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Twice Into The Same Stream
Chapter 3
by Kate04
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January 2005
Andy hated the smell of hospitals. It reminded him of all those endless days he had been tied to a bed to recover from various injuries and all the times he had spent waiting for the outcome of a colleague's surgery. This time it was different. The person he was here for was not a colleague. Not really. She was a fellow officer, but that was definitely not why he was here, dread sitting in the pit of his stomach like a large, cold stone.
Don't worry too much, sir. I'm sure your wife will be okay.
His wife. No, she wasn't his wife. He couldn't remember if they had asked him or not, but somehow the EMT had gotten the idea that he was Sharon's husband and he had found neither reason nor energy to correct him. What was the point, anyway? From what he had heard, her real husband currently wasn't exactly on the list of her most popular people and neither her children nor her parents were local. Setting them straight would only have meant that no one would be allowed to be there for her.
The young EMT had tried his best to reassure him, but his optimism had only lasted until he had dug through Sharon's handbag, searching for any information about possible allergies or medical conditions he should know about, since he hadn't been able to get that information from Andy. After looking at a picture he had retrieved from the purse, the medic had handed it over to him, his eyes sad and his expression full of regret. It had taken a moment for Andy to comprehend, even though it hadn't been the first time he had seen the printout of an ultrasound. When he had made sense of the name and date on the picture, his breath had caught in his throat and he had looked at her still flat belly in wonder. For a few precious seconds he had seen their future dance in front of his inner eye, her leaning against him, laughing happily, beaming with pride as they both looked at the tiny being securely held in her arms. The image had burst like a bubble, however when his gaze had met that of the man across from him. Suddenly his compassionate expression had sunk in and the iron fist of dread and fear that had seized Andy's heart the moment he had found her on the ground of the parking garage had tightened once more, making him fear that it would simply stop beating. Looking at her, her face red with blood from a cut above her right eye and her hair soaked with it, angry bruises already starting to show, it had been hard to imagine how that little spark of life inside of her could have remained unaffected. The medic had told him that he should wait for the tests they would do at the hospital. For the moment he should draw hope from the fact that there didn't seem to be any noticeable bleeding.
It was that hope he still clung to just as tightly as he held that precious image between his hands. He had no idea how long it had been since the nurse had pushed him into one of the uncomfortable chairs in the waiting room, assuring him that they would take good care of his wife, that she would come and get him as soon as the doctor was done and they knew what they were dealing with. Andy had complied, mostly because he didn't have the strength to fight with anyone, with the image of Sharon's curled up body and the sensation of her cold skin and weak pulse still too vivid. His thoughts spun around in an endless circle of hope and fear, of possibilities and painful reality. Mixed into the memories of her battered and almost lifeless form on the cold ground and the wishful thoughts of an impossible future were recollections of the last time he had seen her, tears and longing in her eyes and her body rigid with pain of a different kind as he had turned his back on her, on them. How can you be afraid of losing a person who was never yours to begin with? It was a question that went through his mind repeatedly and he was still no closer to an answer. She could have been his. Maybe she even had been for a few breathtaking hours, but they had walked away from the amazing possibilities, both too scared to take a chance with their hearts, too frightened of losing the other. And here he sat, his heart breaking at the notion of a world without her in it.
He swallowed hard, closing his eyes against the burning of tears as he heard the familiar sound of his partner's footfall getting closer. When the older man slumped into the chair next to his, Andy didn't look up, not wanting to reveal the depth of his distress to him. They sat next to each other in silence for a few moments, before Provenza reached over to gently take the picture from him. Andy let him have it, his gaze now on his empty hands where they hung between his knees. Empty hands – would that be what he would leave this hospital with? Would a blurry picture be all he would have left of her?
"Damn!" The heartfelt exclamation of his friend drew Andy out of his thoughts for a moment and he risked a glance at him. He was shaking his head, still staring at the ultrasound when he spoke again.
"I didn't know her old man was back in town. Last I heard he ran off with some young, blond thing to lose some more money at a poker table."
The urge to punch his partner in the face came as a surprise to Andy, and he had a hard time restraining himself. The old man might wonder why his friend was so affected by what had happened to the Captain, but he had no way of knowing why he cared so much and why the notion of Jack being responsible for the fuzzy little shape in the picture made him so unbelievably angry. If he were honest, he would have to admit that it wasn't really Provenza he was irritated with. A small part of that anger was probably directed at Sharon for not telling him, but mostly he was mad at himself for not fighting for her when it had mattered most.
Snatching the image back, Andy smoothed it against his thigh, one finger tracing the outline of the tiny head.
"It's not Jack's," he growled, waiting for his partner to understand what he was implying. He counted the seconds it took Provenza to process his words, because it was the least painful thing to focus on. It took eight seconds until his friend's head shot up and he stared at him in shock, all the pieces suddenly falling into place. Andy sighed, waiting for the inevitable string of questions. Instead, the other man gave his shoulder a firm squeeze before he stared at the ground in front of them once again. His voice was quiet and full of sympathy when he finally spoke after a long silence.
"How's she doing? Did they tell you anything?"
Closing his eyes, he shuddered at the memory of having to let go of her hand when they had taken her away. Not knowing was hell, but he was also scared out of his mind about what they might tell him.
"They couldn't say much. She was hypothermic and they're pretty sure that she has a concussion and probably a broken arm. The paramedic said that she must have been there a while. If she had any severe internal injuries, she would already…" The thought sent a chill through him and it settled inside his bones, making his hands shake slightly until he pressed them against his thighs. "She wouldn't have made it this long. They got her stabilized on the way in and they'll let me know as soon as they're done with the tests. It's gonna take a while."
He didn't need to say how much he hated waiting, how it was killing him to sit around without anything to do. Andy Flynn had never been a patient man and the old Lieutenant could see how much this entire situation was taking out of him. These were ideal circumstances for falling off the wagon, but he wouldn't let that happen. He would have to watch him closely and try his best to keep him distracted. For the moment, getting him to talk sounded like a good idea.
"While you were sitting around here, we started looking into what happened. The Chief marched into the Pope's office earlier and convinced him that it was our case. It's not a homicide, but someone attacked a cop in our own damn parking garage, so it's definitely priority. Surprisingly, he agreed. We got a timeline together with footage of her crossing the lobby towards the garage, but there's nothing on the actual attack. Someone disconnected the security cameras down there late last night. It's a safe bet that he was waiting for her to leave. Whoever we're dealing with is no amateur and so far we have a whole lot of nothing. The Chief sent me here to get an update on the Captain's condition and find out if there's anything she can tell us – preferably the identity of her attacker. A list of people she pissed off lately would help, too."
Andy knew what his friend was trying to do and he welcomed it, letting his mind dive into the case, away from all those dark thoughts that were slowly spiraling out of control inside him.
"What about her guys? Did you ask her pet Sergeant what cases she's been working on recently?"
A grunt and an exaggerated eye-roll were his answer, letting him know just how much Provenza had enjoyed that particular conversation.
"Yeah, I talked to Elliot. He had no idea. There was some issue with someone in Gang and Narcotics a couple of days ago, but he said it seemed like a regular complaint. He did notice that she was working on something that seemed to be bothering her, but she wouldn't talk about it. Elliot asked if she wanted help and she declined, which seemed a little odd to him but he didn't push it. There were no files on her desk or anywhere else in her office. If she has been working on something, she must have locked it inside her desk drawer or taken it with her."
Nodding towards the black purse that sat on the chair next to Andy, he went on, "Did you find anything in there? Files, notes – anything?"
Andy shook his head, wondering about that. Every cop had some sort of notebook and he knew from personal experience that Sharon loved taking notes. "No, there was nothing in there, which is odd. Do you think our guy took it with him?"
The other man hummed and tilted his head, thinking about a possible sequence of events and it didn't make sense to him. "It's certainly possible, but why would he take whatever files she had with her and leave her alive? She's no idiot. She wouldn't carry around evidence or anything else that was irreplaceable. If she was attacked by someone she was investigating and they wanted to cover their tracks, they wouldn't have left her alive. Our current theory is that the perp got distracted and ran off, which would make it impossible for him to snatch anything from her purse."
Nodding slowly, Flynn saw his point. "I guess we'll have to wait till she wakes up and hope she has some answers. The thought of anyone getting away with something like that annoys me, but if it's someone she investigated, that means it's a cop and that I can't accept."
They all agreed on that. No one wanted to walk through Parker Center and wonder who, of all those people they trusted to have their backs, was capable of beating up a fellow officer. A friendly punch in the face happened every now and then when tempers ran hot, but this was an entirely different thing and that small part of him that still fought against the cynicism even after all those years on the job made him want to believe that it didn't have anything to do with her job.
"Are we even sure that it's someone she investigated? What about old Jack?"
Andy snorted, surprised that the old man would even consider that possibility. Sharon's husband was many things, but he had never been violent. Besides, he didn't think Raydor would have the stomach for something as cold-blooded as almost beating his wife to death and he said as much.
"I didn't mean he himself, but he's been known to mingle with all sorts of shady characters. What if he owes money to the kind of people who wouldn't hesitate to go after the wife?"
They both thought about that for a while, but in the end it didn't feel likely to Andy. "Yeah, but why would they do it at Parker Center when they could just as well have waited for her at home without half the LAPD around? And how did they manage to take out the cameras without drawing any suspicion? It just doesn't make much sense. The longer I think about it, the more I'm convinced that it's one of our own guys."
Provenza nodded, having come to the same conclusion. They both stared at the glass doors behind which the person with all the answers was – at least they hoped she had answers. He sensed that his friend was getting sucked into the darkness of his thoughts again. It worried him, but it also made him curious about that thing he seemed to have with Nurse Ratched.
"So, what do you want to do now?" With a sweeping gesture that included the stubbornly closed doors and the picture in Flynn's hands, avoiding to ask the most obvious question. The other man just shrugged helplessly, closing his eyes against the many ways in which it could all end badly.
"I don't know. I guess I'll wait till she wakes up and then we'll talk. There's no use thinking about it before we know if there even is anything left to talk about."
The defeated tone made Provenza swallow in an attempt to hold back the reassuring words that wanted to spill out. He knew all too well how these things usually ended and there was no point in making false promises. Studying the man next to him, it was clear that he didn't believe his own words.
"And yet you are. Thinking about it, I mean." Andy simply nodded, his fingers caressing the image of a child that he hadn't had a chance to meet yet and because of some lunatic probably never would.
"Do you wanna tell me how that happened? Maybe talking about it instead of having it haunt your thoughts will help a little." It was a long shot and Louie half expected to be told to go to hell, but eventually Andy started to speak of that night a few weeks ago when he ran into Darth Raydor and ended up getting to know and admire Sharon.
- TBC -
