"If I could just see you,

Everything would be alright.

If I'd see you,

This darkness would turn to light…"

Friday, September 26th, 2008

2:00 pm – South Street Parking Garage, Lower Manhattan, NY

x x x

"It's okay. I'm okay… I'm okay. Where's Gitano? Go Elliot go. I'm fine. Go! Go!"

x x x

Olivia.

She was selfless and resilient in a way he'd never seen in anyone before.

That day at the bus terminal, she just as easily could have sent him away with the last words she ever spoke. Even if she wasn't the least bit okay, Olivia would have never asked him to stop for her.

In the hours and days that followed that case, truthfully, he had almost resented her for it.

It made him realize how selfish he was to need her as much as he did. He couldn't lose his partner.

Not then. And not now.

x x x

"Olivia!"

He called out her name after he cleared the entrance to Lower Level I. He stopped just past the height clearance marker, which was barely visible near the water line.

The floodwaters continually fed into the area, channeling down the ramps and between gaps into both lower levels. It left Elliot about a foot and a half of space between water level and ceiling. But it was all filling quickly. Additionally, the near pitch-black conditions he now faced not only made it difficult to find her, but a hazard to be in there himself. He could find no working lights and any daylight streaming in was sparse at best.

"Olivia!" he called out again. He was finding it harder to hear over the roaring sounds of the storm outside, and the water rushing in sounded almost like a waterfall at times. He knew his own voice wasn't projecting very well, but it was all he could do. He was beyond exhausted from the hours he'd been out here and the lack of sleep that had finally caught up with him.

He swam further into the lot with almost nothing to guide him. So now what, Elliot thought as he stared into a darkness that matched the bleakness he felt inside. He'd never witnessed flooding like this before and had absolutely no idea where to start.

Elliot could still remember the remnants of Hurricane Floyd and the street flooding caused by that storm. Mainly because New York City schools had closed that day and that rarely happens. It was also right around the time Olivia came to SVU.

There were a few bad floods back in the 1980's and 1990's that also left their marks on the area.

But nothing like this.

His eyes tried to adjust to the darkness. The miniature flashlight he had with him was useless, but it would have been difficult to tote around something larger. He had counted on this level's floor plan resembling the ones above it, and so far he had been right. It may have been about the only thing going for him down there.

Simply trying to maneuver his way through here while watching out for abandoned cars and other obstacles was worse than the day he left the hospital after the Saul Piccard incident.

So how the hell was he ever going to find her?

As he swam, his hands frequently brushed against random objects floating around. The water seemed to carry a lot of dirt and oil-like substances and whatever else could float near the top. He found a lot of garbage of course. Paper cups, cigarette butts, aluminum cans, bags and plastic materials that may have once been worthwhile evidence.

Then there were other substances that he couldn't identify. Long lost remnants of the East River. Things he knew he wouldn't want to be in contact with had he been able to spot them in advance.

He also realized that there could be discarded syringes floating around. As soon as that thought crossed his mind he began to tread more carefully.

Elliot almost jumped up out of the water when his hand brushed something that felt like hair. When it brushed against him again, he realized it was probably a stray dog or cat that had unfortunately succumbed to the elements.

He'd stop periodically to get some air and then would call her name again. It could be exhaustion, but his voice was sounding weak to him.

He mostly stayed focused, paying attention to anything around him that might clue him in to her whereabouts.

Although whenever he'd let his mind wander, it was usually to some random memory of Olivia and their partnership.

x x x

"…Then this morning you're offering to drive me to work? In the neighborhood? You have the sedan with you? Which means you drove all the way uptown from the Queensboro Bridge, dropped off the car, picked up the sedan, turned around, all the back downtown to get here? That's a lot of neighborhood, my friend…"

x x x

Soon after they started working together, he realized why she could tolerate him. She had her own stubborn streak that at times almost rivaled his.

Thinking about Olivia—her persistence, energy and sheer will had actually helped.

It wasn't only his hopes and his energy that were fading out. As time wore on, it was getting more and more difficult to ignore the fierce headache and dizziness he had felt ever since the wave hit. Although getting hit with the piece of scrap metal earlier may have initiated his head pain, everything else that followed only made it worse. Being in that water was making him nauseated from his head clear down to the pit of his stomach, and it wasn't just from the sulfur he could detect. He had no idea what could be in here, but it was definitely affecting him.

He was almost through Lower Level I, and there was still no sign of her. There was just the area along the back wall, the stairs and the exit ramp left.

Elliot gathered his courage, drew in a deep breath and quickly dove down below the water surface to check things out. He hoped he wouldn't find her trapped somehow below the surface, but he had to rule that out.

When he could open his eyes and take in his surroundings, he noticed two bright, hazy objects on the back wall that he soon determined were lights. It surprised him that they still worked. The lights gave an orange cast to the water, illuminating a portion of the area. What he couldn't see, he tried to judge as best he could. He scouted around a bit and after he was satisfied with having checked it through, he followed the light beams clear to the back wall.

x x

"Blink your lights when you get inside."

"You're just going to sit here all night until I do, aren't you? You stubborn sonofabitch!"

"Yes, I am."

x x

As far as partners go, Elliot had finally met his match. He and Olivia just seemed to fit.

It wasn't that they never had their differences. They definitely did. Their strengths just seemed to compensate for it. It wasn't long after the Sennet case that they figured out how to give the other one space and allowed some of those differences to exist.

Olivia was also one of the rare types who managed to tolerate his short fuse at least enough to work with him when no one else even wanted to approach him.

But not only had Olivia stuck it out with him for ten years, she got him. She knew how to settle him down with just a few words or a supportive glance. All the while, she'd hold her own while tracking down Manhattan's worst and still gave her all for the victims.

Her strength. Her persistence. Her patience. Truth be told, he'd never known a better cop. God was probably feeling generous the day that he sent that woman to the 1-6.

Like he told Cragen one day, she really is a saint.

x x

"With all the slime that's out there. All the kids living or getting killed on the streets. Sometimes I just need to see for myself that my kids are still safe."

"Let me know what I can do to help. We can work things out around here too, El. Rotate weekends. We'll figure this out."

x x

The first thing he noticed as he approached the staircase was that the door had been forced open, likely from the excessive water pressure. It was now just another channel from which the water flowed in. There was practically a waterfall coming down from the first floor. The entire scene before him brought back memories of seeing the movie Titanic. Kathleen and Elizabeth had coaxed him into watching the DVD with them one afternoon when he had a day off.

But staring at the flooded stairwell now left him with nowhere to turn. He had just covered all of Lower Level I. Elliot took one last look around and called out her name several times.

He thought back to what Darnell said and wished that he'd been right. That Olivia was at a storm shelter. It wouldn't have mattered that he was out here now, just as long as she was someplace safe.

But Darnell didn't know her like he did.

Olivia would always stick it out.

There was only one floor left that she could be on and the situation was only looking more grim.

Struggling with his surroundings while trying to convince himself she was okay wasn't easy.

However, accepting anything else at this point was not something he was willing to consider.

x x x

Suddenly, a surge of flood water hit his back, neck and head, knocking him off balance. With no time to react, he instantly went underwater.

The force of the water and the motion forward shook him up enough to finally expel what had been building up in his stomach for a while. As he did, he began to choke and reflexively flailed his arms around, trying to reach the surface again for some air.

The top of his head quickly reached the ceiling of the garage, which didn't help his head pain. The water level had clearly risen and now left him only a narrow margin of space. He almost couldn't get his nose and mouth above the surface to get air. He finally leaned way back and tried to tread water as he gulped in mouthfuls of air.

Elliot then headed toward the nearest wall, and using the broken track lights and ledges for support, as well as some scraps of metal and fiberglass that were lodged in the corners, he quickly made his way around the full surge of the water and up the stairs. He struggled but reached the landing, grabbed ahold of the railing and held on tight. The water was just above chest level. Relieved to have no restrictions on his mouth and nose, he began to choke very hard, gasping for air until his chest began to hurt. To make matters worse, his head was in a great deal of pain, and his stomach wasn't done wrecking havoc on his insides.

He coughed hard several more times as he realized what might have just caused this.

It was another damned wave!

He was completely spent at this point. He didn't know how he was going to continue fighting this storm and still try to find her. He needed to be strong for both of them, but now he wondered if he could even save himself.

Elliot leaned in toward the concrete wall as the surging waters continued to rush around him. He immediately noticed how slick the landing and steps were and tried to maintain his footing. It felt like they were coated in some kind of oil. He had no idea how much longer he would be able to stay like that.

And even when he could move, what the hell was he going to do? Where would he go?

Frustration had taken over, and if he wasn't so nervous about falling into the surging water, he would have punched the wall. Probably break his knuckles, but that seemed insignificant compared to the other pains that were currently gripping him. He was low on patience and getting more and more desperate by the minute.

All he could do was try and hold on while his mind sorted out what he was going to do next.

"Liv, where the hell are you?"

A few minutes passed as he held on and tried to regroup. Then, from somewhere near the exit ramp, he thought he heard a scream.

Liv?

Elliot didn't give it a second thought. He instantly dove with the current and stayed near the wall as he headed straight for the ramp to the ground floor level. Adrenaline took over for a while but just as he was about out of breath, he reached the start of the ramp.

As he tried to swim up the ramp, he encountered a lot more garbage and random things that made it difficult to swim straight in any direction. Fortunately, whatever daylight there was had shone through and made it a little easier to see as he got closer to the ground floor level.

When he neared the top, he looked around and immediately began calling her name.

After a few minutes, there was no response. Nothing. Just the echo from his voice reverberating off the concrete wall next to him, not to be matched by the howls of Hurricane Lilith.

For a minute he just stood there hoping he'd hear the scream again and could place the source. Elliot eyed his surroundings, wondering if something might point him in the right direction.

Soon, however, he began to wonder it was all just false hope. Maybe he'd just imagined it out of desperation.

But take away false hopes and he didn't have anything left.

Leaving just didn't seem like an option. What would he do? Go to a shelter and wait for someone else to find her body a week later? Come down to some crowded, temporary morgue in a storm shelter to identify the body?

So right then and there he made a decision. He wasn't leaving. Not until he had proof she was someplace safe.

And if she was out here in this, he didn't want to be anywhere else.

Something inside of him knew that she was. It was the way he'd always known she was close by whenever they were out in the field chasing down a suspect.

But what the hell happened to her?

"OLIVIA!" he yelled out, his voice sounding as desperate as he felt.

Elliot was losing his grip.

The racket caused by the storm was suddenly all he could hear, and in that instant, it became more than he could take. It was all he had heard for the past several hours, and he couldn't get it out of his head regardless of where he went. Elliot knew he would be hearing it for days, weeks, and maybe even longer, if he ever made it out of here.

Standing there, he couldn't even gather his own thoughts. The storm's howl seemed to be preventing him from making sense of things—from figuring out some way through this mess.

He was hurting, sick, scared, exhausted, angry, frustrated and he didn't want to be here anymore.

But he couldn't leave.

Yet all of the patience, strength, courage, and any positive hopes he tried to keep up for her sake seemed to be rapidly depleting.

Maybe he just wasn't as strong as she was.

Maybe that's why God made her his partner.

But he couldn't give in now; she was counting on him. She needed him.

She needed him, and he was barely holding up, he thought.

"Liv…" Elliot sighed.

After a few minutes he heard the scream again.

This time he knew he hadn't imagined it.

Elliot turned his head all around trying to place its direction. He decided it was somewhere near the front of the garage and took off swimming for the ground floor vehicle entrance. Although he was hurting from head to foot and tired of swimming, it was the fastest way to get there.

He prayed again. If I find her now, please just give me enough strength to be able to get her to safety.

Elliot struggled breathlessly the last few feet and finally reached the attendant booth about twenty feet from the garage door entrance. He stopped for a bit and looked all around again. He still couldn't find the exact source.

Maybe it was a sign. Maybe it was his last hope.

He looked out beyond the attendant booth into the disaster that was once his city and suddenly realized the irony of his life right at that point.

Kathy wanted him to give D.C. a shot but he wasn't willing to leave the city.

Then a damned hurricane blows in, and there's next to nothing left.

Elliot didn't even know if he'd have a place to go home to when this was all over.

He eyed the wreckage outside and tried to remember what used to be where. A Duane Reade was once next door with some offices in floors above it, and now there was barely a skeleton of the structure sticking up out of the water. Somehow, a few of the buildings on the block were demolished and a few were left standing. Some of the older buildings surprised him when he noticed they were still intact aside from some minor structural damage. Inside was probably in worse shape wherever water could seep in.

An apartment building that had been there for about ten years seemed to be okay aside for some broken windows. But if that roof held out, it would be a miracle, Elliot thought.

The Liberty Hotel at the corner of Beekman looked to be holding up quite well too for something that was built in the early 1960s, even though it had been through several reconstructions.

Elliot's thoughts drifted back to the present. He hadn't heard the scream for a few minutes so he decided to check outside.

He walked out slowly and cautiously toward Pearl Street, staying low but glancing up periodically. He shoved aside plywood in his path that might have been used to board up windows. More garbage cluttered the streets ahead of him.

Elliot immediately noticed that an abandoned building off to his left had lost its roof, and the structure was barely standing. The roof had fallen over on its side, remaining almost intact and formed a barrier that blocked some of the wind and rain. It extended only about twenty feet out however, and he knew it could begin to shred apart, creating projectiles out of scraps like he and Olivia had seen earlier.

Suddenly, something ten to fifteen feet off to his right caught his attention.

Something or someone out there. It looked like a large duffle bag on top of a container or else someone who was hunched over. Although, it would have to weigh a lot or else be grounded somehow, not to be toppled over by the wind and floodwaters that surrounded it.

He moved closer and realized that it was a person. An old man was sitting on an overturned trash can in the street behind an SUV using the overturned roof to the left to shield himself from blowing debris. He looked disoriented and quite pale. Elliot suspected he was injured and might even be going into shock.

"Sir? Sir, can you hear me?" Elliot called to him. "Are you okay?"

The man looked at Elliot, blinked his eyes a few times, but never replied.

"I'm a police officer. Are you injured?"

The man never said a word but hadn't looked away.

Elliot spoke louder. "I'm going to check your pulse. Is that okay?"

The man nodded once and offered his wrist. The pulse was weak, but what he immediately noticed was that the man's skin was cold as ice.

"What's your name, sir?" Elliot asked, continuing to project his voice.

The man slowly spelled out the name Vincent in sign language.

Elliot recognized some of the letters and could figure it out. "Vincent?" he smiled. "Okay, let's get you inside that garage for now, Vincent. Can you come with me?"

Vincent looked down and then back at Elliot and shrugged. He pointed to his knee. Elliot deduced that he couldn't walk. That explained why he was sitting there instead of looking for someplace safe.

"If you lean on me, can you get inside?"

Vincent nodded. Elliot helped him stand up and as they started forward, he realized it was too much of a struggle for him in these conditions. Elliot lifted him with relative ease and carried him into the garage. He was about Munch's size and probably close to his age, but he hardly weighed much at all.

Elliot stayed low to the water surface, almost dragging Vincent through the water but it was the only way he could shield them both from the flying debris that continued to blow through the streets.

He set Vincent down just inside the door and got him to lean against the wall, and then went over to the attendant booth. Finding that the door was locked, he picked up a block of wood floating near by and swung it several times against one of the side windows. When he could get an opening, he reached in and unhinged the door. He opened it and looked inside deciding it would have to do. He picked up Vincent and carried him to the booth, setting him down on the chair inside.

The booth attendant had left a sweater behind which was way too big, so he wrapped it around him and made sure he was okay otherwise. He had nothing to treat the knee so he just tried to help him elevate it by stacking some things under his foot. It was all he could do for him really.

"Hang in there, big guy, okay?"

Vincent smiled up at Elliot and nodded appreciatively.

Elliot secured the door and walked back toward the entrance.

Another strong gust of wind suddenly hit and Elliot briefly wondered if this storm would ever end. He suddenly remembered that they were expecting both of the storms to hit at pretty much the same time. The nor'easter was also partially to blame for the damage he had seen.

Elliot looked up at an office building across from him. Most of the building was made of steel and glass, and had already been shred apart and almost gutted out, leaving a good chunk of a metal structure. It looked like nothing but a weak tall frame of scrap metal and he began to wonder how long it would hold out.

And then he got his answer.

The metal roof of the apartment building to the left of it finally ripped completely off in almost one clean piece and slammed into the office building. The remaining jagged metal structure, about 150 feet tall, toppled over and came crashing down toward the street.

Elliot was stunned as he watched it all happen, but suddenly realized he was standing way too close.

He stumbled backward first, and then scrambled quickly to get back into the garage as fast as he could. But the force of the wind and the water he waded in slowed him down.

As he fought to get to safety he began to wonder if he would actually make it. It all happened so fast but he could see and feel everything happening and every step he took, as though he was looking at one snap shot of the scene at a time.

He leapt into the garage with only one thought in mind.

Olivia.

x x x

Next Chapter: SUSTAINED WINDS