Chapter Four

Gail stared at the blank, hospital wall. The Doctor was talking to her, but she wasn't really listening. If she looked at him, she knew she'd end up staring at the weird mole on the corner of his lip.

'Officer Peck?' She turned to see he was handing her a prescription. She shoved it into her pocket without looking at it.

'You should be good to go now,' he told her. 'Just check up with your GP in a couple of days to make sure it's healing properly.'

'Right,' Gail said, not really listening to what he was saying. Her wrist notwithstanding, the double shift had taken a lot out of her, and she mostly just wanted to sleep. Unfortunately, that involved actually leaving the hospital.

Since her cell phone was off, she went to the phone beside the hospital bed, and dialled Holly's number by heart.

'You've got Holly.'

'You busy?'

'That depends. It's a little early in the day for a hook-up, isn't it?'

Gail frowned, and checked her watch. 'It's eight p.m.'

'Huh. So it is. I guess that's probably too late to do my grocery shopping, isn't it?'

'Well, if you feel like going out, I actually need a ride.'

'Don't tell me you got drunk without me.' Gail bit back a laugh. If only.

'No, but I did have a nice Oxy trip.'

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. 'Do I want to know?'

'I'm at the hospital. I had an accident with some industrial drain cleaner at a grow op.'

Holly didn't miss a beat. 'So you're clumsy even on the job?' She sounded slightly concerned, but mostly amused.

'Very funny. It actually really hurt, and the drugs are starting to wear off.'

'I can be there in ten minutes.'

I love you, Gail almost said, but caught herself just in time. She could've seen how it might've been taken out of context, when really, she just wanted to get the hell out of there. It was hard to dress one-handed; even harder, given the fact that her fingers were a little numb.

Apart from Andy's completely unsurprising confession, Gail still wasn't entirely sure what had happened on what had been an almost magical hour-long Oxycodone trip. She was almost disappointed when her doctor had told her that she could probably manage something a little less potent from here on out. Still, he'd been nice enough to give her one last dose before she left, which meant she was still a little high, but she was high enough to know that she was high, and that was the important part.

Andy was waiting in the hallway, and Gail really, really just wanted her to be somewhere else. She was tired, and she was sore, and she was pissed, and she didn't want anyone's pity or apologies, least of all coming from the person that was sleeping with her ex-boyfriend.

The conversation was just as painful, and as awkward as she knew it was going to be. Gail so desperately wanted not to care. She wanted to just tell them to be happy, and to move on with her life, but she couldn't. So she said some things she knew she'd regret later, and walked away.

'Hey.' Holly had clearly been watching the conversation, but made no mention of it, or of the tears in Gail's eyes.

'Hey. Let's get out of here.' The hospital walls were closing in on her. All the drama, all the…everything of the last few days was starting to catch up. She just wanted to lie down, close her eyes, and sleep for the next ten years or so.

They took a detour through the attached pharmacy to fill her prescription, which was another annoying obstacle on her journey to sleep.

'So a grow op, huh?' Holly asked, as they stepped out into the parking lot.

'Yeah, it was a very exciting day.' Gail's reply was a little dry, and probably a lot bitchier than she'd intended. 'You'd think people keeping an eye on three dozen pot plants would screw their drain cleaner lids on properly.

'Let me have a look.' Holly managed to walk and do her doctor thing at the same time, but she stopped short of tearing off the bandage.

'You have a second opinion?'

'Well, you don't have rigor mortis.'

'Right. Probably shouldn't be asking the person that looks at corpses for a living.'

'Given that they let you out so quickly, it's probably not too bad. You didn't dip your whole arm in the stuff, so you should be fine. This is me.' She stopped beside a silver sedan.

'Good to know.' Gail leaned against the side of Holly's car. 'You drive an Audi? Really?'

'Do you have a problem with German engineering?'

'I have a problem with assholes in Audis.'

'I'm sure the fact that you change lanes without indicating has nothing to do with it.'

Gail chose to ignore that comment, not least of all because she was too tired to think of a witty comeback. Instead, she reveled in the comfort of leather seats. It was ridiculously comfortable, and Gail was very, very tempted to just fall asleep.

'So where exactly is the chauffeur service taking you tonight?'

Gail frowned. She hadn't actually thought about that part.

Home was the first answer that came to mind, but it didn't really feel all that appealing. The station was even less appealing, because she knew that's where Andy and Nick would be. She'd stayed with her parents in the aftermath of the Perik thing, but even that was more pain than it was worth.

'Tell you what,' Holly said, without taking her eyes off the road. 'Do you want to stay at my place?'

Gail froze. Wow, that was not the kind of question she could answer right now. 'I don't have a toothbrush with me,' she said, by way of an answer.

Holly smirked. 'I have a spare.' There was a pause. 'But if you don't want to stay, that's fine. It's just that I figured you might want some space from your roommates.'

It wasn't an entirely inaccurate assessment. Chris had moved back in, and Chloe was staying the night more often than not, which meant there were four people living in a place that was better suited to two. She could barely deal with Chloe's chipperness when she was at full strength; she didn't want to try and handle it when she was recovering from skeezy grow-op chemical burns.

In any case, Holly's apartment was much larger than the Casa de (until recently) Peckstein shoebox.

'You better make me breakfast,' Gail grumbled, and that was the last thing she remembered until morning.

…

Holly's spare bed was awesome.

That was Gail's first thought when she woke the next morning, followed by, my wrist is killing me, and then, how the hell did I get here?

Her uniform had been torn off haphazardly, and thrown onto the chair in the corner of the room. She had a brief moment of panic before she found her service weapon in the drawer of the nightstand. She'd get into a ridiculous amount of trouble for that, but after the day she'd had yesterday, she wasn't in a mood to care.

The stronger drugs seemed to have worn off overnight, but she still felt the side effects. Really, on the whole, she almost preferred the wrist pain. That, at least, was predictable. The side effects of painkillers usually just hit her like a sledgehammer of…shittiness.

Ok, so words weren't exactly her friend while she was wallowing in semi drug-addled self-pity. Still, now that she was buzzed again, whatever Andy had said felt a lot less important than it had last night.

So what if Andy and Nick were doing…ew. She didn't really want to think about what they were doing, but she had the day off and they didn't, so it sucked to be them anyway.

She wanted not to care. She wanted to just walk away, and not let their happiness affect her. But that was impossible; the happiness they had was the happiness that she wanted, that she'd needed with Nick. She thought that she'd had it, right up to the point where he left her. Right up to the point where he came home in love with someone else.

Really, though, she wouldn't have been so pissed off if Andy hadn't been so…so Andy about the whole thing. But no. She needed to stop thinking about it, because the whole damn thing was making her feel more nauseous than any medication could.

She found Holly in the kitchen, making coffee. 'It's ten o'clock,' Gail said, by way of greeting. 'Shouldn't you be at work?'

'I took the day off,' Holly said, and Gail had no idea how to respond to that. Since she was such a rookie at the whole "relationship with another woman" thing, they'd been taking things slowly. She wasn't even entirely sure what she wouldn't call what they had, let alone what she would. Something like a "friends with benefits" thing, only more friends, less benefits. At least, that was probably how Holly felt, given that Gail was still trying to figure out how to do things.

'How did I…?'

'You were awake enough to put yourself to bed,' Holly said, in what was apparently her attempt at a reassuring voice. It wasn't that Gail cared exactly, but there was a big difference in the level of intimacy between sex and sleeping in the same bed with someone. Gail was of the opinion that the former was a lot less…intimate than the latter, and it was a bridge that they hadn't quite crossed yet. 'How're you feeling?'

Gail rubbed her eyes. She knew that Holly was talking about more than just the wrist, but at the same time, she had no idea how the hell to answer that question.

Holly, to her credit, didn't push the point, though it didn't take a genius to figure it out (and given the number of qualifications Gail had seen on the office wall last time she was here, Holly was at least forty IQ points ahead of her). Instead, she made chocolate-chip waffles with bacon (she'd wanted to make something a little less vomit inducing, but Gail had vetoed that idea), and put on Kill Bill (Gail knew that Holly didn't really like waffles or Quentin Tarantino. "I do like Quentin Tarantino," Holly said, when Gail brought it up later. "I just think he's done better.") Gail curled up on the couch, with a fleecy blanket that had definitely seen better days.

When she vomited everything up an hour later, sleep was once more starting to look like a good idea. 'I'm sleeping now,' she told Holly matter-of-factly, and pulled the blanket up over herself. Holly's couch was pretty comfortable, but then Gail figured that a forensic pathologist probably made a hell of a lot more than a still sort of rookie cop. It was the kind of thing that made her think that really, by this point in her life, she should have been something more.

Really, though, that wasn't a "today" kind of problem.

Her sleep was short, fitful, and plagued by some seriously fucked up dreams.

Zombies ate her face, lions tore out her hair, and dragons stole her shoes. Gail wasn't sure whether she should be worried, or intrigued by the way her brain reacted to some things.

'Yeah, codeine will do that to you sometimes,' Holly said, when Gail mentioned the dreams. She set a plate of dry toast on the coffee table.

'Well screw that,' Gail muttered. 'I think I'd prefer to deal with the pain.' She made a mental note to flush the pills the first chance she got.

'Is there any room on there for me?'

'I guess you could be my pillow or something.' Gail feigned exasperation, and shifted her body slightly so that Holly could sit down. 'Wow, your lap is super-comfy.'

'It's the faux velvet sweats,' Holly told her. Another time, Gail might have wrinkled her nose at the thought of faux velvet sweats (she wore them herself sometimes, but that was her; she'd expected Holly to be less…whatever), but at that point, she was kind of hungry. Dry toast would have to do.

A short beeping sound, and a sudden vibration jerked her to alertness. Her thumb hovered, ready to delete as she unlocked her phone, but thankfully it was not from Andy.

Your brother is an asshole, FYI. Gail grinned. The fact that Traci was calling her brother an asshole only meant good things. She quickly sent back a reply, suddenly aware of how difficult it was to text left-handed.

Well where do you think I got it from?

They had a brief conversation over text, where Gail gave an update on her physical status (but not her mental one), and in return, Traci filled her in on how the case had resolved (leaving out, Gail was sure, some details involving Steve).

Penny tonight?

Gail stared at the phone. Before she could think of how to politely decline, another message came through.

Andy won't be there.

Fiiiine, Gail replied, making sure her perceived annoyance was well documented. 'I'm going to head out tonight,' she told Holly. 'To the Penny. Did you uh…did you want to come?' She knew there was hesitation in her voice, and Holly noticed it, too.

'Gail, if you don't want to tell them yet, you don't have to. I'm not upset. It's not something you want to push.'

'I'm not…ashamed. I just…I don't want people to think this is some kind of rebound, "cry for help" kind of thing.' As accepting as her friends purported themselves to be, this wasn't something that they could understand. They couldn't know the pain, the emptiness she had felt after facing down Perik. They couldn't know how easy it was, or how happy it made her, to be with someone who was a little more like her. At least, in the ways that counted. Gail would never wear a puffy vest by choice.

'It's not, is it?' Holly asked, putting on a tone of mock concern. 'Because I've already started designing the wedding invites.'

'You're a dork,' Gail murmured. She lifted her hand and moved it up behind her head. Holly took hold of it, and rubbed her thumb absent-mindedly. It was…nice.

It was different to what she'd had with Chris, what she'd had with Nick. Simpler, on some levels. Less dramatic. She felt more relaxed.

The realisation hit her like a ton of bricks.

This wasn't just a casual thing.

…

Traci pushed the door open, and scanned the room for Gail. Usually, the other woman was sitting at the bar, but tonight, she was in a booth in the back corner of the bar. Her hair was a little unkempt, and her right wrist was bandaged, but she gave a smile when she looked up. The glass of orange juice she was nursing seemed untouched.

'You're not still high, are you?' Traci asked, and Gail's expression quickly turned to a frown.

'Who told you about that?'

'Andy,' was Traci's reply, and it definitely wasn't her imagination when Gail rolled her eyes. There was definitely something going on.

'Yeah, what else did she tell you?'

'Nothing. Look, Gail, if there's something going on, you can talk to me about it.'

'Honestly, yes, but I really do not want to talk about that tonight. It just makes me want to drink.' Traci raised an eyebrow. That was the most she'd gotten from either of them about things, but it still wasn't enough. 'How about you? How was your day? How's Steve?'

Traci laughed. 'Oh, nice. Bring me back to that.' She drummed her fingers against the table, but knew that this was the question she had to answer. 'I think I'm kind of falling for him.'

'Gross.' Gail wrinkled her face in disgust, but she was grinning. 'Now if you actually go out with him sometime soon, he'll stop bugging me about it.'

'So.' Traci poked her in the arm. 'What about you? Sheriff of Rottingham still on the cards, or have you picked up another poor guy to go on blind dates with?'

Gail didn't answer straight away. She turned her gaze, and ran her thumb around the rim of her glass. 'I think I'm falling for another woman,' she said.

Of all the answers Traci had been expecting, that was down the bottom of the list. 'Ok,' she said, a little stunned. 'Let's talk about that.'

Author's Note: If you're reading this now, I have put two extra chapters at the front of the story to help it flow a little better. It might screw up some things, but there doesn't seem to be a provision for submitting chapters out of order.