A/N: Given all the BJ inspiration flowing today from our dear mom(s5thchild), I was duly inspired to finish this chapter and get it ready to post. I've borrowed from her backstory for Jim and hope that she not be too angry with me for doing that without asking. There is also minor reference to ashatanii's Exit Wounds (which is amazing, by the way).

Chapter 2

Christie – she was Christie now – sat silently as the doctor explained what was happening inside Jimmy's head. She wasn't sure she understood everything, exactly, but there was a lot of emphasis put on the fact that there should be "no cognitive dysfunction." He stressed that they'd have to wait and see about everything else.

In the next few days, as Jimmy started to wake up, the picture started to clear up, if you could call it that. Scans showed that the bullet had entered the temporal lobe of Jim's brain, damaging the lateral geniculate nucleus and connections to the superior colliculus. When she looked it up later online, she found that it meant he had no vision in the lateral side of his left eye or the nasal portion of his right eye. It was the hemorrhage in the occipital lobe caused by the bullet's damage to blood vessels in that region as well as the force of his head striking the ground after he'd been shot that took care of the rest. The doctor didn't seem optimistic about the prospect of any sort of meaningful recovery, as CNS neurons don't often repair or regenerate themselves. His words of advice were to offer to introduce Christie to a social worker who would help them set up services for when Jim was ready to come home. Christie thought that given the choice, Jim might have taken the cognitive dysfunction. She couldn't imagine what they were going to do now.

He'd been in and out of consciousness, and they'd had to sedate him between examinations. When he was fully awake, he flailed around in the bed, dislodging lines and tubes and setting off alarms. She couldn't stand to see him like that. Frankly, she could barely stand to see him at all, even with him looking so unassuming and vulnerable. She knew he was still the same asshole underneath all the bandages.

Still, she couldn't bring herself just to leave him like this. She spent the first three days in the chair beside his bed as he slept and showed up at the hospital every day before and after work after that to check on him. Six days into it all, she walked into his room to find him sitting up in bed, a nurse strategically positioned on either side of him. He was eating, or they were feeding him or something like that. When he heard her heels on the tile, he stopped. His head shot up and swiveled toward the door, trying to force his eyes to tell him who had entered the room.

"Who's there?" he asked with more than a touch of paranoia in his voice.

"It's just me, Jimmy." She started to move toward him but stopped. "Is it okay if I come in?"

"Yeah." He turned to the nurses. "Can I have a minute with her?" he asked.

"The call button is wrapped around the bar on your left side, Detective Dunbar," one of them told him, placing his hand on it before she walked out of the room.

"Chris?" he asked, once the footsteps had stopped.

"I'm still here, Jim," she confirmed.

"You can come closer. I'm sure there's a chair or something." He listened as her shoes clipped across the hard floor. She stopped for a second before reaching him. Fabric rustled as she removed her coat and placed her purse on the aforementioned chair. A second later, her Chanel No. 5 filled his nostrils, and a soft, perfectly manicured hand found a place on top of his.

"You're awake. That's quite an improvement." She was surprised that she didn't have to make her voice sound pleased.

"The nurses said you've been here a lot."

"It's not a big deal," she quickly replied. "I'd like to think you'd have done the same for me." He was silent. She moved her hand a bit higher on his arm. "It's okay, Jim. You don't have to say anything."

He closed his eyes briefly and then opened them as he turned his face toward where he thought she must be. "You don't have to do this, Christie." He dropped his head. "I know you're leaving, and I understand. I'll figure out something. I can go to Indiana, stay with my mom or Rick maybe."

She stopped him. "Let's try not to worry about that right now, okay. Let's just focus on getting you well." God, she sounded so stereotypical.

He called her on it immediately. "That's bullshit Christie and you know it. What did they give you some kind of wounded policeman's wife brochure to read from or something?" Then, he started to get defensive, speaking words with a fire that was vintage Jim Dunbar. "I don't want you to hang around and watch me fumble around like some idiot. I'll hire someone before I let that happen." His face reddened as he spoke.

"Calm down, Jim. You're getting all worked up. Again, we don't have to decide anything right here or now." There was a harsh scrape as she dragged the chair across the floor to sit beside him. "Have you talked to anyone about when you'll be ready to come home or what we need to do?"

He shook his head. "I only talked to the doctor today, you know, got the whole picture, which is ironic."

"Jimmy," she whispered.

"Fuck, Christie." His voice started to quiver, "What the hell am I gonna do?" He paused for a second. "It would have been better for both of us if I hadn't made it. You could keep the apartment and I would have died a hero."

She stood from the chair. It scooted back across the floor with the momentum of her body moving against it. She grabbed his face with both of her hands and held it tightly.

"Don't you ever say that again. Do you hear me, Jim? That's not fair and it's not true, well, except for the hero part" she added, although the thought has also crossed her mind. But seeing him here, he still looked like Jim and sometimes he sounded like Jim, even like the Jim she used to love. She released his head. "We'll figure it out. That's what I came to tell you. I want to stay, for a while at least."

Although she had initially been resistant to see Jim at the hospital, and had gone mainly out of a sense of duty, the moment she walked into his room today, her heart broke seeing him awake and so scared. She'd spent the past week agonizing over whether or not she could actually do what she knew she had to. Until she had seen him just now and said the words the minute before, she hadn't been sure she could actually go through with it.

"Stop it, Chris. I don't want your pity." Whatever they had shared just moments ago was fading fast.

"I don't trust you, Jim, and although I'm angry with you, I don't hate you. But you still shouldn't have to go through this alone, and I'm not saying that out of pity. We used to be good together, and I'm not suggesting that we can ever get back to where we were, but I want to help you."

He paused for a few seconds to digest what she'd just said. "Why would you want to do that, after all I've done to hurt you? You said you'd hope that I'd be here for you, but if you'd done to me what I did to you, my ass would have left you."

"Well," Christie answered, "That's what I was in the process of doing when your ass got shot. So I had to rethink my plan slightly."

Jim smiled briefly but let it slide off his face. "I can't ask you to do this."

"You didn't ask; I offered." Jim's head started shaking again. "And I know you're no good at accepting help, but you don't have a choice here, Jim. You're going to need someone, and wouldn't it be a lot easier and more practical if that person was me?"

He considered this briefly. "Well, yeah, but…"

"No buts, Jim. It's settled." She glanced at her watch. Everyone of any consequence was gone for the day. "I'll talk with the social worker and the doctor in the morning to start arranging what I need to do at the house and get you set up for the proper classes and stuff."

He groped for her hand and finally found it. In just that act, she saw his composure start to crumble again. "I don't know if I can do this, Christine."

He never used her given name. "I'm not aware of anything you can't do," she tried.

"How about see? Maybe you could put that on your list," he spat as the wall shielding his emotions shot up again and he dropped her hand, crossing his arms and shoving his hands beneath his armpits in a full-on pout.

Shit. How had she fallen into that? "Sorry. That wasn't too smooth." She reached up and pulled his left hand out and back toward her. "You can do this. We can do this."

His right hand rubbed over his face, scrubbing at his eyes. "Oh, God, Chris. What am I gonna do?" he repeated from just a few minutes earlier, this time with greater desperation. "I can't live like this. I'm a fucking cop, for chrissake. And I'm fucking blind." Once he said the word, he completely unraveled in front of her eyes.

Christine kicked off her heels and climbed into the bed. She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him toward her as his body shook in silent sobs. His head rested on hers as his hand found her face and hair, his fingers twisting in the dark strands. She let her own fingers work into his hair, avoiding the injured left side as she massaged. She couldn't tell him it would all be okay. She couldn't tell him the two of them would figure out their relationship. She couldn't even tell him that she loved him because she wasn't sure that she still did. All she could do was lay beside him and hold him as the reality of it all began to sink in.