"The reason I hold on is I need this hole gone"

-Stay, Rihanna

Saturday, June 24, 2023

Afternoon

She knew this was a bad idea when Noah mentioned it, but her poor son is still pale and tired from being so damn sick that she can't possibly resist him and he's right to be thoughtful and respectful and empathetic and so when he suggested he wanted to get a card for Elliot - since the cards his classmates had sent to him in the hospital had really cheered him up - Olivia couldn't refuse. Nevermind that she hasn't seen Elliot since before he woke up or talked to him since the night she ran out of his place like a bat out of hell, she knows she can't get out of this unless she undermines her son's attempts to grow up to be a decent fucking human and she so nods and takes Noah to the store and waits patiently while the boy reads every card in the aisle and asks her what condolences means and finally picks out a card and she doesn't ask to see it because it's probably fine and if it's something embarrassing, she assumes Elliot will know she had nothing to do with it besides tapping her phone to pay at the check out.

She's alarmed when Elliot opens the door because she's still in the group chat with the kids and she thinks they've forgotten she's in there because they're all going on about their lives and dates and careers and once Elliot was discharged from the hospital, following an apparently loud discussion with the doctors that he was not going to a rehabilitation facility, they no longer seem worried and Olivia has had to accept their assessment because after Noah left his hospital, she's been very busy at work cleaning up all the shitstorms that McGrath has been raining down on her head to punish her for taking two weeks off unannounced when he was already pissed off at her for sucking at her job.

She realizes as soon as she sees him that his kids are wrong and that he clearly needed that rehab center and while she and the kids had assumed it was rehab for his injuries, she's not sure because he's a fucking disaster right now and he's half dressed and drunk at noon on a Saturday.

At least he has the sense to excuse himself and she sits with Noah on the couch and tries not to notice how many empty bottles of booze are scattered around the room and she can't believe he's managed to drink them all in three days and she can't remember if they were here prior to that and thinks maybe they were because fuck he was drunk that night too.

"Mom, where did Elliot get all those scars?"

She'd barely noticed because she was taking in his behavior and trying to process the let down of seeing him technically alive and well for the first time in weeks because he's alive but clearly not well and she'd been focused on the fact that he's drunk rather than the scars criss-crossing his stomach and side. She knows there are more under the bandage on his arm and she'll admit she's a little concerned that he's wearing the sling and that's an admission of weakness from him she really doesn't expect.

She swallows hard and thinks about Noah's perspective and how the freshly healed evidence of Elliot's brush with death would be about eye level for the boy and she wishes she'd called ahead to at least give Elliot a chance to put on a shirt, but she'd been afraid, considering the last time they talked, that he'd tell her to fuck off and she didn't want to have to explain that to Noah.

"He got hurt at work, Noah, I told you that." She's always careful when talking to her son about job-related injuries because she doesn't want him to panic about the same thing happening to her. "He had to have surgery to get better. Four times."

Noah nods and she can see him thinking, but she no longer knows what he's thinking because he's starting to take after her and keep everything close to the vest and she hates that her inability to be honest about how she's feeling is the one trait of hers he's picked up out of all the things she tried to instill.

The minutes are dragging on and she doesn't think there's another door besides the two she can see from the living room, but there's no reason it's taking this long for him to get dressed and so she excuses herself to Noah and approaches Elliot's bedroom door and knocks lightly. There's no answer, as she expected, but there's no protest either as she peeks her head around the door.

"El?"

He's sitting on the side of the bed, his face blank, his eyes red, and she's waiting for an invitation to leave because hiding in his bedroom is hardly an invitation to stay. Then again, he'd offered her one, not in so many words, the last time she was here and she hadn't responded well.

"You ok?" He doesn't respond again and she crosses the room and waits and he still doesn't respond and she sits down beside him and wonders if maybe the doctors were wrong and he's not ok at all.

He makes a vague gesture with his left hand toward his wrapped arm. "I can't move it."

She glances at the way his arm is wrapped, recognizing the thick cotton wrapping poking out from under the Ace wrap and she's certain he shouldn't still be wearing the post-op dressing at this point because it has been nearly two weeks and he should be cleaning it. "Can't or won't?"

That gets his attention finally, his eyes snapping to hers. "There are plates and screws holding my fucking arm in one piece."

She leans down and pulls up her pant leg, showing off one of the scars on her ankle where she has plates and screws from her accident. "I know the feeling. The first time they told me to stand up, it felt like my leg was going to break in half."

He's staring at the scar on her leg and, unlike with Noah, she can follow his thoughts and she knows he's realizing he had no idea what sort of surgery she'd needed and he's blaming himself for not being there for her and then he's blaming himself for the whole thing because he's convinced it was a vendetta against him that got her run off the road in the first place.

She slides her pants back down and nudges his left arm with her elbow. "You have to move it or it'll get stuck like that."

And once again, she hears his thoughts like her own, a quip on the tip of his tongue about her mothering him and she sees the instant he remembers because he'd forgotten for a moment and her arm slides around his back to comfort him. "She loved you, El, but it wasn't your fault."

His jaw is clenched and she knows he's fighting back tears and her son is in the next room and will come looking for them if they don't come back and so she has to calm him down by changing the subject. "Do you have any t-shirts you don't care about ruining?"

He just looks at her like she's insane and she figures he's really not attached to clothes so she stands up and reaches for the second drawer of his dresser, waiting for his nod to assure her she guessed right, before pulling it open and grabbing a shirt. "Scissors in the kitchen?"

She doesn't wait for the nod, she knows that's where they are because she'd seen them in the knife rack when she was washing his dishes that night. They're right where she remembers and she snips through the seam on the right arm of his shirt and promises Noah they'll be out in a minute and then she's standing in front of Elliot and helping him take off the sling and unwrap the dressing that's unnecessary at this point and maneuver his now naked arm through the cut sleeve of his shirt.

It's strange being this close to him, because except for that night in the kitchen when they'd been much closer, she's been careful to keep space between them. She sees his eyes on her and she feels the emotions he's too tired or too drunk or too something to hide and she tries to avoid eye contact, but his left hand moves up to cup her jaw and she has to look at him and she feels tears welling in her eyes in response.

"It was always supposed to be you, Liv."

She gets it, she does, because she feels it too, standing in his bedroom and helping him get dressed when he's too injured to do it himself and she knows this is how it was always supposed to be, but shit it has never been simple for them and no matter how natural it always felt to behave like his wife would, he'd always already had a wife. She thinks of that fucking letter from Kathy, with the single line from him, and however pissed she was about most of the words and their author, she knows he intended that line to reassure her that he'd always been right there with her.

And then she's thinking about how they know of their relationship, undefined as it is, but no one else does, not really.

"No one knew to call me, El." She's thinking of how she was sitting in that damn meeting with McGrath while he was fighting for his life and how she might not have known if McGrath wasn't such an asshole. "When you got hurt, no one called me. I overheard McGrath talking about multiple fatalities on Ayanna's task force."

He's lost her train of thought, she can see that from his face as he steps back and she knows he didn't make the jump from where he was probably about to kiss her to talking about work. "I don't know where ex-partner falls on the notification list and I honestly don't know what else to call you anymore."

She opens her mouth to respond, but he cuts her off.

"We're not friends, Olivia."

"I just want to know if you get hurt. I want someone to call me." She doesn't know why she's making this claim now when so much is undecided, but for some reason, this is a point she doesn't want to let go.

"Like I got a call when you were green lit by a gang?" He seems to have swung to the opposite extreme, his sentiment from moments earlier apparently erased by a slight she didn't intend and she suspects that their emotions are too raw right now to have a productive conversation. She'd suspected coming here was a bad idea and now she knows she was right. "I'm sure someone would have told you eventually."

She leans back against the dresser and sighs. He doesn't get it and she doesn't feel like having the argument because she's tired. "You know, I was in front of a review board with McGrath when it happened and I just walked out as soon as I heard. He's fucking furious at me because I disappeared for two weeks. I spent the first week at your bedside and the second one at Noah's and I was terrified the whole time that one of you was going to die. Can you just please talk to my son for a minute and then we'll leave you alone?"

She sees it then, the way his expression falls and she realizes that's exactly what he's afraid of - her leaving him alone. "We need to talk, El, but my son is in the next room and maybe this isn't the right time."

He nods and motions toward the door. "It's never the right time, is it?" He's back in the living room and talking to Noah before she can think of a response.