Rafael Barba kept his eyes on the flashing red and blue lights, following the sound of the sirens in front of him. His only focus was moving at the same pace as the ambulance and hoping to avoid being pulled over for pushing his car to move faster than ninety miles an hour.
When EMS had arrived at the apartment, Olivia had lost all consciousness and Barba was pacing the living room floor, wringing his hands together, desperate for help to arrive. He felt like the longer she laid there, the faster Liv seemed to fade away. By the time the paramedics rolled Olivia out on the stretcher, Rafael could barely hold himself together. There was something about his relationship with Liv, they had never been involved, but they had shared more horrible times than most couples did in their whole relationships. He cared about her, probably more than he would ever admit.
As Barba replayed the events in his head, he had pulled into the parking lot and stopped the car without even realizing it. He was on autopilot immediately, almost running directly from his car to the emergency room entrance, but he was stopped before getting through the ward doors.
"Sir, you can't go back there." A nurse in light blue scrubs stepped in front of the moving DA.
"But... Umm..." He couldn't even form a sentence. "The woman... The woman that was just brought in, I need to know how she is."
"Okay, I can help you with that." The nurse led Barba back to the front desk. "What is her name?"
"Olivia... Uhh… Benson."
The nurse typed the name into the computer and the look on her face said it all. "They've already taken her into surgery. I'll let you know when I have some more information."
And that was all the Rafael heard for the next two hours. He sat in the waiting room, fidgeting in his seat, he walked up and down the hallway, nothing could calm his nerves. It was odd; he had never really cared so much about what happened to someone else.
The ringing of his cell phone finally brought Barba back to reality.
"Barba." He answered without even looking at the caller ID.
"Please tell me you went with her to the hospital." It was Nick, sounding almost as panicked as Barba felt.
"Of course I did." He couldn't believe that Nick would think he would simply leave after finding Olivia.
"How is she?"
"I haven't heard anything yet. She went into surgery right away and nobody knows anything else."
After a quick conversation with Barba, Nick hung up his phone, shoved it in his jacket pocket, and walked into the apartment building. He couldn't help but wonder how many times he was going to have to visit Olivia's apartment as a crime scene, it had been too many times already.
Amanda, Fin, and Carisi were already inside, looking for anything and everything that could possibly lead them to the people who beat Liv and took Noah, but they were coming up empty handed. The only evidence in the apartment belonged to Olivia, the blood on the floor, the chunks of pulled put dark brown hair, it was all just evidence of the torture she went through, not who put her though it.
"There's nothing in here." Amanda let out a frustrated sigh. "These people were good, no fingerprints, no shoe prints."
"I just don't get what anyone would have wanted with Liv and Noah." Fin said.
"I sure as hell hope the security cameras outside got something then or we're going to be completely screwed." Nick hated to be the pessimist, but with no physical evidence there wasn't much of anything for the team to work with.
The four detectives stood in silence for a while, letting it all sink in. They had done it all before, but it never got easier.
"Hey detectives." They turned to see one of the patrol officers who was guarding the crime scene standing in the doorway. "I have a girl here who claims she saw someone with the little boy."
Nick and Amanda left the apartment to talk to the witness, leaving Fin and Carisi to finish up with CSU and see if there wasn't even just the smallest thing that would help them find whoever did this.
The girl the officer had been talking about was waiting outside the crime scene tape, obviously anxious.
"I'm Detective Amaro, this is Detective Rollins. The officer said you saw someone with Noah."
The girl nodded. "Yeah, when I got home earlier; I was… I was walking up the stairs when I saw woman holding a baby. At first I didn't realize that it was Noah, but when I looked again I was almost certain."
"Do you know Liv and Noah? Are you sure it was him?" Amaro questioned.
"Yeah I know them. I live down the hall and when Olivia can't get a hold of Lucy quick enough or if she doesn't want to bother her, she asks me to babysit Noah. I know for sure that it was him."
"Who would want to do this to Olivia and Noah?" The young girl couldn't understand.
"We don't know. That's what we're trying to figure out." Nick said to her.
"Okay, sweetie, do you think you could describe the woman who had Noah to one of our sketch artists at the precinct?" Amanda asked her, bringing them back to the reason they were talking to the teenager in the first place.
"Umm… Yeah, I think I could." The girl sounded pretty sure of her memory of the woman.
"Good, then we'll have one of our officers give you a ride there." Amaro waved over the officer he had talked to earlier.
But before the officer and the girl could make their way to the elevator to meet another officer downstairs, the girl turned back around to face the detectives. "There was a man too. I didn't see him with the woman, but when I ran into him in the hall, I had a weird vibe about him and I think there might have been blood on his shirt."
Olivia's blood, Nick thought. "Look, if you can remember his face too, have the sketch artist work up a picture of him."
"Thank you." Amanda told her and the officer took the girl into the elevator.
The two detectives walked back into the apartment, where the crime scene techs were packing up their equipment.
"Did you get anything useful?" Fin asked.
"The girl says she saw a woman with Noah when she got home today and then a man that may have had blood on his shirt, we sent her to the precinct to get a sketch of them." Nick filled him in.
"Well it might be start. It's more than we found in here." Carisi commented.
It was more than Barba had at the hospital, too. It was going on four hours now and Rafael was done waiting to hear about Olivia. Someone had to know something.
He stood in front of the nurses' station, waiting for the person sitting there to acknowledge his presence.
"There still isn't anything in the chart, sir."
"It's been over three hours, how has nothing been updated?" Barba knew that he sounded harsher than he had intended, but he was too preoccupied to care.
"I promise you, as soon as something comes up I'll let you know, but for now there isn't anything I can tell you." The nurse seemed genuinely sorry, but there was nothing she could do for Barba.
Rafael took a seat again, crossing and uncrossing, then re-crossing his legs, he was so anxious had hadn't stopped moving since he had arrived. And he hadn't heard anything from the detectives, either. He figured that they had already been in and out of the apartment, but there was no word from any of them.
"Barba." He looked up to see the whole squad walking towards him, Nick having called his name.
"Thanks for keeping me in the loop." Barba scoffed.
"There wasn't much to tell you; we have a witness at the precinct helping to get a sketch and there was no evidence in the apartment, we don't have much to go on right now." Amanda said to the upset attorney.
"And you haven't heard anything more about Liv?" Carisi looked at Barba for an answer.
"No, nothing." Rafael answered. "They keep saying they'll tell me if they get any news, but it's been nearly four hours and no one knows anything."
Before anybody else got a word in, an older doctor wearing a surgical cap and trauma gown walked into the waiting room. "Is there anyone here for Olivia Benson?"
All four detectives and Barba walked up to him. "We're all here for her." Barba told him.
"Wow… okay. Let's go somewhere a little more private." The doctor walked away from the open waiting room and down a hallway, stopping when he felt he was out of earshot of any other people. "You're not all family are you?"
"We work with Olivia. She's an NYPD sergeant and now part of an investigation." Nick informed him, knowing the doctor was worried about disclosing private information.
"Okay. In that case, Ms. Benson, is still critical. We took her into surgery right away when she got in. There's some swelling in her brain from all the blows she took, she has three broken ribs, and one of her lungs is partially collapsed from the trauma to her torso."
"So what does that all mean?" Fin questioned the doctor.
"It means we don't know much yet. She's stable for now, but we have her sedated for pain management. We have to keep a close watch on her for the next few days, with all the injuries she's endured, there is always a possibility that something will arise that we missed. It's hard to say how well she'll make it out of all of this yet."
"But she's going to live?" Barba clarified.
"It's all a bit premature to predict anything right now." The doctor sounded uncertain of Olivia's condition, the last thing any of them wanted to hear.
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