Elisa blinked in stunned silence for a split second, then reacted instinctively.
She swung her double handed grip up and took aim at the dark figure in front of her. "Freeze!" She shouted. "Drop the weapon!"
Elisa needn't have bothered, and the gun had fallen to the ground. The shooter was dressed in dark colors, so it was hard to make out anything other than a vague outline and shadowy features.
Suddenly, the little light from the streetlights on the street glinted off of the silver badge on the man's shirt.
She met the surprised gaze of an officer that she didn't recognize.
Elisa treated it like any other shooting instinctively. She never lowered her weapon, and began barking orders.
"Get on the ground," She shouted to him.
When he didn't move, Elisa started yelling louder to get the other officers in the front of the buildings attention.
"I said, get down on the ground, hands behind your head!" Elisa shouted.
Keeping an eye on the man in her sights, she began shouting, "Officer down!"
She was rewarded with the sound of running feet.
"Get down!" came another familiar voice. Officer Morgan, a twenty year vet on the force, was walking up behind the officer who had done the shooting. He kicked the gun away, towards Elisa. "On the ground!"
The unknown officer knelt down slowly.
Morgan didn't mess with it. He had the guy flat on the ground, hands cuffed behind his back in no time at all.
"Damn it," Elisa yelled. She holstered her own weapon, and was kneeling beside Carver in the space of a heartbeat.
"Officer Down." Morgan called into his shoulder mounted radio. "We have an officer down with a G.S.W. to the chest."
Elisa went on autopilot after that. She applied pressure to the wound, shouting orders to the officers all around her. Morgan dealt with the shooter, another officer was using an evidence bag to collect the shooter's gun. A couple of the officers had to go to the front to stay with the people who had been arrested, but the rest were trying to encourage Carver into hanging on until the Ambulance got there.
Sirens sounded in the distance, letting the officers know that they were close.
Carver let out a gurgling breath, and suddenly… Nothing.
"Shit." Elisa swore heatedly. "Someone go flag those EMTs down!"
A couple of the officers ran to the front to do just that.
"Morgan," Elisa called out the first name she could think of, looking around for his familiar face.
"He's out front," Another unfamiliar officer said, kneeling beside her. "What do you need?"
"Put your hands here, and apply pressure."
The man put his hands on his fallen comrade without hesitation.
Elisa changed positions and began CPR, alternating between compressions and forcing breath into Carver's lungs.
During the compressions, she kept up a litany of encouragement and insults. Anything to try for a response.
"Here they come," Someone called out.
Elisa was only vaguely aware of what they had said, so focused on her task as she was.
"We have him," a woman's voice came beside Elisa. She glanced over and spotted the bright white of the EMT uniform.
Elisa moved, and the medical technicians fully took over. The woman who had spoken to Elisa took over the chest compressions while another tech placed an oxygen bag over the young officer's mouth and nose.
Elisa backed up a few steps, not taking her gaze off of the young man who had been so determined to be a detective.
No one had to tell her. God help her, but she already knew he was gone . The EMTs made a valiant effort, but nothing could be done.
She saw the moment that the EMTs realized it too. As one, they stopped their work and sat back. They wouldn't meet any of the officer's eyes around them.
"We will take him to Manhattan General," the female tech quietly told Elisa. "If you want, I can call his station house and have someone sent to notify his family."
Elisa blinked. "He's from the 23rd precinct. I will tell the captain when I get there."
The tech tilted her head and looked at Elisa closely. "Maybe you should come with us, officer."
Elisa looked at the Tech blankly.
"Are you sure that none of that blood is yours?" The tech pushed. She put a gentle hand on Elisa's back and began guiding her to the ambulance. "Come on, officer. We need to check you over for injuries."
Elisa didn't protest. What could she say at that point? She was fine. She could get out and race the ambulance on foot to the hospital.
But Carver couldn't.
Elisa sighed, and laid her head back against the side of the ambulance.
"Detective," Morgan called softly, handing Elisa her forgotten coat. "You might want this."
"Thanks," Elisa said emotionlessly. She could hear it in her voice, that distance and tightly held control.
It was a comfort, in a way, knowing that she still had that much control over what was happening. Everything else was so far out of her control that she was afraid to look outside of herself.
For now.
"Officer," the female paramedic broke into Elisa's reflections. "Let's take a look at you now." She offered Elisa a hand to help her into the back of the ambulance and onto the gurney.
The EMTs discovered that she had, indeed been injured. Despite being non-life threatening, they took her to the hospital with full lights and sirens for treatment.
At the hospital, it was discovered that Elisa had been nicked by the bullet after it had passed through Carver. The bullet had gone through Carver's left lung, tore a hole in the sac around his heart, and out the other side where it had carved a large groove in Elisa's upper left arm.
With everything going on at the time, she hadn't even noticed it.
It had required ten stitches to close it.
Elisa sat on the bed in the ER, feeling strangely numb. 'Shock,' Elisa corrected herself.
"Can I go now?" Elisa asked as the doctor finished bandaging her arm.
"Let me write you a prescription for the antibiotics and a painkiller."
"No," Elisa shook her head. "I don't need a painkiller."
"You might need it tomorrow," the doctor was insisting.
"I. Do. Not. Need. A. Painkiller." Elisa said through gritted teeth.
The doctor threw his hands into the air. "Fine. I will write the prescriptions, and you can choose to fill them or not."
Elisa stood up as he left, slowly putting her jacket back on. She looked a little less like she belonged in a horror movie with it on. The blood, both hers and Carver's, blended into the red of her jacket and the brown of her boots. Her white shirt was toast, but the jacket could cover most of it if she zipped it up.
There was no hope for hiding her jeans. Everything from her thighs to her knees were spotted with blood. From her knees down, she looked as if she had been kneeling in a puddle of blood.
Elisa sighed. There was no help for it now. She had to get back to the precinct and talk to Maria. Make her report.
She had to talk to Goliath.
Shit! Elisa froze in the sudden dawning horror. How much did Goliath know about what happened after he had left her at the scene?
Did he know anything, or was he still sitting at the station wondering where she was?
If ever there was anything that could snap her back to reality, it was that Goliath.
A nurse came in with her first round of antibiotic pills, and Elisa hurriedly tossed them back in her sudden anxiousness to get out of there.
When the doctor returned with the prescription and release papers, she practically grabbed them out of the doctor's hand and started running. She wanted to get outside so that she could at least talk to Goliath via communicator, but was stopped in the waiting area.
There was wall to wall officers who had come for word on their injured officers.
They had gotten word of Carver, but they were staying to support her. Normally, it wouldn't have bothered her, but she was in a hurry to get somewhere where she could contact her husband without being surrounded by people...
She tried waving off everyone's concerns, and finally gave up. They weren't going to stop.
A familiar redhead caught her attention. "Matt," she called out frantically.
Matt turned and had such a look of relief on his face, she knew she was going to have trouble. "Matt, what the hell?" A feeling of dread had started settling in her gut, making her anxiousness level rise.
"Elisa, I have got to tell you," He said, dropping his voice in hopes that the minimal amount of people would overhear. "Your husband is here and about to start tearing the walls of the hospital down."
Elisa reached in her jacket pocket, and pressed the communicator into his hands. "Go. Tell him that I am alright." Elisa urged. "Then you come back and get me out of here."
Matt frowned a little, but did as she wanted. He turned, making his way through the crowded waiting area to the door outside.
A few minutes later, he came back in. He found her surrounded by well meaning officers, made their excuses and ushered her out to his car. "Goliath is going to follow us back to your building. On his orders, and yes, I am going to follow them, I am to get you into the elevator, and to your floor safely. He will meet you at the door."
"Matt, I have to go make a report at the station about what happened." She reminded him.
"Not tonight," Matt said firmly. "Captain's orders. You can do it tomorrow if you insist, otherwise I am to tell you that if you type up an informal report in an email and send it to the captain, that will be enough for now until you get back to work and can make a formal statement."
Elisa nodded, oddly grateful that she didn't have to face any more of her fellow officers that night.
"Thank you," Elisa said, with a tired sigh. "Take me home, then."