AN: Sorry for the delay, I've been super sick!
I know this whole damn city thinks it needs you / but not as much as I do
The fertility specialist Dr. Miller sent Amanda to had a corner office on Lexington Avenue - a far cry from the health center in Queens she had been going to for her entire time in New York City. She had been able to schedule the appointment a couple of hours before she and Sonny had to attend a mandatory field training for SVU that day. When they arrived, everything was shiny and modern; ironically she was instantly glad that she had not brought either of her children there, as Jesse would have been tearing through magazines and Luca probably would have to be restrained to keep him from digging up the potted plants. Sonny kept asking her, how much is this gonna cost, exactly? in a nervous but resigned kind of way - and truthfully, Amanda didn't know the answer. She would handle this how she approached most other things in life: she would do it, then deal with the consequences later.
Dr. Lombardi (Oh, good, he's Italian, Sonny had sighed, as if that was some kind of indicator of his competence) sat behind his chic glass and steel desk wearing a sharp navy suit beneath his white coat. Amanda and Sonny were positioned on the other side, in two chairs, waiting to speak until spoken to while the physician reviewed Amanda's information.
"So, you're a patient of Dr. Miller's," Dr. Lombardi observed, looking up at Amanda.
"Yeah. I've been seeing him for at least six years," she replied.
He nodded. "Jeremy and I, we went to medical school together."
"Oh. Okay."
Dr. Lombardi set Amanda's paperwork down and folded his hands atop his desk thoughtfully. "The research shows that conceiving in the first six months after a miscarriage means a lot fewer complications with the resulting pregnancy. It's when you have two miscarriages consecutively that it's cause for real concern."
Amanda was glad that he got right to the point - she wasn't in the mood to shoot the shit about the personal relationship between her two physicians. "So, you're saying that if I get pregnant again and I miscarry..."
"You can always keep trying, but after two, the likelihood of having more goes up exponentially," he explained. "Emotionally, it really starts taking a toll. That isn't to say people don't successfully have children after multiple miscarriages, but the road is difficult. At that point, I'd advise you to seek alternate options, but of course it's ultimately up to you."
"I know Amanda isn't as worried about this as I am," Sonny interjected. "But uh, I'm kinda concerned that two outta three times she's nearly bled to death."
Amanda's eyes flickered over the doctor's face nervously.
Dr. Lombardi nodded. "There's really no surefire no way to predict if that'll happen again. We can book you for a series of ultrasounds and procedures to try to detect any uterine abnormalities, but-"
"I'll do it," she told him eagerly. "Whatever tests y'all wanna give me, I'll do them."
"We can arrange all that." The physician gave her a knowing look. "But, Amanda, I really need to stress to you how important it is that you take care of yourself."
"I do!" she blurted. "I mean, the first time, I know I overdid it. But after that, I've been on restricted duty at work and everything."
"Just because you're on desk duty doesn't mean you're not overdoing it," Dr. Lombardi reminded her. "You routinely work ten, twelve, thirteen hour days. You're not twenty years old; these are things you have to consider now."
If Sonny had said that to her, Amanda's head probably would have exploded. But since she was sitting in a very nice office with a very nice doctor who was going to help her do something very important, she pressed her lips together and bit her tongue.
"Yeah, I know, it's just... it's a busy job," Amanda answered eventually.
"I get that," the doctor insisted gently. "But once you're pregnant again, I'm advising you to slow down. Maybe work a normal eight hour day, that's all. I know you have a lot of responsibilities. That little girl in the river, I saw on the news... is that your case?"
She nodded. "Yeah. Both of ours."
"Very taxing work." He sighed. "Well, on your way out I'm going to have you set up some follow-up appointments with the receptionist out front."
"He called me old," Amanda snapped to Sonny the second they were alone in the elevator.
"Oh, Jesus, Amanda, I knew you were gonna say that," Sonny groaned, head leaned back against the wall in his exasperation.
"Well, he did! 'You're not twenty years old,'" she mimicked him snidely. "First of all, I was a mess when I was twenty, second of all-"
"Who are you tryin' to convince, exactly? There is a big difference between being twenty and being thirty seven," he challenged her.
"Except if you're a man," Amanda snapped. "Then nobody cares."
Sonny raised an eyebrow. "You are very cranky."
"I need a bagel," she admitted, because she had been too anxious to eat earlier and now she was starving.
"Ah," he responded with a knowing nod as they exited the elevator and walked through the building lobby. "Let's get one before we have to do this stupid training."
"You just think it's stupid 'cause I'm a better shot than you," Amanda told him with a smirk.
"Not true," Sonny insisted. "I think it's stupid because we only get a fifteen minute break for lunch, which is an unrealistic time to enjoy anything."
"Uh, maybe because most people don't live their lives just waiting for their next meal and have other stuff to do besides eat," she laughed.
He offered her a sly grin. "Those people have clearly never had good food."
Between Amanda, Fin and Sonny, they had ruled out almost one hundred and fifty missing persons cases. Bleary-eyed on a late Wednesday night and slumped in her chair, Amanda poked at her take-out container of Pad Thai, feeling defeated. There were so many children in the national database and while some of them vaguely matched Baby Doe's description, there were barely enough similarities to make them worth pursuing. The composite photograph was circulating on the news, but had yet to garner any useful tips.
Amanda looked over at Fin, who was sitting across the round table from her, very obviously playing a game on his phone. To her right, Sonny was scribbling shapes on a legal pad. She rolled her eyes and huffed out a sigh.
"Uh, hello? Y'all getting paid overtime for this?" she asked at the two men sarcastically, dropping her Pad Thai back onto the table in front of her keyboard.
Fin gave her a guilty look. "Sorry, Sarge, but I'm not getting anywhere."
"Look, 'Manda. I've been thinking," Sonny interjected.
"You've been doodling," Amanda corrected him.
"I mean, while I've been doin' that, I've been thinkin'," he insisted. "What if this girl was never reported missing?"
"Who loses a three year old and doesn't do anything about it?" Fin asked.
"I dunno, pieces of crap. But it happens." Sonny yawned and stretched out his long limbs with a groan before letting his arms flop back down to his sides."I'm just sayin', we're spendin' all this time lookin' for missing people but, come on. I'm willing to bet that the majority of the parents to these missin' kids would call up in a heartbeat if Doe looked even remotely like the child they lost, even if it was years ago when it happened. But instead, we've got nothing. Only a bunch of jackasses callin' in and sayin' stuff like, 'oh I saw her in a laundromat once' or, 'some lady in a burka took her to a park two Fridays ago.'"
The wheels in her tired mind began to turn. "Maybe, maybe it's not just somebody she knows that did this, then," Amanda began slowly. "Maybe that's why the parents haven't called. Maybe they did it."
"Some good that does us, when we don't know who the hell her family is," Fin grumbled.
Amanda frowned; he was right. She picked up her Thai food again and dug her fork around the noodles, then looked up at the two of them. "So, what? We stop looking?"
Neither of them said anything.
Her eyes widened with a sudden idea and she put her food down once more. "I think we need to try a different approach. Ask people for help. You know, the community." She opened a new internet tab on her laptop and went to Facebook. "The internet community."
"You gonna post a status update?" Sonny quipped with a smirk.
She gave him a stern sideways glance. "No." Her fingers flew over the keyboard, logging into the NYPD Facebook profile. "Over seven hundred and fifty thousand people follow this Facebook page. So..." She quickly began to compile a public post with Baby Doe's reconstructed image at the very top. Below it, she added a few sentences about the investigation and where to call with information. "...think of all the eyes this will reach."
"Are you gonna ask Liv about this?" Fin asked her tentatively.
"We don't have time for that," Amanda told him briskly as she re-read the phone numbers she had typed beneath Baby Doe's photograph, then pressed 'post.'
A few nights later, Sonny and Fin left the precinct without Amanda to go to the morgue; Forensics was trying to salvage any bit of hair or teeth from Baby Doe's body in order to figure out where she had come from. At SVU, Amanda spent hours on the phone chasing down a tip that ultimately went no where. She thought she had found a girl in NamUS matching Baby Doe's description, but in the end it was determined that the person listed was actually alive in another country. Frustrated, she spent another hour poring over criminology articles until her eyes went blurry and her head started to pound. Stuffing everything she had printed out into her purse like she needed some grim bedtime reading, she finally left the squad room.
By the time Amanda got home, it was past ten o'clock. She made an effort to slip through the front door as quietly as possible, but found Sonny on the living room couch. He was watching television with a drink dangling from his hand, his long arms stretched out lazily across the back of the sofa. He had changed out of his suit into more comfortable clothes and somehow appeared both exhausted and wide awake at the very same time. Fluffy was curled up on a cushion by his side; the animal still followed him around almost constantly, but Sonny had finally stopped putting up such a fight.
On the subway ride home, Amanda had wondered about his trip to the Medical Examiner's office. Amanda had seen Baby Doe's body on top of the crumpled garbage bag she had been wrapped in, flies swarming her bloated features, her skin an unnatural combination of blues, greens and grays. Except for some photographs, Sonny had not - until that evening. They were all accustomed to looking at dead people, but there was something especially disturbing about a decaying three-year-old. It turned Amanda's stomach every time she thought about it, but she was certain that after Sonny saw Baby Doe in person, it would keep him up at night.
"Hey. I was wonderin' when you'd get outta there," Sonny said once he realized she had come home.
"I didn't think you'd still be up," Amanda admitted. She set her bag down on an arm chair as she shouldered off her jacket, then pulled her gun and her badge off her hip to set them on the coffee table.
"Yeah. Can't sleep," he told her before taking a sip from his glass.
She frowned before her expression brightened. "Well... I got ya something."
Sonny looked over at her curiously. "Hm?"
Amanda dug through her purse and produced a small, white bakery box. "Gianpiero's. Caught them just before they closed."
His eyes lit up like a child's on Christmas morning. "Cannolis?"
"Mhm." She nodded. "I figured if you were asleep, you could have them for breakfast, but you can have them now." She sank down onto the couch next to him and set the box on his lap.
"What's the occasion?" Sonny asked, leaning in to put his drink down so he could start picking at the red and white twine.
She shrugged. "I dunno. I just, walked by on my way home and thought of you."
He grinned. "Aw." Leaning in, he kissed her gently. "Thanks, 'Manda."
"You're welcome." Her explanation was partially true: she knew that he loved that particular bakery, but she also knew that his day hadn't exactly ended on the most upbeat note. Pastry wouldn't make the case any less traumatizing, but at least it tasted good. Pulling her knees up by her chest, she leaned her side into the back of the couch and watched him open up the box. She had gotten a giant chocolate chip cookie for herself and reached in to retrieve it. Breaking off a piece, Amanda asked him quietly, "how was it?"
Sonny shook his head, cannoli in hand. "I hate goin' there. You know I hate goin' there."
Amanda nodded solemnly; that's why he had despised working homicide. "Yeah, I know."
He set the box down on the coffee table. "It's shitty enough when kids are alive and we have to talk them about what some son of a bitch did to them. To see them dead..."
She picked at her cookie in silence. Fluffy crawled over Sonny's lap to settle next to her.
"They didn't find anything substantial," Sonny continued bitterly. "They said judging from some pollen on her body, she 'may have spent most of her life in the tristate area.' Yeah, real helpful. Really narrows it down."
She sighed. "I think that may be as good as it gets."
"Mama!" a familiar voice called. "You're home."
Looking up, Amanda saw Jesse standing at the base of the stairs in her pajamas, cheeks pink and hair a mess from sleep. "Jesse, what are you doin' out of bed?" she asked.
"I wanted to say g'night," she answered her mother sweetly.
She waved her over. "C'mon."
"What are you eating?" Jesse asked excitedly, positioning herself in between the two of them. "Can I have some?"
"A bite. Then back to bed," she bargained. She held out the cookie and Jesse took the biggest bite her little mouth could manage. "Hey! That's way more than a bite."
Jesse giggled.
"Alright, c'mon. Gimme a hug and go back upstairs," Amanda told her.
"Can't I sit with you for just a little while? Please?" Jesse whined.
Too tired to argue and suddenly very grateful that her own child was alive and well, Amanda sighed. "Okay."
The five-year-old plucked Amanda's badge from the coffee table before she sat on Sonny's lap, curled into him on her side so she could face her mother. Her little hands toyed with the shield; to her, it was a cool piece of jewelry. She often begged Amanda or Sonny to play with one of their badges and had to be reminded on several occasions that it wasn't just a pretty accessory.
"What'd you do today?" Amanda asked her curiously.
"I played with Robbie next door," the little girl answered as her finger traced over Amanda's badge number: 0458.
"Yeah? Did you have fun?" Sonny asked, attempting to eat his cannoli around Jesse.
"Yeah. But he was sorta funny," Jesse said.
"What d'you mean?" Amanda raised an eyebrow.
Brown eyes wide as she looked at her mother, she giggled, "he thought Audrey was my mom! So I had to say, 'no, silly, she's not my mom!'"
Amanda felt her heart sink into her stomach. Ouch. She was surprised how hurt she felt over a conversation between two five-year-olds. Over the years she had always been nervous about how well she fulfilled her role as a mother, not because she didn't love her children, but because her job sometimes meant that she spent more time at the precinct than at home. Sonny did, too, but a man working hard to take care of their family was admirable - a woman trying to juggle parenthood and a career was an invitation for judgement. Even with all of the outside opinions, nobody was harder on Amanda than Amanda herself was.
"Robbie must need glasses, 'cause you and your mother are like twins," Sonny chuckled..
"I told him my mom and my dad are so cool," Jesse continued excitedly. "You shoot people!"
The color drained from Amanda's face. "Hold up - you didn't actually say that, did you?"
"Yeah!" her daughter told her lightly.
"We don't shoot people, Jesse," Sonny said weakly. "We try to get other people to stop shootin' each other."
"But, you have guns," the five-year-old challenged him, sounding confused.
"Well, yeah, but we don't like to use them because they're real dangerous. Not cool at all," Amanda explained quickly. "Remember how I told you that they aren't toys and you should never, ever should touch one?"
Jesse shrugged. "Robbie thought it was cool."
"I'm sure his parents were thrilled with that dinner time conversation," Sonny remarked cynically. "'Hey, mom! Our neighbors shoot people!'"
"Jesse, you shoulda told him we were police officers," Amanda said gently. "That's kinda important."
"I forgot." Jesse bashfully looked down at the badge in her hands. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay. Just, well, maybe no more talkin' about guns, huh?" Sonny suggested, tilting his head to get a better look at the little girl's face. "Today's been depressing enough."
The heels of Amanda's boots dug into the mud where Baby Doe had washed ashore two weeks ago. This time, she was accompanied by a large portion of the 16th precinct, Chief Dodds and other NYPD higher-ups; they were giving a press conference. Liv stood at a makeshift podium to address the reporters that swarmed the Eleventh Street Basin. On a screen behind her, the reconstructed image of Baby Doe was displayed, along with photographs of her clothes and the zebra print blanket she was found with. Liv explained that this information was being televised to ask the public for assistance identifying the little girl.
"Lieutenant!" a reporter shouted. "What steps have you taken to narrow down her identity?"
"I'm going to let Sergeant Rollins answer that question," Liv replied easily.
Amanda's mouth went dry. She had been prepared to stand silently and stoically by Liv's side, not talk to hoards of anxious media. Her heart rate quickening, she watched her lieutenant step down from the podium and motion for Amanda to take her place. Nervously, Amanda tucked her hair behind her ears. She was glad she had put a little extra blush on that day. Hovering over the microphone, she looked out at the crowd: the reporters looked like were ready to pounce on her at any given opportunity. She tried to pretend she was debriefing her colleagues - something she did almost every day - instead of a bunch of television cameras. "In addition to working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, we've been comparing what we know about Baby Doe to the thousands of cases in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System," she began. "So far, we've ruled out two hundred and seven missing people. We've also started a twenty-four hour tip hotline; officers and trained volunteers will be taking calls around the clock and every tip will be vetted. So far, officers have done 'well-being checks' at twenty different homes. In each case, the girls have been found safe."
"Given that it's been two weeks with no leads..." a loud, male reporter interjected. He shoved his microphone as close to the front of the group as he could manage. "...should parents be afraid that their child is at risk? Is there a child murderer on the loose?"
"At this time, we do not believe that Baby Doe was murdered by a stranger," Amanda responded slowly.
"But you can't be sure, right? You can't be a hundred percent certain this child wasn't killed by a random predator," a woman challenged.
She adjusted the black blazer she was wearing over her white blouse. "I can't be a hundred percent certain, no, but-"
"So it is possible that a stranger-"
"Loved ones - specifically parents - are responsible for more than half of all the murders of children," Amanda interrupted firmly. She felt like she was back in college, giving a presentation on her late-night research. Except this time, the stakes felt much higher. "For children under the age of five, the figure is seventy percent."
"So you believe it was the parents who murdered this little girl?" another voice asked.
"That's one theory, yes," she responded diplomatically.
"Sergeant!"
"Over here!"
"One more question-"
"If you know this child, please come forward," Amanda concluded, ignoring the chorus of voices vying for her attention. "Clear your conscious and help us identify her. Nobody, especially not an innocent child, deserves this kind of ending. Thanks."
Early the next morning, Amanda went on a run. She had a lot on her mind: what would all the fertility tests she was doing ultimately tell her? Was she even cut out to be a mother of three if Jesse's friends weren't even sure she existed? Would there be any valuable tips about Baby Doe when she went into the precinct that day? She needed to finish her notes from the night before. Did she remember to turn on the coffee pot before she left? There was a pile of the kids' clothing just sitting in the upstairs hallway, needing to be washed...
At Hunters Point, her right calf began to ache. She paused on the pier to stretch it out, digging the heel of her sneaker into the ground and leaning forward to rest her weight on the railing to elongate the sore muscle. It was a beautiful morning: the sun was just beginning to rise over the New York City skyline...
"Hey, you're NYPD, aren't you?" a female voice to her left said.
Amanda looked over to see a pretty woman in her mid-thirties by her side on the pier. She was dressed in leggings and a tank top, clearly breathless from a run. If Amanda was supposed to know her, she definitely did not. "Yeah..."
"I saw you on television yesterday," the woman explained.
"Oh. Yeah," she responded awkwardly.
The woman eyed her almost suspiciously. "Such a shame that you haven't figured out who that little girl is yet," she sighed, like it actually gave her a little pleasure to say it. Her tone saccharine, she added, "how do you sleep at night?"
Mouth agape at the stranger's audacity, Amanda resisted the urge to respond in the snide, sarcastic way she wanted to. She offered her a tight-lipped smile. "We're doing everything we can."
"Hm," the woman hummed disapprovingly. "Well, good luck."
She jogged away, leaving Amanda alone on the boardwalk. "Ugh," she murmured to herself before she continued her own run.
By the time she made it back home, panting and sweating, the newspaper was at the front door. Picking it up, the front page headline read boldly: Baby Doe Baffles Cops. "Oh, come on," Amanda groaned, eyes scanning the massive article as she let herself inside. Barely looking up from the news, she pounded up the steps and into her bedroom. Amanda barged into the bathroom where Sonny was taking a shower, the space filled with steam. She hopped up to sit on the counter, legs dangling, and pressed the newspaper to the glass of the stall.
"Look at this!" she demanded.
Appearing confused, Sonny stuck his head out the door. "Jesus, can't a person just take a shower in peace?"
Amanda shook the paper at him. "No. Read this headline."
He dutifully squinted at it before returning to stand beneath the stream of water. "I mean, I've definitely seen more creative-"
"No, Sonny. This is embarrassing," Amanda interrupted him. She went on to read an excerpt, "'a sketch of the face of the toddler found dead at the Eleventh Street Basin has been seen 42 million times on NYPD's Facebook. So why can't police identify her?' Do they think we haven't been trying?"
"You know the media. They love to villainize us," he suggested.
"Well, it isn't fair. They have no idea how much time and energy we've put into this. I'm doing everything I can."
"Who said it was your fault? Not everything has to be personal, 'Manda."
"How can it not be personal?" she exclaimed. "This kid... this baby, washed up outta the river with nobody. Except us."
She heard Sonny heave a sigh, even over the hiss of the shower. "You're doin' it again. You're gettin' way too invested."
Amanda looked down at the paper in her hands, Baby Doe's photograph staring back at her. She was about to challenge Sonny with an impassioned no, but she didn't want to lie.
