Eyes Wide Open

Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's not mine. This story is on an AU track.

Chapter 13: The Storm That Follows the Calm

Olivia's eyes were fixed on the road as she drove through the streets of New York at what had to be three times the speed limit, looking carefully for anyone who might dare to defy the lights and sirens. She could hear Bobby in the backseat talking to Alex, trying to stay calm but with a note of panic beneath his voice. "Come on, sweetheart. Hold on. Just hold on."

She sped into the parking lot, tires squealing as she slammed on the breaks. A concerned doctor was beside the vehicle before she'd even taken the keys out of the ignition.

"Adult female," she called to him as she stepped out of the car. "Six months pregnant. GSW to the abdomen and the upper right arm."

He waved over his shoulder, and two women in scrubs came running over with a stretcher. Bobby had stepped out of the car, still cradling Alex in his arms, and he set her down gently. He kept hold of her uninjured left hand, and both he and Olivia stayed close beside the stretcher as it was wheeled inside. The blonde was pale and glassy-eyed from blood loss, but she still responded when Bobby squeezed her hand.

"Who's her medical proxy?" one of the nurses all but demanded.

"Her father," Bobby replied immediately. It had been John Eames since her first day on the job, and even after she and Bobby had become close, she'd kept her father as her proxy, reasoning that making her partner her proxy could become a problem in the not impossible event that they were both incapacitated at the same time. "His number will be in her phone under 'Dad'."

She was wheeled through the ER and through a set of double doors where a nurse stopped Bobby and Olivia. "I'm sorry, but you'll have to wait out here."

"Please..." Bobby said softly. "It's my girlfriend...my daughter. Is there at least somewhere I can watch?"

"There's an observation room over the OR," she replied, her face softening. "I'll have someone show you."

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"All right," Murphy said, surveying the scene in the squad room. "How the hell did this happen?"

"He just came out of the observation room," Rollins said, standing up shakily from behind the desk with Amaro's help. "I was walking down the hall, I heard the shots and the glass break, and the next thing I know, he's in front of me and swinging his gun at my face." She gently ran her fingers over her cheek, which was still bright red.

Murphy turned on his heel and made his way briskly towards the interrogation room, followed by most of the officers who had been present. As many of them had expected, the one-way mirror between the interrogation and observation rooms was destroyed, apparently having shattered from the impact of a bullet that had been fired through the glass.

Two officers lay crumpled in the interrogation room, and the officers immediately ran over to them. The younger of the two lay facedown in a pool of blood stemming from a hole in the back of his head. Fin checked automatically for a pulse, but that only confirmed what he already knew. "Point-blank shot, back of the head. Nothing anyone could've done."

Amaro and Rollins, meanwhile, were kneeling beside the other officer, who was lying on his side with blood seeping from a wound to his temple. Amaro felt for a pulse and let out a small sigh of relief. "He's alive."

Rollins was examining the wound. "I don't think he was shot."

"That's consistent with what we heard," Murphy confirmed. "Only two shots fired in here, and we've already accounted for both of them."

Rollins nodded. "Looks like he was hit in the head with a blunt object - might've been pistol-whipped. We need EMS in here, now!" That last was shouted to anyone within earshot, and one of the officers at the back of the crowd immediately ran for the nearest phone. "He's alive but this doesn't look good."

Amaro, meanwhile, was checking the officer for injuries and noticed something that he immediately realized might be significant. "He's still got his gun. Fin -"

"He doesn't," the other detective replied after quickly checking the dead officer. "What are you thinking?"

Amaro stood up slowly. "I think I'm getting an idea of how this went down. He asked for a lawyer, so Goren and I left, letting these two in as we walked out. They were going to cuff him and take him to holding. So they go to cuff him, and Lockard here," he indicated the younger officer, "steps into the wrong position at the wrong time, putting his sidearm within Johnson's reach. Johnson reaches out, grabs it, fires the first shot into Lockard's head, then turns and hits Montgomery with the back end of the gun, taking him down before he can react to the shot. He knows the door's locked, so he fires into the window to break it, then climbs through the open window, runs out the door from observation where he sees Rollins, and from there..." he shrugged. "From there, we all know what happened."

Rollins nodded, and Amaro realized she was starting to shiver. He reached out a hand, helping her to her feet. "Come on. We know now what happened here, everyone else can handle it. Let's go sit somewhere quiet for a bit. I want to take a look at your face, make sure it's only bruised."

"It's only bruised," the blonde insisted, but she didn't resist as he led her from the room. The adrenaline was wearing off, and as it did, the full impact of what she'd been through was starting to hit.

He led her through the squadroom, doing the best to put himself between her and the sight of William Johnson's body where it still lay on the hardwood floor, and led her up to the crib. She was unsteady on her feet, so he lowered her gently onto a bunk, then sat beside her and took her into his arms. He made no move to examine her injured cheek, and neither of them spoke. They just held each other.

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The man who joined Bobby and Olivia in the observation room was ashen, but he stood almost rigidly as if refusing to allow himself any more signs of fear than were absolutely necessary.

The Sergeant didn't recognize him, but it was clear to her that Bobby did, as he tried and failed several times to speak, staring at his shoes the whole time. It was the newcomer who finally broke the silence. "Alex...is she..."

"Hanging in there," he replied, finally finding his voice now that he had a concrete idea of what to say. He couldn't bring himself to say the rest. "Sergeant...Olivia," he said, stumbling over what to call her under the circumstances, "this is, uh, this is Alex's father."

"Olivia Benson." She offered him her hand, but he didn't reach for it, just staring at her instead.

In the next moment, she realized why. She was still dressed in the same clothes she'd been wearing at the time of the shooting, the clothes that were stained with Alex's blood. "Oh, my God." She could only imagine what seeing that must be doing for him. "I am so, so sorry."

"Don't be," Bobby said softly from beside her. "You - that happened because you were trying to help her. You caught her when she fell and tried to stop the bleeding. And I saw you right after - you were protecting her, you put yourself in danger to protect her."

Olivia nodded, acknowledging the validity of Bobby's words, but they didn't help any. All she could think about was the series of medical crises that Noah had gone through in the short time she'd been his parent, how helpless and scared and worried she'd been every single time, and how much worse it would've been to see something on the level of what he was seeing now. "I'm still sorry."

Any further conversation was forestalled when the door to the observation room opened and a doctor stepped in. "Family of Alexandra Eames?"

"I'm her father," the older man replied immediately. "John Eames."

"If I could have a word with you in private-"

"It's all right," he replied immediately, his eyes still fixed on the still form of his daughter where she lay on the operating table. "We can talk in front of them."

"All right," the doctor said after a moment. "The good news is, she's stable and expected to make a full recovery. She'll need intensive physio on that arm, but there shouldn't be any lasting damage. We're transfusing her to compensate for the blood loss, and she's responding well."

The words were positive, and the relief in the room was palpable, but none of them missed the tension in the doctor's tone. John broke the silence after a long moment. "And the bad news?"

His tone was even more somber as he replied. "The bullet that hit her in the abdomen penetrated the uterine wall and tore a hole in the amniotic sac. By some miracle, it missed hitting the baby, but we'll need to do an emergency c-section."

"What are the baby's chances?" Bobby asked hoarsely.

The doctor looked over to John, who gave a quick nod of approval, and then turned back to the younger man. "According to Ms. Eames' medical records, she's just shy of twenty-six weeks along?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Well, we won't know for sure until we actually get a chance to examine the baby, but statistically, the chances at that stage of development are around eighty percent. It's a lot better than it would have been even two weeks ago."

"There's no choice," John said softly, "is there?"

The doctor shook his head. "There's no way she can finish the pregnancy. Not with this kind of damage."

"All right," he said finally. "I'll sign the consent forms."

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Three pairs of eyes watched in anticipation as several pairs of gloved hands lifted the tiny child out through the incision in Alex's abdomen. John's first thought was how different this was from any birth he'd ever witnessed. He'd been at his wife's side for the births of each of his five children, and at the time, he had thought that they were all very different from each other. But what he was seeing now was so far removed from all of them that it made them seem more alike than he'd originally thought. Even with the one c-section Katherine had had, they had both waited in eager anticipation for that first sharp cry, and in each case, it had come after a few moments, two of them with no prompting, three (including Alex, he remembered fondly) after a quick slap of encouragement. He'd been told after the births of several of his most recent grandchildren that the practice of spanking babies to encourage breathing was no longer practiced, but he also knew that this wasn't the reason this baby wasn't crying. No one had expected her to. The lungs were not developed enough to breathe independently; one of this baby's first impressions of the world would be a respirator. The NICU staff had already closed in with an arsenal of equipment, pulling the baby off to the side as the doctor began to close the incision.

Bobby's eyes darted between mother and daughter. Though he knew the science behind it, the more emotional part of him almost couldn't believe that Alex would fully recover from such a massive procedure. And the baby - she couldn't weigh two pounds. How could such a small human survive?

Olivia fought to shake off memories of the last severely premature infant she'd come across, a tiny girl who had died in her arms without so much as a name. This girl isn't the same, she reminded herself forcefully, trying to remember the optimistic odds this doctor had given just minutes earlier, such a contrast to the grim ones the other baby had had. In the next moment, she realized a few tears had slipped from her eyes just remembering. This baby has to be okay.

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A strange ringing cut through the fog in Olivia's head, which only served to remind her of the fog's existence. Why am I feeling so out of it, anyway? It's only the middle of the afternoon. One night's interrupted sleep wouldn't do that to her. It had to be the adrenaline from the shooting, she realized. An adrenaline crash could make her feel foggy and disoriented.

The ringing sounded again, and Olivia suddenly realized it was her phone. Damn, it must be a bad crash if it took me this long to figure that out. She pulled it out of her pocket, pressing the button to answer. "Benson."

"Liv?"

"Elliot?" Fog or no fog, she couldn't miss the worried tone in his voice. "Is something wrong?"

"That's what I wanted to ask you. I heard there was a shooting at SVU. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she assured him quickly. "I didn't think you'd hear - who told you?"

"The news. They broke the story over an hour ago. Are you sure you're okay? This is the fourth time I've called."

"I've been at the hospital. Not for myself," she rushed to assure him. "I brought in a - an officer who was shot." She trusted Elliot completely, but she was still bound by her personal desire to keep a victim's identity confidential if at all possible. This way, even if the press released Alex's name, there still wasn't enough detail to put together the reason why she'd been at SVU. "I had my phone off. I just turned it back on when I came out to the waiting room."

"What the hell happened?" Reassured now that his wife was unharmed, he turned his attention to the details of the situation.

"Suspect got a gun, started shooting and took a hostage." She realized with a start that this was all she knew, hours after the incident. Her entire focus had been on supporting Alex and then Bobby, who she could tell was hanging by a thread.

Thankfully, Elliot didn't question further. Maybe he sensed that she didn't want to answer, or maybe he just thought that the Department had told her not to elaborate. "You still there?"

"Yeah. Probably will be for awhile yet. Tell the boys I'm sorry?"

"Will do," he assured her. "Is there anything you need?"

Olivia glanced down at herself; she was still wearing the suit she'd worn into work before the shooting, stained with now-dried blood. "I could probably use a change of clothes."

"I'll be right there." He hung up before she could respond.

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Bobby slowly reached through the opening in the ICU incubator, careful not to disturb the many monitors and wires attached to his baby daughter. "Hello," he whispered, his voice choked with tears. "I'm your daddy."

"Mr. Goren, I presume?"

He jumped, startled by the voice and shocked that anyone could have come up behind him unnoticed. "Yes. Robert Goren. And you are?"

"Doctor Bethany Giles. I'm the primary ICU nurse assigned to your daughter's care."

"How is she?"

"Stable." She gave him a sympathetic look. "I know it's never easy for parents to see their children this way, but she's actually doing quite well under the circumstances."

"Thank you," he replied rather numbly.

"For what it's worth, Mr. Eames - the mother's next-of-kin - has been quite adamant that you're the legal next-of-kin for your daughter. We'll have to do some paperwork on that later, but until the mother wakes up, we will allow you to be the primary decision-maker."

Tears pricked his eyes at that. The care that the Eames family had showed him had always been almost incomprehensible, especially with his background. But this - John easily could have claimed decision-making power for the baby while Alex was still out from the anesthesia, and no one would have questioned it.

"For the moment, as I said, she's stable and the course of treatment is routine. I do have one question for you, however."

"Yes?"

"Does your daughter have a name?"

The question was so unexpected that it actually brought Bobby up short. "What?"

"A name," she repeated gently. "It helps them, we think, to have a specific identity, even at this stage. Something to call them. We try to talk to them as much as we can, of course."

"Of course," he repeated, still feeling numb. "And, um, yes. She has a name." He swallowed hard, the memory of lying in bed with Alex as they debated names for their daughter warring with the image of Alex on the operating table and the baby in the incubator. "Sarah. Her name is Sarah Katherine Goren."

The nurse smiled. "I'll put that on the chart." Then she leaned in conspiratorially. "Now, you didn't hear this from me, but I've been doing this for a long time, and my unofficial opinion is, Sarah's going to pull through just fine. From what I've seen, she's one tough little girl."

Unexpectedly, Bobby felt a smile tugging at his lips. "Of course she is. She's her mother's daughter all the way."

Major props to my fellow Fanfiction author In the House for this chapter. Her story Onslaught gave me a lot of direction around the scenes having to do with the birth and care of a premature infant.

The baby who died without a name is a reference to the SVU episode Savior, in which a severely premature infant without a name is left in Olivia's care and is in serious condition the last time we see her. Since we never see or hear anything about that baby again, it seemed to make the most sense that the baby had died (which was a very real possibility at the end of the episode).

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