A/N: I am picking up this story over 10 years after I posted Chapter 14, when I was locked out of my account and gave up writing. I loved this story and I felt like it deserved an ending.

Disclaimer: I still own nothing.

Chapter 15

Looking back later, Calleigh's memory of the frenzied drive from North Shore to Memorial Regional Hospital would be a blur. When the calls started pouring in to 911 that a cop was shot, first responders were on the scene in impressive time. They had to restrain her to keep her from boarding the life-flight chopper. Her heart was shorn in two as she watched them take him away, soaked in crimson, not sure if her partner, her best friend would ever grin at her again.

I just found him, she had thought at the time. It was too cruel.

Compton had continued to pump precious air through the trach into Eric's lungs as they loaded the CSI on to a spinal board and hefted him into the helicopter. But Carlisle had stayed behind with Calleigh. They were both covered in blood. Eric's blood. That's what she would remember most—the blood.

Not the careful way the paramedic guided her to his car and helped her in the front seat or how he buckled the seatbelt for her—calmly, kindly and with urgent purpose. He knew where the life-flight was headed, and he planned to be there just behind it, traffic willing.

Calleigh didn't remember Carlisle talking to her on the way to the trauma center. She wouldn't remember telling him about how Eric was only a year removed from being shot in the head and leg, or how she thought it would be impossible for him to survive this, too. A bullet to the throat? No.

She wouldn't remember the man's reassurances that he'd seen victims heal from similar wounds and go on to live normal lives. That if her partner had survived a gunshot to the brain, he could survive anything.

Sitting in the front seat of a stranger's vehicle, careening through intersections with the caution lights flashing, her thoughts wandered in time. Eric had survived before. He came back to her once before, maybe a little broken, but he came back.

She thought about the last ten days and was physically ill. What if this time was different? What if, this time, he didn't return to her? Cal knew how heavy the burden of his fight with Speed, only a week before his friend's death, weighed on Eric. How would she feel if Eric didn't make it, and the last thing she'd done was to stonewall him for ten days?

But no, that wasn't the last thing she'd done. I told him I loved him. I touched him and held him.

In the midst of the anguish she felt, the all-consuming pain in her gut, Calleigh at least held comfort in knowing she'd finally told him the truth. The truth about that night three years ago—that she wanted him then, and she still wanted him now.

I need him.

She needed him just two weeks ago. Needed her partner. But the need she felt for him now was new and different…scary and unending. The last ten days had irrevocably changed her. She felt raw.

Later, Calleigh wouldn't remember trying to escape the car when they reached the hospital, only to be stopped by her restrictive seatbelt. She fumbled with the buckle and managed to free herself, then she flew with abandon toward the automatic sliding doors. They were too slow to open, so she halted her approach mid-stride before the door frames parted wide enough for her to turn sideways and slip through the gap.

She pulled out her badge when she reached the front desk of the ER, and finally her training kicked in, the adrenaline clearing her mind and quelling her panic, to the extent that was possible. The rest of that day and night Calleigh remembered, not as a blur; every excruciating detail would haunt her nightmares.

"Officer Calleigh Duquesne. My partner was shot. The life flight brought him here."

The front desk clerk hadn't noticed the approaching woman through the worn plexiglass until he heard "…partner was shot." At that point, he looked up. He couldn't see her entirely, but what he could see of her arms perched on the counter's ledge, and of her shirt, she was soaked in blood from fingertip to cheekbone.

"Ma'am," he said quickly, standing up from his swivel chair to get a better look at her. "Where are you hit? Latimer, Breeze, get out here stat!"

Calleigh was confused as she watched the clerk signal to two nurses to follow him out to the waiting room. She heard the buzz of the secured door and saw it open, and the three people rush into the room.

They thought she was the victim, she realized. "I'm not hit! I'm not hit. Not me, my partner," Calleigh repeated. "Eric Delko. He would've just arrived on a chopper."

"Ma'am, you're covered in blood. Are you sure you're not hurt?"

"No!" she bellowed. "I am fine. It's Officer Delko, D-E-L-K-O. Miami Dade PD."

It fully hit them then…Officer Down. The clerk hurried back through the secured door and Calleigh saw him resume his position in the swivel chair, this time picking up the phone to call…somewhere. She couldn't hear what he was saying, but she did see him nod his head, hang up the receiver and start punching keys, looking up something on his computer.

The passing seconds were agonizing. "Where is he? I need to see him," she entreated, as calmly and controlled as she could. Don't they know this is an emergency?

Latimer, the nurse directly in front of Calleigh, gently grabbed her elbow and attempted to guide her to the row of seats closest to the welcome desk, but it was too far and Calleigh resisted.

"No," she said, pulling away. "Tell me what's going on."

Breeze called over to the clerk, affected by the blonde woman's controlled—yet obvious—distress. She didn't usually provide patient statuses freely, and for privacy purposes most often couldn't, but she had a feeling that this one visitor was going to be overly persistent. And the vic was a cop, after all. "Oliver, what do you got?"

"He's in Trauma 3, Thomlinson and Gregg are working on him," Oliver replied through the plexiglass. "They're trying to stabilize him. That's all I have right now."

Breeze turned and said, "Latimer, stay with Officer—"

"Duquesne," Calleigh repeated at the senior nurse's beseeching look.

"Officer Duquesne. I'm going to Trauma 3 and I'll page you when I know more." With that, she headed through the security door and disappeared.

Calleigh felt another gentle tug at her elbow and looked up into the younger nurse's eyes. "Officer Duquesne, please have a seat. Dr. Thomlinson and Dr. Gregg are the best trauma surgeons in the state. Your partner is in good hands. You said his name is Eric? I'm Sam. Why don't you tell me what happened?"

It took another tug from the paramedic Carlisle to get her to move. She didn't realize he had returned after parking the car. Before she knew it, Calleigh was seated in a hard plastic chair, struggling to give her account of the shooting to the two strangers.

"It happened so fast. We fired, the shooter went down, then I saw Eric lying on the ground. I'll have to give Horatio—oh my god, I need to call Horatio." Calleigh had been so consumed earlier, all thought of protocol had been forgotten.

She reached to her back pocket for her cell phone only to realize she'd left it on the picnic table at the park. "Sam, I need a phone."

He covered the space to the desk in three strides and returned with a portable phone receiver. "I'm not supposed to let visitors use the phone, but I think this counts as an extenuating circumstance," he said.

Calleigh nodded her thanks and dialed her LT's number from memory. She heard the ringing stop and his voice come over the line. "Caine."

"H, Eric's been shot. I'm at Memorial Regional. Please get here."

Sitting in his office at CSI headquarters, it took a second for his CSI's words to sink in, and another for him to process them.

"Wait a minute, Calleigh," he said calmly, even as he snagged his keys off his desk and started running. "Eric's been shot?"

"Yes!" she said, louder than she intended. If all heads weren't already trained in her direction in the waiting room, they were now. She felt Carlisle sit down beside her and put a hand on her shoulder.

Lt. Caine saw Wolfe advancing up the hallway toward him and pointed. "You're with me. Now," he commanded. The man obeyed immediately and without explanation, handing the files in his hand off to the lab tech he'd been conversing with, turning on the spot and breaking into a run behind his boss.

Horatio addressed Calleigh once more. "Cal, I'm on my way. I'm going to put you on speaker phone from the car, and I need you to tell me exactly what happened. Wolfe is with me."

"I can't H," Calleigh said, finally choking back an undetectable sob. She'd managed to hold on until now. She was determined not to break down until she was alone.

"Just the high points, Cal. You can fill in the details when we get there. Where is he shot? Are you okay?"

"The throat, he was shot in the throat," the woman answered, feeling the tears burning in her own windpipe. The fiery sensation she felt building inside her only made things worse as she imagined the fire, the lack of air, the bubbling blood that Eric must have endured after the bullet ripped through his body.

"Okay," Horatio said evenly.

Calleigh hated how measured Horatio was right now. "H, you don't understand…"

"Not yet, Calleigh, but I will. You'll help me understand. Now, tell me if you're hurt."

"No," she relented with a sigh. "I'm not hurt, H. But Eric and I both discharged our weapons. The shooter is dead. We both hit him. Five shots. I think his wife went down. She'll be fine, I think. Or…I'm not sure." Calleigh shook her head and rubbed her eyes with her free hand. "I was so focused on Eric, I—I just don't know."

Horatio could hear the exhaustion and fear in her voice, and his gut churned at the sound of it. "Alright, Calleigh, listen to me. Where did all this take place?"

"North Shore. They life flighted him here," she explained impatiently. "Horatio, what's your ETA? I don't want to go through this until you get here. Not alone."

That struck Horatio, and he pressed on the gas. It struck Ryan, too, and he shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat; he'd never heard Calleigh sound like this before. Not even when Delko got shot the first time. It was yet another reminder of how close the team around him was, and how deep their trust in each other ran. He resolved to himself that, no matter what it took, he'd be there for Calleigh through this. And for Delko, given he had the chance. Ryan swore under his breath at the thought.

Ryan didn't hear Horatio sign off the call, but he did hear as his boss ordered, "Wolfe, get Tripp on the phone, ASAP. We need a line into what's going on at North Shore."

"On it," Ryan responded, already pulling out his cell phone to dial the number.

God help them, ran through both men's minds as they flew blindly across town.