XXXVIII:

By the time they got to the hospital, Mike had been rushed into surgery. Several small waiting rooms had been set aside for police use and Rafael and Liv were ushered into one where a very pregnant Rollins was already taking up space on the couch with Carisi, their faces creased with worry. Fin followed them into the room. "Heard anything yet?" he asked.

"Dodds said his lung collapsed en route and he was rushed into surgery," Carisi said. "Lieu, sit down. Barba, there's a vending machine just around the corner – she needs a snack."

"I need Mike to be okay," Liv said firmly, all but crashing into a chair and burying her head in her hands, elbows on her knees. Rafael settled into the chair next to her without comment.

Unbidden, he reached over and rested his hand on her back, gently caressing her enough that she would know he was there, but not so much that it would upset her more. "You want something to drink?" Rafael asked softly. Liv shook her head and heaved a heavy exhalation of breath, tensing under his fingers. "Okay, mi amor," he murmured.

Amanda shifted uncomfortably and her hand splayed out over her belly. "I can't wait for this to be over," she admitted.

"Soon," Carisi reminded her. "Three more weeks."

"Yeah, then you won't sleep soundly till she leaves the house – believe me," Fin warned. "And even then, you'll still worry."

Liv pushed up into a sitting position and smiled wanly at Amanda. "The first time they smile at you is the best," she said softly. "Noah smiled at Rafa and it was magical. I've never been so happy in my life."

Rafael rolled his eyes. "It was right after he threw an entire fistful of macaroni at my face."

"That might have had something to do with it," Carisi joked.

Amanda was about to say something else, but was interrupted by Dodds coming into the room. "I called Alice," he announced. "She's on her way to O'Hare. And I still can't get in touch with my ex-wife, so…" He looked like he was about to tear his hair out. "I never thought I was going to have to make this call."

"No, of course not," Olivia said weakly. "And if I had moved just a little quicker, you wouldn't have had to –"

"No, this isn't on you," Dodds said firmly, waving his hand. "None of this is on you, Benson. We should have had protection in place for you as soon as we fired Tucker and – I can't admit culpability on behalf of the NYPD or…"

Rafael's phone buzzed and he grabbed it. "Rita's got some loose teeth and a hell of a headache, but she's okay," he said. "She wants to know if she can join us when they let her loose."

"We won't be great company," Dodds warned.

"She knows," he answered. "I think she feels in some way like this is partially her fault."

Liv shook her head. "In no way," she murmured.

"You try convincing Rita Calhoun of anything," he countered gently, still running his fingertips comfortingly over her shoulder. "I value my life." Rafael smiled half-heartedly. "You want me to step out and get you anything, amor?"

Liv shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair. Her hands were shaking when she brought them down to rest on her thighs. "Can you make sure Lucy knows what's going on in case we don't get home in time to put Noah to bed?" she asked in an achingly soft tone.

"I already texted her," he replied.

She finally looked up at him, her stare still somewhat vacant, caught between shock and a place he knew he couldn't reach her. She'd had much the same look when he'd first seen her after they'd taken her from the house of horrors William Lewis had visited upon her, but now she blinked and it cleared away and she was back with him, taking a deep breath, swallowing hard, reaching for him. "Thank you," Liv whispered. "I don't know what I would do if you weren't here, Rafa."

"Don't," Rafael said gently. "You don't have to worry about that, mi alma," he promised. "I'm right here." He glanced up at the others in the room, glad to see that they weren't paying them much mind. "It's going to be okay."

"And if it isn't?" she asked, her voice very low.

"Then we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

A doctor came into the room and said, "Mr. Dodds?" Dodds followed him into the corridor, and Liv tensed again beneath Rafael's touch.

When Dodds came back, he said, "Looks like Mike is going to be okay – the bullet didn't hit anything major, and they're finishing up. He'll be in recovery in about half an hour."

Liv let out a breathy exhale that turned into a sob of relief. "Hey, I told you it would be okay," Rafael said softly, a tiny smirk on his lips.

"You've been known to lie," she sobbed.

"She's telling the truth," Rollins pointed out, rubbing her belly in a circular motion. She let out a long breath and muttered, "Now… Dominick, since we're here, if you'd like to help me up to labor and delivery, I'd like to get this kid outta me before we have a reenactment of Alien in the waiting room. My contractions are five minutes apart and my water hasn't broken yet."

Liv patted him on the arm. "Help him," she insisted. "Rafa, help Carisi –"

Between Rafael, Carisi, and Fin, they had a nurse, a wheelchair, and Amanda rolling her eyes by the time the next contraction kicked in. "If it's a boy, you'd better name him Mike," Dodds joked.

"It's a girl," Amanda groused uncomfortably as she was wheeled away with Carisi at her side, rattling off birthing facts as she told him to just shut up already.

"I hope this isn't what pushed her into –" Dodds began, but Liv cut him off with a wave of her hand.

"No, she was ready at any time," she said softly. "Bill, I'm sorry that –"

"Olivia, what occurred was a failure of many types, but you can't blame anyone but Tucker for what happened," Dodds dismissed. "Barba, you should take her home –"

"You think I'm going to take her home before she has a chance to check on her second in command?" Rafael scoffed. "Like I said before, I value my life." The door opened and Rita came in. "Rita, hey – you okay?"

Rita shrugged. "Nothing another decade of therapy and an expensive bottle of wine can't fix," she said dismissively. "Liv, you okay?"

Liv nodded. "Fine," she said, but the slight crack in her voice and the tearfulness at the edges belied the words. "Rollins is in labor."

"Oh," Rita said. "Good for her – little Rollins is on the way, finally. Now there will be two."

Rafael stifled a laugh. "Sheath your claws, she-demon," he scolded.

Fin smirked. "Lemme take ya home, Calhoun," he said gently. "You shouldn't get a cab with a bruise like that. Someone will take advantage."

"Are we all going?" she asked.

"We're staying," Rafael said. "Mike will be in recovery soon, and as soon as Liv's seen him, we'll go meet his fiancée at the airport and bring her here and then head home."

Rita hesitated, then nodded. "It's okay for me to go?"

"You'll need to make a statement for IAB in the next few days," Dodds said, "but I'll make sure they come to you."

"Yeah," Rita said. "Whatever you need."

Rafael watched one of his oldest friends walk away, concern churning in his gut. But for the moment, there was nothing he could do but stay with Liv and hope that Mike would be all right. Too many balls in the air, juggling too many things, hoping that he could stay calm enough to balance everything.

"Alice, you wanna go down to the bodega and get me my usual?" Mike called out to his fiancée. "Jamal knows – just tell him Sergeant Mike sent you." When she was gone, he turned to Rafael and said, "So that buys us twenty minutes or so. What did you want to talk to me about, Your Honor?"

"I've told you before, it's just Rafael out of chambers," Rafael said with a self-depriciative smirk, "or even Barba. I don't mind: I've been called worse. Either way… have you talked to Liv since you got out of the hospital?"

"On the phone for a few minutes – she wanted to tell me about Rollins and the baby. A little girl named Jesse," Mike said with a grin. "That's exciting."

"You know she blames herself for what happened, right?"

"For the crazy ex-cop who sexually assaulted her for years to turn stalker and shoot her coworker? Nah, not her fault," Mike said, shaking his head. "I talked to IAB. She talked to IAB. Hell, Calhoun talked to IAB. If Liv hasn't been placed on administrative leave by now, she's not going to be. There was no scenario in which one of us didn't get shot by Tucker: I'd rather it be me than the civilian or the object of his wrath."

Rafael sighed. "Can you tell her that? She already doesn't sleep well at night; I just want to have one night where we both sleep well. Just one. It feels like we haven't had any of those since… well, for a very long time." He didn't feel right invoking the ghosts of the past, William Lewis, Elliot Stabler, Eva… And yet, they were ingrained threads in the fabric, woven so deeply that to tug on them would pucker and unravel the weave. They were as much a part of the story of the Barba family, of Liv and Rafael, as anyone else, no matter the hurt.

Mike smiled just a little. "Hey, if my jailer lets me loose for a little bit, I'm due some exercise today. I could always swing by the precinct and make sure nobody's eaten all my gummy worms."

"I know for a fact that your boss has been sneaking a few," Rafael said. "Mostly because she begs me to send my assistant out to buy bags to replace them every so often."

"So she's the thief," Mike said with a low chuckle.

"I mean, do you want to pretend you don't know?"

"Honestly, it's just candy," Mike said with a shrug. "I was annoyed at first, but now that I know it's Liv and that she's making the effort to replace what she's eating, it's not even a big deal."

Rafael chuckled. "You and Alice want to come over for dinner tonight? It's spaghetti night. It's a family thing. You're family. Hell, make your dad come – it's nothing gourmet, I just throw some noodles in a pot of water and make a sauce and some sausages from the market and some garlic bread."

Mike nodded. "I think we can do that. Look, Rafael, you don't have to pretend to mend fences that aren't broken, okay? What happened isn't Liv's fault, and it isn't Calhoun's fault – it's Tucker's. And that's where we're going to leave it."

Rafael nodded. He knew already that he was probably going to catch some kind of hell from his wife for interfering, but such were the breaks. Eventually, she would forgive him. She always did.

"Don't think you can cuddle and get out of the dog house," Liv grumbled as she climbed into bed and Rafael immediately moved to embrace her. "I know what you've been up to, Barba."

"Last name, ouch," he said, flinching.

"Also, don't think you can just be sexy and get one over on me, either," she muttered. "Interfering and colluding and just being a general pain in my ass."

"Isn't that what the love of your life is supposed to do?" he countered.

"You're supposed to tell me we're having a dinner party."

He frowned and kissed her shoulder. "It's family dinner, not a dinner party."

"It's my boss, his son, who happens to be my subordinate officer, and his son's fiancée – that's not family dinner," she ground out through clenched teeth. "That's like calling the mayor over and having mac and cheese."

Rafael refrained from reminding her that one time in the not so distant past, she'd stumbled in on him playing poker with Connie Braga, the mayor, and the Deputy Police Commissioner, eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch and milk, drinking shots of tequila, at 2 am, while she'd been on a case that had run late into the night. "Okay," he said instead, valuing what was left of his life and his marriage.

"It was spaghetti night and you let Dodds think we just…"

"Are a normal family?" he asked gently. "He knows you would do anything for our son, Olivia. Just like he would do anything for his." He tightened his hold around her waist, burying his face in the crook of her shoulder. "They're part of our family now; last night was opening the door to let them in."

"I don't –"

"It's okay," he said softly. "Did you and Mike talk?"

She stiffened and muttered, "I don't suppose he told you he'd put in a transfer request before Tucker went off the rails?"

He paused. "No."

"Anti-terrorism." Her voice cracked. "Of course they want him even more now. And I just have to stand by and give up one of the best officers I've ever had because he wanted to use us as a stepping stone to better things."

"That's not what SVU is."

"Isn't it?" she challenged. "Elliot left. Munch left. Cragen left. Everyone leaves. It's too much. This job is too much for any sane person to do."

"You're saying you aren't sane?" he asked, trying to envelop her in the warmth and comfort of his embrace. "I know it can feel that way when you look at so much horror, such inhumanity day after day, but you are a beacon of light in the darkness, Olivia. You are love and light and a swirl of color for anyone who needs it. You are sanity and reason and the best person I've ever known, even when you feel like you aren't enough… or when you've done something wrong or disappointing."

She turned in his arms and tucked her head against him. "What did I do to deserve you?" Olivia whispered. Her hair smelled like vanilla from her shampoo and the clinging garlic from dinner, with undertones of her skin – the gentle smell that was just her, that bespoke to Rafael of comfort and home and stability.

"We don't deserve each other," he whispered back. "We've had to earn it – every bit of it. Blood, sweat, and tears, Livvy. I'm so sorry it's had to be that way, but I wouldn't give you up or trade you back for the world." He sighed and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "I know you're mad at me for having the Dodds's over…"

"It was just a surprise after Mike came in and told me he knew about the gummy worms," she said pointedly. "Did you tell him?"

"No," he lied, hopefully convincingly.

"Whatever," she huffed. "He apologized for not telling me about the transfer. I just… we were already short-handed, and Carisi is taking night classes at Fordham Law, so I have to prepare to eventually lose another detective – I don't know what to do, Rafa. I don't know what to do."

"You need to close your eyes and sleep, mi amor," Rafael whispered, reaching up to rub her temple with the pad of his thumb. "And we'll look at everything with fresh eyes in the morning, okay?"

"I'm still angry with you."

"Only a little," he said gently.

"Just enough," she replied.

"Next time, I'll make sure to plan an appropriate dessert," he murmured.

"Mmm, that's a step in the right direction," she sighed, leaning more into his touch. "And maybe not spaghetti night with Noah throwing noodles every direction?"

He chuckled and gave her a kiss. "But he's such a charmer when he's doing it," he teased.

"He takes after his father," she protested, allowing him to deepen the kiss. "I love you," she whispered against his lips. "Please don't doubt that."

"I don't," he promised. "El sol sale y se pone, la marea sube y baja, mi corazón late cada día por ti."

"Why do you have to be so romantic all of the time?" she whispered. "I feel so inadequate –"

"Shh," he replied. "You're the practical one, I'm the dreamer – it's okay. Hey, wanna play hooky and Lucy can take Noah after work and we can have a quiet date night?"

Liv hummed quietly. "Sounds wonderful, Mr. Barba," she whispered.

"I love you, Mrs. Barba," he whispered back. "Now go to sleep and stop worrying about things out of your control."

TBC...