There was something wrong with her partner. Juliet knew it. And she knew that she needed to get to him, now. Sooner than now. She should have been there a week ago for him. She hadn't stopped thinking about what had happened on the call at Lily's birthday party. He was talking so clearly to someone else, but she knew that they weren't there.

Who is he talking to?

She needed to go see. Screw bed rest. There was something wrong with her partner and she needed to find out what it was. That was her job, right? Even if he never came back to work again, they had been through too much together for her to leave him hanging now.

"Bye, Babe," Shawn called from the kitchen. "Gus and I are picking Lily up from school and taking her to ice cream for her birthday."

"Okay," Juliet called back, relieved to have some privacy. She needed a chance to escape. "Have fun!"

She heard the front door close and looked at the clock. She needed ten minutes to go by before she could go anywhere. Shawn could come back. For someone with a photographic memory, he seemed to have a terrible time remembering what he was supposed to bring with him whenever he left the house. She had strongly considered on multiple occasions leaving a little checklist taped to the door, but had decided against it- it was much more fun getting to make fun of Shawn for having to come back in. Plus she got one more kiss for the road.

She waited seven and a half minutes.

She couldn't wait any longer.

Carefully lifting herself out of bed, she hurried down the stairs and into the car. Well, hurried was a generous word. More like quickly waddled, her one hand resting on her back and her other hand swinging furiously for momentum. She hadn't driven anywhere since the last time she drove to visit Carlton. Since she got driven to the hospital by Henry. Since she'd been on bed rest.

She felt more confident the faster she drove, pushing the speed limit to make up for lost time. She was sure she could save him. Positive she could fix him. She pulled into the rehab center, checked in at the front desk, and hurried up the stairs to Carlton's room on the third floor.

As she reached the top of the stairs, she heard an overhead speaker calling for a rapid response on the first floor and saw staff rushing past her down the stairs. She turned briefly to watch them go, but was much more focused on the closed wooden door around the corner and down a long hallway

She pushed the door open softly but stopped dead in her tracks, her heart misfiring through her chest. Her partner sat on the big chair, his gun sitting on his lap. Giving him a once over to make sure he hadn't done any damage yet, she felt her baby do a summersault in her core at the sudden pounding of her heart.

She shut the door behind her, afraid any disturbance from outside the room might startle him.

Her eyes darted around the room, trying to assess the scene. The lights were off and the curtains drawn, leaving a dim shadow on the room. But the sunshine slipping through the window shades revealed Carlton's black suitcase lying next to him on the floor. The top zipper lay partially open revealing the pocket where the gun that he took with them to conferences hid. Marlowe must not have known it was in there when she packed the bag for him.

Had Carlton?

It didn't matter right now. What mattered right now was that her partner was sitting in a chair with a possibly loaded gun. And if she knew her partner, the odds seemed far better that there was at least a bullet or two that could be shot off at any second.

"You don't know that," Carlton said, his eyes fixed over her shoulder.

So he had a loaded gun, and he was hallucinating.

Juliet watched, her heart dancing harshly against her sternum as Carlton looked from the edge of his bed to right next to her, clearly watching a conversation between two people.

"I'm trying," he said softly to her shoulder. And then, "I can't help it. What kind of father can't pick up his child? What kind of husband can't dance with his wife? What kind of grown ass man can't button up his own shirt? I'm worthless."

Juliet's heart dropped as she began to understand just how deeply Carlton had been hurting.

"You're not worthless, Carlton," Juliet said, cautiously taking a step forward. "You're my partner. I need you, Carlton. Exactly as you are." She said his name carefully, hoping to bring him back to reality.

Juliet watched his face soften as he looked around the room, trying to place her. "O'Hara?"

"Carlton. Listen to my voice." She continued walking towards him, her hands in front of her to stop him. If she could just get the gun out of his hands, maybe she could reason with him. She had to connect with him. Bring his distant mind back to reality.

"I can't do this. I'm so tired of trying."

Juliet could feel her heart breaking for him. She knew exactly how he was feeling. The exhaustion of trying so hard to be fine, knowing that it was completely impossible. When circumstance had rendered "normal" a thing of the past, leaving her with nothing but a bag of gray puzzle pieces resembling what used to be her life. She had felt it when she was a little girl and her father ran away for the first time. She had felt it every day she was sick. She had felt it after Yin had tied her to a clock tower and left her to die.

And she had felt it that day at the gas station, what felt like ages ago, when her partner had collapsed right before her eyes. She couldn't even imagine what it must have been like for him.

"You have to keep trying," she said, continuing to inch towards him. "You have a wife who loves you more than the world and a daughter who looks up to you. They just want you home."

She could see his face begin to soften.

"This isn't how it was supposed to go," he sighed, his monotone voice heavy. "I was supposed to be the hero. I dedicated my entire life to being a detective. If I fell, I was supposed to fall in a storm of bullets, fighting the bad guys until the very end. It wasn't supposed to end like this."

His eyes were far away, lost, looking past her. She couldn't even be sure he really knew she was there. What she did know was that with every word, he gestured with the gun, pointing it around the room and towards himself as he talked, causing Juliet's heart to pound even quicker and the tiny baby in her stomach to flip and kick, anticipating her emotions.

"Carlton, you are a hero."

Get the gun.

"It doesn't matter how this happened or why or when…"

Just keep his attention.

She kept talking, trying to catch his distant eyes. Begging him to come back to reality. If she could just hold his attention long enough to remind him where he was or that he was at least still alive, maybe he could make it out of here in one piece.

"Yeah, right," she heard him scoff and for the first time since his stroke, she let herself feel the one thing she had put away in a box. The one emotion she had been trying with everything she had not to feel- anger. Anger at him for having the accident, for leaving her out there all alone. For almost dying on her.

"Yeah, right?" Juliet asked, a little louder than she was intending. She saw him jump slightly and his eyes darted around the room, glazing right over her as they seemed to search for the source of the noise.

"Carlton, do you even realize what we went through that first night?" She continued talking, her mind floating back to the first few days at the hospital. How scared she had been, nausea and fear consuming her insides, very little related to the microscopic baby she didn't even know about yet. How hard she had tried to hold it together so Marlowe wouldn't freak out too much. How badly she wanted to freak out herself, certain she would never see her partner alive again.

It had been horrible and horrifying. And they had all been so relieved when he woke up only to realize that even if this stroke hadn't killed him, it had taken more from him than they were able to process. More than they even realized at the time. And none of them knew how to deal with that fact.

"...Even when you're awake it's like you're gone!"

Her heart was racing at an uncomfortable speed when she finally finished talking, her partner becoming blurry as tears ran down her cheeks. Guilt punched her in the stomach as she watched Carlton stumble over his words in front of her.

Don't yell at him! Help him! Get the gun!

"I'm no good for anyone," he finally said, and Juliet felt regret wash over her.

Bring him back. Her thoughts echoed loudly in her head as she tried to make sense of what was happening in his mind. She took a few steps forward, the gun just barely out of reach.

"They don't care about any of that," she continued a few feet in front of him. "You're part of a family and your family misses you. Even if you're different now. They want you back. All of us do."

He looked like he was about to come back to reality when something loud startled him. She looked around for the source, but the room remained silent. She watched his face harden again. His jaw was clenched and his hand tightened around the base of the gun.

"They don't want me like this." It wasn't a question. It was a fact. She could see in his eyes that in his mind, that was the truth. He had shut out the world and she couldn't break through to him anymore.

"I'm done."

Juliet watched in horror as Carlton slumped back in his chair, his eyes drifting closed. In slow motion that moved faster than she could process, Juliet watched him raise his hand to his forehead, the barrel of the gun pointing directly into the soft spot on his head.

"Carlton! No!" She cried, lunging forward. His eyes were opened, but he wasn't there. His dark irises completely glossed over. She reached her hands out to his arm, attempting to pull his wrist away from his temple. Attempting to keep the bullet out of his brain.

BANG!