August 18, 2021
"It's gonna be ok, babe," Brian said. He said it reflexively, passionlessly, said it the same way he might have said fine if someone asked him how he was doing; he said it because he had to, because the moment was fraught with an unbearable, suffocating kind of tension, because Olivia was falling to pieces and he'd never been comfortable with seeing her in disarray, said it because when a person was worried sick a man had to say something, and an empty reassurance was the only thing he could come up with.
It wasn't his fault, that his words didn't help, that he wasn't the least bit convincing; nothing, in that moment, would have been a comfort to her.
She was lying in the hospital bed, chained to it by machines and IV lines, Noah snuggled up next to her fast asleep, and her heart, her world, her hope, her future, was lying in a tandem surgical suite upstairs. The doctors had taken Elliot back first; they'd need to take the piece of his liver first, and then carry it next door to the place where little Mia was fast asleep, waiting for it. The man she loved and her child, both unconscious, both cut open, both at risk, and there she was, gutshot and helpless, unable to even stand on her own yet. It was killing her by inches, the waiting, the not knowing, wondering how the ones she loved would fare under the knife, wondering if she was about to lose one or both of them forever.
The surgery itself was not without risk, but it was the after part that worried her most. How would Elliot do, missing part of himself? Would he recover, the way he seemed so certain he would? Would he suffer, not realizing just what he'd sacrificed until it was too late to take it back? And what about Mia; would her little body accept this gift, or reject it, and what the fuck would they do if Elliot's liver wasn't enough to save her? Even if they both recovered well they would be convalescing for weeks, monitored by doctors for longer, and Olivia had a long road ahead herself. The bullet that had torn through her body had, somehow, miraculously, avoided her major organs, but she was now short a gallbladder and a spleen and a bit of intestine and rather a lot of her own blood, and the doctors had gone in, repaired as much as they could, but she'd been ripped open, and it was no small thing, healing such a wound. She'd be out of commission, too, when her baby needed her most, and she was already furious over it, already pissed and frustrated just thinking about the weeks ahead. Pissed, and frustrated, and scared out of her mind.
And there was Brian, saying it's going to be ok with his face white as a sheet because he knew she needed comfort but he needed it, too, because Mia was his as much as she was Olvia's; his heart was lying on that operating table, too.
Beyond the little room where Olivia's family was gathered, breathless and anxious, the sun had risen, and a new day had begun. Fin came in, some time around dawn, touched Olivia's shoulder gently and told her it was good to see her face and made her promise not to worry about work, and he'd promised, too, to keep her hospital room empty, to keep the horde of well-wishers at bay at least until after Mia's surgery. Olivia was grateful for that; it was hard enough breathing the same air as Brian while she waited for news from the transplant team, and she wasn't sure how she could stand it, speaking to more people, holding herself together for them, reassuring them - or worse, hearing the same platitudes Brian offered coming at her from more and varied mouths - while her heart was breaking in two. She needed quiet, and the warmth of Noah beside her, needed Brian, damn it, because Brian had seen her broken before, and she felt no need to hide from him.
"Has, uh, has anybody talked to Stabler's kids?" he asked suddenly, and Olivia looked up at him sharply, ashen-faced.
It was the sort of thing she'd tell herself later not to feel guilty for; of course there were necessities she'd overlooked, while she'd been on heavy medication, recovering from a serious trauma, sick to death with worry for her child. There was only so much a person could do on her own, only so much room in her head for details in a time of crisis, and later she'd tell herself it wasn't the worst thing she'd ever done, forgetting to call the Stabler kids. Later, she'd tell herself that. In the moment, though, she felt nothing but a great and towering shame.
"Fuck me," she said, softly.
"Take that as a no," Brian said drily.
"Where the fuck is my phone?"
"Hang on, they gave me a bag with your shit in it."
There was a counter along the back wall of the room, and he went there, came up with a plastic bag in his hands. There wasn't much in it; her clothes were ruined, and IAB had sent someone to retrieve her gun, but her badge, her phone, her panties, her shoes, those things were still in there. Gingerly Brian opened the bag and pulled out her phone, and brought it back over to her like a goddamn butler.
"Thing's almost dead," he told her as he passed it over. "And I don't have a charger."
"Will you go to the apartment?" Olivia asked, seizing her phone and immediately finding herself distracted by the sheer number of notifications waiting for her there. Texts and emails and phone calls, it was like everybody in the world had been trying to get ahold of her while she'd been unconscious. "I'm gonna be here for a while and I'll need some things, and so will Mia."
"Yeah," Brian said. "I can take Noah."
Olivia's arm curled protectively around her son; the last thing she wanted was to let him out of her sight. Brian's eyes followed the movement of her body, and he frowned.
"Liv, if something happens, you can't get up," he reminded her, not unkindly. "If Noah has to use the bathroom you can't go with him. If you code or something, there's no one from your team here. He'd have to wait outside with a fucking uni or something. You really expect me to leave him?"
The thing was, he was right. And sometimes, she really fucking hated it when he was right.
"Maybe don't go right now -"
"If we go now, I can get back before Mia's surgery's done. I can be here when they tell you what's going on with Mia. And I can sit with her while she's waking up."
And Olivia couldn't walk, couldn't go in the room and hold her daughter's hand as she came up from the anesthesia.
"Ok," she said finally, tightly. There was a logic to the plan, but it was a logic she found no comfort in. Brian needed to go now, because he wouldn't be able to go later, and he needed to take Noah with him, even if Olivia's heart screamed out against it.
"Be back before you know it," Brian said, and then he leaned over her bed, kissed her once, gently, on the forehead.
"You better," she told him warningly, and he just grinned. That grin; it was tired, and strained, and yet, still, somehow, it was the same little boy grin he'd always worn, would always wear, because he would, always, still be the same little boy she'd first met a quarter century before. Peter Pan, she thought, sadly.
With deft hands Brian lifted Noah out of the bed, and though the boy was almost too big to be carried Brian settled his son on his hip, and walked out of the room with him.
They'll be back soon, Olivia reminded herself. They have to be.
For the moment, though, she was alone, and she had an urgent task herself. She only had a phone number for one of the Stabler kids, but one was enough, and so she turned her attention to her phone, and found Kathleen's number, and dialed it at once.
Kathleen picked up on the second ring.
"Olivia!" she exclaimed, something like terror in her voice. "Are you ok?"
It sounded, Olivia thought, like Kathleen knew at least something about what had happened the day before, and that made her feel a little bit better about not calling before now.
"I'm fine," Olivia said. "I mean, I'm not fine, but I'm gonna be."
"I just got to the hospital," Kathleen said, halfway frantic. "I don't know where to go, I don't know what to do, I don't know-"
"It's all right, sweetheart, just take a breath," Olivia told her gently. The hospital had a system for treating trauma victims; they assigned a codename to each of them, only gave that codename out to family members, so that members of the press or other folks with nefarious motives couldn't ask for the victims by name and find their way to the rooms. Olivia's codename was Sienna, and armed with that word Kathleen was able to make her way up through the bowels of the hospital and into Olivia's room in about half an hour, which was actually pretty impressive. Things moved slow, inside the hospital, and getting around was no easy feat.
The second Kathleen saw her the girl let out a low cry, and rushed across the room and into Olivia's arms. It was a little awkward, hugging her when all Olivia could really do was lay flat on that damn bed, but they managed, and when Kathleen finally pulled back she collapsed into the chair at Olivia's bedside, rubbing vigorously at her eyes.
"Have you heard anything?" Kathleen asked urgently.
"What have you heard?" Olivia really, really wanted to know what Kathleen knew before she started talking about the mess they'd all found themselves in.
"I was in Jersey when Dad called," Kathleen said miserably. "He said you'd been shot and he said your little girl needed a liver transplant and that he'd volunteered to do it."
It was a relief, really, the realization that Elliot had told his daughter the truth himself, that it wouldn't fall to Olivia to tell Kathleen the massive risk Elliot was taking on her behalf. The Stabler kids had just lost their mother, and now their father was unconscious in a hospital for Olivia's sake, and it made her feel selfish, somehow, knowing that Elliot had offered her so much when he had children of his own to think about. But she'd have done the same for him, if their roles has been reversed. Would do anything to help one of his kids, just as he was willing to do anything for one of hers. What's yours is mine, that had always been the way of things between them, the good and the bad things both.
"That's about it," Olivia said. "They took Elliot back for surgery a few hours ago, and now they've taken Mia, too. Your dad will come out first, I'm hoping they'll come and give us an update soon."
"Can I wait here until they do?"
"Of course," Olivia said firmly. "I was going to ask you to. I think we'll both feel better if we wait together."
Kathleen reached out impulsively, caught Olivia's hand in her own and held on tight, watching her with shining eyes. There had always been something almost painfully earnest about Kathleen, something so sincere, so vulnerable it made her hard to look at, sometimes, and it was harder now than ever, now when Kathleen's every fear was written on her face, when Olivia felt responsible for putting it there.
"I'm so sorry," Olivia said, horrified to feel the sting of tears welling up in her own eyes, but Kathleen just smiled softly, sadly, and squeezed her hand a little tighter.
"She's your daughter," Kathleen said. "That makes her family, and Dad will do anything for family. It's who he is."
Oh Jesus, Olivia thought, because now she really was going to cry.
"I'm not sure I deserve it," she managed to choke out. She wasn't sure she deserved any of it, really, the life she felt she'd ripped from the clutches of death itself, the love that Elliot carried for her when it was Kathy he'd made a family with, Kathy he was meant to be devoted to, wasn't sure she deserved his devotion, wasn't sure she deserved to be called his family, when he had children of his own, a great sprawling of web of family the very idea of which was so foreign to Olivia it felt almost holy.
"You do," Kathleen said softly. "But if you can't believe that, can you at least believe your little girl deserves it?"
Yeah, she could do that much. As hard as it was for Olivia to believe she deserved any of this, the love and the family and the second chances she'd been given, she believed without hesitation that Mia deserved every bit of it, because Mia was still just a child, innocent and scared, and it was Olivia's job to keep her safe, and she'd failed, but Elliot had stepped into the breach. Olivia didn't believe in much, but she believed in him, always, and he had done this thing without hesitation.
They sat there for a time, holding tightly to one another, breathing slowly in the stillness, until at last a man in blue scrubs appeared in the doorway, and approached them both, carrying the fate of their worlds on the clipboard clutched in his hands.
