Elizabeth came groaning into the bullpen and rubbed her aching neck.
She should have been home by now, but that black Audi 80 wouldn't let her go. So she had ordered Katherine to join Nick in the BRIC, and the three of them had watched the video footage repeatedly at all speeds, hoping perhaps to find a sequence in which they could recognize the killer's face well enough to at least attempt digital facial recognition.
But the killer was like the night. Everywhere and yet invisible. Or maybe he was just damn lucky.
"Let's continue tomorrow," she muttered, taking a deep breath.
"I don't mind," Katherine replied, nodding slowly.
The detective walked over to her desk, took her laptop off the docking station and slid it into her shoulder bag, then took a cursory glance at her smartphone that she had left in the bullpen to charge while she had been at BRIC since the battery had been about to die.
As she looked at the screen, she felt like the earth would stop spinning. She found it hard to breathe while her heartbeat accelerated as she read the countless messages from her two daughters, Jane and Maura. The same message was there repeatedly: get to Mass Gen ASAP. It's Maggie. Something has happened ... It's an emergency!
Katherine watched her sister brace herself at her desk, the color draining from her face. "Elizabeth, what happened?" Horror scenarios played out in her head, starring Nikki, Ashlyn, or even both.
Elizabeth looked at her sister, and her gaze glazed over. "Maggie," she gasped, "Maggie ... She's at Mass Gen. I --"
Katherine's automaticity instantly kicked in, and she gently took the detective by the arm. "Let's go right now. I'll drive!"
xxx
She woke up. It was dark outside. Confused shadows of the dream she'd just had wafted through her mind. She blinked. Inside, only a dim light behind her. In front of her, a woman. She recognized the outline. She saw the face of Maura.
"Where am I?" asked Maggie. Only to know in the next moment where she was. Approximately, anyway.
"Mass Gen," Maura said in a relatively rare soft tone. "Liz was here until just now. But she didn't want to wake you. She's getting coffee."
Mass Gen, Maggie thought. She was in the hospital. She looked around. A single room. The standard furniture. The table had two chairs; the third chair was where her mother-in-law sat. The LED television on the wall. The outlets above the bed. The bedside table with the tablets and the water carafe. And a bouquet of flowers. Probably from her wife or one of her colleagues.
She was in the hospital. Mass Gen. Waking up in the hospital after a 'mission. She had felt kicks. Had literally seen stars. Had doubled over in pain. Then everything was black. "Mass Gen?"
Maura took a deep breath and nodded slowly. "In the department of gynecology and neonatology."
"And why am I --"
Maura explained to her curtly where the uniforms had found Maggie. There would be disciplinary repercussions for the officers who had arrived too late. And that the redhead had been injured. Maybe by the murderer. Of whom there was no trace.
The door to the room opened.
Maura looked at the door and took a deep breath when she recognized Katherine. "Kate will be better able to explain that to you."
Even in the dim light in the room, Maggie could see Maura go pale.
Maggie frowned deeply as she looked at her sister-in-law. "What happened?"
Maura got up from the chair and cleared her throat. "You should discuss this in private."
Maggie waited a few seconds. "So?"
"Should we talk about it right now?"
"It's about the baby, isn't it?"
Katherine took a deep breath. "I'm afraid so."
Maggie swallowed hard but tried to make a brave impression. "Well, if it were a root canal, I don't think I'd be on the gyn."
Katherine tried to smile and sat on the edge of the bed. "Right. For starters, you're safe."
"So?"
"So what?"
"I'm safe. That means someone else isn't, Kate."
Katherine took another deep breath. "You're right. Let's get right to the point. You did ... You lost the baby."
Memories flared in Maggie's mind. The man with the glasses. Velvet Pearl. The kicks. The blood. She had blocked it out, but it was there. Like thin ice beneath her feet that she could break into at any moment. Or from beneath which greedy hands could reach through to drag her down. Down into the depths of her memory. Because there was something else. Something that ...
"My baby? Is it dead?" Tears welled up in her eyes. Maggie couldn't help it. She felt the salty taste on her tongue, felt the warmth on her cheeks.
Katherine pressed her lips together and nodded. Tried to be the cold doctor she had been trained to be. She had told her former colleagues at Mass Gen that she would take on this gruesome task, only for Maggie to hear it from a familiar face. "Maggie, blunt force trauma caused vaginal bleeding and partial placenta detachment. The doctors here did an ultrasound. They could ... no longer see a heartbeat."
Maggie closed her eyes and licked her lips. "Dead? Dead --" she muttered, "Now what?"
Katherine took another deep breath and took her sister-in-law's hand. "They're going to have to do a scraping of your uterus. You'll have to stay here for two to three days."
"Will I get general anesthesia?" Maggie wondered at her rational clarity, but she knew the shock was yet to come, like a time fuse that detonated later.
"You're getting twilight anesthesia," Katherine said, her brows furrowed but her voice soft.
"Propofol?" asked Maggie. She knew the drug intimately. Propofol was administered intravenously during such twilight sleep anesthesia.
"Yes, Propofol," the psychiatrist said.
Maggie knew about such drugs because they were also often used by rapists and murderers to anesthetize their victims. A drug in the narcotic group, it was considered controllable because of its short plasma half-life and relatively low accumulation. In commercially available preparations, Propofol was dissolved in a milky-white emulsion.
Katherine continued speaking. "Since it has no analgesic effect, it is usually combined with an opioid such as Sufenta."
"Sounds good," Maggie muttered tonelessly.
"Most people don't even know there is such a thing. But I'm sure you know the name."
"Yeah. Michael Jackson had his private doctor inject him with the stuff so he could sleep. Probably because he was on coke too much before. The stuff still creates positive dreams, too. But if you take too much of it, you can get into a real trip. And you don't survive that. Like M.J."
Katherine squeezed Maggie's hand with a deep frown. "You'll survive it, Mags. You're only getting it today, after all."
Maggie closed her eyes and swallowed hard. "And then?"
Katherine gave her a long look and gritted her teeth. She knew that under normal circumstances, Maggie knew the process of such a procedure. Under circumstances where she wouldn't be the patient. "Don't you want to discuss this later?"
"No!" Maggie's voice was cuttingly sharp as she sat up in bed. "I want to know what happens then. After the Propofol!"
Katherine nodded slowly. "Then the embryo goes to pathology."
"And then?"
"Maggie!"
"And ... then?"
Katherine paused and licked her lips. "Then the remains are disposed."
Maggie's eyes filled with tears. "They'll what?" She was silent. The remains will be disposed, she thought. Disposed ... The remains ... She knew her sister-in-law meant the baby. The remains ... But remains, that didn't sound right. That sounded wrong. That didn't sound like her child. And what they would do with the baby wasn't right either. But she couldn't say anything, even if she wanted to. Her child was ... disposed ... She was just stunned. Stunned and helpless.
My baby, she thought. A little creature, not even a real creature. Only a few inches long. Healthy, actually. No deformity. No hereditary diseases. Yet dead.
"My baby is being disposed?" she wanted to say, but only her mouth moved.
"You should get some sleep, Maggie," Katherine said, squeezing Maggie's hand again. "We'll do the procedure in the morning." Katherine reached for the pills on the nightstand. "Take these pills, and you can get some sleep."
But Maggie heard inside only these words, My baby is being disposed ...
Katherine got up from the edge of the bed and walked out of the room.
Maggie was alone. My baby is being disposed ...
xxx
Katherine walked down the hospital hallway and stopped at the waiting area. She saw her sister sitting in one of the many chairs, slumped forward, her elbows on her knees and her face buried deep in her hands. She had been sitting there like that ever since Maggie's doctor in charge had brought it up to her in a way that made it seem as if scraping out an embryo was commonplace, which was why Katherine had agreed to talk to Maggie about it, even though she wasn't really practiced in such things anymore.
Jane was standing at the soft drink vent with Nick, talking with a deep frown. Very likely about how this horrible incident had actually happened and where who had been at that moment, and unreachable at that.
Katherine winced a little as she felt a hand run over her back and looked at Maura in confusion.
Maura also had a worried, deep frown as she eyed her older daughter from a distance. "We should keep an eye on Liz," she said quietly but worriedly. "The last time she sat there like that was the day --"
"The day Sarah shot herself with her service weapon," Katherine added to the unfinished sentence.
Maura nodded slowly and pressed her lips together. "This time, we can't let her retreat into that damn shell like she did then. Where only she, the girls, and her work exist. She wouldn't survive losing the baby and Maggie at the same time. I think then we would lose Liz, too ... Literally."
"You're right," Katherine said, and at that moment, she wanted to go to her sister to at least try to offer Elizabeth some comfort, even though she knew it was hardly, if not impossible, in such a situation. But then she paused as Jane moved in Elizabeth's direction and sat in the vacant chair next to the detective.
She watched as Jane spoke to Elizabeth with a deep frown, the words only for her and the detective to hear, as if they shared a painful secret. Now and then, Jane would shake her head without stopping to talk, even when Elizabeth wouldn't budge.
But then, after a few seconds, something happened.
The detective raised her head and lowered her hands as if Jane had spoken the magic words that had broken a dark spell.
Jane continued to speak, nodding repeatedly as she placed her hand on Elizabeth's shoulder and gave it a visible squeeze. Then she pulled her older daughter into her arms and hugged Elizabeth tightly.
At that moment, Elizabeth let out a bloodcurdling sob as she continued to be held by her mother.