Chapter 10:

"Kate, you really need to stop doing this."

Castle was worried, but he still kept his voice barely above a whisper. She had been out for longer than usual this time. For the last hour, he had gripped her left hand, unconsciously rubbing the circles into the spot along her wrist where her thumb met the rest of her hand. The spot they had established to say so much early in their relationship when they were still trying to hide it from the precinct. He was on track to rub it raw if she kept this up.

"Kate, you really need to stop doing this. To me, to yourself, to Lily." He emphasized each person mentioned with a gentle squeeze and shake of her hand. Consciousness as coming slowly, her eyelids fluttering, head tilted toward his gentle voice.

To her, it felt like waking up from the deepest sleep. It had felt like a luxurious bed, though now the starchy and slightly itchy coverings were pulling at the fantasy. Kate's mind was trying to work upwards through the dizzying swirls of unconsciousness. Beyond the scratchy sheets, Kate could feel the beginning of the raw spot Rick had rubbed into her left hand.

"Doin' what?" she slurred, barely audible through her thick dry mouth. Her right hand felt heavy and confined. Restrained? Was she cuffed again? She attempted to move against the unusual weight and hardness restricting all the way up her forearm. She put every energy into it, flinging it outward as hard as she could with a loud grunt. A loud plastic clunk accompanied the movement, plaster hitting the side rail of the bed hard. To a normal person that would've hurt.

"Hurting yourself." Rick answered her question tinged with frustrated empathy, "And please be more gentle." He reached over her body with his free hand to maneuver her casted arm back to laying along her side. He would have put it over her waist, but her six-months pregnant belly was in the way. He didn't want to rest a casted arm on that delicate bundle. He knew that her discomfort of being on her back would settle in soon, he certainly wasn't going to add to it. Kate's half-open gaze had followed his arm to hers, perceiving the cast. The pristine white plaster confined all her movements from the wrist to just below her elbow, padding extended out to cushion the inside of her wrist and palm. She was surprised it didn't hurt.

She wiggled her fingers as much as she could, staring at the cast slightly confused. Casted arm, hospital bed, how did she end up here? Luckily Rick could read the confusion written on her face.

"Simple break of both the radius and ulna. One plate and four screws". He was flat and objective. He knew she needed simple information only as she worked through the levels of consciousness. "You are still coming out of the anesthesia from surgery."

"Why it doeshn hurt…. yet," Kate mumbled again, unable to articulate as well as she wanted. She leaned her head back into the no longer luxurious bed, shutting her eyes completely to hold back the beginnings of dizziness.

"Yeah", Rick tracked his hand from Kate's cast to the crest of Lily's prominent form. Kate's stretched belly undulated visibly as Lily rolled somersaults in there. He had noticed about a week ago, mostly when Kate gave him an interesting face, a mixture of pain and discomfort as her hand had pressed into the side of her belly. Fatherly instincts had him rushing toward her, something clearly wrong. Kate had returned with concern, "I think she just learned how to roll over." Since then, Lily hadn't really stopped. He wanted to be proud of his little girl, doing complex tumbling routines already in the womb; Kate wasn't so proud, barely amused actually. She would have been, if it wasn't happening 'inside' of her! When she wasn't asleep, Lily was rolling, kicking, and full of movements. A wonderful sign, although causing Kate some major discomfort at all hours. Rick was almost glad that Kate's body was still a bit numb right now; she was getting a bit of rest from Lily's current routine.

"How did I get here?" Kate's voice, a little stronger and clearer now, wafted into his perception. He had been so focused on Lily, his concern now shifted.

"That's a great question hun."

It had been a fairly routine day. Captain Beckett tucked into her office, signing reports, fielding phone calls, drafting end of month reports; her squads a muted buzz of activity outside the windows. Esposito was running solo today, Ryan out sick with something Sarah Grace had brought home to share with everyone in the household. This wasn't the first time she had done that. Having a very limited immune system, Beckett's body reacted to any and every sickness. Without a spleen, her body didn't "remember" how to fight even the simple illnesses, she was hit with the flu as if she had never seen it before. Add the immune system suppression of the pregnancy, and she might as well be wearing a blinking neon sign. Thanks to Sarah Grace and Ryan, Beckett had powered through two days of feeling crummy at the office last week, but couldn't do any more once the puking started. She hated puking, but doing so now that she harbored a center-of-balance-altering passenger was one of the worst experiences of her life. And she had been shot, repeatedly. After that bout, a new rule was implemented. All sick time within Captain Beckett's squads was approved immediately, if a detective chose not to stay home, they were not allowed within five feet of Beckett's presence. No one dared question the edicts of "Molten Steel", the secret-but-not nickname they had for their new captain. So Ryan - the guy who never missed work for anything- was stuck at home with his sick family.

Normally riding solo wouldn't be an issue, but Esposito had been trying to run some witness interviews that day. Due to a rule implemented by Gates long ago in her tenure - thanks to Beckett and Castle's antics - no one could go out solo, even for witness interviews. Beckett had also kept the rule that the captain be informed of detectives leaving the precinct. Esposito had hesitantly floated the idea of taking her with to this interview. No one else was around, and he could follow two rules with one field trip. Beckett hesitated at first, but the feeling of being cooped up had won out, so she had agreed. It was only supposed to be a simple witness interview anyways, what could be the harm in a little field work.

And indeed it had been easy at the start. Inside the spartan apartment, Espo had joined the witness at the living room couch arrangement, while Beckett had stationed herself leaning against the support pillar between the front door and the living room, darting her perception between the two. Leaning helped get the strain off her ankles, but not reveal too much of her pregnancy bump nor her discomfort. People were starting to notice, but not saying anything, which was comforting. Luckily it was this witness's first police interview, so he didn't even blink an eye at her condition or the fact that a captain was helping to conduct the interview. The interview had just been wrapping up, when Beckett had perceived a disturbance on the other side of the door. She remembered asking if they were expecting anyone, but it was answered by a shot through the door's lock mechanism. She had instinctively reached for her gun in her jump back, Esposito joining her in defensive positions after directing the witness to hide more interior.

An assailant had breached the door to the cacophony of their shouts to lower the weapon. After a few shots over her head that caused her to duck and step more behind Esposito, the shooter took heed and dashed out to the hallway. Esposito took chase, dashing to the right out of the door in full pursuit. Beckett, although she was jogging regularly now, didn't have the speed anymore, so she had pursued at more of a brisk walk. She had made it to the T intersection of the hallway just in time to see the back of Espo's head disappear down the stairwell to the left. Ambling over to the doorway, she recalled doing a quick count of the footfalls and his shouts, calculating that he was gaining quickly on the suspect about a floor below. She remembered feeling really unstable on the crumbling concrete, leaning back against the rail to her left and doing the stairs down one foot at a time - left then right- while keeping her gun up to defend.

Esposito's frustrated shout from below had caused her to pause. Each foot on its own step she remembered bending her knees to brace for a shot. She couldn't remember what the suspect looked like, but she remembered details like that. Her cop brain needed some retraining for field work. Either the adrenaline was pumping too quickly, or she had just not been paying attention, but the suspect had turned up a flight quickly past Espo, headed right towards her. She recalled him doing an impressive swing along the landing, using his left hand on the rail as a pivot. He had been only a few feet below where she was planted when the shot rang out. She had ricocheted a bullet just enough to graze his knuckles without hurting him bad, but causing him to let go. What she hadn't calculated was the momentum of his swing. Her stance proved to be unstable when the full brunt of a body crashed into her knees. As his body collided with hers, she had dropped her gun and tucked her forearm toward her body to brace for backward impact.

At least that was what the report mentioned. Esposito had come up the flight just seconds after, rolling the assailant off Beckett's prone form and handling the arrest.

Back at the hospital, Castle read aloud from the copy of the report. Esposito had dropped it off while she was in surgery, hoping that when she woke up, she could add anything before he submitted it.

What he hadn't written in the report was how much Beckett was cursing when he had finally gotten up to her, trying to use her injured elbow to push her body up to sitting. How she had snapped at him, but taken it anyway, when he reached out a hand to pull her up to standing. He didn't record how she had asked him quietly to drop her off at the hospital on their way back to the station, the ride silent as she shut off all emotion. Or how, every ten minutes, she took a slow breath, concentrating on counting Lily's movements under her breath, trying to confirm that everything was okay. Esposito had seen Beckett vulnerable before, but had never been the one to put her in that situation. He didn't let the guilt show, and she didn't let the pain show either. They both felt the consequences of their actions sink in during the silent and uncomfortable drive.

"That tracks", Kate finally responded to Rick's reading, "I have nothing to add to it."

Castle nodded his approval, folding the report in half decisively. He would give it to Espo on his next walk out of the room. Once he confirmed that Kate wasn't going to try to break her cast against the rail again.