"It's going to be ok, Lindsey," Paul reassured her, rubbing his hand in soothing circles over her back.

Nothing had ever felt less ok in her life; she'd rather be shot again than endure this. The EMTs had declared that Noah had likely suffered an asthma attack, gave him oxygen and then a nebulizer while he sat on his mother's lap in the back of the ambulance. By the time they arrived at the hospital it seemed the worst had passed, but Noah was stressed out and crying, reaching for Olivia while the nurses checked his vitals and her heart shattered in her chest. The nurses took him away from her, said something about a chest x-ray just to be safe, and that was when Paul swooped in. He'd followed the ambulance in his car with little Riley in tow because, he said, Riley wanted to make sure Gabe was ok, and I didn't want you to be alone.

Olivia had been alone for so long now she had forgotten what it was like not to be; it was nice, to have someone there with her. Someone to comfort her, someone to talk to instead of climbing the walls on her own while she waited for the nurses to bring her baby back.

"I just don't understand why this happened," she lamented. It made her feel a little foolish to admit such a thing, but it was true; Noah's tumultuous early months in foster care had put him behind the developmental goals for his age group, but he'd made progress by leaps and bounds in the stable home Olivia had made for him. Sure, he wasn't talking as much as she'd like, but apart from that, he was a perfectly healthy, perfectly normal toddler.

"Are you absolutely sure you haven't noticed any symptoms before now?" Paul asked urgently, like he was trying to help her find her way to the understanding that had so far eluded her.

"Positive," she said miserably. "There's been nothing. He hasn't even been sick."

"Well, moving forward you might need to pay closer attention to him."

"I take care of my son," she snapped. How dare he, she wondered; how dare Paul insinuate that any of this was her fault? Olivia loved Noah, and she kept a careful eye on him always; sometimes she felt like she was too careful, watched him too closely, felt like her job and the horrors she'd seen made her overprotective, wary and afraid.

Only tonight, when the asthma attack started, she wasn't watching him. She'd let her guard down, left him to play unsupervised in the next room. Oh, she and Paul could see the boys from the kitchen, but they weren't exactly monitoring their every movement; shit, what if Paul was right? What if there had been signs, but she'd missed them? The last few weeks she'd been so caught up in the turmoil Elliot left in his wake; what if Noah had been struggling for a while, and she missed it, too preoccupied with her own heart to notice the signs of this impending disaster?

"I'm sorry," Paul said. "I'm just trying to help."

"I know," she said, reaching for him, clasping his hand in hers. "I'm sorry, I'm just a little overwhelmed right now."

"It can't be easy, doing it all on your own."

She wanted to point out that Paul was raising Riley all on his own, too, but that wasn't really true; Paul's parents routinely took Riley for the weekend, stepped in whenever Paul needed an extra set of hands, and since Paul worked from home, Riley didn't spend all day, every day in daycare. Paul had his friends in the neighborhood, his friends from church, a vast network of people ready and willing to offer their support, and Olivia had nothing at all. She was alone, more alone than she had ever been.

"I'm doing the best I can," she said.

"I know, sweetheart."

The doors at the end of the corridor swung open and the nurses returned, one of them carrying Noah, the other two flanking her like bodyguards. As they drew near Olivia started to reach for her son, but one of the nurses stepped smoothly in front of her while the others carried him into the exam room behind her.

"Everything's all right," the nurse said, though she raised her hands in a gesture that indicated Olivia was to stay put, that she couldn't rejoin Noah just yet. "We just need to talk to mom and dad first."

Paul was not Noah's dad, but Olivia didn't bother correcting the nurse, didn't even care, not really, about the woman mistaking Paul for her husband; Olivia just needed to know that Noah was going to be ok.

"Was it an asthma attack?" Olivia asked urgently. "Do you think he'll have another one?"

Paul stepped up close to her, looped his arm around her waist, his free hand holding tight to Riley's, looking for all the world like a concerned father, the three of them together painting the picture of a family. The steady warmth of him beside her was a comfort, one she'd never really known. All this time she'd been raising Noah by herself; it would've been nice, she thought, to have a partner.

"It certainly looks like an asthma attack, but it's hard to say if he'll have another one. We'll send you home with an inhaler and you'll need to follow up with your pediatrician."

"Do you know what could have caused it?"

"It could've been environmental, could be an underlying condition. That's what we need to talk to you about, actually."

The nurse looked over Olivia's shoulder, something in her expression like she was looking for someone, trying to catch someone else's eye, and so Olivia turned and looked, too, and felt her heart sink as she watched a uniformed police officer approaching.

What the fuck? She wondered.

"As you know, the doctor ordered some chest x-rays as a precautionary measure," the nurse continued. "His lungs are clear, but the x-rays revealed some old fractures on his ribs."

Olivia swayed on her feet, dizzy with terror. There were so many questions about what Noah had endured when he was small; what his life had been like with Ellie, how he had been taken from her. The couple who bought him had treated him like he was their own, but then he'd been bounced around foster care, and there was no way to know what had happened to him there. He'd never been hurt in Olivia's care, so whatever had caused the fractures must have occurred before she brought him home.

But she couldn't tell anyone that. There was no record of Lindsey adopting Gabe; she was listed as his mother on the birth certificate the Marshals had created for him. As far as the paperwork was concerned, Lindsey Duncan had given birth to Gabe, and there was no record of Gabe having ever been in foster care.

She was fucked.

"Mr. and Mrs. Duncan," the officer said, pulling a little notebook and pen out of his pocket, preparing to begin the interview. How many times had Olivia done the same thing herself? Met with concerned nurses at the hospital, interviewed parents with something to hide? She never imagined she'd find herself on this end of the investigation, and now that she was here all she wanted was to escape. To scream, to claw her way free of Paul and the nurses and the cop, to grab her boy and run for home, not the little house on the culdesac but home, their apartment in the city, the place where they belonged.

"He's not my husband," she managed to say. "He's a friend. And I don't think he should be here for this. Paul, please, take Riley home. I'll call you later."

"I don't want to leave you alone," Paul said, eyeing the cop warily. It was very noble of him, wanting to stay with her, wanting to protect her, but she didn't want him to see what was about to happen, didn't want him to hear the officer's questions, didn't want to hear her struggle to answer.

"Please, just go," she said.

He went.

"Stabler," Elliot grunted into the phone. Kathy was staring at him from the other end of the couch, something sad and knowing in her eyes. It was after 8:00 p.m., almost bath and bedtime for Eli, and there were dishes to be washed and lunches to be packed and Kathy still couldn't do much of anything, still laid up with her busted leg, and Elliot had promised to do it all but instead he was on the phone and he knew his excuses were wearing thin. She knew he wasn't working at the courthouse; out of the house at all hours, taking calls after dinner, that didn't make sense for a man whose job was supposed to end at 5:00 p.m. every day.

I'm gonna have to tell her something soon, he thought. Not the truth, he couldn't afford the whole truth, but he couldn't afford to continue lying, either.

"Stabler, it's me," Jackie said.

Like I don't know that, he thought; he'd seen her name on the caller ID.

"Listen, we got a problem."

"What's up?"

He rose to his feet, began to pace, putting a little distance between himself and Kathy. Maybe he was going to have to come clean to her about his job soon, but he couldn't risk her overhearing anything Jackie had to say until he'd decided just how much to tell her.

"I got a call from a friend at local PD. Your friend Lindsey's in deep shit."

"What?" he demanded. What the fuck did she do? It wasn't like Liv to run afoul of the law; she was a goddamn cop herself, and she knew how to stay out of trouble. Unless she'd seen something; it happened while she was under with the environmentalist nuts. She'd come across a case and couldn't leave it alone and got herself in hot water. Maybe that was all it was, maybe she'd just -

"She took her kid to the hospital for an asthma attack and now they're investigating her for child abuse."

"Jackie, there's no fucking way-"

When he said fucking Kathy flinched like he'd hit her. She didn't like it when he swore. Olivia never seemed to care; she always swore right back at him.

"The kid's ribs were broken when he was a baby, the cops have questions."

And that didn't make any sense. Liv would never, ever hurt her child. There were so few constants in Elliot's life, but Liv was one of them. He knew her, inside and out, and he knew she wasn't capable of doing that kind of physical harm to her own baby. Whatever this was, it had to be a misunderstanding. Maybe they'd been in a car accident, or a nanny had dropped him, or…

Or maybe his father, whose name Elliot didn't know, had been a real son of a bitch.

Please, God, he thought, marching towards the door. Please don't let that be true. What he'd learned about Lewis, about what had been done to Liv, that was bad enough, but what if Liv and her boy had suffered at the hands of a monster who'd lived in their own home?

What did I do?

He never should've left.

"Where is she?" he demanded even as he gathered up his keys and slipped into his shoes.

"Elliot -" Kathy called quietly behind him. He never even heard her.

"Methodist Hospital. I'm gonna meet you there, we have to tread lightly-"

Fuck that, Elliot thought. He had no intention of treading lightly. Liv was in trouble, and she needed help, and by god he was gonna be there for her this time.

"I'm on my way," he said tightly. He hung up the phone, swung the door open, and raced out into the night, Kathy's voice calling after him, looking for answers he could not give.

He did not turn back, did not respond to her at all, just slid behind the wheel and peeled out of the driveway as fast as he could go, his entire being focused on one single goal: get to Liv.