Hi, so again back with this story and I hope you enjoy it, this was one of my favourite episodes and again there was a sense it was rushed. There were so many missing scenes that I simply decided to...add...them.

Hope you enjoy.

For once this is mostly cannon...

Usual warnings on spelling/grammar apply if you've read my works before you'll know.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine.

Please Read and Review.

Something Bad Happened

Chapter 3-Such Good Friends

Eddie gets the phone call that every cops wife dreads.

There's no great warning when your about to get the worse news of your life.

That's the first thing that she knows. Hell she was with Jamie when news came in about Linda. They had been having pizza at her place watching some kind of horror movie that he loved and she hated and then the phone had rang, they had been dancing the delicious dance that was their relationship and she had been enjoying it…thinking that maybe it was the half bottle of gin in her that made her want to take this further (or though she did not dare to admit it—the acknowledgement every woman goes through when she realises her vibrator is not enough and she needs a good pounding through the headboard) and then Jamie's phone had rang and she'd watched as he had seen that his Dad was calling and had smiled pausing the TV as he had gone to answer the phone.

She had watched as his hand had trembled on his gin glass, she had been the one that had caught it, she'd watched as his face had gone slack first in disbelief and then in horror and then had crumpled into a terrible loss. She had seen him that night go from her strong partner, the man that she was achingly, secretly in love with, her brave man to a broken little boy almost. She had taken the phone out of his hand and had spoken to Frank herself, had heard his tone and had barely been able to reconcile herself with the image of her boss—her strong, indomitable, inflexible perhaps, always solid boss…and this image of a man who was at the heart of a matter a family.

She had been the one to drive Jamie…well…to put Jamie in a cab and go to the house with him, she had been the one to call Maria asleep and tell her that her partner had lost his wife and between the two of them they had made tea, washed the dishes and in Maria's case cooked (because that was apparently what Maria did in a crisis) and they had kept that family going.

For Eddie always on the outside looking in it had been an interesting thing to see a family in grief. She had never had that with her own, her father had been sent to prison and she'd become an outcast no matter how much her mother had tried to shield her from it, she had lied and schemed to get into the Academy and then to pass and it had been the two fingers up to her father that had kept her going. She had never been a part of a close knit family. The closest that she had come to a stable influence growing up was her grandmother and she was not entirely sure how many stories about the Cold War and fleeing the war was going to help here. To see the Reagan's in grief, to see them come together to support Danny…to see Jamie step up to the mantle of big brother in a way was a combination of educating, inspiring and downright frightening.

"Makes you wonder what it had been like back then" Maria had said. The entire family had gone to sleep but Henry had insisted that they both spend the night, the wind was picking up he said but grief and exhaustion had lined his old face and neither one of them though that they could argue with the older man and to be honest neither one of them could. They had dressed down as best they could and then Maria had gone to get a bottle of wine and had slid the doors shut and the two of them had gossiped like schoolgirls.

"You mean?"

"Joe" Maria had said shortly. "Makes you wonder what it must have been like back then"

"Did you know him?"

"No…I was with the FBI then as a consultant, I heard about It though, I wanted to go to the funeral but I couldn't so I watched it on TV. It was a big thing, half of the cops in the country must have turned out for it or tuned it in. But I remembered looking at my boss and thinking how he could do it. I didn't realise how hard it was until I watched my mother bury my brother. And they were not as close as the Reagan's are. I don't know...how you put one foot in front of the other"

There a pause where Eddie thought they might have been in the same boat. With Maria it was hard to tell, even now years on from that conversation with a little girl of her own under her belt it was hard to tell if Maria was in love with Danny the same way she had fallen in love with Jamie. She had never asked and Maria had never spoken about it. But out of that long night and the longer days beforehand there had been a friendship develop. The older woman was kind, wonderful even with her knowledge and friendship, eager to go out for drinks. Eddie fell on the companionship like a crack addict fell on a kilo of coke. She didn't have female friends, her one female partner had been dirty, her friends from high school had turned their backs on her the second they found out that she had a father in prison, she'd had to fight her way out of more than one mean girl gang up and she'd always been more comfortable alone than with any of the judgmental bitches that were her family. And her mother…God help her she loved her Mom but they were not what one would call close.

Even now, even married she still considered Maria more of a sister than she did Erin. Maria was easier to talk to, with Erin…well…

If truth be told she had always gotten the impression that Erin had thought her a poor Linda stand in. Linda and Erin had, had a friendship that had gone on for more than a decade and a half, there was thing there that Eddie knew she could never get there with, Joe…Erin's Mom. She knew it, and more to the point she knew Erin knew it. She had tried with Erin but the truth was they didn't get along much. She didn't take it to heart, knew Erin liked her but she also knew that they weren't close.

It was fine. In the grand scheme of things it wasn't like it hurt her.

The point if you are wondering of what this little trip down memory lane was supposed to entail was that she didn't know what had happened. All that crap about feeling it deep in your soul when your partner was injured was just that. Crap. She had never been in this situation before, never bothered with it if she was being honest. She had never thought that she would be here and so when she got out of the car and saw McNichols running towards her she didn't consider that maybe it was something to do with Jamie. She had just thought the other woman was going to have a pop at her again for not putting in her papers.

She sighed and then turned to say something but the expression on the other woman's face made her stop. She didn't know what it was but it wasn't good.

"Eddie"

Oh god that was really not good.

It was never good when your boss who didn't like you on a good day called you by your first name in the middle of the day with THAT expression on her face.

"What?" she croaked out. She was aware suddenly that the older woman had took her hands.

"Eddie" McNichols said and her tone was gentle but her eyes were not and Eddie…she could see it, looking back she could see it but she couldn't at the time if that made sense. Eddie watching her thought she was watching her from a long way away, seeing her a long way away, hearing her…

"What happened?" she asked and she didn't realise until later that it was her own voice.

"Something bad Eddie" Captain said and her tone was gentle as if she was speaking to a kidnapping victim or a victim of some other kind of terrible trauma. It was a gentleness that she did not think that her boss capable off. Certainly not after the tongue lashing she had given them this morning.

"What?"

She was shaking. Dimly she realised that she was shaking.

"Jamie"

She didn't need to hear more than that, she had known from the off that it was Jamie, know it when she had seen the usually competent woman coming to her watching her as if she was about to fall to the floor and never get up again.

For a second she stared at the woman and she hoped and prayed that this was an entire joke. She wanted her to be a cruel ass bitch who would say this to hurt her, she wanted it to be a lesson in why husbands and wives should never work together rather than have it be the truth. She was not sure she was ever going to be ready to hear the truth.

"He's been shot Eddie" McNicholas said, she didn't beat around the bush she gave out bad news in that way she gave out good news and it didn't matter that Eddie had been on her way into shift, that she was half dressed, that she was unable to see due to the tears that were in her eyes it was this woman who she had always thought didn't like her that took her car keys out of her trembling hand and put her in the passenger seat as if she was a little baby.

"Eddie listen to me" the older woman said gently. "Danny's partner called me personally, he's alive they were taking him into surgery. So we are going to go and get there to be with him okay—"

Eddie nodded. She couldn't think, she couldn't speak, she could barely function over the beating of her heart that beat and beat alone for Jamie.

She didn't remember getting in the car, she didn't remember the other woman driving, she didn't remember getting out the car if she was being honest.

What she did remember only too well was the panic and the pain and the despair crashing down on her in waves sending her whole body into waves of shock and adrenaline, she felt like she had done all those years ago when she had come home to see her mother crying, her father gone and her house teaming with police officers and just like that her world had been ripped out from under her.

The second she was out of the car she was running. She didn't know where but her legs were carrying her through the hospital and then she crashed through some double doors sure her very soul was going to reunite her with her husband and then she crashed into a tall drink of water as her mother would say, a solid build of muscle and she rebounded in time for her brother in law to catch her by the arms.

For a second she stared at him, the horror she was feeling seemed to be etched into the very bone of Danny Reagan's face. He seemed to be locked into his own private hell and she stared at him unable to look away.

He grabbed her by the arms and dragged her forwards and she realised then that she had been crying. God knows how long she had been doing that but she had been crying.

"He's in surgery" Danny said his tone furious. "He's in surgery"

But she was hardly listening. She didn't care that half of the family were there either she surged towards the door that kept her from her husband. Some bitch nurse got in her way but Eddie was quite prepared to kill if she had too and she screamed but before she could work her way up to grievous bodily harm she had been picked up around the waist as if she was a sack of potatoes and wrapped around her brother in law again. Danny held her as she screamed and punched him and rocked her back and forth as if she was as baby and Eddie cried unable to stop herself as the boy that they both loved beyond measure was in the next room fighting for his life and the rest of the family (bar one) looked on helpless in the extreme.

I do kind of like McNichols. She has an edge to her that feels more realistic than it should.

Hope you enjoy.

Next Chapter-The one we've all been waiting for...AKA. Frank finds out.