With Malcolm's help she'd learned how to navigate the phone, how to find her list of contacts, how to read her old texts, how to place a call. There were other things the phone could do that she didn't quite understand yet; there were so many symbols, so many buttons to press, and she has no idea what any of them did. Malcolm had muttered something about apps that she didn't follow and suggested that she wait to explore the phone more until tomorrow. Malcolm said she'd already encountered so many new things today, and she was still healing; Malcolm said maybe she should take it slow.
He meant well, she knew he did, but when it came time for her to go to bed she waited until he wasn't looking and tucked the phone into her pocket. It was her phone, and the information contained inside it was hers, too, and she felt a little foolish, hiding it from him; surely she had every right to do whatever she pleased with her phone. Still, though, she did not want to fight with Malcolm, did not want to appear ungrateful for his steady, reassuring guidance and all the help he'd given her so far - without his help she was certain she would've crumbled, and found herself back in the hospital or worse, and she was grateful to him - and so she resolved herself to a little sleight of hand, just to keep the peace.
But now she was alone, freshly showered and sitting in the middle of her bed with the phone cradled in both her hands. She unlocked it the way he'd shown her, meticulously typed in the numbers 6-3-1-3, and watched the phone come once more to life. It had been charging all evening, and she hoped there was enough life in it for her to do a little exploring.
The first thing she did was locate the text conversation with Fin. Truth be told she was immensely curious about the man; his voice was so different from Malcolm's, and he'd been so quick to offer his help. The moment he learned about her accident he'd been ready to drop everything and come to her immediately, had asked if she was safe with genuine concern in his voice, and that concern made her feel warmly to him. The man was a stranger, but he cared for her, and that care meant everything.
The texts did not offer much insight into his life and her relationship with him, not really. There were the recent messages about Christmas, his invitation and her cagey response. As she scrolled slowly through the messages she took note of the dates; sometimes they spoke several days in a row, and sometimes not for weeks. The messages were peppered with names, Fin reporting on the activities of Rollins and Carisi - who seemed to be adults - and Jesse and Billie and Jayden, who seemed to be children. Olivia herself talked a bit about Noah, and said very little about herself. It was hardly illuminating, but she paused on one message in particular, dated about six months prior.
Thank for coming, Olivia had written.
I'm always here for you, was Fin's response. You don't have to go through this alone.
It had been six months since Ed died; that must have been what they were talking about, she thought. Her husband had died and her friend had come to comfort her, and promised her that she was not alone, and then she had not seen him again for six months. Had he just left her then, after promising her always? Or had she not let him come? In the texts she'd been hesitant about Christmas; maybe she'd pushed her friends away. It seemed Fin meant to keep his promise of always now; perhaps she simply had not let him, before.
Was that the kind of woman she was, the Olivia Benson she could not recall? The picture of her life that was slowly forming in Olivia's mind was small and lonesome, but maybe that was by design. Maybe she was a solitary creature, and maybe she liked it that way. Even now, scared and unsure, Olivia kept finding herself wishing for a moment's peace, away from Malcolm's watchful eye; maybe she'd always been this way.
It seemed she had not spoken much to Fin recently, but his name appeared several times in the log of her calls. Over the last six months they'd spoken a handful of times, most recently about a week before the accident. What had they discussed, she wondered; what topic merited a phone call rather than another exchange of texts? In the days before the accident the only friend she'd received a call from was Fin. And the only call she'd placed to a friend was to Stabler.
With a few taps of her thumb she pulled up his name and sat staring at it for several minutes. From her brief phone call with Fin she knew that Stabler was a man, and a friend, but Fin had cautioned her not to call him, not until after she'd had a chance to meet with Fin. What did he mean to tell her, she wondered, about her friend Stabler and the phone call she'd made to him? What about the man concerned Fin so much? Why should he be worried about her speaking to him?
Maybe he's just being careful, she thought. After all, the news of her complete memory loss would likely come as a blow to her old friends. Might even hurt them, to learn she had forgotten them. What if Fin just wanted to relay the news himself, wanted to spare Stabler - and everyone else - the shock of it? What if he was just trying to be kind?
Fin himself seemed to have taken the news well enough. He'd been surprised, sure, but he hadn't been shattered. What if he was underestimating Stabler's resilience?
What if he was trying to protect her from something?
Whatever was happening here, Olivia felt herself at a disadvantage. There was just so much she didn't know, so much that other people did, and it wasn't fucking fair. Fin said to wait, and the wisest thing to do, she knew, was to listen to him, to meet with her friend and hear him out and then decide what to do next, but impatience skittered across her skin. She didn't want to wait; she wanted to know.
And Fin told her not to call Stabler. He didn't say anything about a text.
Malcolm had shown Olivia the various functions of the little pictures on the phone screen; this one makes a call, this one makes a video call, this one starts a text.
She tapped on the image for texts.
The screen flashed, changed, a keyboard popping up against a black background, a little white bar blinking impatiently as it waited for her input. It was a little after 10:00 pm, and Noah was asleep, and Malcolm and Olivia were each tucked up in their beds for the night. Would Stabler be lying down to sleep, too?
The good thing about a text, Malcolm had told her at dinner, is that the person doesn't have to answer right away. If they're busy they don't have to stop what they're doing, they can come back later when they have time. It's not as much of an interruption as a phone call.
Maybe a text would be ok, then. Maybe Stabler was sleeping, or showering, or driving, or something, and a little text wouldn't interrupt him. He could just answer later, when he had time.
But what on earth should she say?
In the hospital she had not been able to write. When the nurse put a pen in her hands she couldn't remember how to even hold the thing, let alone how to draw the letters, how to construct a sentence. The nurse asked her to sing the alphabet and she didn't have any idea what that meant, let alone how to do it.
But she could read. She looked at the words on the phone screen, printed on the books in her living room, and she could read them. The phone had taken some of the guesswork out of writing; she didn't have to draw the letters herself, she just had to choose them, press each one in the order that she needed.
You can do this, she told herself. Think.
Maybe she couldn't compose a word herself, but maybe she could copy it. All she needed to do was find something to use as a guide. The text messages with Fin would do nicely, she thought. Carefully she tapped back over to her conversation with Fin, and read through it quickly until she found what she was looking for.
In a message from July she'd written I'm glad I got the chance to talk to you today. Sometimes I forget how much I need that.
Olivia stared at those words long and hard, and then she went back to Stabler. Opened a new text message, and searched the keyboard until she found what she needed.
I, she began. And then she clicked back to the texts with Fin.
So it went; slowly, painstakingly, she began to transcribe her message, switching between the two conversations after each letter. It took nearly half hour and a headache was beginning to form behind her eyes, but she persevered through her exhaustion and frustration until at last the thing was done.
I need to talk to you
It was hard work just to type that much, and she wasn't sure how much more she could do tonight. But it was a start; that would be enough, wouldn't it? she asked herself. Enough to get his attention, surely. Enough to convey some urgency, enough - perhaps - to compel him to respond. That was all she wanted, anyway. Just for him to respond, just for her to know that he was out there, somewhere, her friend. That he cared about her, even if he hadn't answered her call the day of the accident.
The message was written; all she had to do how was send it. Malcolm hadn't shown her how to do that but she was beginning to recognize a certain logic in the language of the phone's iconography, and she succeeded on the third try. The message sent, appeared in a little bubble against that black background, looking just like her old messages to Fin.
Here goes nothing, she thought. How long would it take for him to respond? Surely it wouldn't take him a half hour to compose a text message; he didn't have her disadvantages. Everything she'd forgotten, he remembered. But if he was asleep, or otherwise engaged, she might not receive a text from him until the morning.
I'll just have to be patient, she thought.
She was so fucking tired of being patient.
In an effort to distract herself she rose to her feet, left the phone on the bed while she rummaged around in her dresser drawers, looking for something to wear to bed. The night before she'd hardly looked in the drawers, too exhausted and too afraid of what she'd found in her bedside table to do any more digging, but tonight she was desperate for a distraction.
The top drawer of the dresser contained underwear and socks, of all different styles. It was the underwear that concerned her at present; there were soft stretchy briefs that would cover all of her, right up to her belly button, and barely there scraps of lace that wouldn't cover her at all. Some of them were cotton and some were silk, some patterned, some plain. Some old and threadbare, some barely worn. A flash of pink caught her eye and she reached for it at once, curious. So much of her clothes - underwear included - were black that the pink both surprised and reassured her. Black was a sad color, wasn't it? She didn't want to be sad. The pink seemed more hopeful, somehow.
The pink underwear were lacy and soft, and when she slipped them over her hips she found that they were comfortable, too. She liked the way the color looked against her skin, and she liked the way they made her feel, and so she kept them on.
The second drawer was full of pajamas. Old, oversized t-shirts, soft leggings, matching sets of shorts and prim little shirts. It was cold outside but warm in her bedroom and she didn't want to be restricted, wrapped up in layer upon layer of someone else's clothes, so she pushed through until she found a loose black gown. It was very short, and swished sweetly around the tops of her thighs when she moved. The straps were very thin - the gown had no sleeves at all - and she felt comfortable in that, too. Felt like she could move, without her clothes pulling at her. The neckline sat low over her breasts, not high up around her neck, and she breathed a little easier in the gown than she had done in the sweater she'd chosen today. When she looked in the mirror, saw her body in the soft black fabric, looked over her shoulder at the flash of pink just peeking out beneath the hem of the gown, she felt pretty. Pretty, that's what she thought when she looked at herself, free and loose in the clothes she'd chosen, her hair heavy and softly curling around her face. It was nice, she thought, to feel pretty.
Now that she was dressed and comfortable, there was nothing left for her to do but sleep. She went back to her bed, crawled beneath the covers, and unlocked the phone one last time, wanting to look once more at the text she'd sent to Stabler.
That wasn't the only message she'd found; he'd responded to her.
I've been trying to call you for days, he said. Your phone's been off. What's going on?
Her heart began to race. So he was out there, then, Stabler. Out there somewhere, alive and well. Maybe he hadn't answered when she called him on that fateful day, but he'd tried to call back. Malcolm had told her that if someone tried to call while her phone was off there would be no record of it, unless they left a voicemail, which Stabler had not done. She was inclined to believe Stabler now, to believe that he'd called, even if she had no proof beyond his word. The man was her friend; surely his word was enough.
Stabler was her friend, and he had tried to reach her, and when she texted him tonight he responded at once. There was comfort in that, she thought, in knowing that she'd found another person who cared for her. The fear receded a little more with each name added to the list; she was not alone, and her friends cared about her, and with their help she was certain that she would find her way through the darkness she'd found herself in. But still something like anxiety was blooming in her heart; she did not know this man. Did not know why she'd tried to reach him, why Fin had warned her off him, and she did not know where he was now. If he was back in New York City, the home she did not remember, or somewhere else entirely, lying in his bed even as she was now, waiting impatiently for her response. Maybe he wasn't in bed at all; maybe he was sitting up somewhere, in a restaurant or on a bench beneath the stars, full of life, full of memories, tapping his fingers on a table top, wishing with all his might that she would respond.
She wanted, very much, to answer him. To tell him about the accident, the loss of her memory, the fears that plagued her. But it was late, and she was tired, and she wasn't sure she had the energy that texting him would require. It had taken so much effort to send the first message, and the second would of necessity be longer, more detailed. Maybe Malcolm would type it for her, if she asked him to; maybe Fin would, when he arrived in the morning. Malcolm said texts were better than calls because there was no need to respond right away; maybe Stabler wasn't sitting around, holding his breath, hoping she'd answer. Maybe he didn't expect to hear back from her tonight. Maybe it would be ok to wait.
The thing was, she didn't want to wait.
And so she sat up straight, and began to pick out another message, once more using her old texts with Fin as a guide.
Who are you She asked him. That was what she really wanted to know; who was he to her, and why had she called him that day? There were no other messages between them on the phone, no record of any other calls, no clues to examine. It was as if they didn't know one another at all, as if he were a ghost, only coming back to her now, in the dark of the night, destined to disappear again when the sun rose. She didn't want that to happen. She didn't want to lose him.
I'm sorry Liv, he wrote back. I'm so sorry. You gotta believe me, I never meant for any of this to happen.
The words made her blood run cold. What on earth was he talking about? Why did he respond to her question with an apology, and not an answer? What did he think she was asking him, and what on earth was he apologizing for?
Maybe Fin was right. Maybe she should've waited until Fin was with her; maybe she wasn't ready to do this on her own. It was too late now, though. The thing was done; she had reached for Stabler, and he was reaching back. All that was left for her now was to decide whether or not to take the hand he offered her.
What happened she asked, typing painfully slowly. The typing went a little faster now that she could use his messages as a guide instead of having to switch back and forth with Fin's. Please understand, she begged Stabler in the vaults of her mind. She wanted, desperately, to know what happened, to know what he was apologizing for, to know why, when she'd asked him who he was, he'd only said I'm sorry.
I did my best, came Stabler's answer. You wanna hate me, I get that. But you gotta know I did my best.
It was just so damn frustrating; she felt as if they were going in circles. Each answer he gave was more cryptic than the last; he seemed to be responding to questions she hadn't even asked, discerning a meaning in her words she'd never intended. She was tired, and confused, and bitterly disappointed; when this text exchange began she'd been so certain Stabler would hold the keys to her understanding, but all he seemed to do was muddy the waters further. Why should she hate him? Was that why she'd called him, the day of the accident? Had she left a voicemail, the same way she'd done for Fin, telling him that she hated him? The not knowing was about to drive her mad.
Later, she typed, too tired to say much more than that, and tossed the phone aside. She'd come back to him later, after she'd had a chance to rest, after she'd had some time to think. It was enough, for now, to know that he was there, that he was willing to answer when she reached for him. She'd figure out the rest of it later.