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This isn’t about him anymore.
That’s the first thought that hits him when the sparks start to clear away from his eyes, settling in the corners of his vision.
Lying on the cold pavement, his ears roaring with white noise, he realizes that for the first time since Miranda, he’s thinking about consequences. He’s not thinking about what he’s lost, but what there is to lose. He’s not thinking about his want to die, but how badly he needs to stay alive right now, for them.
For the Murtaughs.
Then again, he did just have his ass kicked up and down a dark alley for what felt like an hour, so a head wound could be at play. Either that, or his heart isn’t as far buried as he’d initially thought, which is a thought almost scarier than the steel-toed boot soaring toward his stomach -
The breath leaves him in a sharp wheeze. He curls in on himself, and his vision swings in protest. His head feels like cotton and lightning.
No worse than a bad hangover, he thought to himself, feeling his burgeoning concussion like a freight train through his skull.
“I’m not taking the piss this time, Martin,” Baron says, spitting Riggs’ names like its poison. He’s crouching down at his head now, and Riggs blinks hard, trying to focus on the hands clasped lazily before him, but they’re soon twisting through his hair instead, yanking his head up to meet the other man’s glinting eyes.
Baron purses his lips in mock thought. “Trish Murtaugh. That’s the bitch’s name, right? Two kids, boy and girl - a baby — everything ahead of them. Can you see the headlines, Martin? What a damn tragedy. No hope for the grief-stricken Roger Murtaugh, the pig left behind after the bloodbath” -
The warm swell of blood on his tongue peaks to a sharp copper tang just in time. Riggs swishes up a mouthful of it and spits it, hard, in Baron’s smug, juvenile face.
He’ll have to remember to let Cahill know what a game changer it was for his mental health, to spit bloody gob in the bad guy’s face.
Baron hardly flinches; his eyes shut instinctively against the blood, but he wipes it off with a calm swipe of his sleeve. He jerks his chin toward something out of view that Riggs knows to be the two brutish skinheads flanking him.
He lets them pull him to his feet roughly, his ribs biting in protest, his limbs too leaden to fight. The skinheads tug his arms back, holding him in a vice grip. Riggs can’t move or fight in his exhaustion, so he only grins fiendishly at Baron, relishing the way it wobbles his calm demeanor.
“These guys prefer fists,” Baron says, nodding toward his men. One of them grins near Riggs ear, his breath hot and ravenous.
“Me though,” he continues, “I’ve always been so good with knives. I was hoping you’d let me show you.”
Riggs tries to extinguish the cool curl of dread in his stomach at the sight of Baron’s hand brandishing a knife before him, the metal glinting white in the moonlight.
Besides the faint reddening of Baron’s jaw where Riggs socked him, there’s not a scratch on the man, and Riggs is helpless. Even so, he chooses to keep most of his dignity in the face of a death he’s not so sure he wants right now.
As Baron strokes the knife over his cheek, Riggs laughs throatily. “You just gonna play, Baron? Or are we gonna get to the carving? Cause if not, I’ve got some things” -
“Here’s the deal,” Baron interrupts, pressing the blade hard enough into Riggs’ cheek to pierce the soft flesh. “I’m going to stick you like the pig you are, until you scream. Then, I’m going to let you bleed out on the pavement like my boy Tommy did after your partner shot him in the fucking chest. And finally, I’m going to take a drive over to 145 Terrance Lane so I can skewer your partner’s children before his precious wife’s eyes just to spite you. What do you think?”
Riggs can’t help the tremor that runs through him, reverberating in his bones. The skinheads must feel it, because they tug his arms further behind his back until his shoulders are screaming in protest. He grunts, swallowing a yelp.
He knows with every fiber of his being that he won’t let a bunch of anti-cop thugs touch the Murtaughs while he’s still alive.
If he’s dead, though…well, he can’t guarantee he’d be too useful, and the thought takes him back to a place of such helplessness, he can see Baron’s eyes starting to look more like his father’s – cold and hard and somehow topaz blue despite the dark night.
Riggs doesn’t get a warning before the knife is snatched from his cheek and buried in to his gut.
An animal noise escapes Riggs – something suppressed behind his teeth, bursting to get out. Baron is stone-like but for the twitch of his mouth as he slowly, slowly, slowly pushes the knife further into Riggs, his gaze never leaving the detective’s eyes.
“I did ask you a question,” Baron says, raising his eyebrows. Somehow, impossibly, half of his knife is still exposed, waiting to cut further into Riggs.
Time slows down as another millimeter buries itself into him, and he grits his teeth hard as a swooping, white-hot pain threatens to take him down. His matted hair trembles in his peripheral.
“I can twist this at many horrifying angles and it’ll still keep you very much alive,” Baron says, his voice faraway. “See, I don’t like your attitude, Detective. I’m thinking it might be helpful for the both of us if I just…adjust it a little.”
He adjusts his knife on cue, twisting ever so slightly, and Riggs thinks he might be falling over, before he feels the skinheads tightening their grips, holding him in place.
Riggs refuses to break his willpower. He thinks of Miranda, of the baby he never got to meet, and lets that pang of sorrow burrow into him until he’s certain he’ll take an eternity of torture not to put Roger through the same thing.
“Fuck you,” Riggs spits. He fears his teeth might shatter for how hard he’s biting down on them.
Baron bows his head in mock regret. Riggs tries to control his breathing and his bladder and his trembling limbs in the eternal second before Baron pushes the knife in to the hilt. He rips it out a second later, and pain shreds his abdomen.
Riggs can’t help the scream now.
His muscles tense into paralysis for a moment before the hot blooming of blood under his shirt makes his knees buckle. Baron watches him silently, studying his handiwork, before he thrusts his arm back and plunges the knife, full force, back into the wound he’d already made.
Riggs chokes, and a rippling shudder through his body acts as a numbing agent, making him cold all over, before everything goes blissfully dark.
Roger gets the call from Avery just after one in the morning, while tucked in bed.
“Murtaugh. A bystander called in a gang assault matching the description of Baron and his goons, about half an hour ago. We got ‘em.”
Roger feels relief flood through him.
The protective detail that has been surrounding his house day and night since Baron’s threats, keeping watch over his wife and kids like a bunch of brooding eagles, was starting to make him lose his mind. The fear in his kids, their anxious silence around the dinner table, was worse than anything this job has ever put him through.
“Well thank God,” Roger breathes. “You got a victim from the assault?”
“He got away. Not unscathed, though, it seems.”
“You need me to come in?”
“Not a chance. They’ll be here for you in the morning. Just thought I’d keep you in the loop. We pulled your security detail - here’s to hoping you get a good night’s rest.”
Roger nods, before he remembers Avery can’t see him. He says, “Well thanks, boss. You call Riggs?”
“Can’t reach him,” Avery sighs.
“He’s probably knocked out cold on a bench somewhere,” Roger says, sliding a hand down his weary face once more. “Let me know if anything changes.”
“Will do.”
Trish rolls over the moment he hangs up, staring up at him with worried eyes shining in the moonlight. She’s never given him crap for his job, but putting her through this for the past week has made him question more than once whether it’s at all worth it anymore.
Roger grins. “They got Baron.”
Trish somehow sinks deeper in to the bed in her relief, burying her head in his side. He leans down to kiss her, and feels no fear, no resentment from her. His love for her seems to swell right there and then.
Ten minutes later, Roger’s hand ceases stroking Trish’s hair as a knock sounds at the door downstairs.
It’s unsettling only for a moment, before the slump-and-slide of it becomes clearer, its offbeat intervals sending Roger’s eyes rolling.
“The man’s drunk,” he says. “The man is drunk and knocking on my door at 1 in the morning.”
Trish pushes her hair back with a sigh. “Put him on the couch.”
He sputters. “Put him on the- Trish”-
He’s interrupted by another, more forceful knock. He figures Riggs might start throwing rocks in a second or, god forbid, pulling out his gun in a drunken stupor, so he kicks off his sheets with a grumble and heads downstairs.
He wrenches open the door. “What in the hell”-
He’s stopped at the sight of his partner as his hand falls away from the door. Even in the darkness, his skin is a sickly color, too grey to be healthy, and looking even paler against the clotting blood streaked down the side of his face. He’s leaning heavily against the doorframe, red-tinged curls hanging over his eyes in matted ropes, and his arm is wound around his front and –
There is blood. There’s blood everywhere. His crimson hand is practically camouflaged in the soaked fabric of his shirt.
Roger has a right mind to put his hand out to steady the man for a moment, his heart catapulting in his chest, before the other man speaks.
“You have to get Trish - get the kids - and get out,” he breathes. The words sound like they’re winding him. “Baron’s coming”-
“Riggs, Jesus, would you - would you come inside? Just come inside”-
Riggs shakes his head wildly. “Roger, please, just - he’s coming here, now.”
“Listen to me,” Roger says, firmly, to disguise the tremor rising in his voice. His hand hovers awkwardly for a moment, looking for somewhere unscathed to touch Riggs. He settles on gripping his shoulder. “Avery just gave me a call not ten minutes ago. They found Baron and his thugs. They’ve got him locked up as we speak.”
Riggs drags his head up, his knuckles turning white as he grips the doorframe tighter. The deep gash on his hairline explains the blood in his hair, but it’s the way Riggs is hunched over like a geriatric, clutching a wound Roger can’t see, that’s really getting Roger’s heart rate hastening.
Riggs stutters weakly, “All- all of them?”
“Yes,” Roger says, hoping his voice doesn’t betray the impatience he feels. “All of them.”
A stair creaks and Trish’s voice reaches him. He looks at her in time to see her say, “Roger? What’s going on?”
Riggs loses his grip on the doorframe and his knees buckle. He goes down with cut strings, but Roger turns in time to catch him around the ribs with a surprised yelp, dragging himself down to the threshold with his partner as Riggs slumps back against the open door.
“Trish, call an ambulance,” Roger says urgently, not moving his gaze from Riggs’ heavily blinking eyes.
He hears Trish run off and moves the hair from Riggs’ pale forehead. “Hey, man, you hear me? You with me? Riggs.”
His eyes are unfocused, but his partner looks to him and smiles slightly. “S’okay, Rog.”
Riggs grabs at Roger’s wrist and the stickiness of it brings his attention to Riggs’ lower abdomen. He can see his partner attempted to wrap something dirty and denim around it - a temporary solution if he ever saw one. The fabric falls away easy as Roger moves to roll up his shirt, his arm flying up to cover his mouth as the gaping wound is revealed, glinting grotesquely in the moonlight. It’s not neatly circular like a bullet wound, or the angry slice of a knife.
It looks more like something chewed through him.
He feels sick. His partner is still smiling after making his way, wounded, all the way to Roger’s home to warn him of the very thing he’d just endured.
Trish comes flying down the stairs with a towel in hand, shoving Roger to the side slightly in her rush to push the fabric over Riggs’ stomach.
“Alright,” she says, her voice calm and soothing, but Roger can see the fear twinkling in her eyes. “Ambulance is coming. We’re gonna hold this here, and you’re gonna keep your eyes open, Martin, you hear me?”
Riggs grunts a pathetic laugh, rolling his head around to look at Trish. “Roger’s never been very good at keeping me awake.”
He coughs violently on the last word, his lips suddenly speckled with blood when he lifts his head again.
Roger spares a look at Trish, and a wordless death sentence hovers between them. Riggs’ labored breaths guide their attention back to him.
“Ri…Riggs, are you hurt anywhere else?” Trish asks. “He shouldn’t be coughing blood, Roger, not unless” -
“Rog,” Riggs says, his eyes barely staying open as he leans his head back against the door. His grip on Roger’s wrist tightens, but the strength is barely there now. “Rog”-
“Don’t do it,” Roger says. “Don’t start saying things”-
Riggs shakes his head, his eyes pleading. Roger notices the tremor running through the man, making his words tremble. “Rog, I can’t feel anything anymore. I’m not - I’m not”-
“Shh,” Trish says. She presses harder on the towel, but her other hand comes up to cup Riggs’ face, and the detective leans in to it, his brow furrowed with pain that Roger was sure wasn’t physical anymore.
Sirens sound in the distance, growing with each thunderous beat of Roger’s heart. Riggs closes his eyes, and for a second Roger can’t help but wonder if that sound was a relief or a disappointment to his partner.
“Riggs, stay with us,” Roger insists, panic peaking in his voice. He shifts his position at the man’s legs and pats his partner’s face until his eyes flutter open the merest bit. “Just a little longer now. I mean it, Riggs, damn it” -
Riggs’ trembling is a force now. He seems to gain enough strength to grab at Roger’s shirt sleeve with a death grip as his breaths become shallow and barely there.
Roger sees the ambulance pull up in the driveway, his gaze unmoving from Riggs’. He swears he sees his partner nod at him, conviction in his eyes, before his grip on his shirt goes limp, and his arm falls to his lap.
Roger is quick to get out of the paramedic’s way, pulling Trish up from the ground. Her hand comes away bloody and shaking, and Roger puts his arms around her. He feels cold despite her body’s warmth. He feels hollow, watching the paramedics get Riggs strapped to a gurney, calling out letters and numbers and nonsense as they strap masks to his face and hook needles in his arms.
He sees his partner’s infinitesimal nod playing like a broken record on the back of his eyelids, trying to decipher what it might have meant -
If he was agreeing to come back -
Or if he was saying goodbye.
Considering the man is so completely irrational in the way he deals with the risky and the perilous, Roger is a little proud of Riggs’ distaste - to put it mildly - of hospitals. Some things are delicate, unapproachable. Some things are meant to scar. The fact that his partner chose to simply avoid the hauntings of a hospital rather than confront it wicked-grinned and guns blazing, says a lot to Roger.
Still, he can’t help the itch just beneath his skin, like he’s feeling somehow guilty for bringing him here.
He knows he’s just had too much coffee and too much time to think up things slightly less painful to focus on than the thought of his partner dying on the operating table, but still.
Trish brings him a bottle of water this time. She dangles it before him before resuming her seat next to him in the near-empty waiting room. He takes it from her so she can put her hand on his knee instead.
“Roger,” she says patiently. “I’ve got to head to work.”
He looks at her. The ache behind his eyes begins to throb its way nearer to a migraine at the thought of her leaving.
Work, carrying on with a routine, seems completely alien to him at this point, like it’s all been a long, pleasant dream before today.
“You’ve hardly slept,” he notes.
She purses her lips and shrugs. “Justice never sleeps.”
Roger’s eyes snap up to hers. He straightens in his chair, the merest hint of a smile creeping up on his lips. “Was that Batman? Did you just quote Batman to me?”
“Hm. Married for years and you don’t know a thing about me, Roger Murtaugh,” she says with a smile, moving to kiss him softly. She gives his leg one last squeeze before getting up to leave.
He watches as her shoulders sag slightly and she turns on her heel, worry etching lines into her face. “The moment you hear anything”-
“You’ll be the first,” Roger assures her, nodding.
She presses, “And you try and get some rest.”
It’s not a demand. Trish knows as well as him that Riggs has got no one else, and neither of them are expecting him to be able to sleep a second before he sees his partner alive and well.
After all, Riggs may as well have pushed him from the tracks of an oncoming train, for what he’s sacrificed.
There’s another pang of guilt in Roger’s gut when he realizes the sacrifice might not have felt so big for Riggs, who talks of offing himself at least once a day, only further emphasized by his careless antics on the job.
This time, though, Roger still isn’t so sure death by Baron’s knife is what Riggs wanted after all.
Roger is left wandering the hospital, half-heartedly chewing on vending machine junk and downing cup after cup of coffee for about two more hours before he hears anything.
Riggs’ doctor is inscrutable as he approaches the haggard officer in the waiting room. Roger decides to take that as a good sign - surely its more difficult to hide the bad news than it is the good.
“Detective Murtaugh,” the doctor addresses him. He holds out his hand to Roger, who shakes somewhat impatiently, before running his hand over his bald head instead.
“Is he okay?” Roger asks.
The doctor nods dubiously before saying, “He’s stable. He could wake up at any time – hours, days - we can’t be sure. But we’re quite confident he will wake up.”
Roger takes a moment to collect himself, feeling the relief like a rush of cool water over his body, threatening the strength of his knees.
It doesn’t last long, however, as Roger spots the disconcerting mix of weariness and caution that comes over the doctor’s face.
The doctor continues, “There was pretty substantial internal damage to his liver, and some internal bleeding, but we managed to get things under control. He’ll need to be monitored closely for a while, and keep any activity to a minimum. Any bending of that rule and he could make an even bigger mess of himself than I’ve already worked with.”
Roger would laugh, if dread wasn’t threatening to overwhelm him. There’s no way he or Trish or Avery or Cahill, for that matter, could get Riggs to keep his activity to a minimum. In fact, he’s certain Riggs will be determined to accomplish just the opposite.
“You might’ve saved his life, Detective. Keeping pressure on that wound,” the doctor explains, an appreciative smile on his face that Roger knows should be meant for Trish. “Blood loss and a substantial concussion will keep him a little dazed for a while, and he’s got bruised ribs that’ll slow him down, but we don’t expect any permanent damage besides the obvious scarring.”
Roger nods vigorously, still digesting the fact that Riggs is going to be okay. He’s not sure he had let himself fully comprehend what it would mean for him - for all the Murtaughs, in fact - if it were any other outcome.
Now, he won’t have to.
As if reading his mind, the doctor gestures down the hall. “He’s not awake just yet, but you’re welcome to see him. I’ll have to ask that it’s just you for now. We make exceptions for emergency contacts.”
Roger assumes Riggs might’ve just mindlessly scribbled Roger’s name on whatever emergency contact document would provide him comprehensive access to the field, but he can’t help but feel a little warmth in the pit of his stomach, knowing he’s the first one Riggs would think to call.
Roger shakes the doctor’s hand and thanks him, before moving down the hall. A moment ago, he fully intended to call Trish to let her know, but he’s so infused with this new information that he can’t make himself pause on his way to Riggs’ room.
He stops just outside of it, coming to a nervous halt before opening the door.
His partner is hooked to whirring and beeping machines like a lab experiment, and he looks paler than he should, but his head is tilted away from Roger as if he were simply dosing in his backyard lawn chair as he had so many months ago, peaceful and oblivious.
Martin Riggs was many things, but peaceful and oblivious were not a part of that chaotic equation. Which is why, instead of allowing Roger time to sit at his bedside, watching the crimson liquids filtering into his bloodstream and feeling like shit for it, Riggs turns his head slowly, eyeing Roger as he enters the room.
“Riggs!” Roger says, eyes bulging as he moves to shut the door. He sputters, “He said- you’re supposed to be”-
“Ex-Navy, Rog,” he croaks, averting his eyes. “I can trick a heart monitor.”
Roger pauses, straightening. “You were faking sleep. In front of your doctor.”
“I’m just giving myself a bit more time before someone’s back in here probing me,” Riggs says. He moves his eyes from his lap to Roger and says, “You look like shit.”
Maybe it’s the jagged edges of his voice, or the way his skin has a waxy sheen to it, or his eyes dark and weary like a man gone through hell and back; or maybe it’s simply hearing that southern drawl he never thought he’d hear again - whatever it is, Roger feels it like a heavy stone dropped to his gut. The guilt, the fear, the admiration, the love. All of it rushing through him in a single moment.
Something flashes in Riggs’ eyes and he turns away, looking at the wall ahead of him. “Look, Rog”-
“No, you look,” Roger says. He moves toward the man so he can stick a firm finger near his face. “You saved my life. You sacrificed everything for my family yesterday, and then you tried to warn me about it - which was damn stupid, by the way - but if you hadn’t, they wouldn’t have found Baron the way they did, and who knows. But as far as I’m concerned, you’re a damn hero.”
Riggs shakes his head and winces slightly. Roger looks to where his partner’s hand flinches toward his abdomen just a little, but ultimately stays where it is. He grunts before saying, “I don’t got anything to sacrifice, Rog.”
“Yeah, and that’s another thing,” Roger says curiously, cocking his head. “I think you don’t mean that.”
He’s going to go on, to question Riggs about the look he’d given Roger moments before passing out on his doorstep. He’s going to push him to admit that he doesn’t really feel so helpless anymore, that he doesn’t feel like death is the way to go -
But he stops, because Riggs’ hand does crawl up to his abdomen this time, where bandages bulge slightly beneath the blanket, and his back arches as he grimaces.
“What,” Roger says urgently. When the other man only grits his teeth, his unkempt hair falling into his eyes as he rolls his head to the side, Roger moves closer to Riggs’ bedside. “Riggs - hey. I’m calling the doctor.”
“Don’t,” Riggs says between his teeth. The hand that isn’t curled around himself catches Roger’s wrist. He looks in to the other man’s eyes, desperation pulling up to the surface like roiling waves on a shore.
Roger remembers Riggs’ aversion to hospitals. He assumes that includes doctors - their faces and mannerisms, their pitying looks and their euphemisms, all of a unique attribution to those who couldn’t save his wife and child.
Roger purses his lips, torn. He says gently, “You’re in pain.”
His partner licks his cracked lips, his eyes still wide and pleading. “I don’t care.”
“You don’t care or you care just enough to want to feel it?”
Riggs closes his eyes, dropping Roger’s arm from his grip. “Are you really gonna psychoanalyze me right now?”
The guilt stirs in his gut. Roger doesn’t understand where all of his accusations are coming from; he just feels the dread chewing him up from the inside; the same incessant worry that Riggs is going to one day disappear and Roger would be to blame for letting him.
Yet, the man protected him and his family last night, at great cost. The least he could do for Riggs was to stop reminding him of what he would have lost in that fight - his pain, his grief, his suffering.
Roger drops down into the visitor’s chair like a stone, rubbing his hands over his head. He sighs. “I’m sorry.”
“Used to it,” Riggs quips. He tries to smile a little as he shifts in his bed, but Roger sees his jaw tighten viciously in pain, his eyes squinting like he’s struggling to see. He seems to momentarily forget to control the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor next to him, as it moves in to a more erratic, hastened pace.
Roger’s own heart speeds up. He bites his lip, hard.
Riggs gives a short laugh; a horrendous, pitiful sound. He leans his head back and closes his eyes, sweat gleaming on his brow.
“Okay,” he breathes. “Okay, just - tell the doc to get me a few shots of something. Bourbon. Rum. Tequila”-
Roger holds up a finger, smiling knowingly. “Morphine.”
Riggs weakly nods his approval, and Roger jolts up and out of the room to fetch any Scrub or White Coat he can find, grateful to be of some kind of use.
He sends Trish a quick text - hardly formal, but he figures she’ll understand - and flags down a nurse.
They round back to Riggs’ room, only to find its occupant attempting - and failing, it seems - to get out of his bed. He’s hunched over with his legs over the side of the bed, his IVs apparently torn from his veins.
“Riggs!” Roger exclaims. The nurse rushes to him.
“Detective, I need you to lie down, okay?” she says, insistent. She puts her hands on his shoulders, pushing gently. “It’s important you rest now, you’ve got a lot of damage” -
“I can’t be here,” Riggs says suddenly. Something about his hollow tone makes Roger’s stomach squirm with anxiety.
His partner lifts his eyes to look passed the hovering nurse to Roger, but they’re bleary and unfocused. He slurs, “I can’t - be here righ-now”-
Roger sees the nurse fiddle with something on her waist that he assumes is a pager.
“What’s wrong with him?” Roger demands, because she’s shining a light in his eyes now and Riggs doesn’t so much as blink, swaying on the bed slightly.
“He may have jarred his head,” she says distantly. “His concussion is severe. He shouldn’t be awake so soon, either.”
Roger approaches his partner, hunching low just behind the nurse to get a better look at his friend. “Riggs? You with us?”
He’s distantly aware of his phone buzzing in his pocket, but he’s suddenly startled backwards by Riggs’ violent jerk, and can only watch, horrified, as his eyes roll back into his head, and the nurse makes a grab for him, yelling urgently over her shoulder to whoever may be lurking in the hallway.
The rest is utter chaos, made disorienting by the fear that seizes Roger in the moments between watching his friend convulse on his side under the nurse’s hand, and being shoved and shouted out of the room by a swirl of uniforms.
The hand on his arm breaks through the surface of his shock, and he turns to see Dr. Cahill standing there with a furrowed brow, asking him urgent questions that he can’t answer, so he simply slides down the wall with her dropping down next to him, and hopes to God his friend’s attempts at keeping him safe won’t end up bringing him a fate worse than death.
Maureen Cahill isn’t much of a drinker. She’s seen one too many addicts in her line of work, and isn’t willing to become a reflection of them – especially given her addictive personality; something she got in part from her chain-smoking mother, in part from her insomniac father, who ironically slept more than anyone she ever knew, given his affinity for sleeping pills.
That being said, as she stands with her hands hovering helplessly behind Roger Murtaugh as the man sends his fist flying into a hospital vending machine, Maureen would like nothing more than to shut herself in her home with a bottle of wine and let it take her far away, to a place where she isn’t responsible for anyone.
But she knows the drill. Her whole career counts on her ability to care, so it’s probably a good thing that she can’t turn it off – even if her compassion inevitably gets her into trouble.
“Murtaugh!” she says for what has to be the fifth time; this time breaking through her calm demeanor with a mixture of fear and worry and anger and exactly everything else she was taught never to feel in excess when it came to her patients.
Murtaugh, breathing heavy, turns around with his hands running over his bald head, his knuckles reddened.
“This is my damn fault,” he says. “I shouldn’t’ve antagonized Baron. He would’ve never started threatening me in the first place, and Riggs never would’ve gone after him.”
Maureen sees it coming. She gives him a soft smile. “Since when could any of us know what Martin Riggs would or wouldn’t do?”
Murtaugh looks at her a moment, slowing his breathing. He shakes out his hand with a bit of a grimace and says, “So you admit you can’t crack him either?”
She shakes her head. “I’m not trying to crack him. I’m trying to put him back together.”
“Yeah,” Roger agrees. “Yeah, me too. Good luck to us, huh?”
He sighs, moving down the hall away from the vending machine, cradling his bruised knuckles. She frowns after him, wondering, not for the first time, if Murtaugh knows as much about Riggs as she does – or if, perhaps, he knows more. It’s hard to imagine Martin ever willingly opening up to someone, never mind a fellow cop. Either way, it warms her to see how much Murtaugh cares about him.
Too much, maybe.
She can relate.
“Murtaugh,” she says softly. “I really think it’s time you go home. Get some proper sleep.”
He shakes his head. “No. No way. If he wakes up” –
“When he wakes up,” Maureen interjects, “I’ll be here. No one’s about to leave him alone.”
The detective looks bone-weary, his eyes creased with worry as he looks back at her.
“Go,” she insists, crossing her arms. “I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”
Murtaugh, perhaps coming to his senses about not being able to do anything for Riggs while sleep-deprived, finally takes her advice.
The moment he leaves her sight, Maureen drops her arms from her chest, letting her hands shake at her sides.
Riggs blinks his eyes open and sees Miranda. Her slender silhouette, her sweet-smelling hair tumbling over her shoulders in waves, her hands holding a book open in her lap.
For a moment, it’s normal. He’s warm at the sight of her.
And then he hears the soft, clinical beeping in the same tone of her heart flat lining, and the familiar cold washes over him, along with a feeling like his skin shattering.
Dr Cahill’s voice brings it all back, along with the pain.
“Riggs?”
He doesn’t respond. Blinking harder, his vision focuses, and he sees her, wide-eyed, a crease at her brow, her hands folding the book shut over her legs.
For a second, she was his wife.
Feeling he might will the bed to swallow him forever if he keeps looking at her, he closes his eyes and turns on to his back, fire tearing through his abdomen. His head begins to throb something fierce.
She’s getting up, moving to his side. “Morphine’s right here,” she says. “Riggs?”
“Gimme a minute,” he says, his voice like gravel. He closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to stare at the paneled ceilings or the ends of Cahill’s hair.
She does give him a minute – probably exactly 60 seconds - before asking, “What happened just now?”
Before Riggs can even think up a lie in response to that question, there’s a split second where he can feel her stiffening, and she amends, “Sorry. Habit. How are you feeling?”
“Like a baboon’s backend,” Riggs grumbles. His fingers roam around the side of the bed for the little blue button. He holds it down and waits for the relief. “You didn’t have to come. It’s not Tuesday.”
“Guess I wanted to make sure you’d live to see another Tuesday,” she quipped.
One second he’s got nails being pounded in to him from every angle, and the next, he’s floating. He opens his eyes, moaning with relief. “Oh, that’s good. That’s good stuff.”
He looks up to Cahill. She’s doing that thin smile of hers; the one she does when she knows he’s hiding something from her, and she also knows exactly what that something is.
He can’t bring himself to care. In fact, with every minute that goes by, he’s more convinced he’ll answer anything she throws at him right now.
Maureen takes Riggs’ hand from the morphine call and places it by his side instead. He doesn’t fight. His face is slackening under wild tangles of hair, a small smile growing on his lips.
“I better call Murtaugh,” she says quietly, convinced that he’s about to fall asleep.
Riggs waves her off half-heartedly. “Don’t bother him. Probably gonna…”
She doesn’t wait for him to finish. “He’s worried about you. Actually, there’s a lot of people worried about you right now, Riggs. Does that still surprise you?”
She really is trying to reel back on the shrink questions, but she can’t help it. Selfish as it is, she needs normalcy, or distraction, or anything to stop her heart racing, like she’s been struggling to hold on to him this whole time. He feels too tenuous, too far away, and she’s afraid of letting him go again.
Her hand crawls up to her chest, resting at the base of her throat. “Riggs, tell me you’re not going to try to leave this bed again.”
For a moment, she thinks he won’t respond. His eyes are drooping.
Then, “Stay.”
Her heart leaps. He blinks heavily up at her, and she looks down to see his hand twitching toward her.
Maureen digs her nails into the hollow of her throat, and takes his hand with a small smile. He seems to smile back as he grips on to her, but it’s gone just as quick.
“Thanks, doc,” he drawls, before his eyes close once again.