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Eighteen Minutes, And that's it.
“That vein in your forehead looks about ready to pop,” Bishop muttered, as she crossed her arms tightly and ignored Tim Bradford’s furious gaze to the side of her head.
Exhaling loudly for the third time in twenty seconds, Tim shifted his weight from one leg to the other, “how the hell does it take this long to check if the building is ‘secure, extremely secure’,” he growled. Bishop nearly laughed when his voice changed dramatically as he mocked the fireman who insisted the building had to be ‘secure, extremely secure,’ before anyone could start the search.
Talia didn’t laugh because she was beginning to feel a small seed of worry blossom in the pit of her stomach at the thought of Lucy Chen trapped in the unstable building alone.
Earlier they had received an emergency call from a woman stating that her and her baby were trapped in a building and needed assistance. Bradford and Chen responded promptly, due to their close distance to the building. Six minutes later, the call was escalated when there was reported smoke from the building.
“And you couldn’t have waited for backup?” Jackson asked, the rookie completely forgetting his place for a moment. A death glare from Tim was a quick reminder.
“There was smoke from the back of the building Officer West. We entered with caution, we came across the woman who then collapsed in front of me-”
“-It’s okay Bradford, you don’t need to explain,” Lopez interrupting him, her voice stern as she stared at her rookie, silently giving out to him.
“No, my skills as a cop have been put into question, so I better explain. After the woman collapsed, I began to check her vitals. Chen insisted on searching for the child,” he rattled through the story, letting out another exhale and running his hand through his cropped hair, “I performed CPR, Chen was giving me updates. Everything was fine.” Tim stopped abruptly when the building made another noise of a wall collapsing. The sound caused all officers’ to hold their breath.
“Lucy’s smart, she’ll have found somewhere safe to stay until help arrives,” Nolan assured everyone with his endless positivity. Tim wanted to believe him, but he found it hard to find hope when everything in your past has gone to shit.
“Why does that firefighter keep giving us death stares?” Lopez inquired as she was late to the scene and still catching up on what had unfolded after the building collapse.
She was met with silence. So, she made her own deductions
“I’m guessing he had a run in with our local hot head,” she whispered to Talia, who simply raised her eyebrows and scoffed.
“Bradford was marching towards that building like bull seeing red, the guy tried to push Bradford past the safety perimeter and Tim was ready to mow him down,” Bishop explained, keeping her voice low as she told Lopez.
“How did you get him to stop?”
“Told him he wasn’t helping Lucy by distracting the people dedicated to rescuing her,” Talia shrugged, watching Tim out of the corner of her eye. Pacing back and forth, his eyes trained on the damaged building, shrouded in smoke.
“She’s not answering her radio,” Tim snapped.
“It could be broken. Relax Tim, it’s been like ten minutes, give the girl a chance,” Talia tried.
“She’s unconscious,”
“Don’t be so pessimistic,”
“I know my rookie. She’d be making noise by now,” he concluded, his eyes flashing to his watch. Twelve minutes. Somethings wrong.
…
Lucy coughed three times before she had enough strength to open her eyes. It’s hurts, her mind screamed, as her brain tried to figure out what she was looking at.
This wasn’t her bedroom ceiling. It wasn’t the ceiling of the break room at the station where she often caught quick naps. It also wasn’t the roof of the patrol car where she would fight off sleep with as much power as she could muster up.
This wasn’t good. Grabbing for her radio, she tried to make contact, but the device only let out a high pitched tone, indicating it was completely, and utterly useless.
Tim.
Fear clenched Lucy’s heart as she thought of her T.O trapped beneath a slab of concrete. Concentrate, her mind warning, don’t let fear of the unknown take over your mind. The voice in her head sounded eerily similar to Officer Bradford, and it was a lot more comforting than she realized.
Dusk was falling from the concrete ceiling, scattering across her face and already making her feel suffocated. Looking around her to get a baring of her surroundings, Lucy’s mind began to collect and sort her memories.
The call. The injured woman and lost child. The smoke.
Lucy remembered her T.O’s face when the woman cried, “my poor baby, find my baby Harry, he’s all I have left.” His face was like stone, but she saw the flicker of panic behind his eyes. Then the woman collapsed, and it felt like the situation doubled with intensity.
Chen had taken a deep breath, and began to patrol the building, marching further into darkness and feeling pulled away from civilization with every step she took.
“Woman is breathing, but still unconscious. Update Boot,” Bradford demanded over her radio, she could hear the rattle in his breath from the constant CPR.
“Still no sign of the child. She said baby, so I’m assuming he’s young. But old enough to walk. So... he’s probably six?” Lucy half told him, half asked.
“Not much experience with kids?” he asked, and Lucy had detected humor in his tone.
“I...” she began, ready to defend herself and had almost given the same answer she once said to Nolan when he asked the same question. Instead she replied honestly, “none. Kids can be pretty terrifying,” she confessed.
Rounding the corner, Lucy had shone her light on the crumbling walls and burnt furniture. The more of it she saw, she realized this decrepit building had been burnt before. The smell of must, and dirt was over whelming.
“If I was a kid, where would I hide,” Bradford had asked, his voice crackled as the radio sounded as if it was going out of frequency.
“You? Probably watching some astronaut film,” she retorted mindlessly, forgetting that he had never actually told her he liked history. But Lucy was an observer. She heard him once recounting a movie about the space race to a fellow officer, she had never seen him so animated.
“That was a hypothetical. Don’t mock space and give me an update,”
Lucy had rolled her eyes but continued, “still no sign of Harry. He could be anywhere.”
After that, Lucy’s mind was hazy.
Did the walls begin to crumble around her first? Was there a sound that resembled a dog barking? Or was the first thing she saw a flurry of black dust? The truth is, Lucy couldn’t remember what the sequence of events was.
She did remember grabbing her radio and calling for Tim, warning him what could’ve been coming his way, and then her world had fallen into complete darkness.
Right now, she needed to concentrate on how to get out of here. Concentrate on the facts, Bradford’s voice floated into her head.
Trying to push herself up from the ground, a sharp stab of pain flared up in her leg and travelling so fast around her body, she was sure she was about to pass out. Blinking through the tears and the dust, she looked down at her injured limb and tried not cry out once more.
The fact was that her leg was not supposed to be pointing at that angle.
…
“Should we be that level of worried?” Jackson asked, pointing to Bradford who was currently arguing with a fireman who wouldn’t let him in the building.
Nolan had his tightly crossed his arms, his eyebrow furrowed forward as he thought, “of course we should be worried. But we have to let the firemen do their job.”
“But Lucy’s going to be fine, right?” Jackson asked again, his worry seeping into his thoughts as he looked to Nolan for advice.
“Most likely; the wall that collapsed is probably blocking her exit. With walls that thick, it’s hard to get a signal through,” Lopez piped in, listening to the two men deliberate.
“But we don’t know where she is,”
“They’ll find her.”
“But what if Bradford knows something we don’t,” Jackson continued, watching as Tim ran a tired roughly across his face before taking a step towards the man and continuing their argument. Tim pointed at himself, then at the building. His intention was clear.
“He doesn’t know anything; that’s his problem,” Talia added. West’s attention switched to her, waiting for her to explain further. She shrugged casually, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, “he’s panicking because he’s not in control. He’s worried because he can’t see her. He’s angry because he cares about her.”
“Cares? He’s a funny way of showing it,” Jackson muttered, remembering all the times Lucy would be frustrated over her T.O’s behavior.
Talia lifted a single eyebrow at Jackson’s comment and gave a huff of laughter. She was about to open her mouth and reply when she saw Tim storm over to the woman in the back of the ambulance.
They were too far away to hear anything, but she knew; this was probably her time to step in and try and reign him back in.
…
Bradford marched forward, ignoring the calls from his fellow officers. The tingles of panic were beginning to set in. Like blinkers, they narrowed his mind with determination and fueled his energy by rage. Isobel used to tell him it would make him act like a mad man.
Ignoring the firemen, he went straight over to the woman who was lying in the back of an ambulance.
“Sir she’s not ready for questioning,” the paramedic scolded.
Tim ignored it all; because it’s been eighteen minutes and that was reason enough for him.
The only thing he could concentrate on was Lucy’s worried voice as she called his name over the radio, before he heard the roof collapsing and trapping his rookie beneath it. Protocol had told him to get the victim to safety, so he had carried the unconscious woman out of the collapsing building, where he was met with a swarm of paramedics and firefighters, who wouldn’t allow him to enter the building again.
The woman on the stretcher looked relatively unharmed due to Bradford’s help, staring up at him with a question in her eyes.
“Your dog; does it respond to a whistle?” he demanded, the paramedic muttering under her breath to leave her patient alone.
The woman shook her head.
“What type of dog doesn’t respond to a whistle?” Tim could feel his blood pressure begin to rise, reminding himself to breathe deeply through his nose to prevent his voice from rising to a shout.
The woman pulled her oxygen mask from her mouth, and placed it on her check, “Harry’s a Gemini. My baby doesn’t respond to authority,” she exclaimed, her eyes wide and her mouth quivering.
That’s the moment Tim began to laugh manically.
Maybe he had gone mad.
…
Lucy had dragged herself a total of ten feet before the urge to vomit with pain became so overwhelming, she had to pause to still her spinning brain. Lifting her injured leg slightly so she could scoot and drag herself across the obstacle ridden floor, in the hopes of finding route to safety.
She needed medical attention. Fast.
Not only did it look like her leg would never be in the same shape again, but she was beginning to hallucinate. A ginger and white dog sat in front of her, mouth hanging open, wagging his tail and giving a cheerful yap. God that sounded so real.
The vision in her mind took two steps towards her and licked the side of her face.
Huh.
The dog barked again.
So; not a vision. Real dog.
“Can you go get help Lassie?” Lucy asked the dog with a slight slur in her voice. Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth as she tried to speak again. Reaching to touch the dog’s fur, her brain fell into slow motion, as if her body had been injected with a sleeping pill, and everything had been sucked from her veins, leaving her utterly weightless.
The dog started barking again, but this time wouldn’t stop.
Placing her hand on her forehead, she was met with a warm, sticky substance, and through blurred vision, she saw her palm was covered in a dark red liquid. Not good.
Yet somehow, she couldn’t find it in her to care that much. All she wanted to do was go to sleep. Just before she closed her eyes, she hoped Bradford wouldn’t mind her taking a nap while on the job.
…
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tim muttered under his breath as he stared up at the crumbling wall with a hole so small, he couldn’t even get his head through. “Chen,” he yelled, hoping for the fourth time; that this was the correct wall he was yelling at. The fire had calmed, and apparently there was a lot more smoke than flames, which only riled Bradford up more. The firemen insisted the building was still too unstable to enter, but it didn’t stop Tim from patrolling the perimeter and yelling into every crevice he could find.
“Try calling the dog’s name,” Bishop told him.
“Harry,” Bradford grouchily called, his anger beginning to burn beneath his skin. Ridiculous, his mind screamed as he mentally punched each of the firefighters for not letting him enter the building in the first place.
“No animal is going to respond to that voice,” Wells mumbled, his eyebrow lifted in that know-it-all tone.
Bradford didn’t bother holding back the death stare he sent Wells, but in a moment of desperation he moved forward and pushed a fake positivity into his voice as he called out for the victim’s dog, half-mocking Wells and half hoping it would work.
When they were met with silence once more, Bradford stared though the opening, scanning the piles of rubble, barely visible through the inky darkness. Until suddenly, there was a bark.
A gleeful chirpy noise amongst the destruction Bradford was glaring in at.
Tim was sure his mind short circuited for a moment.
“Was that a dog?” Wells inquired, rushing towards where Tim was standing.
If Tim was in his normal frame of mind, he would’ve snapped at the rookie and sarcastically claimed it was a polar bear. Instead Tim started to whistle and called Harry, the Cavalier King Charles, in the softest voice he could manage.
“It’s okay Harry, who’s a good boy” Bradford cooed, his eyes beginning to burn as he strained to see through the dark. The dog barked again.
“This is completely terrifying,” Lopez announced as she walked towards the scene.
“The dog’s here. So, Chen’s here. Are you just going to stand there or help save her?”
Feeling the levity of the situation once more, the cops looked at one another and began helping Tim in widening the gap in the wall. After a couple of minutes, Bradford deemed the space big enough for him to climb through.
“Hold on, I’m smaller; I’ll fit,” Lopez argued, watched as Bradford bent to squeeze through the hole.
“You’re lookout. Those firemen are hell bent on keeping me out of the way,” Bradford told her, as he stuck one of his legs into the abandoned building.
“I could definitely-” West began but was quickly silenced by the look once again Tim sent him.
“My rookie, my responsibility. I sent her through this death trap, so I’m getting her out,” Bradford muttered as he climbed through, making his feelings clear on the situation.
As soon as Bradford was through, Lopez followed, “if you’re too busy looking out for her, you’ll put yourself in danger,” she informed him, leaving no room for discussion.
“Keep up,” he bit out, ignoring the roll of her eyes.
“Boot!” Bradford yelled, his voice aching from the smoke that began to cling to the inside of his throat.
Dust fell from the ceiling and landed in a cloud around him, blinding him for a second. Doing calculations in his own mind, he stood where she had said she was before radio silence. Bricks of cement, broken tiles, poles sticking out at odd angles; everything he looked at was a potential danger. A potential killer.
She’s smart, He told himself as he stepped over a hole the size of the couch Lucy regularly falls asleep on in the station’s break room.
“We’ll find her,” Lopez whispered, as they patrolled carefully. But Bradford kept his mouth shut, mainly because it felt like his heart was going to fall out of it.
“Chen,” Lopez called, her voice carrying a slightly echo as it bounced off the crumbling wall. A large slab of concrete hit the ground with a sudden whack, causing both cops to jump with a start and then shrug off their spike of fear.
The building was becoming more stable by the second, and Bradford was beginning to see a potential future that didn’t include his rookie causing him to feel nauseous.
“Lucy,” Tim yelled more forcefully, feeling as if he was trapped in this on-going nightmare forever.
And suddenly, a noise. A soft whine from an animal causing both Lopez and Tim to follow the noise swiftly. Harry, the cavalier King Charles was lying down, with his eyes staring intently on something in front of him.
Lucy.
His rookie lay unconscious, covered in dust and small pieces of debris, with a gash on her forehead now crusted over with dried blood and dirt. Yet it was her leg that caused Tim’s stomach to turn. His body moved on its own accord.
Please, be okay.
Lucy’s eyes opened her eyes and wasn’t met with dusty air or dirt invested concrete. White light was blazed in her eyes for a moment, blurring her vision to colored spots. Her senses came back one by one. The smell of antiseptic. The sound of her breath flowing through an oxygen mask. The jittery feeling of lying on something unstable and the dull throb of pain which the painkillers were failing to mask.
With eventual clear vision, she realized she was in the back of an ambulance.
Two paramedics poked and prodded at her, talking at her and asking questions where the only answers were a shake of the head or a meek nod.
She heard words like, dislocated knee, surgery, CT scan, concussion. When they began to move her leg, she groaned in pain, clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Lucy you’re going to be okay. Lucy, look at me,” her T.O’s voice floated in her ear. Turning to her right, she came face to face with Tim Bradford, relief swelling up in her chest. Reaching for her oxygen mask, she tried to move it, but Tim’s hand gently encased her wrist, “don’t move that. It’s good for you,” his stern, gruff voice said.
Lucy wanted to talk to him, ask him what happened, but the pain in her leg was becoming all consuming.
“Shit,” one of the paramedics muttered, looking out the panel window.
“That’s exactly what we want to here,” Tim grouched, reaching for Lucy’s hand and gripping it. He wasn’t sure if he was comforting himself or her.
“We’re twenty minutes away from the hospital,” the balding paramedic said, sharing a look with his partner and gathering supplies for something. Tim had a bad feeling
“Unfortunately, we’ve run out of time. We need to pop her knee back into place,” the other man told Tim.
Bradford’s wild eyes shot to the man who said it, “what? In here?” he half shouted.
“It’s obstructing flow to her lower leg, we need to fix it before it’s urgent,” he replied simply, “you need to make sure she stay’s still, this is a three-person job.”
Tim looked hesitant for moment, staring down at her bloody leg before looking at the paramedic once more. Lucy watched the silent conversation they shared, and if she wasn’t on so many pain killers, she probably would’ve understood it.
“Okay Boot sit up, wait… can she sit up?” Tim asked, a small bit flustered as he simultaneously asked Lucy and the paramedics. Everyone nodded and began moving into action.
Ripping off her oxygen mask, Lucy began to lean forward, growing pale as she tried to ignore the pain, “will it stop the pain?” she asked the paramedic, trying to prevent her voice from wavering. The paramedic gave a not very reassuring nod.
“Can’t she be knocked out?” Tim asked gruffly, lifting a leg over the stretched and sat behind her.
“Not with that concussion,” the balding paramedic replied.
“Trying to shut me up Bradford?” Lucy piped up.
“Unconscious seems to be the only time you’re quiet,” he joked.
For one awkward moment, he didn’t exactly know what he was supposed to do. Scooting forward, he left a small space between their bodies. He settled for gripping her shoulders and giving them a squeeze.
“This’ll be a breeze, right?” she asked, pumping false positivity into her own voice. At that very moment, the ambulance went through a pot hole, causing everything to shake and a stab of pain to ripple through Lucy’s entire body. Dropping against Tim’s chest, she tried to ignore the spring of tears behind her eyes.
“Did I ever tell you about that bet I lost at the academy,” Bradford murmured into her ear, just as an injection was pushing into Lucy’s shin. Shaking to avoid using her voice, Lucy’s settled against Tim’s chest, unconsciously moving closing to his body to get further away from the pain.
“I bet that Lopez she couldn’t climb the flag pole in under a minute,”
“You lost?” Lucy asked, concentrating on Tim’s low voice, gravelling as he spoke softly. Feeling a familiar twinge at the pit of her stomach, she allowed herself to feed into the attraction, keeping her mind concentrated and away from the aching pain in her knee.
“She had the flag in her hands, and in front of me and Talia within forty seconds,” Tim told her, watching as the paramedic gave a nod to his partner. Wrapping his arms around Lucy’s middle, Tim held her steady.
“What was the forfeit,” Lucy asked, closing her eyes and exhaling slowly. She felt his low chuckle as it vibrated through her before he replied, “put the flag back in place,”
“And?” Lucy exclaimed.
“Butt naked,”
With that image in her head, the paramedic seemed like it was the perfect time to pop her leg back into place. The pain was blindingly white and Lucy felt herself jolt forward, had it not been for Tim arms securely around her, she probably would’ve jumped off the stretcher.
The pain began to drop from a sharp stab into a dull ache, and Lucy called that an improvement.
“Alright?” Tim asked her, exhaling slowly, as he must’ve been holding his breath.
Lucy hummed, the roller coaster of pain assaulting her all at once, exhausting her entire body.
“Officer, I’m going to need you to stay awake,” the paramedic told her as he began wrapping her knee.
“Stay alert Chen, no sleeping on the job,” Tim instructed into her ear. Opening her eyes drowsily, she allowed herself a few moments to catch her breath. She allowed herself to enjoy the feeling of safety, enveloping her when earlier that day she felt so alone and scared. Her eyes flittered down to the arms the surrounded her, sallow skin from constant sun, and strong muscles beneath her finger tips. A small faded scar by his elbow caught her attention.
Lucy’s hands moved on their own accord, her fingers brushing over the marred skin.
“I’d love to say it was from taking down a bad guy but…” Tim began, once again his low voice vibrating against the shell of her ear.
“But…” Lucy smirked, turning her head to look him in the eye. Wow, he was close. At this proximity, she saw just how blue his eyes were. Usually his furrowed eye brows or frowning mouth was too distracting to notice anything else. Although, it would be a lie if she said she never noticed how attractive her T.O really was. This time, his lips were quirked in a smile when recounting the memory in his mind.
“But I was putting up shelves in my little sister’s apartment, and her stupid cat jumped onto the ladder and scarred the crap out of me. And I fell and landed on her glass coffee table,” Tim admitted, a faint redness creeping into his cheeks at the memory.
Lucy winced, “that’s gotta hurt,”
“I think you have me beat Boot,” Tim informed her, a sadness in his tone as he looked at her leg. When Tim’s eyes finally connected with Lucy’s, she felt that twinge in her stomach erupt, and take on a life of their own. She wasn’t sure how long they would’ve sat there, had the paramedics not broken their bubble, informing them of their arrival to the hospital.
“I’m fine Mom, I promise,” Lucy told her mother for the third time in as many minutes.
“I can fly out and be at your house, help out a bit,” Her mother informed her for the sixth time. The conversation was beginning to make Lucy feel nauseous from her repeated words.
“Mom, honestly-,” Lucy began, when the doorbell sang, indicating the arrival of an unexpected visitor. Dragging herself from her couch, she looked at the time, who’s here at three p.m? Jackson and John were on shift until nine tonight, and her neighbor, Lara, said she’d call tomorrow morning for breakfast. Pushing the phone between her shoulder and ear, she grasped for her crutches and began to hobble towards the door. Even after three weeks, she was still as awkward as the day she first tried them out after surgery.
“Mom, I have so many people checking up on me all the time, there’s even someone here right now,” Lucy said, moving cautiously as she reached for the door knob, feeling as if she could fall over at any second.
“Oh Luce, what if it’s some weirdo ready to take advantage of you when you’re injured,” her mother exclaimed, jumping to the worst possibility imaginable.
Opening the door, she was met with Tim Bradford, holding her favorite type sandwich, and a bottle of whiskey. As usual, he wasn't smiley, a grumpy expression across his faced, as if someone had forced him into the action. But Lucy was becoming a pro at Tim Bradford expressions. There was a second where he clocked her boot, the small cut on her forehead and the view of her couch where her blanket was thrown lazily across the floor.
"That blanket is a falling hazard," he warned her, in his stern voice and bored expression.
“Okay Mom, I’ve got to go say big hello to the weirdo ready to take advantage of me. Love you,” Lucy said awkwardly into the phone, trying not to laugh outright at Tim’s face.
Furrowed eyebrows, mouth agape, “what the hell Boot? Don’t tell your Mom I’m a creep,”
“I said weirdo,” she replied chirpily, leaning against the door so she could drop the phone into her hand and back into her pocket. “Don’t you have a thing called work?” she asked him, shuffling in the door.
“It’s no fun when I’ve no one to order around,” Tim cheekily said, smirking as Lucy rolled her eyes and made her way back over to the couch. “How have you gotten worse on those?” Tim muttered, causing Lucy to stop, turn and glare at the man who was out right laughing at her.
“Okay well when I break my other leg, at least I'll have had practice,” she exclaimed, waving one of them in front of him.
Tim’s smiled dropped, and somehow Lucy had managed to say the worst thing, again. His jaw had clenched as he stared at the absurdly large bandage on Lucy’s leg, and suddenly he was moving towards her, slowly, his eyes focused on her injury.
“That’s not happening again,” Tim warned, his eyes scanning her leg before finally locking with Lucy’s. Deep, navy eyes stared seriously into her own, unable to tear her gaze away she opened her mouth slightly in confusion. This was his T.O voice, a tone that had no room for argument or any other opinion.
“Injuries happen, but it was a freak accident,” her voice soft as she watched the pain flash within his mind. “I can’t promise I won’t get hurt again,” she stated logically.
By the reaction on Tim’s face, that was not the answer he wanted.
“We’re cops, it’s in the job description, right?” Lucy reasoned, her chestnut eyes shining up at him.
Opening his mouth, he yearned to argue, inform Lucy that he would rather a building collapse on top of him than watch her in pain again. Looking down at her, he realized how strong she really was. Appearing out of thin air and into his life, with her kind heart and soft voice, until she began to cement into Tim’s life, and he realized; Lucy's bones were steel and her mind was stronger.
Handing her the sandwich and lifting the whisky he said, "to no more freak accidents,"
"And whisky at 3p.m," she replied, taking the sandwich from Tim and taking a large bite.
"I'll cheers to that," he replied, picking up her blanket off the floor and folding it neatly. He was always watching out for her. Dropping onto the coach, he opened the whisky and glared over at her, "well, what the hell are you waiting for?"
Lucy watched him for a moment, and had the sudden urge for human contact. Maybe that's why her brain allowed her to say the words, "for someone to carry me to the couch?" she sarcastically said, waiting for him to roll his eyes and order her to get better on her crutches. Or maybe, somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew what was about to happen.
It did however, still surprise Lucy when Tim took her up on the offer.
...
Lucy would not be telling Nolan and West when the come for a visit later, that her T.O carried her bridal style and deposited her gently on the couch.
She may tell her neighbour Lara at breakfast.