Chapter Text
“Twenty-four David, in pursuit of suspect in a red Toyota sedan, going north on Bell Street!” Chris’s voice comes choppy and urgent over the radio as she weaves the Charger around slower traffic, siren blaring.
“Twenty-five and twenty-six David, also in pursuit!” Street shouts into his own mouthpiece, his other hand clinging to the ceiling handle above the passenger seat. Tan hits the gas and Street releases his radio speaker to brace his other hand on the center console, off balance as Tan attempts to keep up with Chris and their suspect.
“Stay on him! This guy is the key to bringing down this whole trafficking ring,” Hondo says in their ears.
“Twenty-two David. We’re coming to cut him off from the north.”
“Turning right on Century,” Chris calls. “We gotta get him before he hits the freeway!”
“God dammit, people, get out of the way!” Tan shouts at the windshield.
Street trains his eyes ahead, determined to keep Chris in sight. She’s far enough ahead that some of the drivers who’ve pulled over at the sight of her blue lights have started to steer back into the lanes as Tan screeches around the corner and lays on the horn as if his lights and sirens aren’t enough to get the other cars to move again.
Tan starts to gain on Chris and the suspect once more. Street readies his weapon and rests an eager hand on the window switch on the door panel. “Get close enough and I can shoot out his tires!”
“Don’t do that until Chris is clear.” Tan veers around a clueless Tesla that takes up the center lane and accelerates again. Two hundred yards ahead, Chris is right on the red Toyota’s tail, following its every move so closely that Street won’t have a shot at the Toyota’s tires until Tan gets them right up next to the other Charger.
Then Chris slams on her brakes and falls back abruptly as the sound of gunfire fills the air. “Shots fired! Shots fired!” Chris is yelling into her comm, and Street rolls his window down to take aim at the gunman leaning out the rear window of the sedan.
The shooter ducks back into the vehicle at Street’s return fire, and Chris recovers and speeds up, the gap between her Charger and Tan’s widening again. The suspect’s vehicle careens down the three-lane road wildly, erratically and Tan starts to make his move to overtake it as they near an empty intersection.
Out of nowhere, no more than fifty feet in front of Street and Tan, a pickup truck flies through the intersection from their left.
Later, the sound of metal scraping metal will haunt Street’s dreams. Now, his ears ring worse than they have after any bomb explosion he’s ever witnessed and he barely registers Tan’s shout of Holy shit! next to him.
“Chris!” Street yells, twisting in his seat to keep his eyes on the wreckage as long as he can. But—driving too fast to stop or react—Tan flies past Chris and the truck before the mass of twisted metal has even stopped moving across the pavement.
“Street! Tires! We can get him!”
“You gotta go back, man!” Street cries, then keys his radio. “Chris, Chris, are you okay? Chris! Twenty-six David, there’s been a traffic collision, 24-David is involved—”
The engine revs aggressively as Tan comes right up on the Toyota’s bumper, only to fall back when the shooter reappears. Street manages enough focus to return fire, instinct kicking in to cover for the visceral panic he barely manages to contain. The Toyota’s rear windshield blows out from Street’s bullets and then the shooter slumps down in the backseat, and Street aims lower. Two perfect shots take out the left rear tire and the Toyota swerves precariously. At an angle Street takes out a front tire moments later, and the vehicle finally veers off to sideswipe a car parallel-parked along the curb before coming to a stop.
“Driver’s running!” Tan shouts. “Street!”
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” Throwing the passenger door open as Tan stops the car, Street takes off on foot. Fueled by adrenaline and an urgency he’s never felt before, he sprints after the driver and tackles him to the ground.
The man protests the tight cuffs as Street wrenches him to his feet by the elbow and turns back towards the red Toyota, where Tan has confirmed that the shooter in the backseat is dead.
“We gotta get back to Chris!” Street shouts. “Tan!”
Looking back up the street, he can see four blocks of empty lanes and then the stopped traffic beyond the crash site, but the momentum of the impact pushed the vehicles off to the side of the intersection and Street can’t see them.
“Take the Charger,” Tan yells, louder than necessary as he comes to take their suspect’s other arm. “I’ll wait here for backup.”
It’s been ninety seconds, if that, since the crash but to Street it feels like an eternity. He practically dives into the driver’s seat and cranks the wheel around, speeding the wrong way up the empty one-way street back to Chris. He claws at his radio as he drives, begging her to answer, but staticky silence is the only response.
Debris trails across the intersection, all metal and grease leading Street’s eyeline to the wreckage. The Charger is pinned between the silver Ram pickup and the base of the stoplight pole at the corner of the sidewalk, twisted into a serpentine from the two impacts. Leaving his own vehicle running, Street runs over, his shouts of “LAPD!” clearing the couple of bystanders who’ve approached the scene.
“Chris! Chris, can you hear me?”
“Street?”
For one brief moment, he lets the sound of her voice wash over him, strong and clear, dulling the sharpest edges of his terror. But there’s a distinct smell of gasoline and he still can’t see her as he rounds the back of the truck to assess the wreck, and the relief is gone as quickly as it came.
“Are you all right? We’ve gotta get you out.”
“My leg’s pinned.”
He finally sees her through the shattered windshield. Fresh blood drips from a gash at her hairline and her body is twisted awkwardly in the small space that’s left from where the entire driver’s side of the car has been crushed in on itself. The deflated corpse of a side curtain airbag is stained with her blood and Street thanks heaven, hell, and everyone in between that even with the direct hit Chris is at least awake and talking.
Vaguely, somewhere to his right, Street is aware of somebody—not a cop—opening the door of the truck to check on the driver. And vaguely, something in the back of his mind tells him to get the scene under control. But the only control that matters is whatever it’ll take for him to get Chris out of that car before the whole thing goes up in flames.
Circling to the passenger side, he sees that the light pole is wedged right at the column between the front and back doors, rendering both useless. Still, despite knowing the effort is futile, he grabs the only door handle he can reach—the rear passenger side—and yanks, to no avail.
“Fuck!” He shouts. “Chris? You with me?”
Silence—the approaching sirens and the lull of the chaotic scene failing to reach his ears.
“Chris!”
Scrambling back to the front of the car, Street climbs over the hood to get to her. Her eyes are closed but he can tell she’s conscious by the way her top teeth bite down, hard, on her lower lip. He reaches with a careful arm to her right shoulder, squeezing. She trembles under his touch.
“Hey. Chris.”
“I need,” she says, voice shallow, her previous determination all but evaporated. “To get. Out. Of here.”
“I know. I know, but right this second you’re okay. Can you look at me? Chris?”
Fresh panic grips him like a fist squeezing every last molecule of air from his chest. He’s never seen her like this—eyes screwed shut, but not from pain; knuckles blanched white as she grips at the seatbelt across her chest; nostrils flaring with each slow, deliberate inhale but none of it’s enough to slow down her visible shaking. He runs through a mental checklist, assessing all of her that he can see.
The head injury still bleeds freely, and her left leg extends down beneath the dash out of his sight. Her right foot is wedged on the edge of her seat, knee pressed between the steering wheel and her chest. If there’s internal bleeding from the impact then she could be going into shock, but he’s seen that before, and it doesn’t look like this. He’s seen Chris in pain and that’s not what this feels like, either.
This is unadulterated, deep terror that appears to rip her apart from the inside out.
“Chris? We’re going to get you out, okay? Hey. Keep breathing. Just like that, yes, exactly.”
He needs one hand to hold himself up but he moves the other from her shoulder to one of her hands, peeling her fingers free from the seatbelt as gently as he can. Two fingers move to her wrist, press just below her thumb until he finds her radial artery. Her pulse races, irregular bounding beats that seem to skip around and fuel her panic.
He lets his fingers up and his hand circles around her thumb instead. “Chris, I need to get something to bandage your head. Just a first aid kit. I’ll be right back, alright?”
Her face gives no indication that she’s heard him, but her short nails dig into the back of his hand almost hard enough to break the skin.
Fuck, he doesn’t want to leave her. Whatever this is, whatever threat has gotten inside her head, it’s unbearable for him just to see, and he’s not the one living in it. But externally, the threats of blood loss and entrapment and fire loom heavy in the air and Street knows if he doesn’t start handling those, he might never have the chance to find out what else is going on.
“The first aid kit is in my car. I will be right back. Right back, Chris. Don’t go anywhere.”
“Very funny,” she manages, and that small reassurance that Chris, tough badass Chris, his Chris is still in there somewhere is enough for him to squeeze her hand and slide off the hood of the car.
He runs to his car for the first aid kit in time to see two patrol cars coming through the cross street traffic. More civilians have gathered in the periphery, a few close enough to ask what they can do to help but Street ignores them as he rushes back to Chris. The unis will handle them.
“I’m back. I’m right here, Chris. How’s your neck?”
She doesn’t answer.
“I’ve gotta get a bandage on your head. Here, can you hold this?”
She’s still motionless so he takes one of her hands and presses gauze into her palm before moving it up to the left side of her head. Somewhere behind the enormous truck that occupies his entire vision field, he hears the arriving patrol officers identify themselves and start to move people back.
“Where’s the fire department?” Street screams. “We’ve got an officer trapped, we need to extricate!”
“They’re en route,” a uniform tells him, just before stepping up on the running rail of the truck. “Driver’s deceased! Let’s get the ME out here.”
“You sure you can’t push yourself out of there?” Street asks Chris.
“Pretty fucking sure.” But she tries again anyway, pushing with her braced right foot as leverage to free her left. She grips both of Street’s forearms and pulls but her grunt of effort gives way to a frustrated, pained scream as she falls back against the mangled driver’s seat.
“Hey, okay, help’s coming.” But the reassurance feels hollow and Street struggles to keep his voice even. To free Chris’s pinned leg, the truck will have to be moved so that rescuers can access the driver’s side of the Charger, and he has no idea how long that’ll take.
“Street!”
The familiar voice catches Street’s attention above the commotion and he sees Tan approaching at a run.
“What’s going on? Where’s Chris? Why won’t you answer your damn radios?”
Street brings a hand to his ear and remembers ripping his earpiece out as he ran from his Charger to Chris’s, overstimulated by the incessant chatter as the rest of the team navigates closer.
“Chris is pinned, but she’s okay. She’s been talking to me.”
Tan stops near the side mirror on the passenger side, where he can lean in towards Chris. “Team is four minutes out. Chris? You all right in there, champ? Did you hit your head? What’s pinned? Your leg? Is it broken?”
“I got her, man. Is there a rescue truck here yet?” Street asks, so that Tan stops with the questions.
“We’re gonna get you out, Chris,” Tan says in response, and he slaps the hood of the car before he moves away.
“You still with me, Chris?” Street adjusts higher on the hood and leans towards her. “Please open your eyes, let me see you.”
“No,” she whispers, barely audible.
“Yes. Please. Chris.”
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” she says softly, and Street’s mind spins with the effort of figuring out what the fuck that means.
He has no idea how he gets there as quickly as he does. Understanding washes over him along with a debilitating wave of nausea that would have him doubled over if it didn’t send him lunging instead for any part of her that he can reach.
He finds her upper arm first and grips it tightly, resisting the urge to shake sense back into her. “You’re not going to die, Chris. Open your eyes and fucking look at me. You are going to be fine.”
“Don’t make promises—you can’t keep,” she says, her voice just a whisper riding on a ragged exhale.
She’s crying now, disconcertingly still as silent tears stream from the corners of her eyes and leave messy tracks of mascara and blood down to her neck. Noisy, body-wracking sobs would be easier for Street to take, he thinks—her hands limp by her sides, Chris looks like all the fight has drained out of her, and that scares him more than any physical injury.
Adjusting as close as he can get to the remnants of the shattered windshield, nearly sitting on the interior dash, Street leans in so he can grip her face with both hands. His thumbs trace along her pale cheekbones, desperate for any reaction. The distant sirens get closer and it’s a comfort to Street, however small. But he knows the sound and the logic of approaching rescue won’t cut through Chris’s fog, not when she’s trapped so far inside this consuming anguish that nothing outside her own brain will even register.
The car crash that killed her mother was a completely different scenario than this, but that can’t change the fact that it re-wired Chris’s young brain in irreparable ways. She tries to hide it, and for the most part she succeeds, at least to the untrained eye. But Street knows better, knows how that single day changed the track of Chris’s entire future and it shouldn’t surprise him that a serious crash of her own would so easily bring those traumatic memories back to the surface.
Blood slowly seeps through the gauze that sticks on its own to her forehead laceration, blooming wider like lazy morning flower petals on the stark white of the outermost layer. The fingers of his right hand, combed back into her hair as his palm spans across her left cheek and ear, stain red from blood she lost before the bandage was there to catch it. Neither is enough to make him move his hands, nor is the fact that his shoulders and upper back begin to protest his awkward position.
“Chris, I am right here, and you are not dying. I know you’re stuck. I know you’re scared. Just focus on my voice, okay? As long as you can hear me, you’re still alive.”
His thumbs never still as he wipes her tears away as fast as they fall. He wants to tell her she’s safe, but that feels like a lie, at least right now with no way to start working her body free. He wants to crawl into the car with her and hold her, but there’s no space for him inside and even if there was, her pinned leg would keep him from maneuvering her. So he settles for repeated assurances that she’s alive, that she’s not dying, that this isn’t her fault, that she’s not her mother.
When she finds one of his wrists with her hand and clings to him with all the strength she can muster, he nearly sobs in relief.
A renewed urgency filters through to Street from new conversation beyond the pickup truck, familiar voices now and Street presses his fingers into the back of Chris’s head in the hope that she can hear them too. “The team’s here, Chris. Here they are, they’re coming.”
“Truck driver’s DOA,” Tan’s saying as he comes into view behind the Charger, Deacon and Hondo rushing close behind. “I told the unis to find his ID…”
“Guy must’ve been flying,” Deacon says, as Hondo adds, “Good God.”
“Chris! You alright in there?” Hondo shouts.
“Her leg is pinned in the door, we think,” Tan explains.
“We gotta get her out, guys,” Street yells.
“Need to move the truck,” Hondo agrees. “Tan! Tell Luca to get Black Betty up behind the truck. We’ll see if we can drag it away, get a head start.”
“Fire department should be here any second,” Deacon says.
Deacon and Tan fall out of Street’s view and Hondo rounds the passenger side of the Charger, leaning across the corner of the hood towards the windshield. “Chris, hey, we’re about to get you out. I know it hurts. Hang in there, kid. Street, good, keep stabilizing her neck until she gets a collar on. Ambulance is close.”
Street nods, though he’s less worried about stabilizing Chris’s neck than holding her soul together amidst the wreckage.
“They’re hooking up Black Betty to the truck. You’re so close, Chris. Just another minute, okay? Listen, you don’t have to open your eyes but just let me know you can hear me.”
He wasn’t sure it’s possible for her grip on his arm to tighten any more, but it does with a quick squeeze before her hand falls back into the gap between her right thigh and her abdomen.
“Go, Luca!” Deacon shouts from somewhere close by, and metal groans against metal and asphalt as the truck starts to shift backwards.
“They’ve got the other car. They’re moving it out of the way,” Street narrates for Chris. “It’s almost gone. Then we’re going to cut you out. There’s the rescue truck, they just got here. They’ve got like, I don’t know what that is. A fucking chainsaw? We’re going to slice this car apart until you’re safe, got it?”
The truck groans to a stop some ten feet away, as far as Black Betty can back up within the width of the intersection. Immediately, a crew of firefighters descend on the driver’s side of the vehicle with the jaws of life and another heavy powered machine Street can’t name. One crew member, hands and shoulders occupied with three bright red medical bags, pokes his head into Street’s space around the front post of the car.
“Hey, officer, I’m Steven, I’m a paramedic. My guys are working on getting you out but I need to get a collar on your neck in case you have a spinal injury.” He drops his bags to the ground and digs out a foam-lined plastic collar before he addresses Street. “Okay, man, keep holding her still while I get this on. Sorry—excuse me—“
He shoulders his way against Street to reach Chris and Street stretches, nearly losing his balance in his effort to keep his hands on Chris.
“No, no—I don’t need—“ Chris mutters, and her face twists in protest while she still keeps her eyes tightly shut.
“Chris, it’s okay,” Street manages. “You’ve gotta let him help you.”
“We need to protect your neck, Chris,” Steven says smoothly. “I need you to stay as still as you can. As soon as we can get the door off, we’re going to get you onto a backboard and get you to the hospital. You just let us do all the work, ‘kay?”
“Street—“
“I’m right here.”
“Where’s your pain at, Chris?” Steven asks. He nudges Street’s hands out of the way as he closes the collar around her neck and fastens the Velcro closure—a move that sends unexpected, white hot anger flashing through Street’s vision field until he can reach a hand back to rest around one side of her head.
“Anywhere besides your head?” Steven continues. Running his gloved hands down Chris’s arms, he finds her hands and tucks two fingers into each palm. “Can you squeeze my fingers for me? Good, excellent. Any pain in your neck or back? How’s it feel to breathe?”
Having planned their approach, the firefighters begin cutting through the metal of the center column with one of their tools and the loud noise makes Chris flinch with an open-mouthed, whimpering exhale. In one fluid motion, Street stretches his legs out behind him to lay on his stomach across the hood and dashboard, barely registering the jagged remnants of glass poking through the fabric of his black shirt. He can reach her better this way, reach far enough to cover her ears with his palms even though Steven has to work around him to reinforce the bandage on her cut.
Street swears he feels the slightest amount of tension leave Chris at the gesture—like she’s finally starting to accept that this is almost over, and she’s alive. Her head leans back the tiniest bit to contact the headrest of her seat, which is bolt upright behind her from taking the truck’s direct hit.
He’s sure she can’t hear him through his hands or the noise of machinery and stubborn metal, but he keeps talking anyway, assurances that she’s okay now and the worst is almost over. It’s for his own benefit as much as hers. He knows the paramedic is just doing his job, asking Chris question after loud question as he works, but anxiety is Chris’s problem much more than pain right now and fucking Steven the paramedic isn’t the one who can help her the way she needs most.
Nearby, the ambulance crew that arrived behind the rescue truck sets up a red plastic backboard. It’s an inevitable precaution, Street understands, but his stomach clenches at how Chris will react to being strapped down to that thing—exchanging one type of helpless entrapment for another.
“Watch out for her left leg when you take the door off, it’s pinned in there,” Tan shouts to the rescue crew. He stands with Hondo, Deacon, and Luca, all four of them bouncing on the balls of their feet to expel their nervous energy after being cleared back, to their dismay, by the firefighters.
It’s a small relief for Street that they’ve let him be.
“That leg could be broken,” Steven says, then turns to the ambulance crew. “Get a long splint ready. Chris, can you open your eyes and follow my pen? I need you to stay with me, open your eyes.”
“Don’t make her open her eyes, man, she doesn't want to see all this,” Street argues quietly. “She’s awake. Right, Chris?”
“I’m fine,” she croaks.
“I really need to check your pupils, you sure you can’t open your eyes?”
“Lay off,” Street insists. Remembering basic concussion assessments from his own colorful history, he cups one hand around Chris’s right ear, the one further away from the noise of the extrication tools, and digs for a question that won’t be triggering. “Chris, where does SpongeBob live?”
“Pineapple under the sea.” Her lips barely move when she speaks but Street could single her voice out of any fury of background noise.
“See? She’s fine.”
Street feels the irritation in Steven’s sideways glance at him, but the paramedic lets it go for now.
“Street!” Deacon shouts, appearing on the other side of the car. He holds up a bulky set of headphones, the ear protection the team uses at the shooting range, and then tosses them underhand to Street.
He catches them in one fist and positions them over the crown of Chris’s head before he lets his hands fall to her shoulders. Her tears have stopped but she’s shaking again, wound tight like a spring on the verge of snapping.
Her hand searches for his and just as she finds what she wants, the back half of the driver's door pops free. But the door has been holding her leg stable in place, and the abrupt movement makes her scream, high-pitched for a long moment before she manages to choke it back under control. Street reciprocates the bone-crushing way she grips his hand, and he brings his free one back to her cheek.
If she’d just look at him she’d see that nobody is judging her for being in pain—and nobody’s pitying her either, they’re all just worried. Buzzed as she is on a volatile cocktail of adrenaline and panic, he’s honestly not sure she even recognized any pain until just now.
Her eyes stay glued shut.
The door hangs precariously from bent hinges, creaking against gravity but it can’t open wide enough to extract her yet. Frustrated and anxious, Street’s head falls to hang between tight shoulder blades to hide how upset he is that this’ll take even longer.
That’s nothing compared to the firefighters who step sideways towards the hood of the car and tell Street and Steven both to move away.
“We gotta get the door off, need you to clear out,” the chief calls. “It’ll just take a second, she’s almost out.”
Chris must hear him through her headphones, or maybe she senses it because her hand slides desperately from Street’s hand to his wrist, tugging his arm.
Steven starts to back up but he places a hand on Street’s closer arm when the officer stays put. “Come on, let’s let them get the door off so she can come out.”
They’re wasting precious seconds, Street knows, but he’s glued to the hood of the car, unable to make himself move. Chris clutches his arm and he’s sure if he breaks that contact, she’ll lose it. Or maybe he’ll lose it, the last shred of composure he clings to, and he’s certain once that happens he’ll never recover.
“I’ll be fine, I’m not in the way,” he says through gritted teeth, shifting to angle his torso off towards the passenger side for good measure.
“Officer, I need you to step down,” the chief says.
Luca pushes past the firefighters who surround the car, and he slides one arm in through the inches-wide gap where the door hangs away from the roof. He finds Chris’s shoulder, presses his hand flat on her chest just below her collarbone.
“You can reach her through the window,” he tells Street, pointing with one finger. “It’s okay, Chris, we got you. You’re almost out, just another minute.”
Luca doesn’t move until Street grudgingly pushes off the hood and leans in past the airbag that obscures the busted passenger window. Chris reaches for his hand once more, unseeing, drawn to his presence like a magnet and a feeling that’s fierce and uncontrolled and all too familiar zips through his chest when she does.
Luca claps his hand against her shoulder once and withdraws to stand back with the rest of the team.
He’ll never admit it, but he realizes that moving was a good idea when two firefighters wedge their jaws machine between the door and the vehicle body and turn on the spreader function. The groan of interior hardware ripping apart escalates to a roar loud enough to drown out Chris’s guttural yell as the movement of the door agitates her leg further. Street focuses on her face and on holding her hand as she bares gritted teeth and tries to twist against her C-collar to get away from the pain.
He can barely take it. Everything in him wants to look away from her, from the expression of agony he’s powerless to fix, that threatens to rip him apart from inside. But if she has to feel it, the least he can do is keep his eyes on her in case she decides to open hers.
“Almost there, Chris. That’s it, keep squeezing my hand.” He knows she can’t hear him, hell, he can barely hear himself over the noise. But talking feels like something. “They’re so close and then you’re getting out of here, okay? It’s almost over. You’ll go get checked out, and then I’m taking you by the food truck on the way home. It’s Wednesday, you know that means flan for—“
With a last heaving groan, the door is wrenched off of the Charger and it falls to the pavement. The firefighters clear away immediately, letting Steven and the two EMTs crowd around Chris.
Their hands are all over her and Street sees more than feels it when they tug her arm down, separating her from him to get a pulse ox monitor on her finger. She tries to swat them away but they grasp her elbows to hold her still while they take her blood pressure on the other arm.
Street stands up straight and flexes both hands, muscles suddenly aching from the effort of his grip all this time, or maybe from the absence of hers now.
On the other side of the car, Tan tries to cut into the circle around Chris, but the medical personnel close in tighter and crouch down to assess and splint her leg. Street rounds past the trunk to take his place with the rest of the team, all five men watching with crossed arms and somber faces.
“The worst part’s over,” Luca says.
Street curls his toes inside his work boots to force himself to stay back. But when Steven’s team finishes stabilizing her leg and helps Chris rotate to face the road, she extends her right foot to the sidewalk with her arms braced on the seat back and the steering wheel like she’s going to stand up. Knowing the EMTs’ protests won’t be enough to stop her, Street and Tan don’t let themselves be shut out this time. They lurch forward in unison to keep her grounded with hands on her shoulders.
“Chris, we need you to stay still. We’ve got to get you on the backboard, and you need to let us do all the work.”
“Don’t tell her that,” Tan says, and he pulls the headphones off of her with one hand.
“I’m fine, let me get up,” Chris says. She leans forward, shifting weight onto her forearms where Tan and Street hold onto her, but the effort overcomes her and she has to let them settle her weight back onto the driver’s seat.
“Back up, we need to stabilize her spine,” the female EMT says. “Get that gurney up here! Officer, you have got to stop moving.”
“I can move everything, I’m fine. I don’t need that.” She lifts a hand to her forehead, trying to clear the gauze wrap around her head that’s slid down slightly below her eyebrows.
“You might have a spinal injury that’ll get worse if you move the wrong way. You have to let us do our jobs.”
“Just listen to them, Chris,” Hondo calls. “That’s an order.”
“We’re all right here,” Deacon says. “The hard part’s over, come on.”
Street leans down to her ear. “You’re okay, Chris, you’re safe. Let them get you out of the car, okay? I’m right here, it’s alright.”
“You mind?” Steven asks. He looks at Street and nods at Chris, intending to take Street’s place on her left side.
“Yes, I mind. I’ll help.”
Steven looks over at the rest of the team, but they shrug at him.
“Alright, fine. You do exactly what we say. Chris, we’re going to lay you flat on this backboard and get you strapped down, okay?”
“No, no—stop, I—“
“Chris,” Street says, his voice firm, and she finally stops trying to shove everyone’s hands away.
He’s not sure if her eyes have been closed this whole time, if she’s that determined not to see, or if she’s just forgotten she can open them. In case the pressure from the sagging bandage makes it too hard to lift her eyelids, he lifts one hand to fold the edge under itself without disturbing the area of the cut.
Face fixed straight ahead by the brace and attentive hands, she finally opens her eyes and finds his face where he crouches down in front of her left side. He centers himself in her field of vision as best he can without disturbing her leg.
“That’s it, look at me. It’s time to go, okay?”
Her brown eyes are shallow, hazy with distress and pain. Unfocused, they drift up, away from Street’s gaze and over his head.
He looks over his left shoulder to see what’s caught her attention.
Ten feet away, the driver of the truck is visible through the hole where his windshield used to be, the top of his head slumped forward over his steering wheel. Focused on getting Chris out, nobody’s started with his body yet.
Looking back at Chris, Street watches her eyes slowly widen as the scene processes through her concussed head.
“No, hey, don’t you look over there. It’s time to go, Chris, we’ve got to get to the hospital.” He stands, trying to block her view. “Let’s load up. Come on.”
Fresh tears well up and cling to her lashes, threatening to fall. “Is that—“
Street lets go of her hand to swipe his thumbs across her eyes. “Yep. Don’t look at him, Chris. Look at me.”
“On three, Officer,” Steven says, and Chris’s eyes widen again, filled with fear this time.
Street softly shushes her as Steven counts down, and then the four of them swiftly transfer her onto the rigid plastic backboard waiting alongside the car.
As soon as she’s flat on her back, Steven and the male EMT secure her body with a series of wide Velcro straps while the female EMT packs foam padding around her head and fixes that in place. Street and Tan find her hands and each hold one as she lets her eyelids flutter closed against the brightness of the sky above her.
“You two gotta stay here and give your statements,” Hondo tells them, stepping closer.
“What? Hondo—“ Street starts.
“Deac, you stay with Chris. Luca and I will head back to HQ with our perp and get him processed, then we’ll meet you at the hospital.”
Chris’s grip on Street’s hand tightens, and so does her hold on Tan if the straining muscles in her other forearm are any indication. “I want—“ she tries to say, but Tan’s leaning down so she can see him.
“We’ll see you real soon, Chris. Give ‘em hell, yeah?” He rests one hand on her shoulder for a moment, claps his other on her good knee and steps away.
Street takes Tan’s place in Chris’s field of view and clenches his jaw to keep himself composed at the closer sight of her watery eyes and her parted, trembling lips. He swipes his thumb over her knuckles once, twice as he figures out what to say. Nothing’s enough, nothing could ever be enough but he manages, softly, “See? I told you you’re not dying today.” He smiles small. “I’ll get there as soon as I can. Deac’s got you.”
“Street?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you call—can you call my family?”
“Of course. Anything you want me to say?”
“Tell them I’m okay.”
He’s not convinced, and he’s not sure she is either, but it’s a start and he accepts it. With one last, lingering squeeze, he releases her hand and trails his hand up her arm for as long as he can reach her before the medics roll her away.