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Sometimes Melinda wishes she had been shot in the arm instead. Not that she wishes she had been shot at all, of course, but if she had to have been shot, the arm would have been better.
A collapsed lung is no joke, and the aftermath is almost as bad as being shot in the first place. A bullet to the arm would have just meant a sling for a few weeks and some physical therapy. A bullet to the lung means getting out of breath after taking three steps. Not being able to lie down flat to sleep through the night. Talking in short sentences to avoid struggling for air. Recovery is a bitch. A process, maybe. But a bitch for sure.
Summer is normally her favorite time of year, but the heat and humidity make the air thicker and slower, and trying to take a deep breath of it leaves her coughing and lightheaded. Her husband hovers and her daughter worries, and it’s fine for a little while, but eventually she can’t stand the sight of the concern in their faces anymore, and she tells them in no uncertain terms that they are to resume life as normal. She isn’t dead yet, and she’s not planning on that changing any time soon.
So her husband goes back to work and their daughter goes to camp. It’s a long, slow start to the summer, but by late June, she’s feeling more sure of her ability to just breathe. She can walk around the house without getting winded, talk to her family at a normal volume, and play fetch with Petey. She’s healing, and not for the first time, she’s amazed by the body’s ability to fix itself.
It’s one morning at the end of June that she steps outside to pick up the newspaper from the front porch. Tom normally sets it on the table in the entryway when he leaves for work, but he headed out early today and must have beat the paperboy on his route. As she’s bending down slowly to pick it up, her lungs screaming just a little in protest, she hears the sound of tires on gravel and looks up to see a familiar sedan pulling into her driveway.
A few seconds later, Elliot- in a damn blazer and tie even in this humidity- gets out of the car, charming smile on his face as he tucks a manila folder into his jacket and quickly climbs the three steps to her front porch.
“Well, detective, isn’t this a surprise?” Melinda says in greeting, allowing him to swoop in and scoop the paper up for her, lungs relaxing in gratitude.
“Doc,” he replies in kind, handing her the paper. “I would have brought flowers, but I know you don’t like them.”
That’s true, she doesn’t. They remind her of funerals. She raises an eyebrow and taps his arm with the end of the rolled up paper. “Good memory. You should think about a career in law enforcement. Come on in.” She opens the screen door and leads him inside, through the living room to the kitchen. Petey lifts his head from his dog bed in the corner, but upon sensing no danger, settles back down after a moment.
“Tom here?” Elliot asks as he follows her through the house.
“No, he’s at work,” she answers as she tosses the paper on the island. “He left early today, otherwise you probably would have caught him.”
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever asked what he does.”
Melinda turns around and leans against the counter, crossing her arms. “He’s a hospice nurse.”
There’s a beat, and then Elliot’s eyebrows raise, predictably, and he smirks. “What, did you guys meet at a death convention?”
“Save your breath, detective, I’ve heard it all before,” Melinda says with a dry smile. “And the answer is no. We met in college, like normal people.”
“College of Death, maybe,” Elliot mutters, leaning against the edge of the island. He looks her up and down. “So. Still standing, I see.”
She crosses one ankle over the other. “Standing, yes. Walking, running, and yelling are all still a work in progress.”
“You’ll get there,” he replies. “Takes time.”
Melinda nods, and squints a bit as she studies his face. He’s not making any particular expression, but there’s an air of… “offness” about him. Like someone has taken a piece of his puzzle and turned it the wrong way round. That’s when she realizes something is missing.
“Where’s your better half?”
The smile that comes to his face is one of forced nonchalance. “Working a case with Fin.”
Well, that’s certainly nothing new or different, but the twinge of tension in his voice catches Melinda’s attention. If there’s one thing Elliot hates to do, it’s share Olivia. Fin and Munch are normally the exceptions to that rule, so why he seems frustrated by this particular instance, she can’t say. She wants to ask, but doubts she’d get anywhere. For two people who care about one another as much as Elliot and Olivia do, they sure don’t like talking about each other. Still, she’s curious.
“Something happen that I should know about?” she asks, eyeing his face carefully. It can be hard to keep up with the dynamic between Benson and Stabler. One week they’re like magnets refusing to touch, another they’re stuck like glue. Sometimes they can barely look at each other. Other times they can only look at each other. It depends on the case, and the victim, and the way the fucking wind blows. She wonders if they’re in the midst of a hurricane now.
Elliot brushes her question off with a shrug and a sniff. “Cap’s just trying out different pairings for the summer, that’s all.”
Melinda doesn’t believe him, and she’s sure her face clearly conveys that message, but she just raises an eyebrow at him and lets it drop. Elliot Stabler is a man of few words, and she’s lucky she got as many out of him as she did. She can probably get the scoop from Fin or Munch later.
“So, is there a reason you decided to stop by, or did you just want to grace me with your sunny disposition?” she asks, pushing off from the counter to lean against the island in front of her.
He reaches into his jacket and pulls out the manila folder he had tucked in earlier. “I know you’re technically on leave-“
She’s reaching for the file before he can finish his sentence. It’s been weeks since she’s looked at x-rays that weren’t her own, and just the thought of analyzing a case has her flipping open the file with a vigor she hasn’t felt since the shooting. (Maybe this is why Tom is always telling her she needs a better work-life balance.)
“What’s the case?” she asks, spreading out some of the charts and images onto the island.
“William Hanks. Found dead yesterday afternoon. Ligature mark around the neck,” Elliot explains as he leans forward on his crossed arms. “The temp M.E. ruled it a suicide.”
“And you disagree?” Melinda prompts, quickly reading the toxicology report. No drugs, but a BAC of .25, more than three times the legal limit. The pictures of the ligature mark are at the bottom of the pile, but she pulls those out next, holding one up for better light.
“Yeah,” Elliot sighs. “This guy had just come forward about being abused by his karate instructor as a kid. He was upset, but he wasn’t suicidal. He wanted to get justice for what happened. And then the next day his landlord finds him like that.” He taps his finger on a picture of the body at the crime scene. “It’s too much of a coincidence for me.”
“And what did this temp M.E. have to say about your doubts?” Melinda asks as she picks up the typed report. She skims the other doctor’s sloppy handwriting and frowns. It’s not… bad, per se. It’s fine. Solid work. But not up to her personal standards. Or Elliot’s, evidently.
“He told me that if I was so sure of his mistakes that I’m more than welcome to perform another autopsy myself,” Elliot answers with an indulging grin. “Figured it’d be easier to just get a second opinion.”
She returns his humoring look with one of her own. “Well, you’re in luck, detective. I conveniently have plenty of time on my hands to give you one. Pull up a chair.”
Two hours and many questions later, and Melinda can say with confidence that William Hanks did not die by suicide. That high of a BAC combined with his slim stature would have left him uncoordinated and disoriented, nowhere near possessing the necessary dexterity and focus required to tie the type of knots found in the rope around his neck. And speaking of the rope, the weave pattern on the one found at the crime scene does not match the markings pictured on the victim’s neck. Someone strangled Mr. Hanks, and then staged the scene. She’s sure of it, and she says so to Elliot as she gathers all the evidence back into a neat pile.
“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear,” he says triumphantly, tucking the file back into his jacket. “Thanks, doc. I’ll bring you a donut from Giuseppe’s next time I stop by.”
“Frosted, no sprinkles.”
“You got it.”
His phone rings just then, and the screen lights up just long enough that Melinda can see the name “OLIVIA” on the caller ID before he picks it up off the table. He looks at the screen for a long moment before quickly clicking the button on the side to silence the ringer and shoving it into his pocket.
Ah, so it is one of those times. Where they don’t even like to think about each other for risk of being thrown completely off balance. It’s only been a few weeks since the shooting, and at that time, Elliot and Olivia had seemed so solid. So comfortable. So sure of each other. Melinda studies Elliot’s face and wonders what could have happened between then and now to cause that line of tension in his shoulders at just the sight of Olivia’s name.
“Everything okay?” she ventures, though she knows it’s in vain to ask.
“Yeah, just Benson,” he says dismissively, and uh oh. Last names. “Nothing to worry about.”
Melinda doubts that, but she doesn’t press for more. Elliot never responds well to any form of interrogation, friendly or otherwise. So she lets it drop and walks him to the door, leaning against the frame as he tells her that they all miss her and can’t wait for her to get back and to let him know if there’s anything he can do to help. Then he squeezes her arm affectionately and is gone.
Melinda lets Petey out, tosses Alyssa’s flip flops into the mudroom, and then lays down on the couch and sleeps until Tom calls home on his lunch break.
She finds out the heart of the issue a week or so later when Munch and Fin drop by together one Saturday afternoon in early July. They bring workplace gossip and a lasagna from Jo with them.
“It was bad,” Munch says as he stirs sugar into his coffee. “Worst fight I’ve ever seen them get in.”
“Liv was two seconds from knocking Stabler’s head clean off his shoulders before Cragen stepped in,” Fin adds around a bite of cookie. “Right in the middle of the squadroom, too.”
“They always do know how to make a scene,” Melinda murmurs, lifting her mug to her lips. “What started it this time?”
“We’d been looking into this guy for a string of rapes going back almost a decade,” Munch explains. “His MO was using a date rape drug so his victims couldn’t remember what happened. He has a daughter in her thirties who very much fits the same profile as his victims. Elliot wanted to ask her if she remembered anything about possibly being assaulted. Liv didn’t want to ask her because she didn’t want to turn her into a victim. Elliot talked to the girl anyway.”
“Behind Liv’s back,” Fin throws in.
Melinda shakes her head. “That never works out for him.”
“Sure, and you’d think after more than a decade, he would know that by now,” Munch says. “Turns out he was right this time though. The girl did start to remember some things after he talked to her. She must’ve called Liv about it because Liv came storming into the squadroom, absolutely furious, and they just started going at it. Yelling, shouting things at each other, and there were clearly other things going on that we didn’t know about, but it got to the point where Liv asked Elliot how he expects the daughter to ever recover from knowing her father is a sick bastard, and Elliot said-“
“He said, ‘I don’t know, maybe you can give her some advice,’” Fin recites, eyebrows raised.
Melinda’s brows go up in response. “He said that?”
Fin nods. “Yeah, and I’m pretty sure Liv would’ve decked him right then and there if Cragen hadn’t broken it up.”
She takes a sip of her coffee and savors how the heat spreads through her chest and down her lungs. “She should have punched him for that one. He deserved it.”
“Yeah, you’re telling us,” Munch agrees as he dunks a biscotti into his mug. “He seems contrite enough to me, but you know they’re both so stubborn. They’re not just going to come right out and apologize.”
Melinda hums in agreement and takes another slow sip of coffee. “So that’s how you got stuck partnering with a brooding Stabler and a moody Benson for the summer, huh?”
“Yeah, lucky us,” Fin grumbles, though there’s no real frustration in it.
“They’ll work it out and be attached at the hip again by August, you’ll see,” Munch says dismissively, as if it’s already a foregone conclusion that Elliot and Olivia will find their way back to each other. It’s probably true, Melinda supposes. The two of them can’t seem to go without each other for long.
Tom and Alyssa get home from the store just then, and the conversation goes unfinished as Munch and Fin offer to help put the groceries away. Melinda insists they don’t need to help, but they end up filling the fridge anyway, putting things in the right places based on her instructions. They leave not long after that, with kisses pressed to cheeks and friendly smiles and assurances that the next few weeks will fly by, and she’ll be back in scrubs in no time. Tom asks what she wants for dinner and she mentions the lasagna from Jo in the freezer.
It’s mid-August by the time Olivia finally comes over. Melinda had been wondering whether she was staying away because the memory of what happened in the morgue was weighing on her and making her feel guilty, or responsible, or whatever other self-loathing emotion Olivia’s brain was sure to cook up. She hadn’t heard much from her over the summer aside from a little check-in here and there, and Melinda had been starting to wonder whether there was going to be some weird distance between them now.
But then there she is, standing on the front porch with a plate of cookies in her hands, a manila folder under her arm, and a tentative but warm smile on her face.
Melinda holds open the screen door and gives her a tight hug in the doorway. “It’s good to see you, Liv,” she says, reassuring, as she shuts the door against the crescendoing symphony of cicadas in August. “I was beginning to worry about you.”
“Worry about me?” Olivia echoes in surprise. “I think I’m supposed to be the one worrying about you.”
“True, but I know how you can get stuck in your own head, especially after something like this.” She gestures vaguely toward her healing abdomen. “Wasn’t sure if I’d have to pull you out of it.”
Olivia looks away and then back again, her uncertain smile the same one she always gets when someone expresses concern for her, like she doesn’t know what to do with other people’s care for her. Rather than acknowledge it, she holds up the plate of cookies in her hands. “I brought some treats. I was going to try to make them from scratch, but I figured you wouldn’t want food poisoning on top of a gunshot wound. So Betty Crocker carried most of the weight.”
Melinda chuckles and takes the plate with a thank you. “It’s a beautiful day, and Tom finally put together the new rocking chairs for the patio. Want to sit out back for a bit?”
Olivia agrees so Melinda leads her through the house to the glass sliding door in the kitchen. She pulls it open and exhales in relief when she doesn’t feel a tug in her lungs from the exertion. As long and slow as the summer has been, it finally seems to be paying off. She and Alyssa went for a hike the other day and she only had to take a break once to catch her breath. She was singing along to the radio in the car last weekend and didn’t even realize she wasn’t gasping for air in between verses until the song was almost over. Her doctor has said all along that she was making great progress, and she’s finally starting to feel like it.
“So, do you have a return date yet?” Olivia asks as she sits down in one of the rocking chairs. She puts the manila folder on the small table between the chairs.
“I think the Tuesday after Labor Day,” Melinda answers, setting the plate of cookies next to the folder and taking a seat. “Tom wants me to wait until October, but I don’t think I can sit around this house for that much longer. I’m going stir crazy.”
“Well, we will certainly take you back as soon as you’re ready,” Olivia replies. “I don’t know how we’ve managed this long without you.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about the troubles you’ve had with the temp M.E.”
Olivia rolls her eyes with a laugh. “I wouldn’t say I’ve had trouble with him, so much as some other people have.”
“Fin told me that he mixed up blood samples so badly it nearly got a case thrown out,” Melinda says. “And that Elliot got so mad he almost threw a punch but then just knocked over a stack of lab reports instead.”
Olivia’s smile goes sour around the edges at the mention of her partner. She tries to recover by unwrapping the plate of cookies, but her face is so open Melinda reads it like this morning’s newspaper.
“I can’t help but notice he’s not with you,” Melinda starts nonchalantly, playing dumb as she watches Olivia select a cookie. “And you weren’t with him when he came to visit a few weeks ago.” Olivia takes a quick bite, avoiding Melinda’s eyes as she looks out at the backyard, bathed in the bright afternoon sun. “What did he do this time?”
Olivia chews slowly, eyes dropping to the ground as she swallows. “It’s more what he didn’t do, I guess,” she says, expression growing weary. She sets the rest of her cookie on the edge of the table and looks up. “Has anyone ever… asked you about us? About Elliot and me?”
Melinda nods carefully. She doesn’t need to elaborate on exactly what people ask about. Spend even a short amount of time in the one-six and you’ll hear the whispers about Benson and Stabler, about just what people seem to think they get up to when no one else is around. Melinda herself has not been immune to wondering about their closeness, their unfailing loyalty to each other, but she knows better. She knows they’ve never crossed that line because if they had, they wouldn’t be able to hide it. They’re both terrible at concealing what they feel for each other.
“Occasionally,” she admits, watching as resigned acceptance crosses Olivia’s face. “Just the usual office gossip.”
“And what do you tell people when they ask?”
Melinda shrugs. “I tell them that it’s none of my business, but that I don’t think either of you would ever do anything to put the job or your partnership at risk.” She turns her head and holds Olivia’s gaze. “And I do believe that.”
“Feels like you’re the only one who does,” she mumbles. Olivia looks back out at the backyard. “You know what Elliot says when they ask him?” she asks, annoyance and frustration piercing her tone.
“What?”
“He tells people his sex life is none of their business.”
Melinda raises her eyebrows. “That’s not… the best answer-”
“Are you kidding? It’s the worst answer,” Olivia exclaims. “It basically implies we have a sex life together. And he’s been using that answer for years. I wanted to strangle him when I found out.”
“I don’t blame you,” Melinda agrees. “I’m assuming he didn’t see what was wrong with it?”
“Of course not! He said it’s just telling people to mind their own business, and I told him he’s a fucking idiot.” She shakes her head. “No wonder people still don’t believe me when I deny it.”
Melinda nods. “I take it that didn’t exactly help matters when he brought up your father in the middle of an argument?”
Olivia grimaces. “You heard about that?”
“Munch and Fin told me.”
She sighs and rubs a thumb across her eyebrow. “Yeah, not his finest moment. Or mine. I almost blacked out, I was so mad at him.”
“I think you were entitled to that anger,” Melinda says. “He of all people would know how much saying that would hurt you. Has he apologized?”
Olivia shakes her head. “No, but I haven’t really given him the opportunity. We finished out that case and then Cragen split us up. I haven’t exactly extended an olive branch.” She sighs. “He just… he knows how to get under my skin. And I know I do the same to him, but I don’t know why it’s so frustrating when he does it.
Melinda certainly has an idea, and she’s sure the rest of the squad does too, but now doesn’t seem to be the best time to broach that topic. So instead she nods and reaches for a cookie. “Well, you two will work it out,” she says. “You always do.”
Olivia picks her cookie back up. “I guess,” she says with a sigh, staying quiet for a long minute as she takes a bite and stares off into the distance.
Melinda chews her own bite and watches as Olivia ruminates. Sometimes she thinks Olivia would be better off telling Stabler exactly where he can shove it and then get a new partner altogether. Someone who doesn’t vex her so much. Someone who just does the job, has her back, and gets their paperwork in on time. Someone who doesn’t take up as much of her emotional energy.
But vexation or not, she’s seen the way they are when they’re apart. Either by choice or by circumstance, when one is without the other, there is a palpable difference in their mood, their quality of work, their focus. They honestly might be more distracted by not being together than they are when they’re together but fighting. She wonders if that’s why Cragen has put up with it all these years. That he knows their success as a unit and a department is tangled into the messy web of codependency his two best detectives have woven. Better to play couples counselor every so often than risk the downfall of the whole team.
After a minute or two of silence, Melinda taps a finger on the manilla folder sitting next to the cookie plate. “Did you need my help with something?”
Olivia nods and rubs her hands together, shaking off cookie crumbs. “Yes. I was hoping you could take a look at some autopsy reports and see if you notice anything.”
They talk shop for the next hour as Olivia explains her theory of two perps- one serial killer and one copycat. It has some weight to it, Melinda agrees as she compares and contrasts the autopsy reports from the different victims. She’ll need more than just a few similarities in the victims’ injuries to prove her case, but it’s definitely a start. Talk of the case then turns into other topics and as they share a belly laugh about a particularly frisky elderly patient of Tom’s, Melinda feels a swell of gratitude for both her friend sitting beside her and the painless way she can catch her breath in between bouts of laughter.
She walks Olivia to the door some time later, and as she watches her get into the sedan and pull out of the driveway, she takes a long, slow breath. In a few weeks, she’ll be back at work and certainly by then, the frost between Benson and Stabler will have thawed. Summer is almost over, and she has a feeling the temperature and the tension will both be breaking soon.
The Tuesday after Labor Day, Melinda is walking into the morgue with a pep in her step that hasn’t been there since the 90s. She’s earlier than usual, so she’s greeted by an empty room and the low hum of the fluorescent lights. As she crosses the room, she pauses, just briefly, at the spot she was standing when the bullet pierced her lung all those weeks ago. There’s no stain on the tile, no bullet hole in the wall, no sign at all that her life had very nearly been cut short right there on the linoleum floor. Her fingers flutter involuntarily up to the spot where she now bears a scar, a stretched and faded reminder of that day in May. Her pulse picks up the slightest bit at the memory, so she takes one, two, three slow breaths, counting as she inhales and exhales. Her heart rate slows, and she straightens her back as she walks with purpose toward her office.
Later that day, as she’s prepping her tools to begin her first autopsy in months, she sees one, then two familiar faces enter her morgue.
“Welcome back,” Olivia says with a smile, squeezing her shoulder affectionately.
“Good to have you back, doc,” Elliot echoes, standing behind his partner. “Sorry to spring a case on you so soon.”
“It’s good to be back, and I don’t actually think you’re that sorry,” Melinda teases with a wry smile as she reaches for her latex gloves.
“Since it means I don’t have to physically intimidate the temp M.E. anymore, I guess you’re right,” Elliot says, drawing a smirk from Olivia.
Melinda watches them out of the corner of her eye as she pulls on her gloves. Gone is the tension from both their faces, replaced with a relaxed ease that is more typical when the two of them are together. So her lung wasn’t the only thing that repaired itself this summer after all. She can only imagine the relief Cragan, Munch, and Fin must feel knowing all is right in the world of Benson and Stabler again.
Elliot gives Olivia a look and she returns it, fleeting and private, a brief moment of understanding and connection. As is so often the case when they are together, Melinda suddenly feels out of place, like an intruder or a third wheel, and she clears her throat to dispel her own awkwardness. “Well, if you have a problem with any of my reports, an email telling me so will suffice,” she says with a sardonic look, snapping the bottom of her glove into place.
Elliot pulls his gaze away from his partner and laughs. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
They leave her to it then, and Melinda shakes her head ever so slightly as she watches them walk away, matching each other step for step. This summer wasn’t their first spat and it certainly won’t be the last, but they’ve found their way back to each other again, and that seems to be enough for both of them.
Melinda looks down at the body on her table. It was a brutal murder- dozens of stab wounds, strangulation marks around the neck, and an index finger chopped off. She has a lot to do. She turns on the overhead light, takes a deep, painless breath, and gets to work.