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It was the night before Thanksgiving and the sun had already sunk behind the horizon hours ago. Work had kept Olivia late, as usual, because sex crimes didn’t stop just because of the holiday.
In fact, during her tenured experience, calls and reports only seemed to increase exponentially during the holidays. She wasn’t entirely sure of the reasoning behind that, and she was too tired to think about it now.
All she knew was that it had been a very long day. However, she made it just a little later than planned to pick Noah up from his friend's house. They had a half day of school and went to his friends afterwards to hang out.
He tossed his backpack haphazardly in the backseat and climbed in next to her.
“Hey Mom!” He grinned at her from the passenger seat as she drove. “Are you getting excited for tomorrow?”
“Of course,” she smiled back. “I already have the groceries we need for the sweet potato casserole being delivered to the apartment as we speak.”
She intended for them to go grocery shopping together when she got off work. But as the sun had set and she was still stuck behind her desk, she quickly realized that wasn’t going to happen and placed a grocery delivery order.
Honestly, the last thing she felt like doing was braving the crowds of people rushing around, grabbing their last-minute items at the store. Christmas Eve and the day before Thanksgiving were days she preferred to avoid stores altogether. Plus she had been nursing a pounding headache since lunchtime and it didn’t seem to be easing up at all.
The streetlights and headlights from passing cars actually seemed to be making it worse, and she was looking forward to getting home and relaxing for a little bit and maybe popping an Excedrin migraine.
“What time are we going over to Uncle Sonny and Aunt Amanda’s?” Noah asked excitedly. He had been looking forward to this all week.
Last year, they had gone to the McCann’s for Thanksgiving, but this year Olivia insisted they stay close to home. She was slammed with work lately, and it just didn’t make sense to spend a whole day travelling out of town for one meal. Noah was disappointed at first, but when Amanda had invited them over his spirits had lifted almost immediately. He enjoyed hanging out with the Rollins-Carisi kids.
“I think we said 11:00, so I can help them get things ready while you kids finish watching the parade on TV,” she smiled, actually thinking about how much she was looking forward to it herself. Also, it was nice not to have to host anyone at their place.
NYC traffic was a nightmare this evening. It seemed many tourists had arrived for the parade and she could tell the streets were a bit more clogged than usual. Finally, they made it home and found their grocery order already dropped off at their front door.
“Mom, can I play video games for a while tonight? Some of my friends wanted to play Fortnite since there’s no school tomorrow.”
“Sure. I’m going to heat up some leftover spaghetti for dinner and get started on making the casserole. I’ll call you when it’s time to eat,” she said, setting the bags on the kitchen island.
Her head was still pounding, and now her neck and shoulders were beginning to ache, but she chalked it up to being tired and a bit overworked.
She started making the casserole. It was a fairly simple recipe that she had made numerous times before so she had it ready to go in the oven in ten minutes.
She popped the Tupperware of leftover spaghetti in the microwave for two minutes, stopping it halfway through to stir.
As she sat next to Noah in the kitchen, the adrenaline of the day finally melting away, she took a few breaths and started to notice that she felt off. Besides the headache she had been fighting all day, her eyes felt too dry, as if she had rubbed them with sandpaper. A chill began to take root and crawl up her spine. She shivered involuntarily, hoping that this wasn’t the beginning of a fever.
“You look tired, Mom,” Noah said. “And you’re really quiet tonight.”
“I’m fine, honey. Just tired. It was a long day at work.”
He nodded his understanding, seemingly satisfied with that answer, and excused himself to his room.
Olivia put the casserole in the refrigerator for tomorrow, finished tidying up the kitchen a bit, and headed to her room.
She showered, dried her hair, applied her skincare- her usual nightly routine. By the time she finished she was exhausted.
She laid down in bed with her Kindle, glasses perched on her nose, thinking she might read for a few minutes before going to sleep. She didn’t make it past the first sentence before she was out.
The first thing she registered when waking up was the sound of Noah knocking on her door, asking if she was up yet.
She glanced at her alarm clock. It read 9:45. She must have forgotten to set an alarm. She never did that, even if it was a weekend and she had nothing to get up for. And she never slept past nine.
The second thing she registered was that she was sick. Not feeling a little off like last night. Now her skin was on fire, but she was freezing at the same time. Her head was swimming, and the room was spinning violently. Her nose was completely blocked. When she opened her mouth to respond to Noah, her voice came out as a croak and then a strangled cough.
“Noah?” She attempted to use her vocal cords again and forced out some sound.
“Mom?” He opened the door to her room and stepped inside.
“Hey,” she croaked.
“You sound horrible. Are you sick?”
“ ‘think I am, baby,” she sighed and coughed again, a deep rattling in her chest.
“Does this mean we can’t go to Thanksgiving?” He looked disappointed, and she felt a pang of guilt in her chest.
“Pretty sure I’m running a fever. I don’t think I’m going anywhere today.”
She hated disappointing her son when he had been looking forward to this so much, but this didn’t seem to be a little bug she could just push her way through.
The room spun again, and she fell back against the pillows, closing her eyes.
“I’ll call Amanda,” she said, rolling over to grab her phone from the nightstand.
Noah stood at the foot of the bed, his eyes wide with worry as he watched her struggle to grab the phone, her hand trembling.
“Here, let me,” he said, scooping the phone out of her unsteady hand before it could crash to the floor.
She dropped her arm onto the bed, her muscles completely spent from the effort of reaching a few inches.
Noah put the phone on speaker, and it rang three times before Amanda picked up.
“Hey Liv, you guys getting ready to head over soon?”
“Aunt Amanda, it’s Noah.”
“Hey bud, what’s going on?”
“Mom’s really sick.”
“Oh no! That’s not good.”
Olivia coughed loudly and muttered, “Sorry, ‘Manda.”
“God Liv, you sound awful.”
“Feel it.” Her voice was wrecked.
“Hey, why don’t I send Sonny to come pick up Noah and he can hang out with us while you rest today?”
“Mom!! Can I!? Please!?”
“I don’t want to be any trouble,” Olivia mumbled. She was barely holding it together, barely lucid enough for this conversation. The idea of going back to sleep and not having to worry about anything else all day was too inviting.
“It’s no trouble at all. You need to rest. Sonny will be there in 20 minutes.”
They ended the call with Amanda telling Liv to rest.
“Go get ready. Take the casserole from the fridge.” It took too much effort to even get those words from her brain to her mouth.
Noah bounded off to his room, and Olivia passed out cold.
The next thing she knew, Noah was by her side again, whispering goodbye to her and she could just make out the shape of Sonny Carisi looming in her bedroom doorway.
“Hey Liv, I’m sorry you’re sick. Call us if you need anything. Seriously. And we’ll save you a plate of food for when you’re feeling up to it.”
She nodded, or at least attempted to, but she wasn’t sure if her head actually moved. Then they were gone, leaving her in the solitude of her bed and a coma-like sleep.
—------------
Noah and Sonny arrived at the somewhat chaotic but wonderfully smelling Carisi home.
“How’s Liv?” Amanda asked Sonny as he came into the kitchen to check on the turkey. Noah settled on the couch to watch TV in the living room.
“Honestly, she looked terrible,” he said. “Barely coherent.”
“I don’t like that at all,” she said, frowning. “And I don’t love the idea of her being alone all day either.”
“Yeah, I don’t either, but unfortunately we’ve got a table full of mouths to feed here. Not much we can do,” Sonny shrugged.
“I know something,” she said, reaching for her phone.
She scrolled through her contacts before landing on the name she was looking for and typed a quick text.
Hey, don’t know what your Thanksgiving plans are but I thought you might want to know Liv is at home super sick. We have Noah over here, but if you have time you might want to check on her.
His response came back less than 20 seconds later:
On it. Thanks for the heads up.
Amanda shook her head.
“She’s going to kill me,” she said with a smirk.
—----------------------
Elliot Stabler made a quick stop at Duane Reade, walking up and down the cold and flu aisles. He piled a random assortment of necessities in his basket and made his way to the checkout.
He had already texted his kids that something important had come up and he wasn’t going to make it to their Thanksgiving meal, promising that he would stop by to see them all at some point tomorrow.
He knew Randall would probably give him crap for “flaking out” on the holiday, but he knew he couldn’t enjoy the holiday with his family knowing Olivia was home alone sick in bed.
He wasn’t entirely sure what he would be walking into. Amanda hadn’t been very specific in her text. All he knew for sure was that he wanted to be there for Olivia, and that it had to be pretty bad for her to be staying in bed all day instead of trying to pretend she was fine.
He thought back to the many times Cragen had to practically force her out of the squad room as she protested that she was “fine” and could still work despite being sick enough that she could barely stand up straight.
But that was twenty years ago and a lot has changed since then. Maybe she was older and wiser now. Or maybe she was really, really sick.
Elliot nodded a polite hello to the doorman of her building as he boarded the elevator and headed up to her floor. He had been visiting her apartment more often these days, so the two men were somewhat familiar with each other.
He rapped his knuckles against her front door a few times, waiting a few minutes for a response, but when none came, he decided to use the spare key she had given him a while back. For emergencies only, she threatened.
He assumed that this qualified.
He carried the drugstore bag through the apartment. Seeing no signs of her in the kitchen or living room, he headed down the back hallway to her bedroom.
“Liv,” he called out cautiously. He didn’t want to turn the corner to her pointing a gun at him if she got startled by hearing someone in the apartment.
“Liv, it’s me,” he said through the half-closed door.
“El?” she croaked.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
“Nnnghh” she moaned. It wasn’t really a yes or a no, but he took it as an affirmative to enter.
“What-” she coughed. She wanted to ask what he was doing here, but her brain couldn’t seem to form the words.
“Amanda texted me, said you were really sick.”
He looked her up and down—the apples of her cheeks were flushed with what he assumed was fever, but the rest of her face was deathly pale. Her hair was stuck to her clammy forehead, and her eyes squinted against the sunlight coming in through the slats of her window blinds.
“You look like you feel terrible,” he surmised.
“I do,” she said, so softly that he almost didn’t hear her.
“I’m sorry. I’m sure this wasn’t the Thanksgiving you were envisioning.”
“Dope,” she said, her nose so stuffed that her N’s sounded like D’s.
He set the pharmacy bags down at the foot of her bed and walked around to where she was lying.
“You’re burning up,” he said, pressing the back of his hand against her forehead.
“Thermometer in your bathroom?”
“Mmm,” she moaned. He took it as a yes and disappeared into the bathroom.
He found a temporal forehead thermometer in her medicine cabinet and returned to her bedside.
The numbers flashed red: 103.4.
“Jesus, Liv, that’s too high. Have you taken anything?”
She shook her head no.
“Ok let’s get some meds going.”
He dumped the bag next to her and a myriad of medication boxes and bottles tumbled out. Tylenol, Advil, NyQuil, Mucinex, Pepto-Bismol, Imodium, Sudafed.
“I might have bought one of everything they had. I wasn’t sure what we were dealing with,” he laughed at himself.
She half-laughed and half-coughed.
She pointed in the direction of the NyQuil box.
“This one,” she said. “Not those,” she said, motioning weakly toward the Pepto and Imodium.
“Ok, good to know. Not a stomach thing.”
It wasn’t the first time one of them had brought Pepto or Imodium for the other. He recalled an overnight stakeout and a nasty stomach bug once in 2001. They passed a bottle of Pepto back and forth across the squad car all night.
He retrieved a glass of water from the kitchen and helped her sit up. She tried to take the glass from him, but she had no strength in her arms whatsoever. He was sure she would drop the glass if he handed it over.
“Here, let me help,” he said. She felt like a five-year-old as he took the pill out of the foil packet and put it on her tongue, then tipped the glass up to her mouth so she could swallow it down.
“Thangs,” she murmured stuffily, then broke out in a harsh, wet cough.
“Easy,” he said, rubbing her back gently. “Breathe.”
Her nose had started running from the coughing fit but was also still completely blocked.
“Cad’t breathe,” she muttered, gesturing at her nose.
“Here.” He grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on her nightstand and again, she tried to use her arm to reach out and take them from his hand, but missed completely. Her arm felt like a foreign limb, like jelly, falling back down to her side with a heavy thud on the mattress.
“It’s ok, I got it.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and shook her head no, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.
“Gross,” she rasped, her voice barely a whisper.
“Liv, you really need to blow your nose, and your arms don’t seem to be working. I promise I’ll never mention this ever again,” he assured.
Her eyes softened, and she finally nodded yes, only because she really couldn’t breathe, and she knew she’d feel at least marginally better if she could at least blow her nose.
He brought the tissues up to her nose, and she blew - gently at first, then a little more forcefully. When she was done, he tossed the tissues into the little trash can by the bed and she fell back against the pillows.
Her eyes closed immediately and she fell asleep.
Elliot sat in the chair across the room and propped his feet up on the ottoman, listening to the sounds of her congested breathing.
Rollins wasn’t kidding when she said Liv was really sick, he thought. This was somehow worse than he had imagined.
But he knew one thing for certain. He wasn’t leaving until she was back on her feet.
She drifted in and out of consciousness for the next few hours, with a steady fever around 103. He checked it every hour.
At one point, she suddenly shot straight up and tried to swing her legs to the side of the bed.
“Cragen needs to see us in his office right away.”
He crossed the room and laid his hand against her burning forehead.
“No, Liv, it’s ok,” he soothed and coaxed her to lay back down. “It’s ok. No work today, you’re sick.” He didn’t mention that Cragen was gone.
He took her temperature again, and it was creeping up to 103.6. She was boiling, and he was starting to get a little worried. The fever was one thing but she was definitely delirious now.
He found a washcloth in her bathroom, wet it with tepid water, and laid it across her forehead.
She sighed and her body relaxed slightly.
When she blinked awake around two in the afternoon, more lucid but still running a fever, she was surprised to find him still there.
“Not going anywhere, Liv. I’m not leaving you alone,” he reassured her softly.
“Good,” she mumbled before tumbling back into more fever dreams.
At three, she was sweating through her pajama top. He checked her temperature again and was relieved to find it was going down some. The fever dreams and delirium seemed to have backed off.
At four, her phone buzzed loudly on her nightstand. Messages from Noah.
She was awake, seeming a lot more lucid than before, but still didn’t have the energy to reach for her phone. She just looked at it, then back to Elliot.
Elliot crossed the room to grab it for her. He knew her passcode, the same one she used back in the day for her computer- her mom’s birthday.
He unlocked it for her and settled next to her on the bed so she could see.
A selfie of Noah wearing a turkey hat, a picture of him and Jessie, and one of his dinner plate, loaded with food.
Elliot turned to look at her expecting to see her smiling at pictures of her kid, but instead, her face crumpled as she burst into tears.
Olivia wasn’t normally a ‘burst into tears’ type person; they both knew that. Not that she didn’t cry, of course she did. You couldn’t do what she did day in and day out at SVU for 27 years and not get emotional from time to time. But she had learned over the years to keep her emotions in check. She was pretty good at it after all these years.
But today - Thanksgiving - being away from her kid, being so sick all had her feeling very emotional.
“It’s not fair,” she cried, sucking in a shuddering breath as hot tears fell onto her cheeks.
“I know, you’re right, it’s not fair.” He pulled her against his chest and let her tears soak into his t-shirt.
“I already miss so much because of work. Now I have to miss a holiday with him. He deserves a better mom, who doesn’t work late all the time and doesn’t get sick and miss holidays with him. We only have a few of those left before he’s grown and out of the house,” she rambled.
He knew the fever left her with far less of a filter than usual. He didn’t mind.
“Liv, you’re an amazing mom. Do you know how I know that?”
She shook her head no.
“Becuase I’ve seen it. Because I’ve seen how much you love that kid and how much he loves you. I see you beat yourself up about missing things and about being present for him. And that’s a mom who cares very much about her son. And you cannot beat yourself up over getting sick because that is something that’s out of your control. People get sick. Noah will understand that, I promise you. He knows you love him. He’s having a good time and he’s happy - look at those photos.”
He picked up the phone again and let her look at her sweet son’s smiling face.
“I know this isn’t the Thanksgiving you were hoping for with Noah, but it’s going to be ok.”
She smiled a bit, then tried to sniffle which wasn’t possible through her blocked nose and instead started coughing, directly into his chest. She didn’t have the strength to try to move.
“I’m sorry, El,” she cried again.
“Don’t you dare apologize,” he said.
“Here I am coughing and snotting all over you. I’m so gross. And you’re stuck here taking care of me when you should be with your family today.” She closed her eyes and tried to breathe.
“Liv, look at me.” He tilted her chin up and she opened her eyes. They were shining with both fever and more unshed tears.
“There is no other place on this entire planet that I’d rather be right now…” He trailed off. There was so much more he wanted to say, but he didn’t know if now was the time. But, if she was being completely unfiltered with him then he knew he should be too, so he continued on.
“I know there was a long time when I wasn’t there for you. A lot that I missed. I don’t think you’ll ever know how much I truly regret that. And I know I’ll never be able to make it up to you. I know that.” He took in a shuddering breath and continued on. “But I am here now. I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. And I’m going to keep being here and keep trying until you can trust me again. I promise you that. And for the record, you could never be gross to me.”
He smiled down at her.
“I do trust you,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. “I trust you,” she repeated, a little louder and more forceful this time. As forceful as her weak voice could be right now.
Another tear slipped out of the corner of her eye, trailing down her cheek.
“I know it’s taken both of us a long time to get here. But I trust you. With my life, with my son’s life…with my heart. Do you think I’d honestly let you see me like this if I didn’t?” She waved a hand around her face and they both laughed a little.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, suddenly serious.
She smiled and nestled her head against his chest. He breathed in the scent of her shampoo - mint and lavender - and placed a gentle kiss to the top of her head. They sat like that, completely still for a few minutes.
“I hate to ruind the moment, but I really deed to blow my nose,” she said stuffily.
“I got it,” he said, reaching for the tissues again and bringing them to her face so she could blow.
“What would I do without you?” she laughed when she was done.
“Definitely not be able to breathe, that’s for sure,” he chuckled.
He tucked her head back down to his chest again and stroked her hair.
“I’m so tired, El.”
“Sleep. I’ve got you. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
There was more he wanted to say. More they both wanted to say.
‘I love you’s’ that they both felt.
But they would save those confessions for another time. A time when neither of them was sick or hurt. When they could say them freely and really savor the moment.
For now, this was all they needed.