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He should’ve gone with her.
Tim knew it this morning, and he knows it now, barreling down the freeway towards the far end of Chatsworth, growling out a curse as the sea of cars parts far too slowly for him.
More calls come in over the radio, splitting his attention from the roadway. Some are clear from officers responding to his code, while some are garbled from officers on scene. Harper gives as much of a sitrep as she can, and Nolan manages to notify dispatch that his ride-along is in no immediate danger.
Their communications are minor reliefs, and background noise at best, because the one person he’s racing towards hasn’t radioed in. Two tours abroad and seventeen years on the force have honed the intuition he felt this morning, that sixth sense of knowing the world is about to go to shit. He had hoped that whatever cosmic, unseen force would leave Lucy alone.
Hearing the harrowing screams in the background of the calls, he berates himself for not fighting harder to ride with her. Yes, he had meetings and yes, he would catch flack from the brass when they found out why he missed them. But he wouldn’t be driving halfway across the city to get to her.
He would already be there.
He would know she was okay, because he would have either kept her safe or died trying. When it came to her, he wouldn’t accept any other option.
Static bursts across the radio, but it’s only Penn requesting multiple RAs to the scene to assess the cleanup crew. He tries telling himself that he hasn’t heard from Lucy because she and Juarez went into the building and the rest of his officers have managed to make it outside.
He tries telling himself a lot of things on the twenty-five mile drive up to Westview.
“Control,” Juarez’s voice finally comes across the channel.
He grips the steering wheel to the point of pain, bracing himself, begging for a code four or at least a false alarm. “This—adam three-hundred bee, still searching—’ll radio when located.”
It’s not the best news, but it’s not the absolute worst. And it’s a good sign that Juarez is able to get a message out, as broken as it is.
He eagerly waits for Lucy to chime in and focuses back on the road. The van in front of him is too slow at merging out of his way, so Tim veers to the left and rides the shoulder up. A quarter-mile behind him are the lights from his backup, weaving in and out of traffic at a safe and efficient pace.
A minute passes. Then another.
Still no word from Lucy— because despite the interference, now damn-near constant with more radio chatter, he would know her voice anywhere. From the pleased little hums she makes when he makes her coffee just right, to the silly song she sings to Kojo about the cost of a doggie in a window, to her incensed rants at the TV when the contestant they both hate is given another chance.
It’s hard to believe there was a time he cherished her silence from the shop’s passenger seat. Even back then, though, she still made sure he heard her in the downtime he spent at home with those books on tape, personalized with her stumble over a surname or her occasional chide remark.
He’s kept the old mp3 player safely tucked away in his nightstand all these years. For a time — for far too long, really — he used it as a crutch during his weakest moments. Late at night, when the house was still and silent, and the space in bed beside him too cold, too wide, too empty. He slipped the earbuds in and clicked play, then drifted off as his subconscious formed a dream around her voice. In them, she was right there beside him: in bed, stretched out on the patio lounger, or curled up on the couch, as if he hadn’t pulled the plug on their future.
Now, all he needs is to hear her voice again.
Westview’s campus suddenly appears through the windshield; with a sudden clarity, he realizes can’t recall the last ten minutes or the route he took from the freeway to get here.
He should care, but he doesn’t.
The brakes grind under his foot as the shop lurches to a stop at the curb. He slams the door shut on reflex, his body running on muscle memory while his mind sputters and whirs. Seeing Harper, Nolan, and Penn holding their own against a horde of hazmat suits should be a promising sight.
It is, but only because he has a bigger problem.
“Where’s Lucy?” he demands to know. They turn their worn faces towards him as he approaches.
“We don’t know,” Penn says with a shake of his head. “We never even saw ‘em.”
With more officers pouring on scene to help, Tim doesn’t bother to stop and instead heads straight for the closest building. Trying his luck, he pulls out his radio and hails both of his missing officers.
A burst of static sounds across the frequency, followed shortly by: “Juarez here, sir. I’m still search— ‘estwick ‘ilding for Sergeant Chen. Be advi—zombies still on scene.”
“Understood,” he radios back, sparing a quick glance to the sign above his head. “I’m entering the Prestwick building now. Report back when you find her.”
Readying his weapon, Tim pushes open the double doors. An open stairwell door to his immediate left interests him, but he reasons that Lucy wouldn’t go higher if pursued. With such tight turns in a dark, enclosed space, the lack of sight lines poses too great of a risk. And the higher she goes, the greater the chance of her getting pinned down upstairs, away from an exit.
So, he pushes on, clearing room after room, while his radio stays silent at his hip. He stumbles upon the children’s ward, obvious by the garish circus tent mural painted on the wall. The powder blue elephants and the buttery yellow lions are cracked and peeling, the pastel shades of the fifties faded from neglect. Peeking around the circus tent’s edge is a clown, though Tim can only make out a red nose, a wide, splitting grin, and long, white fingers.
Rusted cribs line the space, filled with toy dolls in various states of decay. When he turns to clear the room's right side, he nearly jumps at the sight of a baby doll floating in mid-air. His flashlight beam catches on her tangled brown curls, and then finally on the broken crib rail that pierces through her yellow dress, pinning her to the drywall.
If the hospital wasn’t already ground zero for a mass-overdose event, it would be all set and ready to go for a haunted house. He reasons it’s a very good thing that the entire campus is slated to be razed.
When he reaches the end of the next wing, his flashlight beam passes over a skull and crossbones painted across an open door. For an abandoned building, it’s one of the few tags he’s spotted, and not one that inspires confidence. Just inside the doorway is another stairwell—but this one leads to the sublevel.
“Lucy?” he calls out, his voice echoing down the stairs.
Light flickers down below, a beam moving along the wall, growing brighter and brighter before a voice calls out: “Sergeant Bradford?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” he answers, trying not to let his disappointment show as he makes his way down to Juarez.
It’s good that he ran into her, he reasons, that way they won’t waste time searching over an area the other has already cleared. But he does wish he ran into Lucy first.
Juarez greets him with a tight smile, clearly relieved to have backup, even as her gaze strays to the dark hallway behind them, scanning for more of the altered crew. He hasn’t run into any so far, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still crawling around the campus.
“Still no sign of Sergeant Chen?” he asks, drawing his flashlight across the nearest room’s open door.
Empty, from what he can tell. Just like all the others.
“No, and I can’t get her on the radio, either. It’s a real dead zone in here.”
Something on his face must give away how worried he is, because she straightens up. “But I know we’ll find her. This place, it’s like a maze. She’s probably just as lost looking for us.”
“Yeah,” he breathes out, nodding along to her theory, then gestures to the nearby doorway. “You been down this way yet?”
Juarez shakes her head. He brings his flashlight back up and enters the room, clearing one side as she clears the other. Old surgical equipment clutters the space, their beams creating elongated shadows as the lights cut across the tables.
“Oh, yuck, what is that doing here?”
Tim glances over to see her face twisted into a grimace, her beam frozen on a clown doll seated atop a table. “I could’ve sworn I saw it in a hallway upstairs,” she insists.
“The children’s ward has a bunch of dolls.” And the world’s worst vibe, if he believed in that sort of thing. “They both probably came from there.”
“Still creepy,” she mutters.
He agrees, though he doesn’t voice it, and is about to suggest they move on down the hall when Juarez makes a startled noise in her throat. “I’ve got blood.”
Tim crosses to her side of the room and sees the drip pattern, smudged by the faint impression of a boot tread. “Some of the people I saw were injured,” she reasons with a hesitant shrug. “It could be theirs.”
The bad feeling in the pit of his stomach says otherwise—especially when they find two more blood stains. They agree to each take one direction of the trail and split up.
Tim follows his to the back of the room and through the vinyl curtain strips, spattered with more blood, and into a dim maintenance tunnel. The semi-cylindrical ceiling is almost a foot too short for him and he has to bend at the waist to enter. Once inside, though, the overwhelming smell of stagnant water hits him like a brick wall. He drags in a few breaths through his mouth, regretting it when he can practically taste the mildew. An eerie light casts up from below, but it’s too faint to make out more than five feet in front of him.
His beam reveals the splayed body of a woman, her clothes bloodied from several wounds to her back. Pulling out a pair of gloves from his pocket, he crouches down to check her carotid—no pulse, as expected. Having found the blood trail’s source, he should feel a modicum of relief that it's a civilian. Unfortunate, but expected under such bizarre circumstances. But that bad feeling only grows when Tim strips off the gloves and reaches for his radio to try and call it in—but a faint wheeze echoes from further down the tunnel.
His weapon up and ready, he clicks his flashlight back on and drags the beam along the floor. A separate trail of blood glistens along the steel grating and he follows it with his light.
The entire world falls out from beneath him. Because crumpled on the ground just outside the tunnel's mouth, her arms and neck covered in blood, is Lucy.
Her name tears from his throat as he races towards her. The grating rattles under his feet, threatening to buckle, but he doesn’t care because every thought racing through his head is for her alone. Landing hard on his knees, he frantically tries to assess her.
“Where are you hurt?” he begs to know. “Lucy, talk to me.”
She jerks to awareness, her eyes snapping open at his arrival.
“‘s got a knife,” she manages around a pained cough. Her gaze slides from him to the tunnel behind him and back, wheeling in terror. “I don’t know where he went.”
She flexes her bloodied fingers that are curled up over the space where her neck and shoulder meet.
“Okay, okay, I’ve got you,” he soothes, shoving his hand underneath hers to stem the bleeding. “Let me do it, Lucy, I’ve got you. You’re safe with me. Juarez is tracking him down right now.”
Her tears spill out and over her temples as a cry rips from her throat. Blood smears across his wrist as she wraps her fingers around him, squirming and grimacing at the painful pressure. His stomach clenches, knowing that he’s the one causing it—but he holds firm, not letting her slip out of his grasp. “Hey, hey, easy, I know it hurts, but I have to.”
She nods her head, but it doesn’t make him feel any better about causing her such pain.
The grated floor and poor lighting make it hard to tell how much blood she’s lost. But her shallow breathing and the blanched pallor of her skin tell him more than a blood pool would. Using his free hand, he yanks out his radio and tries to get a call out, but the channel hosts nothing but static, and with no indication that anyone hears him.
It’s been long enough since Penn’s request for RAs that they should be on-scene by now, but he can’t keep up the much-needed pressure on her wound and carry her upstairs to aid. Not by himself, at least.
With no other option, he shouts for Juarez, knowing she’s somewhere in this labyrinth with them searching for the man who did this—but she dosen't respond. A new wave of fear crests over him and rises like the tide, higher and higher. The person he loves most in this world is bleeding out under his own hand and he can’t even get her help.
“Radio doesn’t work.” As if sensing his turmoil, Lucy strokes along his skin, her fingers leaving slick, red streaks along his forearm.
Her radio is on the ground beside her, wet with her blood. Something catches and holds in his chest at the knowledge that she tried to call for help, alone and injured and scared, and no one heard her. Not even him. “Tried to—I tried to disarm him but he…” she tries to recount, but the rest of her words are lost to a whimper when he places his free hand on top of the other and presses down harder.
“I know you did, baby. I know.” The pet name slips out and somewhere down the line, the brass or IA will gripe about his unprofessionalism when they watch the bodycam recordings. Tim will gladly get raked over the coals before he holds back from comforting her in a moment of crisis. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to keep pressure on it.”
“‘s okay,” she mumbles, watching him from under heavy eyelids. The movement of her hand along his arm becomes sporadic, halting for a few seconds before starting again. “I should’ve stayed put, but I couldn’t. For a second I thought I was—the curved ceiling, it looked like….” she trails off, her strained breaths growing choppier.
The crushing current of panic eases for a moment, but only to let in a flood of heartache. He had been wondering why she dragged herself all this way, but he figured it was to try for better reception outside of the tunnel, or to escape her assailant.
Now, he knows — and he desperately needs to comfort her, but can’t risk letting go. Instead, he leans down and presses a hard kiss to her hair line.
“You’re not there,” he assures, his voice pitched low, his forehead resting against hers. “You’re with me. I’ve got you, remember? I won't let anything else happen to you.”
She manages a nod and makes that gravelly noise in her throat, the one when she’s choking back the deep well of her emotions.
“How’re the others?” she asks when he pulls back, clearly wanting a change in subject. “Nolan ‘n Harper ‘n Penn, are they—?”
“They’re banged up, but they’re fine." Her words are starting to slur and he needs her to stop straining herself so much. “Don’t worry about them. The only thing you need to focus on right now is you.”
From somewhere far behind them, Juarez demands for someone to lower their weapon once, then again, her voice loud and steady. The crackle of a taser and the responding thud of a body echo down to them. Tim yells for Juarez the moment he hears the familiar clink of the handcuffs.
“There, see? Your go-fer took care of him,” he teases.
But Lucy doesn’t respond to it. Her pulse is steadily weakening under his touch; she’s got that faraway look in her gaze that he’s seen before with soldiers that came home in a box. Keeping his grip firm, he gives her a little shake to rouse her. “Lucy?”
Like a switch being flipped, her eyes flicker back to life to meet his and the tide of panic within him recedes a bit—only to come crashing back in at her next words.
“‘s not…Tim, something’s wrong.”
Before he can give her more useless assurances, though, Juarez pushes through the vinyl strips.
“Suspect is secure!” she declares. Her steady pace shifts to a sprint when she catches sight of them at the tunnel’s mouth. “Oh, my god, Lucy!”
“Come here and take over holding pressure.” Tim shifts on his knees, ready to switch the moment Juarez reaches them.
“Are you going to get an RA? No offense, sir, but I’m probably faster than you.”
“No, because we’re bringing her to them. There’s no time to make it back outside, then lead them through this maze to her. She’s got no obvious neck or back injuries, right, Luce?” he prompts, glancing back down at her.
But her features have gone slack again, her lips now an alarming shade of blue under Juarez’s flashlight. His heart trips inside his chest.
“Switch with me,” he demands, sliding his bloodied hands away for her to jump right in and take over. With her transferred to Juarez, he reaches down and tears at his shirt, bundling it up for her to hold against the wound. “I’m going to lift her up. You’re going to keep holding pressure as best you can.”
It’ll slow them down, but the location of Lucy’s wound means he won’t be able to maintain constant pressure against it and carry her at the same time. At least not without putting too much strain on her throat and tweaking his back from the uneven weight distribution. If he were five years younger, he could do it, and he curses at the double-edged sword of aging.
Sliding an arm around her back and another under her knees, he lifts and cradles her against his chest, uncaring when he forgets about the tunnel’s height and knocks his head against the ceiling. He simply readjusts to a crouch and looks down at Juarez, who gives a sharp nod.
“Got her,” she says.
Tim spares an extra second to make sure she does, inspecting her grip himself, before he takes off down the tunnel.
Maneuvering back through the hospital isn’t an easy feat, but they manage it with only a few hiccups along the way. Lucy never wakes during their journey, but he can feel the irregular rhythm of breaths she takes, and that’s enough. It has to be, because there’s nothing else he can do for her than hand her off to the paramedics.
Which is what he does the second they step out into the sunlight.
Spotting an open ambulance, he bounds over and leaps into the back. Laying Lucy down on the gurney, he takes over holding pressure while relaying her condition to the two paramedics. They snap into motion, moving seamlessly around the crowded rig, and have Lucy packed and ready to go in less than thirty seconds.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Juarez tells him as she climbs in to ride with her.
Because he has to let her go. Because he can’t go with her.
As the watch commander, Tim has to stay behind.
Steeling himself, he drops a kiss to Lucy’s pale cheek and climbs down from the rig. Slamming the doors closed and rapping twice against the window is difficult, but watching the ambulance speed away is even worse. For a moment, he’s rooted to the spot, watching until they turn the corner and disappear, their wailing siren fading under the noisy scene around him.
He won’t lose her. He refuses to only ever hear her voice again reading Split Second Leadership to him, or only hear her laugh through the videos on his phone. They’ll never hold a candle to the real thing. She deserves to be more than a digital figment across the rest of his life.
She has to be okay. She has to live.
Dragging in a fortifying breath, Tim steps back into the chaos to take control.
It takes over an hour, but thanks to his original trio of officers and their legions of backup, they manage to wrangle and transfer the entire cleanup crew to the hospital. Once the scene is secure, Tim waits on the arrival of the alphabet agencies to roll in from their division headquarters. They come at their own pace, rolling in with their tinted SUVs and kitted-out LCVs, their sharp suits and their Level A hazmat gear. The station’s detective sergeant, Sistine Shoals, also arrives with her TID team, and Tim lets her bully her way into access to the victims — including the woman in the tunnel.
“How’s Sergeant Chen doing?” Sistine asks when she comes up from supervising her team in the basement. Her frigid demeanor that’s earned her several rude nicknames across the division is tamped down by her genuine concern. She must have seen the blood stain where Lucy went down.
“She’s in surgery,” Tim tells her, but even with the seventeen texts he’s sent to Juarez in just the past hour, he truly has no idea.
In the station group chat he’s a reluctant member of—and only at Lucy’s behest—it’s been a chain of well wishes and no news is good news affirmations. Having been here long enough to see the sun go down, though, he wishes that good news would hurry the fuck up.
“Why are you even still here?” Tapping away at her phone, Sistine spares him a judging glance. “You should’ve been at the hospital an hour ago when I got here.”
“I can’t,” he says with a shake of his head, staring down the barrel of the pile of paperwork sitting in his passenger seat.
“The scene’s secure, Sergeant Bradford. And you can tell the brass you’re waiting on my sign-off.” Even though she doesn’t look up from her phone, she seems to know where his attention strayed. “If I need you, I’ll call. But I won’t need you at all, so go.”
Taking her brusque dismissal as the favor it is, he leaves the scene and heads for Northridge Hospital. Unfamiliar with the layout and with no staff connections, it takes an annoying amount of minutes before he’s directed to the correct waiting room. Nolan, Penn, and Harper are there, having arrived after being cleared, as well as Angela and Wesley. According to the chat he muted but checked on in the elevator, Grey is on his way over, too.
Juarez is still there, nursing a paper cup of vending machine coffee that looks hours or days old. It's impossible to tell.
Tim hands her a fresh cup of good coffee, though in his opinion the long list of additions to the latte qualifies it as more of a drinkable dessert. But she deserves it—not that he’ll tell her that in so many words.
“Thank you, sir. But how’d you know my order?” she asks, her eyes wide like he just performed a magic trick in front of her.
“Thorsen texted and asked if he could be of any help. I decided he could splurge on a coffee delivery for us while we wait.”
He sets two more bags down on the table beside her and retrieves his own order. Everyone shuffles over to pick through the bags. It's a universal truth that good coffee is hard to come by in a hospital. “Any news?” he asks for what might be the fortieth time.
Juarez shakes her head. “But there will be soon,” she says after a sip of her drink. “And I have a very strong feeling it’ll be good.”
He wants to roll his eyes, but he holds himself back, because somewhere deep down, he wants to believe her. Weeks ago, Lucy had called him the center of calm but now he’s anything but, pacing the waiting area and shrugging off attempts to corral him into a chair. The bad feeling returns with a vengeance, washing away every good thought he’s tried to maintain over the latter half of the day. He can’t sit still. He doesn’t even bother to drink the coffee, but instead uses it like a worry stone, fiddling with the cardboard sleeve and peeling away at the sticker.
Then, only a handful of agonizing minutes later: “Are you all here for Officer Chen?”
Tim abandons the track he’s been wearing into the tile and rushes over to the doctor. Behind him, the others straighten up in their seats.
“Yes, we are. How is she?” he begs to know.
“She went into hypovolemic shock on her way in, but we were successful in getting her a transfusion to get her cell count back up in time, and she made it through surgery with only minor complications.”
The doctor talks more about damage to her shoulder muscles and the need for therapy in a week’s time and Tim is eager and willing to schedule every visit now, because it means she’ll be here for them all. After holding steady for hours, the pit in his stomach dissolves and his next breath comes easier—but he can’t fully settle until he sees her. He needs proof that the cosmic, unseen force did not win.
He gets his proof within the hour when a nurse brings him back to Lucy’s room. She’s conscious, but groggy, and he spends many minutes at her bedside watching her sense of awareness return. She reaches for him and he closes in to cup the side of her face. His thumb traces along the apples of her cheeks, appreciating the flush that colors them more than ever.
A soft sound escapes her and he doesn’t realize why until she draws a thumb across his jaw, smearing his tears into the scruff there.
“Hey, it’s gonna be alright,” she tells him. “You’re okay, right? Nothing else happened?”
“No, no,” he shakes his head, trying to ease her worries. “Everything’s okay now. It’s just…it’s really good to hear your voice.”