Chapter Text
This is all his fault . This fact runs on a loop through Tim Bradford’s head. It is an undeniable bullhorn of an announcement, echoing in the hollowed out chambers of his brain, watching them wheel Lucy into surgery. It is an unignorable chant Thisisallhisfaultthisisallhisfaultthisisallhisfault sitting, white knuckled, waiting in the atrium of Shaw Memorial. The words follow him outside of the hospital, into the shadow of a life he tries to lead that next interminable week, while she recovers in the artificial coma they’ve induced to try to help with the pressure on her brain–they are a susurration, a whispered mumbling that scrolls by unending in the back of his mind as, zombie like, he goes grocery shopping, takes Kojo for walks. Eggs for breakfast, or just a protein bar? This is all his fault . Rams game, or sit on the couch staring at the wall, counting down the hours? This is all his fault . Another fifty reps of weight lifting, or go for a run? This is all his fault .
But, he has to admit, this litany is better than the images, the home movie of self-incrimination that runs through his head whenever he lays down to sleep. He closes his eyes, and he’s back there, in the parking deck, and he can see it all unfold, just can’t do anything to change it. Like watching a bad horror movie of his own life.
He watches the two of them approach the shop, after losing the suspect that, as a sergeant, he’d been called to the scene to help organize the search for. Cornered by two P2s after committing a double homicide at a jewelry store hold up gone wrong, the man seemed to have given up on the idea that he would be getting out of this mess without life in prison or worse, shot his way out. One of the P2s rolled off the scene in a gurney, one getting bandaged up on the back lip of an RA, and no sight of their suspect, though one was sure she’d lodged a bullet or two in him.
There was no reason to think he was still on the scene. After doing his best to kill two cops to try to escape, why would he stick around for more? Clearly, though, he wasn’t reasoning these things through. He was looking for escape. A police car would have served him nicely enough, his line of thinking must have gone. There was no asking him now.
Tim is forced to watch, the shaky home movie playing on the inside of his eyelids, as he and Lucy approach the shop–and that right there is his error, he can see in hindsight. When did he shift to thinking of her as Lucy, instead of Chen, instead of Boot? And on the job, too. That was rookie shit. Below him. And yet.
He watches himself walk toward the shop, the driver’s side–always. Why couldn’t he have let her drive just this once?--while she moves to the other side, around the taillights. From this distance in time, this altitude, he can see his own brow furrowed, can see the thoughts playing out in his head. One P2 in critical condition. One who could have been a lot worse. Lucy here in front of him, safe. What was he even going to say to her? He watches himself open his stupid mouth, but what was he going to say? What possibly could have been worth it?
He doesn’t get further than “Lucy,” but still, for that word alone– this is all his fault –she pauses, half turned back toward him. He could count on two hands the number of times he had called her that, on one the number of times held her name in his mouth with that softness, that reverence. Maybe he could remember, but doesn’t want to, what he would have said. What he felt was worth starting a conversation for in the middle of a parking deck, in the middle of a man hunt. What was it she had told him? “Please be careful.” He’d wanted to say the words, something like them, to cast them as a spell of protection over her. He hadn’t gotten that far, though, and what fell from his lips had ended up more like a curse.
She turns to him, then–of course she turns to him. He said her name , not Chen, not Boot, but Lucy , and maybe he’ll never know, but he knows , the way he knows the move she’s going to make before she does, the way she knows him the same, that it knocks her off her center. Just for a moment. A flicker of Lucy, not Officer Chen; a flash of civilian, not cop. But it’s all their suspect needed.
He sees the man leap out from behind the shop, metal pipe in hand, and he watches in horror as it connects in a sickening crunch with the side of Lucy’s head.
She is so small. He forgets, sometimes, for how much room she takes up in his life, in his mind, in every space she enters into. She fills it up, the space around her, the room she’s in, his life, so that she feels undeniable, unavoidable, unignorable. But she is so small. The same pipe, swung at the same angle, would have caught him in the shoulder or arm. Maybe a break, maybe just a deep bone bruise.
But it connects just above her temple, and Tim sees, as he didn’t have time to in the moment, the way the corded muscle bunches under this man’s skin, the raw power with which he slams the metal bar into Lucy’s skull, and he can’t, no matter how loud the incriminating chorus of this is all his fault gets, drown out that sound, the sick wet thump of it.
It is all over in a matter of seconds. The metal and her skull connect. As Lucy’s head ricochets into the back windshield of the shop, hard enough to leave a small spiderweb fracture in the glass, a trickle and then a gush of blood from her opposite temple, Tim is drawing his gun.
The next second: the man is raising the pipe; Tim is squeezing the trigger three times, a tight cluster; Lucy is collapsing on the ground between them, the side of her head that had met pipe bouncing off and then settling against the concrete floor.
And the next second: All three of them are on the ground, the man backward into the grime of the parking deck floor, never to rise again. Tim to his knees beside her, pulling out his radio and calling in a wounded officer. And Lucy, so still. So small, and so still.
This is not an action movie. It is not a prime time drama. And so Tim knows, when you go down from a head injury, when you do not get back up, it is not a coy plot device. It is not a brief blip. It is, at the very least, brain damage. When you go down from a head injury that quick– when you drop like that, just straight down to the ground, so that your hands do not go out to catch you, even if it might break your wrists–when the only force acting on you or in you anymore is gravity, you are not getting back up any time soon.
Tim knows when head injuries are involved, the neck might be injured, too, knows only paramedics should move the person. He knows the RA is still just outside, that help will be here soon, that he will not be kneeling in blood alone for much longer, that he might be able to be of use once someone with a little more knowledge of head and neck injuries is on scene. And he knows, in a way he doesn’t think he will ever be able to shake, that this is all his fault.
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Tim had made sure to give his number to both the night and day shift nurse, to call him as soon as they had more information on Lucy’s status, in the rare hours he was not at her bedside. He always wore his badge around his neck when he went to visit her, even though, technically, yes, he was on administrative leave for an officer involved shooting for at least the next week. But between the badge and the serious look on his face, he had managed to avoid any questions about their connection which might limit their willingness to give him every shred of an update he could get about her status. So, it is the only thing other than his keys that he grabs as he jogs back up to the house. He had been walking Kojo when he received the call–her vitals were good, the swelling had gone down, they were going to bring her out of the coma.
He flexes and unflexes his hands around the steering wheel at every stop light, tempted almost beyond control to blast through any impediment to being by her side when she first wakes up. He arrives, barely legally, and takes the steps two at a time to her room, unwilling to wait on the elevator.
“How is she, Claire?” he asks, eyes not resting for even a moment on the nurse on call, but going straight to Lucy, still unconscious in bed; still, he had learned all of the nurses names, made sure to be kind in his fear and impatience, partly to give himself anything else to focus on, partly out of the hope that the many nurses who cycled in and out of her room would take his kindness and pay it forward with their precious charge.
“Just finished weaning her off. She should be awake in the next few minutes.”
“Thank you,” he says, meaning it, and briefly takes his eyes off of Lucy to look up at Claire, make eye contact and approximate a smile. She returns it, full force, and walks out, leaving them alone.
He sits by her side, and is transported back to the last time he had been at her hospital bedside, the fear and pain and desperation he had felt then, and the dizzying relief upon seeing her that kept the smile from fully overtaking his face when she awoke, so torn between joy and tears at the knowledge that she was okay, she was safe, she was going to be okay. What he wouldn’t give for that knowledge now.
He bows his head, then, forearms resting against his knees, badge shining, suspended from his neck as he clasps his hands and stares at the ground. He has never been one for praying–if God wasn’t going to listen to a scared boy asking for his dad to stop, asking for his mom to recover, to get out of the hospital, to live, then why would He listen now?--but he is tempted.
What would he say to God now? What would he offer, what could he give? What could he tell Him about the woman in front of him that would stir Him to compassion, to action?
Tim would never know, because just then, he heard just about the best sound he’d heard in his life. Her voice was creaky and rough from lack of use, gruffer than the warm, sweet melody he was used to, but no less dear.
“Am I in trouble?” He looks up, and sees her looking at him, sees her brown eyes open, and brown is his favorite color forever now, this brown, the rich warmth of it, the depth and security of it, the hidden riches the color of her eyes promise. He tries to laugh, to smile, but it chokes off in his throat. He wants to be able to make a joke–so much trouble—but it turns too real before it can leave his mouth. So much trouble, for worrying him, for scaring him, for making him think he was going to have to figure out how to live in a world forever dimmed by her lack of light. But he can’t. She is too dear, and he knows it now. He can’t not know it.
“No,” he responds instead, the word forcing its way past a thickness in his throat he hadn’t seen coming. “No, it was all my fault,” he admits, and the lightness he feels at being able to say it, at being able to speak it now in past tense, rushes over him, almost dizzying.
“Oh,” she says, and she doesn’t smile at him like last time she was waking up from being gone for a time, and he worries he shouldn’t have admitted it just yet.
“So, you’re–I don’t understand. What happened?”
“The doctors said this might happen, a little fuzziness or memory loss around the event. A suspect caught you off guard.”
“A suspect,” she repeated back to him, still looking confused. “So that’s why you’re here–this is a police matter?” This is the moment, when Tim looks back, that the world starts to tilt ever so slightly, though he doesn’t feel it at first. He is still lightheaded with relief that she is here, that she is awake, that she is talking.
“Yes, we were on duty,” he says more slowly this time.
“On duty? I’m sorry…I just—who are you?” It’s a tasteless prank. Not that the last one was any more tactful, that last day of her rookie year in his shop. He had told her that the doctors said she might lose some memories, and now she was milking it. He had admitted fault–which he never did–and she was leaning into it. Infuriatingly and perfectly Lucy. He rolls his eyes at her.
“I’m not falling for it again, Luce,” he says, and the nickname rolls off his tongue so easy, so lightly; he likes the feeling of it. “You wanna give me a five minute break from worry before you put me through it again?” he ribs her, but she doesn’t break, doesn’t give up the gag.
“I’m sorry, I really don’t–”
Tim is surprised by the anger that wells up inside him then–anger born of fear. He speaks more harshly than he means to, than he wants to. He just wants to be happy that she is here, that she is awake, that she is okay.
“That’s not funny, Chen,” he barks, standing up abruptly, and his chair rolls back out from under him, and it’s then that he sees it. Then that he feels the tilting of the world. Because there in her face is fear. Her eyes jump from his face to his badge to his balled fist, and those warm brown eyes are closed off to him–they are afraid.
“Claire,” he calls out then, backing away. “Nurse!”
“I’m sorry,” Lucy says again, straightening up in bed, pulling the covers further over herself, as though shielding herself from him. “I just don’t know who you are.”