Falling For Lucy

Epi 9 - The Stand Off

It has started raining. Lopez and I were back in the car, driving around the area in the dark looking for my dead wife's remains. 

"I knew it was a mistake," I said to Angela. I should have never let Isabel do this Op.

"Nothing you could have done to stop it," she replied.

"I could have blown the Op early before she went in." Or convinced detectives to send Carson in instead of Isabel.

"And then you would have gotten yourself fired. Torturing yourself isn't gonna help us find her." 

"She's dead Angela. Vance killed her the second they got free of our surveillance."

"You don't know that," she argued with me.

"Yes, I do. Just like I always knew I'd end up looking for her body." I answered. This was the darkness that was looming overhead that we could never escape and now it was done.

Suddenly we heard Bishop on the radio, "We found her. Alley on Crenshaw near the 10. Get here now."

I sped my way towards the alley, hoping she was still alive if they found her. I slowed down once we were in the alley, my headlights showing me the EMTs pulling my wife from the dumpster and laying her on a gurney. 

Isabel.

They threw her away like she was trash. My heart broke. Isabel was a lot of things but she didn't deserve this.  I felt like I had failed her. When she needed me the most, I wasn't there for her. 

I got out of the car to run to her, but Bishop met with us first. 

"She's alive, but it's not good." She explained. "They shot her in the head." How was she ever going to survive this?

I jogged over to her limp body laying on the gurney as the EMTs pushed it to the ambulance. 

"I'm here baby," I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. "I'm here." I kept repeating as I helped EMTs get her into the RA and take her to the nearest hospital. The whole way there, time felt like it was going in slow motion. The EMTs had given her an oxygen mask and were stuffing her wound with gauze. I was holding her hand so tightly that in the end, I was probably cutting off blood circulation. I let go just as we finally arrived at the trauma center and we wheeled her in and the healthcare professionals took over, leaving me standing there in the hallway.

I found my way to a waiting room and took a seat and just stared at the wall, the night replaying in my mind over and over. I nitpicked every decision and every error we made. It was a little over an hour into my wait when a doctor from the trauma team found me and gave me an update on the situation.

"Mr. Bradford?" The doctor said when they approached.

"Yes?" I asked, my head snapping to him,

"Hi, I am working on the team handling your wife's injuries. I want to start by saying this is very serious, but we are hopeful. At this time the team is working on removing the bullet fragments and bone fragments from the wound. After that, we will assess the damage. It looks like a bullet may have bounced off the side of her head. We think she may have been fighting or moving when she was hit. This is good news. Because of that, we are hopeful if she can survive this surgery that she should make a full recovery." He informed me and I was relieved. She was still a fighter. "Now, is there anything you think we need to know? We noticed in her chart that she was here some weeks back due to a drug overdose."