My Little Love

Fades to Black

Elliot drops me at my car, and I head to pick up Noah from daycare. The drive over feels exhausting, and I can't wait to pick up my baby and spend the night soaking him in. He's the only thing in my life that I know isn't going anywhere and I feel guilty for allowing myself to think that if things fall apart with Elliot that I'd be alone. I knew that wasn't true but being a single Mom wasn't easy and some days it was lonely.

 Nonetheless, she picked up Noah and buckled him safely into his car seat. The last few months had been tiring and she'd spent sleepless nights alone spending as much time making her apartment perfect for the two of them, filling out the adoption paperwork, finishing up case files from work after he falls asleep and making sure he has everything he needs. She'd been making sure there was nothing that could put a hold on his adoption being approved. 

"Mommy missed you sweet boy."  She looks up in her rearview mirror at the baby mirror in the back where Noah happily chewed on the end of his blanket. "I can't wait to get home and snuggle up, just the two of us." Her phone rings on her dash and she slides to accept the call. 

"Hey Liv, I just wanted to let you know that I filed that list of names and brought the file back to the restaurant. I'm gonna run the names later but I just wanted to tell you I'm working on it and I'm really sorry for the way things went down earlier. I was thinking tomorrow if you wanted to come in  a few hours late in the morning, I could work on the running the employee list and call you in when I'm through with that?" Noah babbles to himself in the back seat. "Is that Noah? How's he doing?"

Liv glances back again. "Yeah, that's him. He's doing good. He's finally over that cold he had last week so I just picked him up from daycare. We're about five minutes from my apartment. If you don't need my help with the case in the morning I'll call Cragen and see if he's okay with me taking a few hours. I was supposed to meet with Noah's case worker after work but it'd be a lot easier to do it in the morning, so I don't have to rush to pick him up and then rush back home after I leave the precinct." Noah continues loudly babbling to himself. 

"Hi baby. What are you talking about back there, huh?" Liv reaches the stop sign before their apartment and looks back in the mirror once more before focusing her attention back to the road and in a split second she can feel her entire world spiraling as everything around her goes black.  

She opens her eyes and all she can hear is a loud ringing in both her ears she can faintly hear Noah's screams as she tries to focus her vision. Everything is hazy and broken by a mix of shadows and blinding lights. She tries to look around focusing harder and realizes that everything is upside down. She tries to reach down and unbuckle her seatbelt but can't move her arm. She reaches down with her right arm and undoes her seatbelt screaming out in pain as her body drops. It feels as if someone is sucking the air out of her lungs. She can hear Noah's screams echoing over the ringing in her ears and she drags herself into the backseat wincing in pain. She reaches up and tries to calm him as she lays on the ceiling. 

"It's okay. You're okay Noah. Mommy's right here. I can't get you right now okay? We gotta wait for help." She can feel the tears falling down the side of her face and tries to keep talking to him  in an attempt to keep him calm as she feels herself losing consciousness.                                                                          

                                                                                          ***

Liv? Liv can you hear me?

Olivia it's Elliot.

Liv? Wake up Liv. I need you; we need you. Noah needs you.

Elliot looks at Olivia. Her face is still badly bruised, and her arm is in a plaster cast that goes past her elbow. It'd been a week since the accident, and she still hadn't woken up.  A truck had blown through the red light launching her car into the oncoming traffic causing the car to roll before it landed completely upside down on the other side of the road. Noah came out of the accident without a scratch, but the front driver's side of the car took all the impact. The doctors say she's lucky to be alive somedays and she'll be lucky if she wakes up others. The left side of her body took significant damage and she'd broken some ribs puncturing one of her lungs, the bone in her arm had been broken in three different places and was badly bruises all around.  All the trauma from the wreck and the force of impact caused swelling in her brain and they didn't know if or when she would wake up. While Liv was his main concern, they were doing everything they could to keep everything up with Noah. They knew that if she didn't wake up soon there was a good chance she could lose him, and he knew that the only thing that could ruin her more than he could was losing Noah. Liv had been working so hard to keep him and have his adoption go through and nobody wanted to see her lose her baby. That's what he was. She'd loved him from the second she saw him and had never stopped trying to show it.

"I know I never told you this since you've had Noah, but you're a great mom, Liv. Noah needs you." he pauses for a second before taking a breath. "You were meant to be his mom, don't let him lose another one." Elliot moves a stray hair out of her face and walks out of her hospital room. He drives home to his own new empty apartment. It was too quiet and he hated how alone in his thoughts it made him feel. He thought after the divorce papers were finalized that he could make things work with Liv, but he'd been out of the house all week and now here he was and it still felt wrong. He wasn't with his family and he wasn't with Liv.  He walked over to the island in the kitchen and poured himself a glass of whiskey before sitting down and opening his laptop to finish up some last-minute paperwork.