Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes

2

Tim did not remember arriving at the hospital. He only remembers the call from Lopez telling him to get to the hospital because Lucy was there. The sergeant didn't remember getting in his car and driving to the hospital, all he felt was the cold night wind as his palms sweaty and his heart was in his throat as he tried not to throw up.

His weariness had evaporated and been replaced with fear and panic. He wasn't sure how to feel, it was the first time in almost a year that he would see Lucy.Almost breaking various traffic laws, Tim made it to the hospital. Automatically, he got out of his car after parking, not before considering using the handicapped-only parking lot, and quickly entered the large building. It was no secret that the man with the dirty blond hair hated the hospital. He was simply uncomfortable with the immense amount of bad memories that it brought back. Like having to lie to the doctors about how he had broken his arm or how he had gotten the bruise that decorated half his face or the times Tim held his sister's hand when they had to stitch her up because their father had thrown a broken bottle of whatever he had been drinking and she had gotten hurt or when he was questioned as a child because the cops wanted to know how his mother had gotten those blows to her ribs. Nothing good ever happened in hospitals.

He didn't even say 'hi' when he walked into the reception. "Lucy Chen? I'm her boyfriend." He lied, well technically it wasn't a lie, they never put a name to their relationship and he wasn't exactly her friend either but the receptionist didn't know that. Although, considering that the two of them hadn't seen each other in so long, Tim didn't know where that left their relationship

He couldn't stop thinking about Lucy… was she hurt? Was she sick? A car accident? Tim couldn't help but think in the worse case scenarios.

The man on the desk looked at him behind his computer and pursed his lips before returning his eyes to the screen in front of him and typing something. "Room 24C." He sighed and Tim ran to the room where the brunette was. Forty-two stairs, three hallways, and four hundred and two steps later, Tim finally found the woman's room. Soon enough he was in front of the room 24C, he didn't even bother knocking on the door, he just entered.

Big mistake.

There was Lucy but she didn't look like herself, if someone told him he had gotten the wrong room he would have believed them. She was unrecognizable. Her hair was longer, a lot longer, the shine and softness he once loved was gone, now all tangled and visibly damaged. Her body, jesus her body, it looked so small and fragile as if at the first touch it was going to break, her once amazing body, full of curves and softness and yet full of strength that would never stop surprising him was also gone. Now replaced by protruding bones and skin as if at the first breeze of wind, she was going to break or vanish. Her face, her beautiful face, colored with green, purple and yellow bruises, her eyes surrounded by dark circles. Her right cheek swollen while the left one was scattered in painful looking scratches, he couldn't see the rest of her body but also a casted hand that Angela was holding onto.

He gasped and his eyes were wide open. Angela was sitting next to Lucy in a small chair but quickly stood up when she saw Tim.

"Tim." She whispered and walked towards him, Tim shook his head in disbelief. "Lopez." He stuttered back, barely feeling when she took him by the arm and pulled him out of the room.

"What happened?" The question was the first thing that came out of his mouth after what felt like many minutes of silence. He saw Angela death in the eye, hers were glossy with tears, something he had never seen in her, her breathing was also coming a little shaky Tim was quick noticed.

Now he was really worried.

The woman licked her lips. She wasn't sure on how to drop the bomb on Tim. Lopez was the one who comforted Tim when Lucy's disappearance was still recent and he would blame himself, it was like Isabel all over again so she wasn't sure how Tim would react to this. 

Smitty found her. He found her lying on the sidewalk in front of the station about three hours ago, she was unconscious when they brought her to the hospital. One of the officers called me when the ambulance arrived and then I called you, Harper is on her way too." Angela gave Tim a moment to process the information and so she could see how he was going to react and decide if she should keep going or just leave it there.

His face was emotionless

"The others are checking the cameras to find out how Lucy got there. It only remains to wait for her to wake up to ask her some questions, I thought it would be the best to call you, you two were close." Angela added and scanned Tim's face once more. He was tense. She could see that but she couldn't blame him, this was an stressful situation.

"Did they say how long will it take for Lucy to wake up?" The man asked, he didn't want to think about how Lucy ended up in such state. Angela shook her head and bit her lip. "They don't even know the rest of the damage, the doctors said they needed her to wake up to finish checking her up. They just put an IV on her to hydratate her. They also said she was underweight but that's obvious." She scoffed. "They said it might be a while until she wakes up though, her body has a lot of healing to do." Angela murmured as she touched Tim's arm again, if this was hard for her she couldn't imagine how Tim should be feeling.

"Angela... she didn't leave, there's no other way for her to be like this, in that state of nothingness. Look at her, this is not normal, those wounds are made by someone else and it seems that they starved her! And we think that she abandoned us! Lucy would never do that and we gave up on her, Chen would never do that to us." He was overwhelmed by the guilt, Lucy had been hurt and it was all their fault. He knew they should have searched for a longer period of time, maybe if they had worked harder she would have been found earlier and all this could have been avoided.

"Tim-" Lopez started but was quickly interrupted by a soft cough. He thought he had imagined it but apparently Angela had heard it too when she stopped in her tracks, turned around on her heel and re-entered Lucy's room. Tim was quick to follow.

His heart was beating so fast and the desire to throw up was back.

His breath hitched when she saw a pair of beautiful brown eyes slightly open. Even though the light that had been in them before was gone, they were still the most beautiful eyes Tim had ever seen.

"Lucy…"