Chenford |Lucy Chen and Tim Bradford| one shots <3

your taste on my lips (Don't leave me yet)

They had found her, Tim had found, he had dug for her with his bare hands the dirt still under his fingernails and Lucy's ring heavy in his pocket, but she was alive. They found her. The ride to the hospital was nerve wrecking, Lucy was awake for all of five minutes, which was spent with a death grip on Tim's hand (he could still feel it). Tim still wasn't sure if this was real or a nightmare conjured up by the awful things he had seen in his career. Without Lucy's quiet whimpers, the ambulance had filled with a silence so heavy he felt it dig into him. There were no complications. The EMT kept reassuring him, but Tim didn't see it, Lucy's face was covered in blood, and bruises had already bloomed on her wrist, tear streaks had washed away some of the dirt revealing Lucy's rosy cheeks. Tim looked at her, and he wanted to rip the world into pieces until she would be smiling again.
"Officer, we're almost at the hospital," the EMT, whose name and face he had already forgotten, told him. Tim knew what that meant it meant this was the last he got of Lucy before her emergency contact would step in and decide what needed to be decided.
He never wanted to let her go again.
"This is Ambulance 56. We're two minutes out. The victim is unconscious but breathing, several bruises around wrist, in need of oxygen." The radio crackled, and the silence was laying itself over them again, two more minutes, and then he would have to let her go. Her hand still hadn't left his, although her grip had softened.
The ambulance parked the doors flying open. Without any regard to him, Lucy was pulled away, behind glass doors, and doctors surrounding the gurney.
"Tim! Is she okay?" Angela basically crashed into his side, tears still glistening in her eyes. "Yeah, she uh-" Tim tried to ignore the lump in his throat, blocking his airways like a rock, "She passed out in the ambulance, but they said it was normal since she was low on oxygen."
Angela nodded, hooking her arm into his, slowly making them move towards the hospital entrance.
"Who is her emergency contact?" Angela asked, her voice strained eyes focusing on the doors ahead.
"I'm not sure." Was all Tim could say. The doors seemed too close and too far away at the same time, and Lucy's unconscious form was nowhere to be seen.
"Listen, Grey is sending Nolan and Jackson here. Why don't you take my car drive and go to the station, I'll stay with Lucy." Angela tried to turn her demand into a question, but how was Tim supposed to leave?
How was he supposed to walk away from her? Leave her alone in a hospital after she had just returned to life?
The ring pressed against his thigh, a reminder that Lucy could fight for herself. Angela stopped walking, "Tim, I'm serious. Go home, take a minute. I'll be here with her, and I'll call you the minute we get any news. Go." Since the kind version of her command didn't work, Angela was sending him away, Tim might have seniority, but as a detective, she outranked him, a his friend she only meant well.
"How are you gonna get home?"
"Oh, I'm sure Wesley will have no problem picking me up, now go." Her tone was lighter, almost jokingly as she often did when she mentioned Wesley(and his wealth).
"I'm fine, Angela, I just need some bad hospital coffee and a chair to sit in. You detective
should probably head into the station and start the paperwork on this." And suddenly, there was a noose around his throat cutting of any sounds Tim might have wanted to get out.
How could he say that when he had just breathed the life back into her. How could he joke when the taste of her lips was still lingering on his and the dirt beneath his fingernails felt like glass shards digging holes into him.
How heartless could he be?
"I'm staying, Angela. You can go. Actually, tell Grey the others dont have to come. She's my rookie, my responsibility." Tim didn't leave her any space to argue in, instead of accepting the chance to get a little bit of peace for himself but how could he have a minute of peace with Lucy's limp body still heavy in his mind.
Angela sighed, squeezing his shoulder and walking away. He might've pushed back too hard, but he really couldn't leave. His heart wouldn't be able to take it if he left.

Tim's phone rang, and when he saw the called ID, his heart skipped a beat. The hospital was calling him.
His hands started shaking with a nervousness he hadn't felt since he asked Isabel to marry him.
One weird phone call later Tim was now cursed or blessed with the knowledge of being Lucy's emergency contact. He didn't quite know what to do with that.
"Tim!" Grace called out when she saw him enter the room. The sun had long reached her highest, the emergency room glowing in warm yellow hue.
"How is she?" Apparently, Tim had also forgotten all manners.
"She's stable in recovery. We're keeping her overnight she might have a concussion. Her oxygen levels are stable but have dropped once, so we're keeping an eye on that as well as some minor injuries, which are taken care of." Grace read it of her clipboard, avoiding eye contact with Tim.
"So she's going to be okay?" He tried not to cling to that sliver of hope too hard. In this profession, any day could be the last.
"As of now, yeah, she's gonna be fine." Grace said, her voice more hopeful than Tim was right now.
"I'll show you to her room, come on." Grace walked ahead, not bothering to check if Tim was behind her.
He was, he wouldn't miss the opportunity to see Lucy, to check for himself that she was alive.
Tim was reminded why he hated hospitals. Hate was a strong word, though. Lucy looked, fragile. The hospital gown did not look right on her. The blood on her face had been wiped off, and the dirt was gone as well. All that remained as a reminder of the last 24 hours was the dirt under his fingernails. The noose around his neck tightened.
He pulled the chair closer to the bed sitting down and getting ready to wait, to sit and wait until Lucy woke up and smiled at him and tried to pry him open with some trick she learned in psychology.
He wanted her to give him the look of annoyance and understanding when he was being an ass. He wanted her awake.
"Hey, hell of a night, huh?"
Tim felt like an idiot, talking yo Lucy while she was high on pain meds and sleeping peacefully. "I'm sorry." The noose tightened all the way this time, his lungs burning for air as he tried not to let the tears slip from his eyes. She looked so helpless. She wasn't, but right now, Tim would give everything to switch with her.
But there was nothing he could do. He knew her now, the way she felt when the life had left her body, the way she cried out when it came back, the way her lips tasted after a fight, the way her blood felt on his hands. He knew her.
It made him sick.
At some point during the evening, Tim ordered Lucy's favorite food, a nurse brought it up, no questions asked, and Tim made sure to smile extra nice at him.
The smell of the food kinda made him nauseous, probably because he hadn't eaten since this morning.
No one came by, probably busy cleaning up the mess that this case was. He's glad that Lucy made him her emergency contact.
At some point, a nurse entered the room, disturbing the state of absolute nothingness and everythingness in Tim's mind. "I'm sorry Sir but visiting hours are over, you'll have to go home." The nurse, a guy in maybe his mid twenties, looked like he was about to collapse, either because he was anxious or because he was overworked. Probably the later.
"I'm -"
"Oh, i was looking for you, James." Grace like a godsend entered the room. "He's fine to stay, just make sure to give the nightshift a head ups alright?" Grace smiled at him the kind that meant not to question her authority in any way.
"Oh, sorry, I didn't know." The guy, James, apologized the shaking in his voice going unnoticed.
"No worries." And with that, the conversation was over, and Tim was left alone, and the waiting continued.