Alaskan Nights (A Law and Order: SVU fanfic)

Ch.21

"She's fine, she's strong, she's stubborn and she knows what she's doing. She's Olivia."

He expected it to be Maureen's name that flashed across the display screen of his phone when he picked it up from the side table. It was only minutes earlier when from behind the spray of the shower he heard the first ring. Consciously he let it ring as he imagined that it was only his oldest child calling him while on her way to work as she promised to do a day or two beforehand. He continued to wash the shampoo from his hair and paid no mind to second, it wasn't until the third attempt that he hobbled out of the bathroom, leaving a trail of water behind him as he ran to answer the call.

There, staring up at him through the small window of the device, was an unsaved number bearing what he surmised to be an Alaskan area code. When he answered the call, his suspicions were confirmed as Rebecca identified herself quickly. She proceeded to breathlessly ramble on, not allowing him to get a word and while he didn't register most of what she said, he managed to recognise Olivia's name and the word ambulance used in conjunction with it.

"Rebecca, calm down," he finally says, fighting the feeling of dread that began to creep over him. "What's wrong."

She let out a shaky sigh before repeating herself. Olivia was in an ambulance headed to the hospital with a possible cardiac arrest, their neighbour had found her. He expects her to follow up this information with an address to the facility or maybe a name, but when she doesn't do either, the tone of the call immediately flips to the hundreds of notifications that he has done both with and without Olivia. She's quiet on the other end when he asks her outright, "Is she...Is she dead?"

"I...God...I got there as they were loading her up. I've found her before when she's collapsed and I...but she looked so grey. She looked...I couldn't..."

"You're not at the hospital." He realises.

Shit.

"I couldn't. I just couldn't," she finally cries.

His legs begin to weaken beneath him with only Rebecca's quiet cries filling his ear and keeping him grounded. His stomach turns within him as his legs give away, causing him to drop onto the bed. Upon hearing Rebecca's cries turn to deep and guttural wails he lowers the phone from his ear, trying to stave off the feeling that now threatened to consume him.

It's hard for him to believe even now as he sits listening to her cry that the same Olivia that he saw no less than thirty minutes ago was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. His mind retreats to the screaming match that they had engaged in and more importantly his last choice words to her before he left. And while his logical mind tries to fight with the guilt, the guilt wins as the telltale sick feeling of a guilty conscience sweeps over him, bringing with it a burn at the back of his throat.

He wanted to hurt her back—in part for abandoning him, but mostly for what she kept from him. He wanted her to feel a fraction of what he felt when upon knocking on her door looking for answers, she flipped his life upside down and while the justification does not quell the guilt, it is all he has to cling to.

The longer that Rebecca openly wails through the phone is the deeper that the guilt sinks in. It feels almost criminal sitting here and receiving the cries of a woman that he barely knew when he was the one who had caused it all. He broke her heart and left her bleeding and he suspects that if Rebecca knew what he had done that she would not have called him at all.

But he sits there with her anyway, this woman who might just love Olivia just as much as he does and allows her to openly weep through the phone because it's the least that he can give her. It isn't until her cries are reduced to sniffles that the tornado that currently was his mind finally rested on Quinn. He asks Rebecca about him and he learns that the little boy was currently asleep on the porch swing nestled in the neighbour's arms, having finally cried himself to sleep after twenty minutes of wailing.