It had been two more hours since the group had initially been taken to the room. Linda had left to go pick her boys up from school and tell them what had happened. Erin left to do the same with her daughter, leaving Danny, Frank, and Henry to sit in the room with Jamie. Eddie had yet to return to the room, which Danny had noticed. He excused himself, saying that he was going to stretch his legs. He wandered around the hospital (the parts that he, as non-staff, was allowed to go) and eventually found himself in the cafeteria. It didn't take long to find the blonde in blue, who was sitting alone at the end of one of the tables. He sighed and walked over to her, sitting down across from her. She only looked up at him for a moment before her gaze returned to the uneaten granola bar.
"I know this is a question that you're tired of hearing," he said. "But how you holdin' up, kid?"
Eddie shrugged and continued to fiddle with the wrapper of the granola bar. Her stomach was rumbling, but she had no appetite. "I don't know. How am I supposed to be holding up?"
"Well," he replied, drumming his fingers lightly on the cafeteria table. "I can tell you that you may need to talk to a therapist if you're doing just fine."
"And if I'm not," she asked, finally looking up at him for longer than a second.
"I'll tell you the same thing that I told my kid brother when his partner, Vinny, was shot and killed a couple of years ago. No one expects you to be okay after something like this. None of us are ever okay after something like this," he said to Eddie. "You can't sit at this table and kill yourself thinking about the shoulda, coulda, woulda's. That'll get you nowhere but buried."
Eddie bit the inside of her cheek and quit playing with the wrapper. "He was right in front of me. I could see him, and he was only out of my sight for five seconds."
Danny's frown deepened.
"How can five seconds be so life changing," she asked, though she didn't expect an answer.
"I've been asking myself that for a long time," Danny admitted, and Eddie looked up at him curiously. He explained. "My second year on the job, my partner and I were chasing a gang member who was fleeing from a gunfight. My partner, Jeffrey Knight, was like Usain Bolt. That man was insanely fast. I didn't stand a chance keeping up with him. Anyway, Jeff tailed the guy, had him in arms reach, when the punk dodged around the corner and out of his grasp. I watched Jeff turn the corner after the guy and five seconds later I hear two gunshots. I immediately felt my heart drop, which I'm guessing yours did, too, and I somehow managed to run faster than I already had been. When I turned the corner, the punk was gone and Jeff was dead."
"I'm sorry," Eddie offered her condolences, and Danny accepted.
"Me and dozens of other cops know how critical those five seconds are," her continued. "How fast we get to victims, whether they live or die, comes down to a matter of seconds. Eddie, my brother is alive because you got to him and put pressure on his wounds when you did. If you had been any slower, we would be planning a funeral right now instead of having this conversation in the hospital cafeteria."
Eddie cleared her throat and swallowed the lump that was growing in it. "I should have been there. I should have been quicker."
"Maybe," he confirmed, and she looked up at him with furrowed eyebrows. "What? You probably could have got there quicker. Whether you being quicker would have made a difference doesn't really matter, because you can't change the past. The past is done and over with, so don't go getting stuck in it, alright?"
Silence settled between the two for a few moments before Danny continued.
"Now, come on," he said, standing up. When she just looked at him and didn't move he motioned for her to come with him. "Seriously, you can't just sit in here and wallow in your self-pity. Plus, Linda tells me hospital food sucks. I'd take her word for it."
Eddie sat still for a couple more seconds before obliging and following Danny back to Jamie's room. It was even harder to walk into his hospital the second time, though this time she couldn't back out of the room like before with Danny blocking her exit.
"I found her," Danny said proudly, trying to lift the spirits of the room. Smiles were given, but they weren't what they would have been had this day gone according to plan.
