New Family

Siblings

"What can I do for ya kid." Trudy Platt said, addressing the teenage girl who had been stood next to the desk for around twenty minutes clearly contemplating what to do.

"Um..." She said hesitantly. "Does Greg Gerwitz still work here?" She asked.

"He left a few years ago, went back into the Rangers." Platt said. 

"Oh... Thanks anyway." She said with a small smile before turning to leave, not giving Platt a chance to say anything else.

"Who was that?" Jay Halstead asked Platt having walked past the girl on her way out.

"I was hoping you would know, she was looking for Mouse." Platt said, turning back to her work.

"Mouse?" Jay asked, looking over his shoulder hoping to get another glance at the girl who had appeared to be on the brink of tears when he had walked past her. "She would've been.. what.. only fourteen, fifteen at a push when he left."

"You know as much as I do." Platt said.

"If she comes back, call me." Jay said as Hailey came down a few steps.

"Jay, Voight wants us." She said, opening the door for him.

"I will." Platt said with a nod.

----------

"So yeah, this CI is normally pretty reliable." Upton explained as she walked out the back door of the precinct with Jay. "Jay?" She asked when she realised he wasn't listening to her and his gaze was fixed on a girl across the street. "Do you know her?" Upton asked.

"Give me a sec." Jay said, heading across the road and sitting next to the girl. "Hey." He said, snapping her out of her trance.

"Hey." She said, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

"What's your name kid?" Jay asked.

"Jessica." The girl replied, trying to stop more tears from rolling down her cheeks.

"I'm Jay." He said. "I heard you asking about Greg Gerwitz earlier, I was just wondering how you knew him?"He asked.

"I don't... well I used to but I don't remember him." Jessica said unsurely.

"Halstead! We need to go!" Upton shouted across the road.

"Go." Jessica said with a small smile, as Jay looked back and forth between her and Upton like he was trying to decide what to do.

"Call me." Jay said, getting out his card and handing it to her.

"Okay." Jessica said taking the card and flipping it over in her hand.

----------
"Hey Maggie, I got here as soon as I could." Jay said, rushing up to the nurse. It had been a few hours since he had met Jessica and she hadn't left his mind since. He was checking his phone for the billionth time when he got the call from Maggie.

"She's not talking to anyone, won't let anyone near her. She was clutching your card when the paramedics brought her in." Maggie explained as they reached the room.

"I know her."Jay said, slowly opening the door so not to startle her. "Hey, Jessica." He said calmly taking a few steps towards her. Jessica was sat on the hospital bed curled up in a ball with her knees under her chin, her eyes bloodshot and her cheeks stained from crying.

"Jay." She said quietly. "I was going to call you later I swear." She said, panicking slightly.

"I know you were, don't worry about it." He said, trying to calm her down. "What happened to you?" He said, pulling a seat up to the side of her bed.

"I fell down the stairs." She said, looking at her feet.

"I doubt that." Jay said.

"I did, I'm not lying. Ask the paramedics where they found me." She said, getting more and more agitated.

"Will you let a doctor take a look at you, make sure everything's okay?" He asked.

"I don't want anyone near me." She said, barely above a whisper.

"You let me near you." Jay said, "You trust me right?" Jessica nodded slightly. "My brothers a doctor here, just let him check you over."

"Will you stay here?" Jessica asked, mentally cursing herself for how childish she sounded.

"I won't go anywhere." Jay promised. "I'll tell the nurse to get him and I'll be right back." Jay said standing up and heading out the glass door, keeping his hand on the door handle so she knew he wasn't going to leave. "She's agreed to let Will take a look at her." He told Maggie.

"That's the closest shes let anyone get to her." Maggie said as she paged the doctor.

"What happened to her?" Jay asked.

"Paramedics found her on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, the phone in one hand, your card in the other. It looks like there was some sort of fight upstairs, she fell down the stairs and the attacker fled." Maggie explained what she knew.

"Poor girl." Jay said as Will came around the corner.

----------

"I would like to keep you overnight for observation because you have a nasty concussion and you lost consciousness, aside from that its all cuts and bruises." Will said. "I just need a name and date of birth to update your medical records." 

"Um... I don't know." Jessica said.

"What do you mean you don't know?" Jay asked curiously.

"It's not that I don't remember I just don't know what my real name is or my date of birth." Jessica said. "It's a long story that involves fourteen years in about ten foster homes with ten different names." She explained when she noticed the strange looks the Halstead brothers were giving her. "My birthday has been on the fifteenth of December for as long as I can remember so try Jessica Evans and the fifteenth of December." She told Will.

"Yep." Will said. "I need to go check on some patients, I'll be back to check on you later."

"I never got to ask you earlier, why are you looking for Greg?" Jay asked, changing the subject away from the traumatic incident this girl had clearly been through.

"I don't know really." Jessica said. "I've been in the foster system for fourteen years, so since I was around three or four. And like every kid in the system I've always wanted to know who my real family are." She explained. "So when I was fifteen I illegally gained access to my files and found out that I was left in a grocery store by a woman who they assume is my mother, I was too young to remember my date of birth or my name." Jessica paused and looked around the room for a second. "Pass me that jacket." She said as her eyes landed on the black leather jacket that was thrown over a chair in the corner. "The only things I had on me were the clothes I was wearing and this." She said taking a photo out of the pocket. "I ran an ageing software on the boy then I... um... kinda hacked into the CPD database to ID him and it came back as Greg Gerwitz, but that was a few years ago."

"You definitely sound alike, he was our civilian tech expert and he was basically the computer guy." Jay explained looking at the picture then back at Jessica.

"That's always been my dream job." Jessica said with a smile, the first full smile he had seen from her. "I don't know how I knew him but it looks like we were close."

"You look so like him I would say you were siblings." Jay said, looking at the photo again.

"I'm assuming you didn't know him very well if he was just the tech guy." Jessica said.

"I was actually the one who got him the job in the first place, we served together in the Rangers." Jay explained.

"Oh wow." Jess said with a smile. They spent the rest of the night talking about Greg and how he earned the nickname Mouse, among other things.