[I don't rlly like this chapter but I haven't updated in a while so here it is—]

By the time I wake up in the morning, Jake and Ryan are gone. Brendon is fast asleep and shows no sign of waking up, and I only have one missed call notification. Despite the chaos that ensued the night before, I'm glad it died down fairly quick.

I manage to slide out of bed without waking him up. Even though it's almost ten, I don't expect him to be waking up any time soon. When his crippling anxiety would spike, his subconscious forced him to sleep more so he could avoid his issues all together. It was very counterproductive and caused twice as many problems than there were to begin with.

I stay as silent as I can while creeping through the room. I successfully change my clothes, brushed my teeth, fixed my hair, and grabbed my badge from the nightstand without making a sound. It's a miracle on its own.

Downstairs, all I pick up is my car keys and the note that my new coworkers left on the kitchen island. It's short and sweet, just a thank you for allowing them to stay the night. They may have more educational experience than I do, but I have the feeling they may start to grow on me. They've already redeemed themselves more than Josh ever will.

Before I start my car and back out of the driveway, I check the mirrors and glance around the house to make sure there's nothing out of the ordinary. Everything appears to be in place and nothing appears to be out of the ordinary, so I reverse tentatively and keep an eye out while I drive to the hospital. I should've been at work already, but the circumstances of the day are not normal. Taylor had sent a text asking me to stop by, so I didn't have much of a choice. She put her trust in me after she almost died. I'm not about to push off her request and royally piss her off.

For the most part, the hospital is empty. I'm sure more people will be around later, but I can live with a short line and quick access to the elevators. Nobody rides up to the sixth floor with me, and nobody is waiting to take my place when I exit. It's still early in the morning, and I assume traffic will pick up significantly as the hours pass.

However, the wing Taylor is placed in is already bustling and busy. Nurses crowd the desks and rush around the floor to get news delivered and medicine administered. It's hectic. I'm incredibly grateful that Taylor sent me her room number. She most likely knows about the chaos plaguing the staff.

Very slowly and very quietly, I slip into her room and ease the door shut behind me. I sincerely hope she's allowed to have visitors. It would be really awkward if a nurse had to kick me out.

The most jarring thing in the room is the bouquet of red and pink roses occupying one of the chairs by her bed. It overwhelms the chair and keeps the largest balloon I've ever seen anchored just above the floor. Two boxes of candy sit at the legs of the chair, as well as a small handful of plush animals. I would have burst into laughter if Taylor didn't look like she had joined fight club and forfeited her membership immediately.

The blood that covered the side of her face hid a nasty black eye and a ragged cut that slices over the bridge of her broken nose. A thin scab hangs over both of her lips. Small spots of blood seep through the bandages on her nose and hairline. Her right leg is encased in a black boot and square patches of clean gauze spatter every cut I remember seeing last night. She looks almost unrecognizable.

She lifts her arm slightly to gesture to the balloons. "Look at that shit."

"I see it. That's a lot of stuff."

"It is. I feel like the Make-A-Wish people are about to barge in and wheel me off to meet Daniel Radcliffe." She pauses. "I can't tell if that would be a good or bad thing."

I nod and slide the other available chair around the plethora of gifts to sit by her. "I didn't know you had that many friends to send you gifts."

"The funny part is that I don't."

The I.V. hooked up to her other arm drips steadily, in opposing beats with the heart rate monitor. "Who's it from then?"

"My ex-boyfriend. Semi-ex. My friend with benefits. Wedding date. It's... it's complicated. I wasn't even going to tell him what happened but guess who forgot to change their emergency contact?"

Someone came through the office a month ago and pressured us into updating our information. I wonder how recently things became 'complicated' and how he feels about 'complicated'. Fragile men seek revenge, no matter how small. "Ugh. Probably the last face you wanted to see right now, huh?"

She smirks the best she can. "Actually, he didn't even come up to give it to me. He handed it to the receptionist on the ground floor, told her my name, and left."

"That's weird." I say.

"Yep. That's why it's complicated."

I stare at the setup again. I can't see any cameras out in the open. Maybe they're in the stuffed animals, or maybe the roses. Who's to say the balloons aren't waiting to pop and release poisonous gas?

"It's not him." Taylor mutters. "It's complicated because neither of us have set boundaries or bothered to confess our feelings. We'd probably be together if we weren't acting like children."

"I wasn't—"

"I know what you were thinking. Trust me, he isn't capable of t-boning my car and leaving me for the vultures in the middle of the night. He cried watching Ratatouille and Tangled, and he refuses to drive when it's dark. He also can't do basic algebra. Neither can I, but that's not the point."

I think I cried while watching Ratatouille but this is a bad time to confess that. "...So you think it really was John Doe? Not just an unfortunate hit-and-run?"

"I was the only one on that road. Pitch black, car starts out of nowhere in the bushes and plows right into me. They literally rammed me off the street, watched and waited for five minutes, and then drove away with their headlights off. It was a targeted attack, executed by either John Doe or an assassin that had the wrong chick. Either way, what a wuss."

"A wuss? They hit you with a car."

"There was no follow-through."

I hide a smile behind my hand. "Whatever. You look like shit."

"Oh my god. I know, right? I almost had to have emergency surgery." She huffs. I gesture for her to elaborate. "Some dumb newbie X-ray technician confused my scan with someone else's. If I had to pay for a surgery I didn't need, I'd turn into John Kramer."

"Wow, John Kramer? You'd set dozens of sick and backhanded murder traps to get revenge on one X-ray technician?"

She shrugs to the best of her ability. "What else am I gonna do in here? I'm not leaving for another day or two at the very least."

"Why not?"

"Look at me," she points to her face and then her leg, "I got hit by a car. They think I'll be fine but they're just making sure."

"Better safe than sorry." I say. She nods slowly and quickly fixes her gaze on me like a laser beam.

She squints and gives me a once-over. "What's up with you? Something bothering you? It's not my face, is it? B'cause it's totally fine."

There's no use in hiding my concerns from her, and it may work in my favor if I really do want to alter my schedule in any way. "Brendon. I keep bringing work home and it's stressing him out. I've never seen him so upset before."

"Huh. No kidding." She raises her eyebrows. "What's the move then?"

I shrug. "I honestly don't know. I can't just drop the case and pretend like it doesn't directly involve me. What if that pisses off John Doe too? What if I put twice as many people in danger by ignoring the situation?"

"I'm sure we could handle this without you. If you really need to step back, I mean. Sure it would be difficult at first, but I think Ryan and Jake are really going to step up and leave behind some big shoes to fill." She bites her cheek as she continues to mull over the possibilities in her head, but I know which one reigns. We have no clue who John Doe is, what they're capable of, or who they'll hurt to get what they want. It's like we're trying to outsmart God during his own chess match. Nothing makes sense and we're blocked at every turn, but we have to keep playing.

I barely have to give her a glance to affirm I won't be leaving the case. "I'll just be more careful with the things I bring home. No more work talk at home. I'll look into couples therapy if it gets worse. That's fun, right?"

She tries to reach out and comfort me but the injuries on her arm don't allow her to. "Of course it's okay. Nothing a few therapy sessions and hardcore drugs can't fix. He can have some of my painkillers—"

"He will not have some of your painkillers."

"Let him speak for himself." Taylor raises an eyebrow. "I'll be in contact with him as soon as I can get back to the precinct with a prescription. He'll be fine. You'll be fine. Everything is going to alright."

"I don't know if we will."

"Of course you will. I've never met a stronger couple. May nothing but death do you part, you may kiss the bride, throw the bouquet, whatever."

"Thanks. I really appreciate." I look at the boot strapped around her foot and the image of the large discolored bump resurfaces. "But I really hope you don't bring back a set of crutches. Josh would have a field day and everybody would spend the day daring him to indirectly injure himself. Think of the file cabinet incident, but ten times worse."

During Josh's second official week, someone asked him if he could fit in one of the metal drawers of the file cabinet in the basement. He cleared out all the paperwork and jammed himself inside. Whoever dared him to do it turned the lock and deserted Josh in the basement for five hours until Hayley found him. It was definitely a team up between Tyler and Pete, but neither of them ever admitted it. Coincidentally, someone had taped a sheet of printer paper over the security cameras down there as well.

"I'm not letting him near me. I'm not letting Tyler within ten feet of me, and the same goes for..." she trails off with wide eyes. The steady beeps of her heartbeat pick up immediately. "Pete."

"Pete?"

"I was going to go visit him but I didn't get the chance to." She props herself up on her elbow to look at me. One of the gauze patches on her bicep loses its grip and dangles by a strip of tape. The scrape scabbed over quickly, and I assume the other minor cuts did as well. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

I'm not thinking much. Brendon is still occupying at least ninety-seven percent of my brain. I hope he's doing okay. "Of course. But, uh, just to make sure that we are, you should tell me what you're thinking."

She purses her lips. "You aren't on the same page as I am."

"Not completely."

"I don't think it was a coincidence that I got hit while going to see Pete. I've never driven to his place before."

"Nobody has. Honestly, I don't think he actually inherited a mansion. I think he's full of shit."

"I think so too, but that's not my point. Nobody has been there, so nobody can tell when or if we'd even head out there. Since I don't go routinely, how would someone know I'd be going unless I was being watched?"

We also haven't met the person Pete had been talking to. Maybe they'd been paranoid he was unfaithful and hired a private investigator with too much moxie. "Maybe they were mutated cannibalistic outcasts. You saw The Hills Have Eyes. Maybe this is the beginning of another Final Destination movie."

"Funny. As much as I'd love to die in a gory and twisted way at the hands of fate, someone knew I was going out to visit him and they wanted to stop me before I got there." She shrugs. "I wholeheartedly believe that's the truth."

It sounds crazy, and I've heard my fair share of strange stories and explanations. Small town folk transitioning to big city living are not the most sane people. However, we do have John Doe on the loose. "Are you on painkillers right now?"

Taylor scoffs and rolls her one good eye but doesn't explicitly state that she isn't. There have to be something in her system. "Are you trying to tell me you don't believe that motherfucker out there has nothing to do with this?"

"I never said that."

"Don't discredit me because I might be on painkillers. I run the best precinct in the county, maybe even the state. Maybe the country. I know what I'm talking about and I'm offended that you aren't onboard with my idea."

I desperately want everything to be either a coincidence or an accident. I don't want to imagine that John Doe is the mastermind behind all of this. Removing our Lieutenant from the station for a few days would send us into disarray, because she's one of the few that actively tries to keep up with what's going on. Subtracting her from the equation while possibly eliminating another prominent figure in the case is drastically dangerous — if her theories are correct at all.

"I just really don't want it to be the case, Lieutenant." I say. "At first, I was excited because it would mean we were getting somewhere. But now, they're willing to injure us or even kill us."

"I don't want it to be the case either, but we have to address it and at least try to put a stop to this if it's going to continue to escalate."

Two minutes of silence ensues between us. The monitors beep and the IV drips, the nurses chatter and the carts roll by. She's not wrong and she never has been, but I think I'd like her to be wrong about this. It's hitting too close to home, literally.

Clearing her throat, she gently runs her fingers along the bruise over her eye. She flinches when her muscles twitch and accidentally apply the slightest bit of pressure. As her eye moves from the pain, the popped blood vessels become visible. It looks like someone dipped the back of her eyeball in strawberry syrup.

"I need you to leave." She says, voice cracking slightly. Shame pools from her shaking hands and floods the room. "But I also need you to do something for me."

"I'm not pulling the plug on you—"

"You wish I was clinging on to life support. Then you could take my prescription meds and run."

"Sometimes I wish that, but I refuse to steal prescriptions. The justice system is corrupt enough as it is." I stand and pull my car keys out from my pocket. "What did you need me to do?"

"Check on Pete. Take someone with you. Get his address from the precinct. I left his file on my desk. It's labeled and everything."

"Do I have to have someone come with me?"

"Do you want to take any chances?"

She's right. I sigh and pull my phone from my pocket as I wish her goodbye and slip out of the room and into the bustling hallway. Quickly, I dodge nurses and carts of equipment to get to the elevators. Only when I'm outside and in my car does my phone connect and finally ring the person I'd been trying to reach.

"Hello?"

"Hey, are you at the precinct?"

"...Yes."

"Are you busy."

"Me? Busy? Never."

"Alright. I'll be there in twenty minutes. I'll explain when I get there. See you soon, Tyler."