Page 17 of Under Cover
“Kurt Armbruster,” Garcia said. “He’s probably in shock. He’s had a super shitty day.”
“Aw.” Wendy moved to let Brian help Crosby while she went to coax Kurt out of the darkened hallway. “Come on, baby. You’re gonna be okay.” She stretched out her hand, and Kurt reached to take it. Crosby couldn’t turn to watch them anymore, but he did hear her say, “Oh honey. Your hands are ice cold. Let’s get you downstairs with your friend here. We’ll check you out and make sure you’re okay.”
“You… you… can’t tell my family I’m here,” he managed.
Crosby was going to open his mouth to say something, but Garcia touched his shoulder. “Lift your shirt, Cowboy, and let your guy tape your ribs. I’ll see if we can get him someplace safe.”
Oh wow. That was nice. Crosby nodded and let him do that while he moved his hands to the Velcro of his Kevlar, wincing when he disturbed his side.
Brian took over for him, taking out the vest before unzipping his hooded sweatshirt and lifting the shirt underneath. The sound he made sucking air through his teeth was not promising.
“Oh man. There’s some swelling here. It’s looking bad. Wendy, get your ass over here. We need to get him to X-ray, stat!”
“Oh Lord. Crosby,” Wendy said, because she definitelydidremember him, “could you not make things shittier on yourself? That would be great, yeah?”
Crosby was suddenly grateful he couldn’t look past his bunched sweatshirt to see the bruising on his ribs. Somehow that always made it worse. At that moment the elevator doors swung open and Clint Harding strode through the doors, looking pissed off and frustrated. He took in Crosby with a sweep of his eyes and said, “Crosby, lie down.”
“Yes, sir,” Crosby rasped, but Brian shook his head no, pulling out an ace bandage.
“Not tape?” Harding asked.
Brian pushed gently at the swollen flesh, and Crosby let out a little moan, hating himself for the noise.
“Possible internal bleeding. X-rays first, tape after we know if we’re going in for surgery.”
Clint glared at him. “You could not fucking wait?”
“He saved my life,” Kurt said, and Crosby had to give it to the kid. He approached slowly, almost like a feral animal, but still, Clint was on a tear, and that was something to behold.
“We’re so very glad he did.” Harding said it through his teeth, but he didn’t bark.
“Chief,” Garcia said quietly, “this is Kurt Armbruster, one of our runners. He’s a little shocky. We were going to take him to the hospital with Crosby to check his vitals.”
Clint Harding gave Garcia the kind of look he’d been giving Crosby for a year and a half, which made Crosby think maybe the new guy was going to make it for a while. That was good, because at that moment, breathing got a lot harder, and he found himself being helped onto the stretcher while he became the unwilling center of attention once again.
EIGHT WEEKS.That’s how long it took to recover from the broken ribs, with an extra week thrown in for the punctured lung. On the one hand, it was two weeks spent in the hospital, which was the suck because everybody came in to tell him that the new guy was really earning his oats.
On the other hand, it was six weeks spent in Toby’s apartment, in a bed he’d ordered from the hospital and made Toby promise on his life not to let anybody have sex on. Which was also the suck because he sort of missed rooming with Gail. Not Iliana, though. He didn’t even miss the sex, which had been impersonal. He really liked the emotional connection he usually made during sex; he hadn’t had a girlfriend since Chicago, and he missed that.
Gail’s cast had come off a week after Crosby went into surgery. She wasn’t back to full duty yet, but she did get to go out on calls on occasion. She came by and updated Crosby on Garcia and the others too.
When he was out of the hospital and stuck at Toby’s, trying not to bitch like an old man about the five thousand people doing the ten thousand illicit substances in the other parts of the apartment, Garcia himself came to visit.
Crosby was lying on his side, trying to rest and wishing he didn’t feel like such an asshole for begging Toby’s guests to open the window in the living room while they were smoking, when Toby let him into Crosby’s room.
“You doing okay?” Toby asked, and Crosby smiled weakly.
Toby was little—five three, five four—with bandy legs and contorted joints. Crosby remembered Toby saying he hadn’t been able to absorb nutrition as a child. He had a puckish little face and an ugly-beautiful smile, and his sense of humor was spot on. As a DJ—a DJ with a communications degree and an IQ of 145—Toby was widely popular, and Crosby got it. Toby had been on the outside looking in for his entire childhood. Now, in the most happening city in the world, Toby was cutting edge, cool, and interesting. He knew Crosby’s job was exhausting, and when Crosby got home after a week of chasing bad guys, Toby had the fridge stocked with his favorite foods and beer, and when he ambled into his room to crash, Toby asked his guests to tone it down.
Crosby didn’t like to impose, and Toby did his best to accommodate a big oafish cop with zero cool in his fascinating milieu of artists, actors, and writers who wandered in and out of the flat. It seems they’d formed a legitimate and real bond while Toby was helping Crosby through his classes at Illinois State and Crosby was introducing Toby to the football team—and the cheerleaders—and watching his snarky, magnetic personality blossom into who he was now.
But that didn’t mean living in his flat was optimal, and Crosby suppressed a wave of embarrassment as Garcia made his way into Crosby’s sparsely furnished room.
“Wow,” Garcia muttered, grabbing the desk chair and moving it to the side of the bed without asking. “It’s like going from Studio 54 to my old army barracks through one open door.”
Crosby grinned tiredly. “Yeah, but the moldings.” The apartment was old-school, circa early 1900s, retrofitted for electricity, HVAC, and modern plumbing. The bones were good—hardwood floors, solid doors, more space than New York probably allowed by law in this day and age.
Garcia laughed a little. “The apartment is nice,” he admitted, “but is that”—he gestured with his hand toward the sophisticated goose-babbling chaos that filled the front rooms—“always a thing?”