Greg had been planning this dinner for a week. Just fresh from court, he was going to go to the jewelers and pick up the ring. It was going to be tonight. Okay, so officially they hadn’t been together for very long, but it was a long time coming. Since the day he met Sara, whether he’d admit it or not, he was preparing for the day he was going to ask her to marry him. And it was right now.

But, of course, work came first. Much to his chagrin, he couldn’t resist going on a case. He was still on a high from doing so well in court, and Sara wasn’t off anyway, so he might as well kill some time by doing a little crime solving. He was running high and feeling totally unstoppable. That’s why it was going to be that night. There was no way she would say no. Call it Nana Olaf intuition seeping into him, but Greg was sure that come morning, when he would whisk Sara off to dinner, she would be charmed, she would be in love, and she couldn’t say no.

But the best laid plans are apt to go up in smoke when a little thing like gang violence gets in the way. And in that flash of a moment he knew tonight wouldn’t work out how he’d planned. All he could think was, “When you send help, please don’t send Sara. Don’t get her close to these people. She’s already been through enough, please, keep her away.” And then he drove the Denali into the kid with the milky eyes.

Everything happened so fast. He tried to stay conscious enough to take in everything. Who did what, when and where. They were going to need all the information they could get. Potential DNA evidence on his vest and under his nails. Suspects’ car sideswiped the Denali. And they were all wearing the same type of black hoodie with some facial alterations. Probably masks. His head hurt. No, really, his whole body hurt. There wasn’t a part of him he could feel without pain. Maybe this is what his parents felt before they drifted to unconsciousness after their wreck. Worse, maybe this is what his brother and sister felt before they lost all higher brain functions. And as he stopped fighting the urge to look around and mentally collect evidence, all he could do was pray. Pray that if he was going to go brain dead, that he would just die instead. He didn’t want Sara to go through what Amy was going through, watching the man she loved waste away. But if he was going to die, he wanted to see her face one last time. The most beautiful woman in the world. He wanted that to be the last thing he saw, one last glimpse of something beautiful as he died an ugly death. It was all he could wish for. One last thing before he drifted off.

The paramedics woke him up. It was then that he realized he would live, albeit very painfully for a couple weeks. But he couldn’t open his eyes. He could hear and feel, but his eyes were swollen shut. He started talking to Sofia, telling her about what happened. She told him to rest. No, no, he wanted to do his job. He wanted to be tough and normal in case Sara saw him. He wanted to be strong and show he was okay. He didn’t want her to worry.

He said it was her scent that he could tell. But it was her touch more than anything. He’d memorized the exact ways she touched him, he’d memorized everything. Since they first got together he kept a mental record of every single moment, how she talked, how she moved. It had all been too good to be true, so he had to remember all of it. And it was that memory that put the image of her in his mind. He could see her kneeling over him. All the pain went away. She was there. They were together. Granted, he couldn’t open his eyes and see her, but until he could, he had a perfect image in his mind. She read through the macho act, and she was just there. Stroking his hair.

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