Thank you all so much for your amazing reviews! I love them all!~Nan

The beginning of February brings a brutal cold to Chicago. No amount of jackets, hats, and gloves and scarves can keep the bitter chill from setting into her bones. It's been three straight days of temperatures that do not get higher than 18 degrees. The wind chill burns her face and she can't remember the last time she was this miserable.

She's been sitting in a beat up Camry next to Kim for almost three hours. Even with the heat cranked she's shivering. She wonders briefly if maybe she's getting sick, but then forces the thought far from her mind. She doesn't have time for sickness right now.

Things at work have been pretty crazy lately. When Hailey and Jay had disclosed to Voight that they were pursuing a relationship, he hadn't been too surprised. He wasn't happy about it, but he knew they had been walking a fine line for a long time now. The conversation from that day plays back in her mind.

"So you two decide you want to play house, and now I've got to split up my whole unit up to accommodate you. How is that fair to everyone else?" Voight leans forward so his elbows rest on the desk.

Hailey sucks in a breath and she can feel Jay stiffen beside her. He's due to start back in 3 days and they had wanted to let Voight know what was happening before he returned. She had thought that by being up front with him, he would understand and try to work with them, but he seemed far from impressed.

"Sarge, I thought this was the best route. I thought that by telling you instead of hiding it, it would be the right thing to do." Her hands rub nervously at the tops of her thighs, and she swears she can feel sweat gather in the small of her back.

"You think by doing one or the other you can stop me from having to transfer one of you out if this doesn't work? Because that's what will happen. You're not fit for this unit if you think otherwise." He turns away and opens the small filing cabinet, reaching in for a couple pieces of paper. "Fill these out. You'll find out who you're partnered with on Monday."

That's it, he dismisses them and all Jay and Hailey can think is that it could have been so much worse. They hadn't spoken until they pulled out of the lot.

"You okay?" Hailey looks at him, worried he regrets agreeing with her on splitting up, on telling Voight at all.

"We'll be fine. He'll calm down." He hopes. Honestly, the fact that he hadn't threatened to fire one of them was a win. Monday was going to be pretty interesting.

She's pulled from her thoughts by Kim who radios in to the rest of the team that their suspect has just pulled in. They watch as the guy walks up the steps of the house carrying what looks like a bundle of blankets. They wait for the signal from the rest of the team and then they all move out and prepare to breach the house.

Kim and Hailey are sent to the rear of the house and as they head towards the back door, Hailey's eyes connect with Jay's briefly. She knows he's telling her to be careful with the single look, and she hopes he can read the same messages in hers. Kim taps her shoulder and they move forward in unison.

They knock the back door in at the same moment Vanessa and Kevin take down the front. They rush inside, guns drawn as they begin to clear the rooms. They come to a small room that looks out of place. It'S just a small room with a rocking chair, no doors or windows. There is something off about the size. There should be three rooms that are all about the same size on this side of the house, but it's missing over half the space.

Hailey stops Kim from moving on with a hand on her arm, and motions to the far side of the little room. She speaks over the radio quietly. "Middle room on alley side of the house is it. There's gotta be a hidden room. Can you see an entry from the front room We've got nothing back here?" She doesn't have time to hear anyone's response because a flash of movement pulls her focus.

"Woah, take it easy. You don't want to do this." Kim voice is tight as she tries keep the pressure off her neck. The guy had come out of nowhere, and if she had to guess, the door to this room was hidden in the hallway that they already cleared.

"Chicago PD, drop the gun." Hailey keeps her voice steady, not wanting to spook the guy. He looks completely strung out. "Why don't you let my partner go, and and we can help you out of this." She takes a small step forward, trying to keep his focus on her.

"I didn't do anything wrong...I just found that girl. She was all alone. I...I saved her." He erratically waves the gun to make his point, but it's his mistake.

Kim feels the gun leave her side and she takes action immediately. Dropping her weight, she catches the guy off guard and she takes them both to the floor. She hears a shot ring out and she rolls, standing quickly and she sees him trying to point the gun again. Her foot steps hard on his gun hand, and she lets out a relieved breath when Jay and Voight step in to help.

"Hailey you good?" Kim shouts, not seeing her partner in the room.

"I got her, I got the girl. She's okay." Hailey appears, breathing heavily, from a small section of wood paneling in the hallway about 3 feet from where the guy had been holding Kim. She's carrying the little girl they had been searching for, who went missing from a local park 2 days ago.

"Get her outside to a medic, stay with her Upton." Voight's voice spurs her into motion and she hurries outside with the girl. There's an odd sort of burning in her side that feels like a stitch she would get from running too hard too quickly. She ignores it and focuses on her task at hand.

"Nice save Upton." Emily Foster moves forward to intercept the girl and she turns to get her set up in the back of the ambulance. "We got blood. But I can't find a wound." Foster's hands are searching for the source of the blood, but she sees nothing wrong. There's not a scratch on the girl. "Where is all this from?" She turns back to Hailey and then she shouts for her partner.

Hailey can't seem to catch her breath. She tries to stand up and draw her arms up over her head, but the searing pain in her side has her doubling over. Her hand pulls away from her side and she gets a little dizzy at the sight of the blood coating her gloves.

"Oh shit..." It's all she manages to get out. Her body gives in to the shock and she drops to the ground in a graceless heap.

Her eyes peel open and then slam shut against the rapidly blinking lights. She can hear someone talking about a GSW and something about needing a chest tube and she realizes she is in the hospital. She had been shot. How didn't she feel it?

"Hailey? Hailey can you hear me?" Will's worried face hovers above her and she gathers that they are running with her. "Just hang on. You're gonna be okay." They finally make it to a room and she tries not to react as she's jostled about while being transferred to a bed and the rest of her soiled clothes are removed.

"Nnnnuuuhh..." She tries to tell them to stop touching her, that it hurts, but she can't get a breath and her words are just a gurgle bubbling out. Her panicked eyes search out Will's and she thinks he says something about helping her to breathe.

"...it's gonna hurt but you'll be able to breathe." He turns back to the tray set up and grabs the scalpel. "I'm sorry Hailey." Even with the numbing spray, this was going to hurt. He slices into her side between her ribs and her whole body arches up in protest. He ignores her pained cry and grabs the chest tube and the forceps. He pushes the tube in with practiced ease and then watches as the blood fills the tube.

Her chest feels like it's on fire and she wants to shove Will's hands off of her but then suddenly the pressure in her chest feels like it bursts open and she can finally breathe again. She draws in a shaky breath and her body limply falls back to the mattress. She tries to turn her head to avoid the oxygen mask they slip on but it's useless. She wants to ask if Jay is here. She wants to see him, but again, Will's face fills her line of vision.

"We're going to sedate you now and get you up to surgery." He nods to the nurse and Hailey can feel the icy burn of the medication slide through her veins, and Will watches as she goes out.

Jay was walking behind Voight and their suspect, listening to a joke from Adam when he hears Brett's name being shouted. His head snaps in that direction and his heart stops when he sees Hailey huddled on the ground. He had made it to her side in record time and he gently turned her over to get a look at her. The blood on the pavement had his hands trembling, and when he pulls her jacket up he can see an entry wound in her lower right side. The gunshot that they heard must have struck her, and it entered her body just below the bottom of her vest.

He remembers applying pressure and thanking god that she was unconscious so she wouldn't feel the pain of it. Brett had asked about an exit wound, but he couldn't see one, so they knew the bullet was still inside.

He had rode with them in the ambulance and prayed that she would just open her eyes, even just for a second. The longer they drove, the shallower her breaths got, and the small pool of blood on the floor grew by the second. He doesn't care that Foster heard the things he had whispered to her on the drive to the hospital. How he told her he loved her at least a hundred times. He just kept repeating that she was going to be okay. She had to be okay.

Even now, it's all he can think. He wonders if this is how she felt after he had been shot last fall. There's this crushing guilt that weighs him down and he just keeps thinking that maybe this wouldn't have happened if he had still been her partner.

"I'm so sorry Jay. I swear...we cleared the rooms. By the time we realized there was a hidden room, it was too late." Kim apologizes to Jay even though she didn't do anything wrong.

Jay doesn't answer right away. He doesn't blame her. What happened would probably have happened regardless of who cleared the rear of the house. The hidden door had them all at a disadvantage.

"You didn't do anything wrong Kim. She's gonna be okay...she will." He rubs at his face before he slouches back in the chair, willing one of Hailey's doctors to come through the doors with good news.

He sits for nearly 3 hours with his team surrounding him, waiting alongside him. He needs a distraction, anything to take his mind off the horrible outcomes he's imagining. He searches out Voight and nods towards the hallway, wanting to speak with him.

"What do you need, Jay?" Voight's voice is sincere, gentle, and Jay's breath hitches at the unexpected kindness.

"I need...I can't not be her partner." He swallows thickly, hating the emotion slipping through. "These last couple of months, not knowing what she's doing when she walks down the stairs...not having her back out there? I can't do it anymore. I know she told you that we didn't want to be partners, but I need to be hers." He'd started off slow, struggling to get the words out, but now they come pouring out and he's practically tripping over them. "I don't care about the consequences, or if you want to make my life miserable for the foreseeable future. I just need to know she's protected. I need her safe..."

"Take a breath Jay." Voight shoves Jay so he bends slightly at the waist, and lets him breathe deeply for a bit. When it sounds like he has calmed down enough, he takes his hand off and watches as he stands up.

"You tossed a lot out just now Jay. But there's one thing I want you to think about here. Do you think Hailey is going to be okay with you wanting to 'protect' her? Because it sounds a lot like you don't think she can do her job. I get that you're scared, I do, but you aren't thinking straight right now. The last thing Hailey needs right now, is you planting more seeds of doubt in her head." He watches as his words strike home. He knows why Hailey had asked to go back to New York...maybe not the specifics, but he knew enough.

Jay is speechless. That's not at all what he meant to do. Hailey is one of the best, if not THE best in the unit. Sure, she had strayed a bit last year, but she had come back even stronger. "I trust Hailey with my life. I do. My reasons for needing to be her partner are...they're purely selfish. And I know that doesn't help my case, but my focus is pulled in so many directions because I'm constantly worried that she's going to get hurt and just like I am right now, I'll wonder if it would have happened if we were still partners." He knows he sounds weak but he doesn't care.

"If you really want to be her partner again, we can revisit it when the time is right. But Jay...this right is here, what you're doing right now? It's exactly why I have an issue with in house romance. You can think it's me just being an ass all you want, but when your personal relationships get in the way of doing your job...that's a problem."

Whatever else Voight might have said fades to the background when Jay catches sight of Will talking to the team in the waiting room. He hurries to reach his brother, desperate to hear what he is saying.

"...went as well as we could have hoped. She's going to be fine, and she'll be back to work in no time." Will has a smile on his face when he turns to see Jay's worried face. "She'll be moved out of recovery within the hour. You guys can see her then." He answers his unspoken

question, and then turns to leave. He swipes his key card and passes through the doors back towards the surgical floor. Half a step through the doors, he is engulfed in a massive hug.

Jay could care less that his team sees him right now. His brother had been one of the surgeons that saved Hailey...saved the woman he loves. "She's really okay?" He steps back, a bit and wipes at the moisture in his eyes.

"Yeah Jay. She's gonna be fine. She lost some blood and her appendix, plus she's got a grade 1 sub-scapular hematoma that we are watching, but once we got the chest tube in, she was already out of the woods. She'll be a little sore, and because it's a liver injury it's gonna take a little longer, but she'll be back to protecting our city by the end of April at the latest...desk duty, in probably six weeks." His hand goes to his shoulder giving his support. "Come on...I'll take you back now."

The first thing Hailey does when she wakes up is drink. Someone is placing a straw in her mouth, and she gulps and gulps. Her mouth has never been this dry, and she drinks the water as if it's been a week without it.

"Easy, not so fast." Jay pulls the cup and straw back and can't help but smile a little at the way her mouth chases after it. He sets the cup down and he runs a hand over her hair, stopping on the swell of her cheek. "Hey. Welcome back." His lips brush her forehead, and he sits back to look at her.

"I got shot." It's not a question, more a statement, like she's letting him know that she remembers what happened.

"Yeah...you got shot." Jay starts to run through the small list of injuries she had sustained, and he sees her wince as she tries to sit up.

"Hhssssshh" She sucks in a breath as the dull ache in her side increases. She manages to sit up with Jay's help and then she reaches out for his hand.

"You scared the hell out me out there." Jay lifts her hand and presses a kiss to her fingers and he fights the slight tremor in his voice.

"I'm sorry. I honestly didn't even feel it at first. Not until I looked down and saw the blood on my hand. Then it hurt...I was just focused on finding that little girl." Her eyes widen a bit. "She's okay right? The little girl?" Her voice is a little panicked, like maybe she isn't remembering everything as clearly as she had hoped.

"Yeah. She's back with her mom already." He pauses, wanting to bring up the whole partner thing, but he isn't sure how to broach the subject.

"Seriously...you two need to chill it with the injury thing. I'm tired of seeing one of you moping around here..." Will breezes in, stopping Jay from talking. His attempt at a joke gets a small grin from Jay, but Hailey just sort of glares at him. "Come one Hailey...it's true." He pulls her chart and takes a quick look.

"You said it wouldn't hurt that bad." She clearly remembers the ED room, and having that chest tube inserted. It had hurt worse than when she realized she had been shot. "You ever been cut into while you're still awake?"

"Yeah...I have actually. And so has Jay. If you're done with your little pity party, I can get started." Will gives her a stare that's not quite a glare, but he hopes she understands that he had done what needed to be done. She was alive after all.

She apologizes quickly, realizing she had sounded ungrateful, and she listens as Will starts to talk.

"You've got a hematoma on your liver, and your appendix was removed, but overall, your injuries are pretty minor. You'll be back to work end of April. Sound good?" He laughs at her happy nod, and then tells them he doesn't want to see either of them in here for a while.

"Hey. Where's you head right now?" Hailey can feel the unexpected waves of tension coming from Jay. Was he mad at her?

"You just had me worried. Are you in pain? What can I do for you?" She's got a bit of a recovery ahead of her, so he guesses the conversation about wanting to be partners again can wait. He'll be partnered with someone else until she can come back anyway.

She doesn't answer him with words, just tries to shift a bit on the bed as she pats it, so he can lay with her.

Jay will pretty much do anything she asks him right now, so laying with her is fine. He takes off his shoes and carefully arranges himself on the narrow strip of the bed she had vacated. His hand rests on her left hip, on the other side of her stitches. He listens as her breathing evens out but when he thinks she has fallen asleep and tries to move so she can rest more comfortably, she speaks.

"Jay?" Her whisper breaks through the hum of the machines in her room.

"Yeah?" He pauses, hovering half on the bed.

"Will you stay with me?" She sounds a bit like a scared little child, but again, the look on her face has him pretty much willing to do anything she asks. She relaxes against him again and like that first night in the hospital all those weeks ago, she taps out that she loves him and she drifts off shortly after he whispers he loves her too.

"You sure you don't want to wait another week?" He knows the answer before she even glares back at him, but Will had said that the chance of a repeat injury to her liver are higher than normal, especially in their line of work, so he worries.

"I'm not even gonna acknowledge that question. I'll be in the truck." It's been two months of laying around, waiting for the hematoma on her liver to disappear. The thought of her body reabsorbing the massive blood blister creeped her out a lot, and the fact that all she could do was sit or lay around...it was the most boring two months she can remember.

Jay watches her walk out and flinches when the doors slams shut behind her. He's been both anticipating and dreading this day for a while now. She will be fully back to work which is definitely a good thing, but he hadn't ever brought up being partners again. So he will be right back to where he was...watching her walk out without him having her back. His conversation with Voight had stayed on his mind and he never wanted to make Hailey doubt herself again.

So he had kept his mouth shut, and chose instead to just enjoy his time with her. They had taken a lot of long drives and gone to a lot of movies and dinners, and he loved every second of it. He knows she was more than ready to get back out there, he just needs to accept that.

He wonders if Hailey can hear the breath he releases before he opens the door. Pissing her off on her first day back was not a good move on his part. He slides the key into the ignition but doesn't turn it. He studies her profile, hating the rigid set to her shoulders.

"We're gonna be late. Seriously...I'm fine Jay. You were there when I got cleared." She turns to look at him, and the intensity in his gaze has her heart stuttering. She watches as his hand reaches out and he brushes his knuckles against her cheek.

"You're gonna crush it today, Hailey. The team is excited to have you back for real. I'm excited to see you back." He lets his hand travel down her neck and then runs down her arm to bring her hand to his lips. "I love you." He smiles against her lips when she leans over the center console to kiss him.

"Love you too...now take me to work!" Her smile is the biggest he's seen in the last two months, and she keeps it the entire ride to work.

Hailey reaches the top of the stairs and stops abruptly. There's little streamers and some balloons taped to her desk and she laughs. It's a mess, and a poor attempt at a welcome back party but it pretty much sums up her team perfectly.

"Welcome back Hailey!" She's greeted like she hasn't been on desk duty for the last 3 weeks and she smiles even harder, despite the blush heating her cheeks. Being the center of attention is definitely not her thing. She finally makes her way to her desk and pushes some of the streamers off her chair so she can sit down. Her eyes scan the room and she gives Voight a small smile when she spots him in his office doorway. His smile mirrors hers and then everyone settles in to work.

Hailey had been finishing up the last of her paperwork that had piled up while she waiting to return on desk duty, when Voight comes out of his office.

"We got a double homicide and a possible kidnapping." He rattles off the details of the case and everyone rises, silently getting ready for their assignments.

"Rojas, Attwater, I want you to head over and talk to the responding officers. Burgess, Ruzek, I want you to get any footage you can and start talking to neighbors. Upton, Halstead, get to the house, lets find out what happened." He can see Jay's shocked expression, and when his team disappears down the steps, he smiles. He would never admit it, but this was how his team worked best. These were the partners that made his team one of the most sought after units in Chicago.

Jay's fingers tap against the steering wheel with a mix of nerves and happiness. He doesn't know if Voight partnered them together again because of what he said in the hospital the night Hailey was shot, or if he just happened to let it slip his mind that they weren't supposed to be partnered together. He obviously wasn't going to argue.

"You okay over there partner?" She sees his fingers dancing away and she can tell how happy he is.

"Yeah...Yeah I am. I just want you to know that I didn't ask to be partnered with you. If you want to switch back I understand." Keeping his eyes straight ahead, he waits for her answer.

"Do you not want to be partners anymore?" This is what she thought he wanted. Why was he being so weird.

"I want you. Any way I can get you. I just know that we agreed on not being partners before, and I wanted you to know that I'm okay with that too." At the light, he turns his head and finally looks at her. She's been quiet for the last three blocks. The light turns quickly and he eases the truck forward just as she starts to speak.

"I talked to Voight last week. I thought I was making the right decision about splitting up, but I was wrong. You're my partner Jay. Nobody even comes close to what we have. Even before we started dating, we just connected." She watches her words sink in, and she can't help but smile at his happy smile. "So I asked Voight to put us back together. That's what I want."

"It's what I want too." His hand finds hers and he wishes they were at home so he could show her just how happy he is with her decision. He settles for holding her hand, and he knows she can see the promise in his eyes that he will make good on tonight.

When they pull up to the house, they fall into step with each other and move as one up the steps to the tech team inside. They were Hailey and Jay. Upton and Halstead. They were back, and just before they step through the door, Jay turns and gives her little wink. This was where they were supposed to be. Together they can tackle anything.

We've reached the end of another story! Thanks for joining, and see you next time!~Nan