The clock radio clicked, but instead of the raucous buzz Abby was
used to hearing from her own
alarm, music started playing.
--nd shall you be my new
romance?
On the clear understanding
that this kind of thing can happen
Shall we dance? Shall we
dance? Shall we dance?
She snickered sleepily, and reached out to slap the snooze button.
She would've expected a rock-n-roll
station... he just kept right on surprising her all the time. He
emerged from the en suite bathroom,
wrapped in a robe with his hair all wet, and spiky from vigorous
towel-drying. "Good morning." She
was, he thought, the most beautiful woman he knew.
"Morning," she rasped, then cleared her throat. Darned cigarettes...
maybe someone at work knew
of a way that really worked, because the gum and the
patches just hadn't done it for her. She wondered
if hypnosis was any good. "Rodgers & Hammerstein? Didn't know you
liked that kind of music," she
told him, grinning saucily.
"There's a lot you still don't know about me," he told
her, returning the smile and tracing the line
of her jaw before he kissed her. "And I didn't know you
were familiar with Rodgers & Hammerstein."
"Oh, sure. High school production. I can't sing worth a lick--" she
giggled, as he flopped down on the
bed next to her and playfully licked her neck. "Can't - mm! - sing, but
I can organize props with the
best of 'em."
"You can prop me up anytime, Abby," he teased her.
"Well, thanks! I think... whatever that means." His smile faltered, and he squeezed her hand gently.
"We shouldn't have done this, you know," he told her. "I mean, I'm a doctor, and you're a student--"
"I was a nurse last night," she reminded him sternly,
and pointed to the pink scrubs draped over
the chair by the bed; he laughed softly, in acknowledgment.
"True enough. So, uh... I guess you're going to be heading home from here?" Abby groaned.
"Yeah. Gotta go make sure Maggie hasn't burned the place down, or
something. And I need to
get a shower and change my clothes." He leered at her.
"Don't you mean another shower?" She blushed, at the
reminder of the hot shower they'd taken
last night... they'd done things to each other under the spray that
she'd only read about before
(Richard hadn't done them, and Abby had been too ashamed to ask him to
do them). The things
he could do with a bar of soap! "Seriously..." he added quietly. "We
need to talk. About what we're
going to do when your next rotation in the ER comes up. I'll disqualify
myself from supervising and
evaluating you, of course--"
"You don't think you can be objective?" He reached out to take her hand in his.
"About you? Mmmm... no. Somehow I don't think so."
* * *
She opened the front door of her condo, and found Maggie surrounded
by fabric and working
with a sewing machine. I don't have a sewing machine, she thought
wildly, but said aloud, "Mom,
where did you get that?" Maggie Wyczenski looked up abruptly from her
project, surprised out of
her feverish pace, and smiled at her daughter.
"Oh, I met your neighbor, Mrs Johnson. Lovely woman.
Anyway, I borrowed her sewing
machine, and--"
"And what about this material? How much did that
cost?" It was good material, too - Abby was
no expert on those sorts of things, but she was an expert
on her mother's ways... thank god she
didn't have any credit cards lying around the house! But that still
left the question of where and
how Maggie had acquired the yards and yards of fabric. Oh, boy.
"Don't you worry, honey," Maggie chirped. "I'm making a nice outfit,
and I'll get a job, and it'll
be all right. You'll see." She finished off another seam, and looked up
at Abby with a sly little
smile. "And I'll even make you a nice dress with a plunging neckline,
to catch the eye of that
Euro-doctor." Abby gasped at Maggie's suggestion... not that the idea
of catching Luka's eye
wasn't appealing, but it just wasn't right.
"Mom, he's involved with somebody else." Maggie
looked up from her sewing, and frowned at
Abby as though she'd announced that the sky outside was pink.
"So?"
"So I don't-- I won't come between two people! Richard
did that to me, and I won't do it to someone
else." Besides, she acknowledged to herself, Dr Weaver was probably
fully capable of kicking
her ass up one end of the hospital, and down the other.
* * *
Carter frowned at Dave's relentlessly cheerful mien - the guy had an
ear to ear grin, and he kept
humming some little tune that Carter didn't recognize... he finally got
tired of hearing "dah da dah,
dah da dah, da da dahhhhh...." and spoke up. "What's with you, Dave?
How come you're in such
a good mood?" Dave merely smiled enigmatically. "Oh-hoh... and who's
the 'lucky' girl?"
"That, my friend, would be telling," Dave replied smugly.
* * *
Dave dashed by the admit desk, pausing only long enough to gasp out
"I'm not here!", and
disappeared into one of the exam rooms. A minute later, an
angry-looking blonde marched
up to the desk.
"I'm lookin' for David Malucci. Is he here?" Randi glanced at Cleo
and Chuny, then shrugged
and shook her head.
"Nope. Sorry, haven't seen him. Dunno where he is."
"Oh. Well, tell him that Stephanie came by lookin' for him."
"Stephanie. Right. Gotcha. I'll tell him when I see him." Stephanie
stared at Randi suspiciously,
but finally nodded and left. Cleo snickered.
"Some other girl was looking for him yesterday, too... I guess since
he hits on everything with
legs, he must hit the target once in a while just by chance." Chuny
smirked.
"Or catch something."
"Hey. Don't knock it till you've tried it," Randi informed them
both, a smug little grin playing
around her lips. Cleo and Chuny exchanged a startled look behind the
desk clerk's back: Randi
and Dave?!?
* * *
They left the courthouse together, both unimpressed by what had
happened in there a few
minutes ago. "Are you okay, Kerry?" Her face was completely unbruised
for the first time in
several weeks, but it was currently darkened by a little scowl.
"Hm? Yeah. Just doesn't seem right, that the guy
practically got away with it. Six months,
including the time he spent recuperating in the jail ward, and he'll be
right back to it. As if that
wasn't bad enough, I heard somebody say that he was thinking about
suing us!" Luka reached
down and groped for her hand, then kissed her fingers before drawing
her into an embrace.
"Don't worry about it, okay? We'll go home, maybe put in a video...
and it's been a little while
since we shared a bubble bath, huh?" He said the last quietly - there
weren't many people around,
this time of day, but he was a little embarrassed to be so fond of the
lilac-scented bubbles that
Kerry liked. Then again, part of his fondness for the stuff had a lot
to do with the way that they
wound up making love every time she drew a bath with it. Sometimes it
was right there in the tub,
with warm water and suds going all over the bathroom, and sometimes it
was afterwards... she'd
climb into bed, wearing nothing but a towel around her still-damp body,
and wake him with a long,
slow kiss. He shivered a little... the scent just did
things to him.
They got in the car and just sat there for nearly a minute, neither
of them saying a word, until
Luka took the car key out of his coat pocket and went to put it in the
ignition. She put her hand
on his arm to stop him, and he turned to look at her and her concerned
expression.
"Do you remember waking up last night?" She thought that the words
didn't even come close to
expressing how much he'd scared her - tossing and turning, and talking
in his sleep for the first time
in a while... struggling as she'd stroked his hair and softly murmured,
"U redu, u redu. Molim,
probudi, dragi," until he'd finally blinked sleepily, grunted an
unintelligible response, and fallen
asleep again.
"All I remember about last night is that I didn't get much rest. Bad
dreams, I suppose, but nothing
comes to mind. Probably just anxious about today."
"Weren't you having trouble with that before, of not being able to
remember your dreams?" He
laughed softly and gently.
"Do you remember all of your dreams, Kerry? I'm fine.
Please, don't worry about me, okay?"
He closed his eyes and absently rubbed the back of his head where the
stitches had been - he
could feel a tiny ridge of scar tissue back there, already - and
wearily half-smiled when he felt
Kerry's delicate little hand resting on his arm again.
"I'll always worry about you, whether or not you think it's
necessary." She hadn't told him about
her encounter with Mr Mellonston, or about her concerns about him...
she'd meant to have a word
with him about that, but then they'd been attacked and the subject not
only hadn't come up again,
she hadn't been able to devise an opening to bring it up again in the
last month. Maybe it was just
that she didn't want to bring it up... but she had to do
it. She'd be the worst kind of girlfriend if,
instead of trying to help him, she let his problems slide by without
saying a word. She'd thought
that he really was doing better, after he'd returned
home, which was why she hadn't pressed him
about his decision to quit his therapy sessions with Kim. But now she
wasn't so sure.
* * *
Inoperable. He'd used that word before, without really thinking
about it. Hell, even his dad's cancer
had been inoperable, but Mark had always thought of it in terms of the
old man being too stubborn
to do anything about it when it was first diagnosed. After all, he'd
already known about it for several
months before he agreed to come live with Mark in Chicago... and that
had probably been why he'd
agreed so readily. But Mark had never really thought of the word
"inoperable" in connection with
himself.
After everything he'd been through in his adult life, it would be a
knot of rapidly growing cells in his
brain - a glioblastoma multiforme - that would kill him. It was
encroaching upon the Broca's area,
which had caused his earlier inability to speak... it had been so
weird, when he was stitching up the
woman's hand, how he'd felt his mind seize up when he would have
answered her trivial comments
about-- well, whatever she'd been talking about. He didn't remember. He
vaguely remembered - the
memory was like peering through deep, murky water - gesturing to her,
to indicate that he'd be back,
and going to the bathroom to conduct a quick and dirty neuro exam on
himself... he'd recovered his
ability to speak - his confidence in his ability to speak
- as he made faces at himself in the mirror. He
hadn't been sure whether or not to be relieved that his facial
movements were all symmetrical: whatever
the cause of his aphasia, it hadn't been a stroke like the one his
mother had suffered.
And he'd lied to Elizabeth about where he was going, this morning.
He'd tried to find the right moment,
and the right way, to tell her, "By the way, honey, I have a thing in
my head which may kill me before
our baby is born!" but somehow those things just weren't covered by
Miss Manners or Emily Post or,
possibly, even Miraculous Mutha. The timing... it was just too
damned symbolic for words, that their
baby would be born about the time that he would die - not to mention
that he and Elizabeth had each
found out their news on the same day.
* * *
Mark had worked himself into a real funk by the time he got to
County, so he wasn't very pleased to
arrive and find that the waiting area was packed with people who
were... well... waiting. He shoved
some stuff on the counter out of the way in the process of getting to a
telephone, and glared at Randi.
She sniffed haughtily at him.
"Don't look at me. It's always backed up like this
when it's Dr Weaver's day off, remember? Besides,
I think she and Dr Kovac were gonna testify today, against that guy who
tried to mug them."
Lydia came by, mentioning a patient's condition, and Mark snapped
out a diagnosis and course of
treatment... he might have an incredibly malignant tumor in his head
that was going to kill him by the
end of next year, but by god he could still be as good a doctor as
ever! Thus, Mark was mortified
when Carter leaned over and quietly corrected his assessment - although
Carter didn't say it, Mark was
aware that the treatment he'd ordered would have killed
the patient. Fuck.
"Carter, you're overdue for a blood test," Mark said, instead of
thanking Carter for the correction.
"Pick a nurse to do the draw... Exam 4 is clear."
"Chuny, are you free?" She agreed, and the three of them trooped into the exam room.
* * *
Chuny quietly bent over Carter's arm... tying the tourniquet,
tapping the pit of the elbow to find a good
vein, and going over the site with an alcohol swab. She knew exactly
what was going on. Oh, not officially,
of course - officially, nobody except Carter and the
attendings knew about Carter's probation and drug
problem. But c'mon... the rest of the staff in the ER, they weren't
idiots! And a person would have had to
have been an idiot, to see all those intense meetings, back in May,
followed by Carter's absence for three
months, and not put the pieces together.
It wasn't like Carter was the first doctor Chuny'd ever seen become
addicted to drugs... the wonder, she
thought, was that more of the people here didn't become
addicts: the drugs were all around them every
day, the work was hard - both on the mind and the body - and there were
an awful lot of doctors who
were arrogant enough, and stuck enough in their God-complexes, to
believe that they could handle what
they used.
Chuny had never felt any desire to go on and become a doctor, but
she'd been proud of Carol, taking a
shot at the MCATs and proving that she was more than good enough to go
to med school (she'd heard
that Carol was thinking about it again, now that she was living in
Seattle with Doug and the girls), and
she was glad that Abby was doing well in her quest to be a doctor
(despite the fact that they'd worked
together up in OB for several years, Chuny had always kinda got the
feeling that Abby had become a nurse
only because it wasn't socially acceptable, where Abby was from, for a
girl to be a doctor). She knew that
both women had had their problems with drugs in the past, so she wasn't
too worried about either of them
succumbing to the lure.
Carter had watched Chuny slip the needle into his cephalic vein, and
now turned away as the vial began
to fill with his blood. He looked up, and noticed that Mark was working
on charts. "Hey! Aren't you
supposed to be watching this, or something?" He didn't notice Chuny
glaring at him.
"Do you really think I want to be here any more than you do?" Mark
was starting to get tired of Carter's
attitude - Kerry had quietly passed on Luka's concerns recently, with
regard to their clash over giving
that patient tPA, and at first Mark had assumed that Kerry was simply
reacting to the tPA issue, since he
knew that she wasn't a big fan of the stuff. But ever since she'd
mentioned it, Mark realized that Carter's
attitude had been getting worse lately. He hadn't really
noticed in their weekly meetings, and he hadn't
wanted to notice it in day to day work, but it was damned hard not
to see it, once it had been pointed out.
* * *
Carter returned to the exam room a while later, and could see that
Mark was holding a sheet of paper, and
looking very serious. "Carter, the results on your test came back: the
level of naltrexone in your blood is
almost undetectable."
"I didn't know you were testing for that," Carter
protested, and frowned when he saw Mark's baleful
expression. "I ran out, and I haven't had a chance to get a refill."
Mark chose not to remind Carter of how
long that would have had to be - they both knew what the half-life of
naltrexone was.
"It's in the contract that you signed! You know, you aren't the only
one with something at stake here,
Carter. Kerry and I took a big risk to get you this fresh start." He
didn't bother mentioning the nearly-
desperate bargaining over terms they'd done with Romano, in order to
keep Romano from destroying
Carter's career completely. Mark had to remind himself of how he'd
been, after he was attacked, in order
to keep from completely tearing into Carter over his attitude.
Carter, in the meantime, wasn't really listening to Mark. It had
been a while since he'd really listened to
anybody - he'd ignored the cautions of the counselor at the treatment
center, during his exit interview, he
hadn't given the terms of his contract more than lip service, and he
even did crossword puzzles during his
AA meetings, instead of sharing. The last person he'd really listened
to was Dr Benton, who'd taunted him
into taking that swing and then comforted him and loaded him into
Mark's van and onto the plane. His last
sight of Dr Benton had been of the older man looking back from the
doorway of the center's waiting room,
sadly watching him at the admit desk.
"'Fresh start'? You call this a fresh start? It's been anything but
a fresh start, with all these restrictions and
requirements, and hoops I have to jump through constantly. I've done everything,
I've done whatever was
asked of me, without complaint, I've gone to all the meetings - both
AA/NA and the meetings with you
and Kerry, and eventually you're both just going to have to trust
me!"
As Carter continued to complain about how he'd done everything asked
of him without complaint, Mark
began to feel a little strange... a metallic sensation filled his mouth
and nose, and phantom sounds rasped
through his ears for a moment. Carter... the exam room... everything
ceased to exist for him, and he
toppled over, almost bonelessly.
Carter cut off in mid-whine when Mark fell over and began twitching
and jerking on the floor in front of
him. It was like the time that Kerry had become incapacitated by
benzene fumes and began seizing, but
this was obviously no chemically-induced seizure. He called out the
door to Chuny, who was passing by.
"Chuny! Get me four of Ativan!" She hurried in, grabbing supplies on
her way, and loaded the syringe for
him. He took it, quickly injected Mark as she watched, and then handed
the empty syringe back to her. "Let's
get him up off the floor. Carefully...."
She wanted to snap at him, and tell him, "Really? I would have
thought that we'd just let him stay down
there, or drag him haphazardly, but you're the doctor!", but held her
tongue as she threw the empty syringe
into the nearest sharps container and called in Malik to help them move
Mark. She wondered what could
have happened to Mark, to cause the seizure... she'd heard that he'd
consulted with one of the radiologists
for about an hour, a couple of weeks ago, and that it had been for
himself instead of a patient. She hoped it
was nothing serious... but if it had been something that had required
him to speak with that radiologist for
so long, it couldn't be anything good.
* * *
Mark was horrified to wake up and find himself lying on a gurney,
wearing a hospital gown and... yes,
there was the IV, in his left arm. Great. He must have had a seizure
right here in the hospital, in front of--
ooh. Right. Carter had been complaining about something, but he
couldn't quite remember what. Maybe
it would come back to him later.
"How are ya doin'?" He blinked up at Dave, bewildered by the concern
in the other man's voice. This was
a postictal hallucination, right? Or he was still unconscious, and
dreaming. Dave was the sloppy jerk, the
one who chased women and did a half-assed job when he wasn't being
downright disrespectful. And yet...
Dave was also the one who'd let him continue playing hockey, even after
it had turned out that he was woefully
underqualified for the position. And Dave had, admirably, stifled his
yelps of glee when Mark had let him know
that he couldn't play anymore due to the headaches and neck pains. "We
were all worried when you had that
seizure, man."
"Dave, out," Carter ordered him, and pointed at the door.
"It wasn't a seizure!" Mark shouted after Dave, as he watched the
younger resident shrug bemusedly and
leave. What was this, Grand Central Station? And Malik
and Chuny were here, standing by... oof. Bad
enough that Chuny had seen him right after that attacker had used him
as a punching bag... all bruised and
bleeding... then again, with luck she was the one who'd put him in the
gown. She'd seen all of him before,
after all.
Carter performed a brief neuro exam, and then tried to order tests,
but Mark overrode him in an increasingly
loud and almost frantic voice as he got up and started to dress,
tugging out the IV with a little grunt at the
discomfort. Chuny helped him put some gauze over the site and tape it,
but watched him anxiously. "I just
need a Dilantin level. That's it." Mark's blunt statement startled
Carter - he'd assumed that the seizure had
come right out of the blue for Mark, but apparently this was something
ongoing that Mark had expected... at
least enough to be needing to know whether there was a therapeutic
amount of the anti-convulsant in his
bloodstream. What the hell?!?
* * *
Luka watched as the King of Siam danced with the young British
schoolteacher - around and around the
floor, at a dizzying pace. Still, it looked like fun... he wondered if
he would be able to support Kerry's weight
enough for them to dance like that. He hummed along to
the song:
Or perchance when the last little star has left the sky
Shall we still be together with our arms around each other
And shall you be my new romance?
He turned to glance in the direction of the kitchen. Yes, he and
Kerry had still been together, the morning after
their first night together, with their arms around each other, and
she'd been his new romance. He reckoned that
she'd probably still be his new romance when they'd been
together for decades and were celebrating the birthdays
of their grandchildren, or even their greatgrandchildren.
"Come on, beba!" he called from the living room. "You're
missing the movie!"
"I can hear it," she retorted, as she sliced some more celery into
sticks to munch on. "I practically know it by
heart - this is the fourth copy of 'The King And I' that I've owned."
"You've gone through three copies of this?"
"Yes. Do you have a problem with that?"
"No... no. It's just... you don't seem like the type of person who
would like this." He paused, and thought for
a moment. "Then again, you also never seemed like the sort of person
who would wear leopard-print
underwear. So what do you think - should I shave my head like Yul
Brynner, and go around in loincloths?"
Kerry giggled.
"The nurses would love you for it, I'm sure!" He got up and went to
the kitchen, then struck a Brynner-esque
pose, and Kerry began laughing hysterically, leaning heavily on the
kitchen counter for support. "Don't you
dare shave your head - I like your hair the way it is!"
He wrinkled his nose, and ran his fingers through his hair. Even
with the shorter style he wore these days, it
was still obviously very thick... and the streaks of grey - combined
with the weariness on his face by the time
he finished with an especially trying shift - sometimes made him look
older than his forty years.
"Don't worry. I didn't like the... uh... buzz I had to get for
military service. Danijela said I looked like a fuzzy
lollipop." His lips twitched in a brief smile at the thought - she'd
been downright appalled by the way he
looked! Kerry looked up from her slicing, almost apprehensively.
"How long did-- I mean, how did you meet her? Danijela, that is."
"At a dance. I went with some of my buddies, and I can still
remember... even more than twenty years later...
looking across the room at one point, through a break in the crowd, and
spotting her. Her long, dark, curly hair
was pulled back into a braid that hung down her back, but the night was
humid enough that bits of it had begun
to escape, and were wisping around her head in a little cloud."
He stopped before his voice would have broken, and quickly stole a
small piece of celery and munched on it,
trying to cover up the pain and the guilt - this had been the first
time in nine years that he hadn't been... alone
on the anniversary of that day. Even when he and Nadira had carried on
their brief affair, she hadn't argued
with him when he'd chosen not to be with her that entire week. This
year, however... he'd worked his shift, as
usual, and had ended the day nestled on the couch with Kerry in his
arms, watching a video of an angioplasty.
A strange choice of viewing material, certainly, but he'd once casually
mentioned an interest in the subject... lo
and behold, she'd tracked down the tape. She'd even offered to see if
she could get him in on assisting Dr Kayson
with an angioplasty, if he was really interested.
Kerry paused for a moment in her slicing, and looked up at him; she
hadn't missed the way he'd stopped talking
abruptly. Also, she hadn't missed the way he was starting to raid her
pile of celery! "Luka... about what we talked
about earlier..."
"I know. Can we please talk about it later, and go watch the movie?
I think you have enough celery cut up,
there, huh?" She gently swatted at his hand, as he tried to snitch
another piece.
"Not at the rate you're eating it!" But she scooped up
the sticks and put them onto a plate. "We will talk later,
then? Soon?" He sighed.
"I promise."
* * *
They forgot about the movie (just as well, since the scene at the
end always made her cry), and became absorbed
in their kiss as the plate of celery sat abandoned on the coffee table;
he'd just unbuttoned her blouse and slipped
his hand inside, when the phone rang. "Can you get it, please?" Luka
murmured. She'd been lying on top of him
when they were interrupted, so she knew why it wasn't convenient for
him to stand up just yet. He gave her a hand
in getting back onto her feet, though, and watched her move to the
phone with surprising quickness. Well... maybe
not quite that surprising. She'd been getting around with
at least one crutch for nearly all her life, after all.
He slowly stood up, and crossed the room to where she was listening
to the person on the other end of the line; he
wrapped his arms around her from behind and nuzzled her, and she gently
pushed him away. "John, slow down.
What happened?" Luka frowned when he heard that tone of voice, and quit
his playful attempts to distract her... though
he did keep his arms around her. "Okay... okay. I'll be there as soon
as I can. Right. Bye." She hung up, and began
moving in the direction of the stairs, with a confused Luka in hot
pursuit.
"What's going on?"
"Mark had a seizure. I'm going to cover the rest of his shift." She
started to open the closet to pick out some
clothes, but he nudged the door closed again, to force her to listen to
him.
"Wait a minute. I should do that - I still owe you for the one you took last month, after all!" She shook her head.
"I have some other things I want to do while I'm there, Luka. If
it'll make you feel better, though, you can take
my shift that I had scheduled for tonight." He rumbled happily, and
hugged her.
"You are all heart, Kerry." She patted his back.
"Play your cards right, and I could be wearing stockings when you come home in the morning."
"Play--?" He was confused by the term, but quickly caught on to the
second part of what she'd said. "Uh...
stockings, or pantyhose?"
"Stockings. Just stockings. And maybe my robe over it." He raised his eyebrows and gave her a silly little grin.
"Oh."
* * *
Carter strolled outside, and found Mark shooting hoops. It still
seemed weird, after nearly two years, to see
him out there without Doug... and even weirder, the times Carter had
seen him shooting with Cleo: while he
could accept that Cleo was a physically active woman (hadn't he seen
her jogging to work often enough?), it
was still sometimes hard to get past his childhood programming, as to
what ladies did and did not do.
"I, uh, got my naltrexone prescription refilled." Mark turned, and
tossed the ball to Carter. "I can take it right
now, if you like?"
"Just be sure you take it," Mark advised him wearily, as Carter aimed for the basket and shot.
"How are you doing?" It wasn't a very subtle bid for information, and they both knew it. Mark sighed.
"Leave it, Carter."
"C'mon," Carter tried to cajole Mark. "I treated you, I'm your
doctor." Mark stopped dribbling the ball, and
walked over to Carter, the basketball tucked securely under his arm.
"Okay, doctor. I have a brain tumor. A glioblastoma
multiforme." He took some pleasure in Carter's speechless
reaction, and was grimly amused by the man's next words.
"So... what are you going to do?"
"Die, it looks like."
"Are you gonna be okay? Um... I mean..." Mark smirked.
"Dumb question, Carter. Just try to keep a lid on the rumors, all
right? I'm not gonna be able to work after
what happened today, but I want to be able to tell Elizabeth myself."
"Yeah. Of course. And I already called Kerry, to take over the rest of your shift."
"You might see if she can get the guy who was filling in over the
summer... he seemed to work well with
everybody." He saw Carter's blank look, and smiled ruefully. "Sorry, I
forgot. She'll know who I mean."
He tossed the ball to Carter. "See ya around, Carter," he said softly,
and began to walk away, in the direction
of the El platform.
* * *
Carter went back inside, rolling the ball between his palms, then
hesitated... where was that number? He
went into the lounge, and opened his locker after tossing the ball into
a corner of the room... how could a
locker get so cluttered, in only a few months? Easy, he acknowledged...
he hadn't sorted anything before he'd
thrown the contents of the box back in. But at last he uncovered the
little address book, which had become
buried at the very bottom of the locker.
Now... he was pretty sure he'd copied the information
into the book, out of courtesy, the last time he'd
spoken to-- yeah, there it was. He went to the phone, and punched in
the number. It rang several times,
before a familiar, distracted-sounding voice answered. "Uh, hello-- no,
the other one! Hello?" There was
a noise on the other end that sounded like a crash, followed by a
dismayed groan.
"Henry? Is that you?" Carter grinned a little at the sound of the
man's voice - probably the worst student he
had ever had, with absolutely no interest in real, human patients,
thank god.
"What? Uh, who is this, please?" Yep, as vague as Carter remembered him.
"George Henry? It's John Carter. Remember me? I was your--"
"John! Yes, of course. I'm sorry. We- we have some experiments going. How are you?"
"I'm doing all right. Listen--"
"And Anna? How's she?" Carter winced at that little reminder.
"She's fine. She moved back to Philadelphia a couple of years ago.
Got a Christmas card from her, she's
fine," he lied. He hadn't heard anything from Anna, not
since the day she'd signed out for the last time.
"Hey, you're still doing brain research, right?"
"Yep. Don't worry," Henry said with a nervous little laugh, "I'm still not seeing patients." Carter laughed politely.
"Oh, I'm glad to hear that. I had a question about it, about your research, actually." Henry hmmed a little.
"About brains? What did you want to know?"
"I know someone who's recently been diagnosed with a brain tumor. A, uh, glioblastoma, uh..."
"Glioblastoma multiforme? Oh, John, I don't know what to--"
"It's not me! Do you know about any experimental treatments, studies, surgeries, anything?"
"Um, not-- not offhand. But I know some people who have more
information on the subject - oncology
really isn't my specialty - I'll ask them and then get back with you,
okay? You're still at County?"
"Yeah, Henry, I am. Thanks. I really appreciate you looking into
this for me." Henry laughed, a little more
confidently - he was the first to admit that he had little interest or
ability when it came to dealing with actual
patients, but the brain was, after all, his field. It
felt pretty good, in fact, that his former instructor had asked
him for help.
"Not a problem, John. I hope I can find out something that'll help
your friend. Oh my... no! Not that one!
I'm sorry, I have to go. New assistants. Bye!" Carter hung up, and
smiled; he hoped Henry would - could -
turn up something that could help Mark. It was the least Carter could
do, after having behaved so badly
earlier. "Badly"? He'd been a shithead to Mark... intellectually, he
knew that Mark would have had that seizure
anyway, even if he hadn't been in the room, but he couldn't help
feeling like he'd caused it. He still thought his
complaints had merit, but they could wait for another time.
* * *
Abby got her coat and gathered up some books and papers she wanted
to take home to work on. It had been
pretty busy up here, the last few weeks, after Dr Legaspi's departure,
and between that and her mother's stay
in Chicago, Abby had definitely got plenty out of her psych rotation so
far. Dr Mueller seemed to be impressed
by the gentle, but no-nonsense, way she had with patients, but she'd
firmly nixed his suggestion that she try for
a psych match. "You met my mom," she'd told him with a put-on air of
nonchalance that he didn't miss. "I don't
think I want to be dealing with that kind of thing if I don't have
to." He didn't miss the apologetic smile when she
said the last, either.
"Don't worry about it, Abby. Though you should probably start
thinking about what you want to put down
for your matches." Abby wrinkled her brow anxiously, and rubbed at her
forehead.
"Oh, god. That's coming up, isn't it?" Dr Mueller patted her
comfortingly on the shoulder. Nice girl, he
thought, if a little prone to a "hang-dog" face when she was unhappy.
Still, he had met Maggie Wyczenski -
he could understand how growing up with a mother like that could mess a
child up. Abby had, he thought,
come a long way, considering that her primary parent during her
formative years had been a bi-polar woman
with a penchant for drinking and abusing her meds, and revelling in the
rampant behavior that brought on,
and her father had been absent for the most part. Strange that she
didn't seem to have any hard feelings for her
father, who'd apparently never been around, but Abby seemed to take
special pains not to reveal anything about
herself.
"Yep. No pressure, Abby, but give it serious thought!" She gave him a brooding little smile.
"Right. Okay. Good night, Dr Mueller!"
"Good night, Abby."
* * *
She cut through the ER on her way out. "Her" guy was hard at work,
and she smiled at the sight; she wanted
to go up to him and wrap her arms around him, and tell him how much
she'd enjoyed last night, but she didn't
want to get him into trouble.
As she walked through the ambulance bay, she heard someone behind
her. "Heading home, Abby?" She turned
and smiled wistfully at Carter, who'd hurried to follow her outside.
"Yeah. It's been a long day, and right now I just wanna go home,
kick back on the sofa and put on the most
mind-numbingly stupid movie I can find on TV." He smiled
knowingly.
"How'd it go with your mom - did you get her admitted?" She shrugged, her resignation plain to see.
"She's gone. She left. But that's what I was expecting. Just our
little dance, that we've been doing for years.
Sooner or later - could be months, could even be years - she'll pop up
again, off her meds, and we'll start this
cycle all over again." She wondered, once more, what it was like to
have a normal family: one where both
parents came home every night, and didn't bring home random strangers,
or freak out in public, or chase the kids
around every time things got bad. Must be nice... her lips quirked in a
sad little smile. "See you later, Carter."
"Yeah. See you, Abby." He patted her on the shoulder, and headed back inside.
* * *
Kerry caught up with Jing-Mei as the younger woman finished with a
patient and dropped off the chart in the
rack. "Jing-Mei? Do you have a minute? I was going to head down to the
cafeteria and get a salad and some
tea - I'll get you some soup or a muffin or something, if you'd like?"
"Sure, Dr Weaver... although I'm not very hungry. What's up?"
"I... haven't really had a chance to speak with you since
September, when you'd become so upset about that
premature delivery that came in."
"Regina Morgan. I remember," Jing-Mei said, shuddering slightly. Kerry nodded.
"Right. I wanted to check up on you, and make you're doing all right as far as the baby and everything goes."
"Um, I'm fine. I've made arrangements for a private adoption - a
couple in Portland is interested, and the
agency is checking them out." Kerry nodded again.
"That's good. You're doing a good thing, you know. If you can't take
care of a baby, it's the best thing for
her--"
"Him. Dr Coburn said the baby's a boy." Kerry smiled at Jing-Mei's
gentle correction, and acknowledged
her mistake.
"It's the best thing for him, to give him to parents
that want him, and can take care of him properly." Jing-Mei
smiled weakly.
"They - the adoptive couple - have offered to send me pictures and
updates every once in a while. But I
don't know, Dr Weaver..."
"Don't make a final decision yet, Jing-Mei," Kerry urged her. "Don't
close doors that you don't have to
close - you don't know that there won't be a need for you and your
son... or his father... to meet up again
in the future, or at least get in contact with each other."
* * *
Elizabeth watched Mark sleeping next to her. She'd come home to find
him making dinner again, which
was sweet... but it was a surprise to find him home so early. It had
been even more of a surprise to find out
why he was home so early, though it had explained the
strange way everybody had been treating her for the
last several hours: sad, sympathetic gazes, people practically
tiptoeing around her, until she was nearly ready
to scream. Even Romano had been... nice, and had
refrained from his usual jabs at Mark.
She knew the strange behavior couldn't have anything to do with that
patient upon whose back she'd operated
several weeks ago. It had been a close shave with him, when she'd
accidentally pierced his dura in the course
of removing the herniated material of his disk. It was lucky that she'd
been just enough ahead of schedule that
she'd been willing to take Dr Babcock's advice, and take the time to
check the leaking of fluid that he'd spotted
on the monitor - if she hadn't checked it out, and discovered the fluid
to be cerebrospinal fluid (instead of the
irrigation fluid she'd believed it to be), the man might have developed
a meningocele that would have cut off
circulation to the rest of his spinal cord. He could have been in a
wheelchair for the rest of his life and would
never have surfed again, and it would have been all her fault.
A brain tumor... good lord. It was times like this, that she felt as
though she were in a badly written medical
melodrama. Poor Mark had been through so much, in the few years she'd
known him, and this appeared to
be the universe's way of getting in one last slap at him. What must it
have cost him, she wondered, to keep
this kind of terrible news to himself when she'd been slobbering all
over him about being pregnant?
She smiled bitterly to herself, recalling her angry words to her
mother not so long ago... that she wasn't even
sure she'd elect to have a family. And yet, here she was. Engaged to
the man whose baby she was carrying,
and it wasn't even certain that he'd live to see the child's birth. And
there was no way she would - or could -
even think about aborting their baby! She gently stroked
his cheek and got out of bed - she just couldn't
sleep, and it wouldn't do her any good to lie awake staring at the
ceiling - then went downstairs to the living
room to watch TV.
One of the movie channels was showing a classic musical -
Elizabeth's mother had never been much of a fan
of Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, but David had been fond of classic
showtunes, including the songs by
that writing team, and he'd passed that penchant on to his son:
Elizabeth sometimes caught Mark humming "Oh
What a Beautiful Morning" in the shower, and had once embarrassed the
poor dear by applauding. "The King
And I" had already been on for quite a while, but Elizabeth settled in
on the couch to watch. Deborah Kerr
was telling Yul Brynner about a girl's first dance... Elizabeth had had
her mother in stitches, when she'd tried
to imitate one of the singers in one of those musicals.
"My darling Elizabeth," Isabelle had choked out, trying her hardest
not to hurt Elizabeth's feelings more than
she already had (the poor child was like a cat that way, sometimes!),
"those women you see aren't really singing!
They have... well... other people who do their singing for
them." Then she'd sent Elizabeth on her way, trying -
with limited success - to keep her snickers muffled in her
handkerchief. Elizabeth could look back now and giggle
a little, too - she'd been simply horrendous at that
restaurant where she and Mark and their parents had gone the
evening of Valentine's Day. But at least she and Mark had been
horrendous together... as badly as the night had
finally ended, it had been a rather nice dinner and a rather nice beginning
of an evening.
Deborah Kerr was now singing (or at least somebody was singing for
her, Elizabeth thought whimsically), and
dancing as Yul Brynner watched her. For a moment her eyes played a
trick on her, and the image shifted on the
screen: for a moment, that was Elizabeth twirling around the floor in a
full length ballgown, as Mark - in his
Siamese finery - watched impassively. Then she blinked, and the picture
was back to normal.
We've just been
introduced, I do not know you well
But when the music started
something drew me to your side
So many men and girls are in
each other's arms
It made me think we might be
similarly occupied
Shall we dance on a
bright cloud of music?
Shall we fly? Shall we
dance?
Shall we then say goodnight
and mean goodbye?
Or perchance when the last
little star has left the sky
Shall we still be together
with our arms around each other
And shall you be my new
romance?
On the clear understanding
that this kind of thing can happen
Shall we dance? Shall we
dance? Shall we dance?
By the time Martin Benson burst in to interrupt the dance, Elizabeth
was stretched out on the couch,
and deeply asleep.
POST-OPERATIVE NOTES:
<PSA>