TITLE:  Turnabout Ain't Always Fair Play
AUTHOR: Ellen Hursh
RATING:  PG
KEYWORDS:  Angst; Elizabeth Corday; episode aftermath
LAST EPISODE SEEN:  "Rock, Paper, Scissors"
TIMELINE:  Shortly after "Rock, Paper, Scissors"
ARCHIVE: If you must.
DISCLAIMER: ER and all its characters belong to Warner Bros.  No
infringement of their copyright is intended.  This story was written for
the enjoyment of "ER" fans everywhere, and may be downloaded for your
own pleasure.
SUMMARY/SPOILERS:  Corday ponders the cruel irony of life. Spoilers for
"Rock, Paper, Scissors".
AUTHOR'S NOTES:  C'mon, I can't be the only one who wondered about this.



Elizabeth hunched over the toilet in a stall in the women's surgical
locker room as her lunch came back up the hard way. It wasn't morning
sickness - she'd actually been very lucky, so far, that she'd only had a
little nausea as a result of her pregnancy - just reaction to the
surgery she'd performed earlier. Or rather, the surgery she'd nearly
botched, on the patient she'd nearly killed, and had to call in Dr
Romano to clean up the mess.

God, what if I've lost my nerve for good? she wondered. It certainly
hadn't helped to encounter Mr Patterson in the elevator earlier... all
full of anger and bitterness toward her, toward the hospital, and he was
perfectly right to be angry, she knew: he'd thought he was just coming
to the hospital to get a simple out-patient surgery on his back (a
surgery that she had recommended to him!), and instead he was confined
to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Bad enough for it to happen to
any normal person, but he'd been accustomed to a very active
lifestyle up to that point. And now all that was over - there'd been
incredible advances in sports equipment over the last few years, but
Elizabeth seriously doubted that there'd be wheelchair-accessible
surfboards anytime soon.

And... she couldn't help thinking of the way she'd laid into Dave
Malucci last year, over the way he and his student had missed a
potentially serious problem in a patient. She'd called him "sloppy" and
"careless"... well, Lizzie, she mocked herself now, who was careless and
sloppy in that operating room, hmmm? Malucci's mistake had been serious,
yes, but the woman had fully recovered. She, on the other hand, had
managed to ruin a man's entire future with her mistake.

She smiled bitterly as she wiped at her mouth with some toilet paper.
She had once had the nerve to call Dr Kovac judgmental? She had had
the nerve to laugh at the "Dr Death" jokes that some people in the
hospital told about him? She'd thought he was insane, earlier, when he
burst out of the trauma room, grabbed the woman's gurney, and dragged it
back in with him, so the woman and her daughter could see each other one
last time - now she understood that he'd known that the two of them
would never see each other alive again. At least he put his patients'
welfare first... if she hadn't been so bloody eager to be out of that
surgery by six o'clock, and on her way to her holiday with Mark, Mr
Patterson would be back home by now, and back to his surfing.

There was a knock on the stall door, and she nearly jumped in panic. "Dr
Corday? Are you all right in there?" Elizabeth stared at her hands,
which were shaking uncontrollably... oh, she was so very not okay!

"I'll be out in a moment, Shirley," she said, not answering the
question, wondering that she was able to keep her voice from shaking, as
well. It was all too much... too much for her to take!