"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless
child!"
--King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4
"You've obviously never met my mother...."
--Abby Wyczenski Lockhart
Dave snickered, and held up the severed hand in the iced bag as he
and Benton wheeled the gangbanger in the
direction of the elevator to take him up to surgery. Even if the
surgeons managed to save the guy, there was no
guarantee that the hand could be reattached, but there was no harm in trying
to keep the hand viable.
"Hey, check this out: the perfect murder. We take this
hand, see, wrap it around a gun, and shoot Romano. And
the only fingerprints on the gun will be this guy's. Cool, huh?" Benton
glared at Malucci and made a show of
restraining himself from dropkicking the guy into next Thursday.
"When you are in a trauma room with me," he settled for growling, "I
expect you to show the patient and me the
proper respect, you got that?"
"Huh? Of course!" Dave replied, a bit crestfallen by Benton's
unenthusiastic response to his joke. He'd seen how
much affection Benton had for Romano (that is, none at all), and had
assumed that the jest would cheer the guy up
a little. Guess not, he thought bemusedly.
Benton snarled at Malucci again, and got the gurney on the elevator.
Only when the doors had shut, and he and Mr
One-Hand were alone in the car, did he allow himself to snicker at the
idea of using a severed hand to kill that little
weasel. It wasn't the way he, personally, would choose
to kill Romano, but he had to give Malucci credit for creative
thinking.
"Yeah, Dr Romano, I have five dollars for you!" He softly imitated
the sound of a shot while miming a gun with his
forefinger and thumb, and laughed. Not that he'd ever give Malucci the
satisfaction, of course... the guy really did
need to work on controlling his behavior when he was on the job.
* * *
Mark arrived about five minutes early for his shift, and took a look
around the place. He still hated the new open
design of the desk area, but since everybody else liked it - or at
least didn't seem to mind - he kept his mouth shut
about it, since it really wasn't that important in the long run. He
spotted Kerry heading in his direction, and sighed.
She was a little mellower, now that her affair with Luka
had been made public by that mugging attempt about a week
ago, but that still left a lot of unmellow territory for
her to cover.
She glanced at him uncuriously, and turned to Frank, who was on again...
there was just something about the guy that
rubbed her the wrong way. She couldn't put her finger on it... maybe it
was just the way that he seemed to have formed
such a strong dislike of Luka, who hadn't - as far as she knew - done
anything to deserve that kind of response.
"Morning, Mark. Frank, 'Mad Mike' is camping out in the linen closet
again. Call Security to--"
"No need, Dr Weaver. I'll do it myself." He reached under the
counter, and Kerry was horrified to see he'd fetched a
large billy club. "Got my trusty Homeless Helper here, to help me do
the job, and--"
"Don't you dare!" Her voice was shriller than she'd intended, and
she glared at Frank. "Give me that... I will not have
you assaulting patients - or members of the public, no
matter how homeless or crazy - with that thing!" She
snatched
the "Homeless Helper" out of his hand and began to crutch away, then
stopped and looked over her shoulder. "And
you call Security to do it! It is not your job!" No more
than running routine background checks on patients is part of
your job, she wanted to shout at him, but she had no
interest in getting into a yelling match at this time.
Mark chased after her. "Remember, I'm leaving early today, at six." Kerry rolled her eyes at the reminder.
"Yeah. I believe you've mentioned that a few times
already." She wished she weren't such a workaholic... she'd
like
to go off for a weekend with Luka, sometime. Just ditch work, take some
leave time, and go off someplace with no
telephone. Right, Kerry. Like that's going to happen any
time in the near future, she thought cynically. She tried
to
delegate authority a little more these days - especially after the
enormous shit-pit that had been left for her to clear up
after her suspension earlier this year - but it was difficult to avoid
the impulse to micromanage as many aspects of the
daily running of the ER as she could.
Fortunately, Haleh was a head nurse who, unlike Carol, didn't
tolerate her getting too involved in the nurses' affairs -
the
woman still had room for improvement in her job, but she definitely
looked out for her nurses' best interests - so that was
one more thing Kerry didn't have as much control over anymore. The
place still went all to hell on her days off, though,
since there weren't too many people around here who were willing to
step up and take some of the day-to-day administrative
load.
But then, it had been so easy for her to step into such a large
administrative capacity so quickly - both Mark and David had
been so lax when she came over from Mt Sinai that her natural desire
for order had driven her to find ways to try to make
the department run smoother, even though she was still only a resident.
And it had been only her second year as attending when
David had urged her to take over all the duties of
running the department after his heart attack... it had seemed like a
dream
come true, especially after Donald officially appointed her acting
Chief.
Then, of course, the dream had gone sour after David officially
resigned, and the board began jerking her around on a permanent
appointment to the chief's job. Robert had spoken to her briefly and
privately, shortly before the meeting in which he'd been
appointed Chief of Staff, and he'd hinted that if he were
appointed as CoS, there'd be a vacancy for the ER Chief's job... a
vacancy
that he would, of course, want to fill with only the best, most loyal
candidate for the job. And he'd walked away smugly, knowing
full well that her ambition to be "alpha bitch attending" in the ER was
stronger than her opposition to him in the position of "top
dog" in the entire hospital. She still felt a little queasy, at how
she'd betrayed Mark in that meeting... he'd only recently begun to
trust her again, and she hoped that nothing would happen to shake that
trust.
* * *
Romano came down for a surgical consult - he could have left it to
one of the other surgeons, but he took a strange, masochistic
pleasure from seeing - and annoying - the man that his
Lizzie was engaged to marry. It just wasn't fair: he'd found the woman
of
his dreams, but he wasn't the man of her
dreams. He could see Lizzie being interested in Peter Benton, with that
Nubian/Moorish/whatever physique going, but Mark Greene? What a weedy dink!
True, the guy had had the backbone to stand
up to him on a few previous occasions, but there was still the matter
of Lizzie.
Unforgivable.
"So Mark... I understand you're skipping out on us early today."
Romano prodded the patient impatiently, ignoring her whimpers
of pain. "Hot weekend planned?"
"When did my weekend plans become such a big concern of yours?
Anyway, I scheduled the time off weeks ago." Romano
scowled, and jabbed the patient again, causing her to moan. "So is she
a surgical case, or not?"
"Yeah. I'll take her up in a minute." He snapped off orders for
pre-op labs, and glared at Greene again before leaving the room.
"You are still going to be here when I get back, aren't
you? You're not going to be running off even earlier than expected for
your
little weekend?" He didn't wait for an answer, but simply stalked out.
Mark and Lydia watched him go, and exchanged a glance. "That was weird," Mark muttered.
"You said it, Mark," Lydia agreed whole-heartedly.
* * *
A pretty, petite brunette approached the ambulance entrance, wearing
a little red sundress, a long, colorful silk scarf, and
platform shoes, all of which were clearly inappropriate for the
mid-November weather. She also carried a large shopping
bag, from which some intriguing aromas were wafting, and neared the
door just as a big, beefy man in his late fifties, wearing
a blue labcoat, opened it and ousted a shabbily dressed man. "And you
stay outa here! Goddamned freeloaders, think ya can
just barge on in and do what ya want!" He turned around and went back
inside, ignoring the dismayed expression on the woman's
face.
Chuny noticed her, though, and quickly went to the door. "This is
the ambulance entrance, ma'am, not a public entrance.
You'll need to go around to come in here." The woman smiled
reassuringly at Chuny - she had a charming smile, and Chuny
unconsciously reacted to it by smiling back.
"Oh, it's fine. My daughter works here, you know.
She's a doctor." Chuny thought she might have seen the older woman
before -
maybe it was just that she looked a little like something out of a '60s
sitcom - and shrugged as she let the woman in. What the
heck... the woman seemed harmless enough, and she didn't
know everybody's parents.
* * *
Ms Forrester led Jing-Mei outside, to the back area of the adoption
center, where about fifteen children were racing around and
yelling. She wondered what on earth would lead such an attractive young
Chinese woman to want to put her baby up for
adoption. Not that they'd have a problem finding adoptive parents for a
baby, of course, but....
"And here's the playground, where the older children play, Miss
Chen." Jing-Mei had already corrected the woman several
times, but had given up. Probably thinks I'm lying about being a
doctor, she thought irritably. "The older ones are still waiting
to be adopted, but of course babies are much easier to place. Even
those with, er, 'ethnic' backgrounds, like yours. Frankly,
though, I'm surprised to see you here - it's very unusual for an Asian
woman to give up her child: we find that they tend to back
out of the adoption arrangements at the last minute."
"Well, I won't," Jing-Mei said stubbornly. "I can't
take care of this baby by myself and work." She was
already using one of her
precious days off, that she could be using to get some much-needed
rest, to get this train in motion!
"Oh, that's right... you're what, a nurse?"
"A doctor. Please, I want to do this - I need to do this!" Ms Forrester nodded.
"Fine. We'll give you some paperwork, then. You'll need to have the father sign them, to terminate parental rights on his side."
"Of course." Ms Forrester wondered at Miss Chen's coolly collected
demeanor - butter wouldn't melt in that girl's mouth! Most
of the single expectant mothers who came here were a little
more agitated than that. But then again, who could tell with some of
these girls?
* * *
The brunette began setting up in the lounge. She removed a tray from
her bag, and put it on the table, then emptied the contents
of a brown paper bag onto the tray - bagels of different varieties
cascaded out and onto the tray, and she carefully arranged
them before moving on to the coffee machine.
Empty, she saw. Well, she'd heard that doctors drank a lot of
coffee, and it was no wonder... as tough as their jobs
surely
were! She ignored the little redhead who came in as she was measuring
coffee into a filter to start a fresh pot, but looked up,
startled, when the redhead - walking with a crutch, she could see now -
put a gentle hand on her arm. "I'm sorry, this lounge
is for employees, Miss... er...?"
"Oh, that's all right," the brunette chirped, smiling broadly. "My
daughter works here, she's a doctor! I'm sure that can't
be a
problem, can it? I mean, Abby might be a little embarrassed about her mom
showing up where she works, but it'll be fine once
you ask her, you'll see. Now, I brought some nice fresh bagels, those
are over there--" Malik had entered, just as the woman
mentioned "bagels".
"Bagels? Cool!"
"Oh, help yourself! Help yourself!" she told him. "There's plenty
for everybody. I know how hungry doctors and nurses can
get, with the kinds of hours you must work. There's all kinds, there's
plain, onion, bacon, even some blueberry bagels. I don't
care too much for the blueberry ones, but the man at the bakery said
they're very popular. And there's some cream cheese - lots
of cream cheese - you can spread on them, that's very tasty, of course.
Plus some lox, if anybody likes fish. If not, I like it,
so it
won't go to waste."
"Excuse me," Kerry butted in. "But who are you? And who is your daughter?" The woman looked at her as if she were insane.
"I'm Maggie Wyczenski, of course. I'm sure Abby has
mentioned me." Kerry continued to stare at her blankly. "Abby.
Dr
Lockhart? It's her married name, of course, that's why it's not the
same as mine," Maggie rattled on. "Just call her in here,
and ask her!" Kerry smiled thinly.
"I will, Ms... uh..."
"Oh, just call me Maggie! Please! We're all friends here, right?" Kerry arched a dubious eyebrow, and headed out.
* * *
Elizabeth carefully examined Mr Patterson- or rather Al's
back (he'd insisted on the informality;
Elizabeth suspected that he was a bit hurt that she hadn't invited him
to reciprocate), as Lily
assisted her - he'd hurt it while surfing in Hawaii, and the back pain
and numbness in his leg
had become so bad, while he was in Chicago for a convention, that he'd
had to go to the hospital.
"Do you surf, Dr Corday?"
"No, I'm afraid I've never had the opportunity to try it. I'm more
of a 'wade in the shallow
end' person myself."
"Oh, well, I'd recommend the waves in Waikiki for a beginner. It's
really quite an enjoyable
sport!" She smiled at him, and wondered how Mark might look on a
surfboard. Nnnnnn...
uh-uh! "Ooh! That's rather tender, there." She noted the
fact on his chart quickly, as well as
noting the pain when he tried to lift his legs while lying in a supine
position.
"All right, then. I'm going to send you to Radiology, to get a few
pictures of your back, and
that'll tell me what needs to be done from there."
* * *
Luka was taking advantage of a lull to work on charts in the suture
room. He looked up,
startled, when a young, casually-dressed black man entered the room.
"Can I help you?"
"Dr Kovac. Nurse said I'd find you back here." Luka raised his
eyebrows enquiringly. "Dillon
Matthews. You took care of me and my brother, back in January. The
social worker came
along and took Jake away from me." Luka winced at the memory of that
incident, which had
dredged up more memories for him.
"Yes. I remember. How did that go?"
"I just wanted to thank you, Dr Kovac. If it hadn't been for you,
DCFS would never have let
me apply for - and get - guardianship of Jake." This was news to Luka -
he'd diffidently
promised to help Dillon get his brother back, but had been rebuffed so
harshly that he'd been
frustrated as well as angry when he went inside to wait for Kerry - but
he played along, out
of confusion.
"So the two of you are doing well?"
"Damn straight!" Dillon said proudly. "That social worker lady set it up so Jake could get special classes, and learn useful skills for gettin' a job of his own, later on."
"Oh. Well, I'm very pleased to hear that you're both all right," Luka said sincerely as he stood up to stretch a little. "No more cooking fires while making breakfast?" Dillon snickered.
"Nah. But Jake's learned how to use the stove properly. I don't like him to use it when I'm not around, but he can use it without burnin' out half the kitchen."
"Good. That's good. And you and Jake are all right physically? No injuries, you're not sick?"
"No. I just wanted to stop by here, since Jake has his classes right now, and say thanks for all you've done for us. I mean it, man." Dillon shook his hand seriously, and left; Luka watched him go, and nibbled his bottom lip meditatively. No, it couldn't be. She would have told him that she had done it... wouldn't she?
* * *
"All right... er... Al. I've had a chance to go over the results of the CT and X-rays with the radiology technician. You have a severely herniated disk - some people call it a 'slipped' disk - in your back that'll require surgery to repair - the ruptured disk is pressing nerves in your spine against the vertebra, which is causing the pain in your back, and the numbness in your legs." He stared at her, appalled.
"Surgery? What would that involve?"
"The surgery - laminectomy - would involve a small incision in your back... probably about five inches long. I would be moving the muscles out of the way, and removing the part of the vertebra that the ruptured disk is pressing against, as well as some of the actual ruptured material, in order to give the nerves more room. You'll be in the hospital for a few days, and you'll have to take it very easy for six weeks, in order to give the incision time to heal." Al shook his head vehemently.
"Six weeks?!? Oh, I can't do that, it'll put me on the sidelines - so to speak - for surfing. No, I don't want that. Isn't there something else? More pills, maybe."
"Okay, the laminectomy is out. There is an alternative, actually. It's a much quicker procedure than actually opening up your back: an endoscopic discectomy. It takes only about an hour, under local anesthetic, and I would be using a tiny probe to get to the spot and remove the fragments. I can do that on an outpatient basis, which means you'd be on your way very quickly, and since there's only enough of a cut for the probe to go in, instead of a large incision, the recovery time is much faster." He considered the thought for a few moments.
"And that'll stop the back pain, and the numbness in my leg?"
"You may have a little residual pain for a short time, as the nerves adjust, and the nurse will go over changes you may want to make in your lifestyle, but yes. You should be up and surfing again in no time."
"All right. Sounds good to me. Can it be done today?" She smiled at the eagerness in his voice - so rare for a patient down here to actually look forward to a surgery! Usually patients on their way to surgery from the emergency ward were what Mark liked to refer to as the "knife and gun club" - that is, people who'd been stabbed or shot - and were generally much less than excited to be there at all, let alone to be going up for more cutting.
"You're in a hurry, then, Al?" He shrugged, and smiled self-consciously, belatedly a little embarrassed by his own zeal.
"Well, if I can get the surgery now, then I can fly home on Monday and get back to surfing immediately."
"Oh? And where's home?" She couldn't even imagine the thought of surfing in the kind of cold weather they'd been having here lately, but perhaps 'home' was Hawaii, where he'd sustained his injury.
"I live in New Zealand. Very beautiful country, y'know."
"Ah, so you live in the Southern Hemisphere. It's summer there right now, isn't it?"
"Heading into summer, yes. So what brings a delicate English rose like you to a city like Chicago?"
"Well, I originally came here as a guest surgeon, and then decided to stay. There are some really marvellous cultural opportunities here." He cast a knowing look at the ring on her finger.
"And some other opportunities, I'd hazard a guess, eh?" Elizabeth blushed, and was spared answering when Malik poked his head in the exam room.
"Dr Corday, we have a trauma coming in - we need you."
"All right, Malik, I'll be right there." She turned back to Al. "I can fit you in at four o'clock this afternoon, if you like?"
"That would be perfect."
"Good! All right. Malik, could you please book an OR in my name, from three to five?"
"Sure thing, Dr Corday."
* * *
"Hey Abby," Frank greeted her pleasantly - or at least, as pleasantly as he ever got - as she came down from Psych to take a history for Dr Mueller. Frank had started after her ER rotation was over, but she'd been down in the emergency department several times in the last eight months - a few times as a nurse, and a few times as a student helping her resident with consults - so he knew who she was. "Your mom's here for a visit. Thought you might want to say hi to her after you're done with your consult." Abby peered over his shoulder.
The woman in the red sundress had drawn a small crowd of people around her; it was, Abby thought resentfully, just the same as always: People only saw the good parts, the fun parts of Maggie Wyczenski, because Maggie only came out to socialize like this when she was on the upswing of a cycle. They never saw the deep, dark side of the woman... they never saw the Maggie Wyczenski who had chased a ten year-old Abby around the house with a carving knife, until she managed to scramble into the closet and hold the door closed with her feet braced against the door. They never saw the Maggie Wyczenski who'd locked herself into the bathroom and taken a large number of sleeping pills; the paramedics had had to break down the door to get to her, after Abby called them. Sometimes Abby wondered why she still bothered... maybe she still, somewhere inside herself, still believed that Maggie could get her shit all the way together, and be the mom Abby had always wanted... had always needed.
"Who'd like some fresh-squeezed orange juice?" Maggie's happy voice - a little too happy, to Abby's ears - chimed out, and Cleo laughed delightedly.
"Fresh? Sure, I'd love some. Thanks!" Abby's gaze returned to Frank, who was eyeing her a little uncertainly.
"I have no idea who that woman is, Frank, but she's not my mother," she told him seriously, and hurried into Exam 4 before Maggie could spot her and start causing one of her queen-sized fusses.
"Whoops!" Maggie called out. "I forgot about the coffee - there is some really nice Kenyan roast brewing up in there, and it should be ready in just a jiffy!" She handed Cleo the container of orange juice, and waggled her fingers before she headed back into the lounge to check on the coffee.
Dave watched the woman, intrigued by her outfit and by her generally flirtatious manner. "If that isn't Abby's mom, then who is she?" he asked Frank, who was also admiring the view.
"Dunno, but she sure is a looker!"
"Better believe it," Dave said appreciatively. "Sure brings some mother/daughter fantasies to mind, huh?" They were too busy ogling Maggie to notice Kerry creeping up behind them.
"Don't you two have something better to be doing?" she asked in a deceptively pleasant tone. Dave whipped around, and goggled like a startled goldfish; Frank merely looked a little embarrassed.
"Uh... n-no, not really," Dave stammered. "The board's blank." Kerry smirked at him. To say that there was nothing to do was a dangerous claim to make, around somebody like her. She could tell that the same thought had occurred to him about half a second after it came hurtling out of his mouth: his eyes widened a little, and he made a little "eep!" face.
"There's another GSW coming in. You can take it with Dr Corday." She redirected her stare to Frank. "I noticed that Abby's down here for a consult - did you ask her?"
"Yes, I did, Dr Weaver. She says she's never seen that woman before in her life."
"That's about what I thought," Kerry said grimly, and headed in the direction of the lounge. The two men somberly watched her go.
"Whoever that woman is, I sure feel sorry for her," Frank said quietly. Dave nodded - silently, for a change - then headed for the ambulance entrance. He could see that Dr Corday looked less than enthusiastic to be paired with him again... oh well.
* * *
Elizabeth went out to meet the ambulance, and wasn't overly pleased to see that she'd drawn Dave to work with... he must have gotten on Kerry's nerves already, today. Great. She'd already heard about his flip attitude with the gunshot victim earlier today - his snide comment about the boy never being able to play the flute again, for one - which didn't help her already generally low opinion of him. Fortunately for him, he was mostly quiet, except for a subdued greeting.
Mark met them as they were heading into the trauma room - he shot Dave a look that promised dire consequences for too much lip flapping, and Dave made a little squeaking sound as they went to it.
* * *
Kerry went back into the lounge, to try again with this Maggie... she found Maggie flitting around the lounge like a hummingbird on dextroamphetamine sulfate, rattling on and on to Kerry with barely a pause for breath. It was, Kerry had to admit, impressive, the way the woman could talk so much without appearing to stop. But then, that was a classic sign of manic behavior.
"Oh! Hello again, would you like some coffee? It'll be ready in just a minute and doesn't it smell marvellous? You know you have a really lovely face, such delicate bone structure, you should let me give you a makeover, it's what I do, well, sort of, I sell cosmetics sometimes as a part-time job, I'm really an artist. You've got such beautiful hair I tried to grow mine out like that and it just doesn't look right you know, not like my daughter's hair, she's got such pretty hair and--" Kerry finally managed to get her foot in the door, conversationally.
"Maggie, Abby says you're not her mother." The woman stopped dead in her tracks for a moment, looking stunned, then her eyes hardened and she scowled. Kerry took a step away without thinking about it, but the woman's anger wasn't directed at her.
"She WHAT? How dare she say something like that about her own mother, I took CARE of her all these years and now she does THIS?!? ABBY!" Maggie turned around abruptly, and stormed toward the door to the lounge, as Kerry followed her out. "Aaaaaaabby! Abby! Where are you, you ungrateful child? Abby?!"
Kerry limped out of the lounge - dealing with a manic woman was a lot of stress, and it all seemed to be going straight to her hip today. "Frank, call Security. And call for psych, too, while you're at it!"
* * *
The woman running around and screaming didn't attract much attention in and of herself... they got lots of screamers. What was drawing attention was the fact that she was screaming Abby's name, and insisting that she was Abby's mother... and that Abby was a doctor here. Well, that was sort of true, Kerry mused as she pursued the woman on another lap of the area. Not for another six months, though, when Abby graduated. Kerry finally managed to finesse a shortcut that allowed her to head off the woman in her aimless flight.
She stared a little blearily at Kerry... she was a little shorter, but the platform shoes made her about the same height. Kerry was struck by the way that, even though the woman's outfit was a little absurd and completely inappropriate for the season, she still somehow managed to make the look work on her. Incredible. But then, there was often something about unbalanced people that made the improbable seem almost normal.
"You know," the woman snapped, a little exasperatedly, "this could all be cleared up if you'd just let me talk to my daughter-- Abby!" Kerry looked up, and saw that Abby had just come out of Exam 4, where she'd been taking a history for her resident. A series of expressions came and went on the young woman's face, with resignation settling in for the long haul, and she lowered the chart.
"Mom."
* * *
"I thought you told Frank earlier that you had no idea who she is." Abby hung her head at Kerry's gentle scold. They sat on the bench in the hallway, flanking Maggie, who seemed to have temporarily run out of steam after her outburst earlier and was hunched over slightly, staring at her shoes and humming softly and tunelessly.
"I'm sorry about that, Dr Weaver. I just... I just didn't think."
"No, I'd say you didn't. So she is your mother."
"Yes." Abby would have rather been anywhere but there at that moment, with Dr Weaver watching the scene so critically. She still had another ER rotation coming up, in just a few months, and could have done without this happening to screw up her chances of graduating with... well, maybe not honors, but at least good grades would be nice. And now Dr Kovac had emerged from another exam room... probably to see what all the shouting had been about.
Yeah... great. He was coming this way. Maggie lifted her head, and noted the new arrival with a coy little smile. She popped up to her feet and stuck out her hand to him... he took it bemusedly. "Oh! Hello... where're my manners?" Abby rolled her eyes behind Maggie's back; she was used to this kind of behavior - these kinds of "manners" - from her mother. "I'm Maggie Wyczenski, Abby's mom. You don't eat enough," she told Luka, who was already a little taken aback by Maggie's rapid-fire delivery.
"Uh, I'm naturally that way," he offered hesitantly, but she was already off on a new tangent.
"And you," she turned and told Kerry. "You know, you really do have a lovely face - very nice cheekbones! - and such pretty red hair." Kerry flinched, as Maggie bent down and touched her braid - she knew from years of being a doctor how quickly a bipolar patient could go from the hyper, manic state to weeping or even outright anger, and would prefer that Maggie's hands be far away from her hair when that lightning change occurred.
"Oh, uh..." Kerry had no idea how to respond to the compliments. She had accepted Luka's sincerity after a lot of effort on his part, but Kim's recent pass had shaken her more than she'd realized... set her back in her self-confidence a little, she supposed. She hadn't mentioned the pass to Luka - probably because she didn't want to admit to herself that the kiss had happened, and that it had been... nice. "Dr Kovac, don't you have patients to see?" she asked pointedly.
He glanced at the three women; he really didn't want to leave, not with the screaming he'd heard earlier. He worried about Kerry anyway, and the mugging had revived some of his old fears, but... she was giving him one of her Looks. The sort of look that told him that she was hell-bent on jumping into a risky situation, just to prove that she was every bit as good as any doctor with two good legs. "All right, Dr Weaver," he told her, teasingly emphasizing her title. He'd thought she was past being shy about their relationship, but maybe she'd just been thrown off-balance by the sudden and dramatic appearance of Abby's mother. "I'll go check the board. Shout if you need me," he reminded her, and leaned in at the last minute to kiss her. She sighed, and watched him walk away. Her sweet, occasionally-infuriating Luka.
"Mom, what are you doing here?" Abby wasn't sure whether to be anxious or angry or afraid or aggravated by Maggie suddenly popping up like this, out of the blue. She knew - intellectually - that some of her coworkers had good relationships with their parents, but she just couldn't grasp the reality of it... she couldn't really understand how a person could have a relationship with a parent that didn't involve constantly worrying and fretting over what kind of completely bizarre thing the parent would do this time.
"Honey, I was worried about you, and your separation from Richard. Of course I came!" Abby snorted, and couldn't help snapping at Maggie, who was wringing her hands and staring at Abby anxiously.
"We've been separated for over a year, and divorced since August, Mom. Catch up on the news, some time, would you?"
"How long has she been bipolar?" Kerry tried to make her tone of voice non-judgmental - it really wasn't Abby's fault that her mother was like this, or that the woman had chosen to show up in such a peculiar fashion. Abby's only failing here, as far as Kerry was concerned, was that she'd denied knowing who that woman was, which had set Maggie off... and Kerry wasn't entirely sure she blamed Abby for that knee-jerk reaction of denial. She'd had a pretty good relationship with her own mom, aside from the usual adolescent rebellion, but she'd seen a lot of bad parent/child relationships in her years as a doctor.
"Seems like forever. She must have gone off her meds again. Mom, why don't you come back upstairs with me, and I can get you fixed up again."
Maggie shook her head - it was more of a twitch than a gesture of negation - and grimaced at Abby. "Now honey, you know I just don't feel right when I'm taking those pills."
"Mom, I really have to go back upstairs - my resident's expecting me back by now - you just can't stay down here." She cast a pleading look at Kerry, who nodded in agreement. "Just come up with me, okay? Please?" Maggie looked sulky, like a three-year-old who'd been told she couldn't stay up to watch the Late Movie, but reluctantly nodded.
"All right, Abby, I'll go with you. I came here to spend time with you, after all."
"And you have no idea how good that feels," Abby grumbled.
* * *
Dave glared at the kid, who was screaming and whimpering as they worked on him. "Oh, God, I don't wanna die! I don't wanna die! Mama! Somebody help me, please!"
"Pipe down, there!" Dave snapped. "Can't hear myself think, over all the noise you're making!" Mark sidled a little closer, and kicked Dave. "Ow!"
The three of them gradually settled into a casual pace as they worked on the kid - as far as they knew or cared, this was just another kid with a bullet wound in his chest. "He needs a chest tube," Elizabeth commented, and Dave perked up slightly.
"Mother may I?" he quipped, nodding in the direction of the kid's chest. She sighed.
"Go ahead, Malucci," Elizabeth told him, smiling a little despite herself. Such enthusiasm... she couldn't remember the last time she'd been so thrilled to be putting a chest tube into a patient!
* * *
"Okay, I'm here," Randi said abruptly, dumping a bag behind the counter and kicking it under one of the shelves. Frank stared at her scornfully, eyeing her attire - today it was a bright red halter top with slashes of bright yellow, with tight plaid pants - the little madam had no idea how to dress professionally... she dressed like a streetwalker and talked like a sailor, and worse yet, he'd heard that she had a police record!
"Well, I'm sure the hospital is in very good hands now," he told her sarcastically, and went to punch out. She wrinkled her nose at him, puzzled by his attitude. He'd resisted her attempts to be friendly, so she'd stopped trying... once a cop, always a cop, it seemed!
* * *
"So what do you two have planned this weekend?" Dave was frustrated by the case, but feeling very challenged - he'd get one thing patched up, and three more would come up - this was why he'd decided to specialize in emergency medicine! Nothing boring in this kid's innards, that was for sure. They'd already intubated him, and put in a second chest tube, but it was clear that if the kid was to pull through, he'd need a lot of luck.
"Well, er..." Elizabeth didn't really want to go into it with Malucci, of all people, but Mark was willing to brag a little.
"Up to Lake Hatteras in Wisconsin. Very beautiful." Elizabeth frowned in Mark's general direction, as she worked to isolate and repair some of the damage. Just because he played hockey with the man, did that mean he had to be best buddies with him? Perhaps it was best that she and Mark hadn't begun dating until after Doug Ross had left - she'd noticed how close those two had seemed to be. She liked both Carol and Doug, but if he had still been around, they would probably have double-dated to death within three months!
"You guys really like Wisconsin, don't you?" Elizabeth scowled at the smile in Dave's voice, as he worked on his section... it seemed too much like he was making fun of them. "Not really my thing, but hey... if it works for you, that's great. Whoops!" he muttered, as one of the monitor alarms went off... closely followed by a second alarm adding its two cents to the matter.
Cleo opened the door to the trauma room, to see if the three doctors needed any help with what was, technically, a pedes case. "No thank you, Cleo, we've got it," Elizabeth said pleasantly. She was pleased that the young woman hadn't tried another end-run around her lately, of going to Peter in order to avoid dealing with her.
"Oh, okay. Just checking," Cleo murmured, and let the door swing shut behind her.
Dave whistled. "With all the help this kid needs, he's a medical education in one easy package." Elizabeth wanted to reach over and smack him, but she had to admit that he was right. As grossly tactless as ever, but this boy was in extremely bad shape. He'd be lucky if he lasted another hour, let alone long enough to make it up to surgery.
* * *
Cleo strolled away from the trauma room, and was surprised to see Jackie waiting in chairs and looking extremely upset. "Jackie? What's going on? Is everything okay?"
"Cleo... please... do you know where Peter is?"
"He's still in surgery, I think. What's wrong?"
"It's Jesse! I got a call that he'd been shot, and brought here, but nobody seems to be able to tell me anything."
"Jesse?! Oh my god! Wait right here!" Cleo dashed for the elevator without giving Jackie time to answer, and was soon outside OR2, where Peter was still working on the boy whose hand had been blown off. She grunted impatiently as she slithered into a surgical gown, gloved up, and held a mask over her face before she barged into the operating room. "Peter!" He glanced up from the patient, startled by her sudden entrance.
"Cleo? What are you doing in here?"
"Jesse! He's been shot - he's downstairs, in Trauma 2. Jackie's down there, too, she's been looking for you!"
"Oh... God," he moaned. "Can you take over?" he asked the surgeon who'd been assisting.
"Uh--" But Peter had already left the room with Cleo. "Oh, brother!"
Peter tugged off the cap and gown and gloves he'd been wearing, and dropped them on the floor with uncharacteristic sloppiness, then headed for the elevators. "Come on... come on..." he muttered, pushing the Down button over and over, as though that would bring a car that much faster. He gave up suddenly with a little growl, and headed for the stairs as Cleo pursued him.
They burst out of the stairwell together, and he went straight for Trauma 2, with Cleo trailing him. He went in and saw Malucci working on Jesse, along with Mark and Elizabeth... uh-uh! He grabbed Malucci's shoulder and shoved him away roughly, then moved into the spot recently vacated and accepted the trauma glasses that Cleo quickly handed him.
"What the--? He was doing a good job," Mark protested, as a fuming Dave lurked nearby.
"What's all the fuss about some banger kid?" he muttered irritably. "Ow!" he yelped, as Cleo pinched his arm.
"The boy is Jesse! It's Peter's nephew!" Liz took a good hard look at the boy and gasped. She hadn't encountered the rest of Peter's family too often in the period of time that they'd dated, but surely she should have recognized Jesse! Of course not, she taunted herself. You don't look at your patient's faces, you just look at what's wrong with them!
"Dear Lord," she gasped, and dug into what she was doing with renewed vigor.
* * *
There was a tap on the window, and Elizabeth looked up to see Romano standing there like some kind of... short, bald demon. Once he saw he had her attention, he crooked his finger at her, and she excused herself quickly. "What do you want, Robert? This is Peter's nephew we're working on, here!"
"Oh. Really." He looked supremely unconcerned with the patient's identity, and she wanted to scream and bang him over the head with a rib-spreader. "I was just going over the scheduled surgeries for today, and I couldn't help noticing that your last surgery is the endoscopic procedure you have this afternoon."
"What about it, Robert?" She really wasn't in the mood for his games and insinuations... she didn't like it any time, and especially not now.
"Awfully convenient that you've planned to do the shorter procedure, when you have those weekend plans." Elizabeth glared down at him... what a nasty little troll he was, sometimes!
"It was in the patient's best interests to schedule the shorter procedure," she informed him crisply. "And now if you'll excuse me, I have a patient waiting for me."
"Oh, by all means," he told her sarcastically. "Can't keep a patient waiting." She returned and put on new gloves, then went back to work. It seemed rather hopeless by now, but they had to do their best. Poor Peter had pulled off his trauma glasses by now, claiming that they were too fogged up for him to see, but it was plain that any fogging of his visual field was from the tears in his eyes as he frantically worked.
Dave was still in the room, trying to be helpful, but every time he got too close to the boy Benton would start making mother-hen noises... and Dave backed off. Mark was getting tired of the dance... and since Benton wasn't going to leave without a major struggle, Dave was clearly the one who had to leave.
"Dave, go get some ice. We'll pack the head, to preserve brain function." That earned him a bewildered look from Dave.
"Is that gonna work?"
"Just go."
* * *
Cleo returned to the waiting area, where Jackie was still... waiting, anxiously and impatiently wringing her hands.
"Jackie. He's been shot in the heart. It's serious, but they're doing everything they can in there."
"My baby!" Cleo's tendency was to be slightly aloof, but she liked Jackie... although she suspected the sentiment wasn't mutual. And this sort of thing shouldn't happen to anybody... not the parents of the kids she saw, and definitely not to Jackie. "I gotta call Walt, let him know what's happening."
"Of course. You can come in the lounge to make the call." Cleo had no intention of making Jackie sit in that little pay phone closet to deliver that kind of news.
A robust young black woman, braids sprouting from her head like licorice whips, sauntered into the ER, accompanied by a group of her buddies. "Hey!" the woman called out in Randi's general direction. "Me an' my posse here 'bout Jesse... he okay?" Randi's eyebrow rose slightly - Cleo wasn't sure whether Randi was offended more by the woman's grammar, or her fashion sense - and Jackie snarled softly, gently pushing Cleo to the side.
"You. You get the hell out of here," she said softly and menacingly. "It's your fault my boy is in here."
"We just tryin'--" the woman whined.
"GET OUT! You have NO right to be here!" Jackie lunged at the woman. Cleo wasn't sure whether or not she really intended to cause damage, but she caught at Jackie's arm anyway. The woman and her "posse" decided that they had other places to be, and got out. "Let go of me!" Jackie frustratedly tugged at Cleo's grip, but Cleo held tight.
"Why, so you can go after them and get hurt, too? You don't know whether they're armed, Jackie. They could have knives, or guns, or..." Jackie shook her head. "C'mon. Go call Walt, let him know what's going on, okay?"
"Okay." Jackie let Cleo lead her into the lounge, where she called Walt.
* * *
"Suction! I need suction, dammit, I- I can't see." Mark and Elizabeth exchanged a glance.
"Peter," Elizabeth told him gently. "It's over." She put a restraining hand on his arm; he tried to tug away to continue working, then dropped the clamp. It skittered down the side of Jesse's body, bounced off the table, and clattered to the floor, but nobody moved to pick it up. "I'm sorry, Peter."
"T- time of death... uh..." He shook his head, and looked helplessly at Elizabeth... the clock on the wall was blurring crazily in front of his eyes.
"Time of death, 1337," she said quietly. He dazedly staggered out of the room in the general direction of chairs, still unaware that he was crying even though the tears were streaming freely down his face. Jackie, who'd gone back to chairs despite Cleo's offer to let her wait in the lounge, looked up at him, covered in Jesse's blood - in his haste to get to Jesse, he'd never put on trauma gear or even gloves - and wailed... a long, loud despairing sound that interrupted several conversations and caused Randi to shiver.
Jackie threw herself into his arms, mindless of the blood - her son's... her baby's blood - that the embrace was smearing all over herself and her clothes, and cried in huge wracking sobs as she clutched her baby brother tightly.
* * *
Jing-Mei headed for the Mercy General cafeteria - Frank's supervisor had told her that he was probably there - and found him sitting with a bunch of his buddies. He saw her, and his eyes got huge. "Guys, can you give us a few minutes alone?" They got an eyeful of her, too, and evaporated amidst grins and catcalls and slaps on the back. She smiled nervously at him
"I guess I should have said something about this sooner, shouldn't I?"
"Well, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say," he told her, his eyes firmly on her bulging abdomen.
"I want to put the baby up for adoption. You need to sign some papers." There. She'd said it. That hadn't been so hard. Frank looked a little taken aback at first, then nodded.
"Yeah, I guess I do." Should've known better, Bacon, he told himself. He'd thought... hoped... that Jing-Mei was here because she wanted to pick up where they'd left off, back in March. He still didn't understand what had happened - he'd been fascinated by the exotic Asian doctor, even before she'd diagnosed his Addison's, he'd asked her out shortly after he got out of the hospital, and they had (as his mother would snidely say) "enjoyed each other's company" for a few weeks. She'd dumped him, just when he was starting to hope that they might have some kind of future together, and a week later he'd applied for an opening over at Mercy... it was just too painful to work in the same hospital as Jing-Mei, when it was so obvious that she didn't want anything to do with him.
And now she didn't even want anything to do with their baby....
"How... how are you doing, Frank? With your Addison's, I mean?" She congratulated herself on the quick save... she couldn't let him realize how much she was missing him. She'd enjoyed their time together, liked him, liked being with him, and yet she'd started to feel like he was getting ready to dump her - she'd been dumped a few times in college, and thought she knew the signs. He'd hesitate before agreeing to their next date, and he'd been far too agreeable about not meeting her family... he should have insisted, darnit! So she'd beaten him to the punch, and suggested that it might be better if they didn't date anymore. He'd looked at her a moment, then nodded and calmly agreed with her.
Frank hesitated a moment, then shrugged. "I'm okay. My steroids have me a little puffy, from--"
"Fluid retention, right. And you're managing your stress?" Frank smiled tensely as he signed the last of the forms - she wasn't really stress that he'd expected. If he thought, for even a moment, that she'd come because she wanted to give things another try, he'd gladly take the stress... he kinda liked the idea of a baby... but instead... ugh! He handed the forms back to her, and forced himself to let go when she took them in her hand.
"Yeah. I'm doing okay, Jing-Mei. Uh... take care of yourself, all right?"
"Sure," she said sadly, and got up to leave. "You too." What were you expecting, Jing-Mei? Eternal protestations of love? Sure. He's probably thrilled you weren't coming to hit him up for child support!
He watched her waddle away, until she'd disappeared through the doors, then let his head sag down onto his clenched fists. She was gone again, and it was a pretty sure bet that he wouldn't hear from her again. And he had no reason to go see her at work... there was an emergency department right here, at Mercy, after all!
"Was that your girlfriend, Frank?" Great. And now his buddies were back, wanting to know what had happened. He glared at Ben, and then included Joe and Larry and Greg in the glare.
"No. She's not my girlfriend. She isn't anything," he muttered, and took a quick, miserable bite of his sandwich.
* * *
"Where's Peter?" Mark and Elizabeth had gone to the lounge to decompress a little after that trauma. So disturbing, when a case affected one of their own like that... Elizabeth sometimes still dreamed about that whispered "thank you", and woke up sweating and shaking. She and Robert had done their best, and it hadn't been good enough.
"I don't know. He left after you called it... maybe Cleo knows where he went." Mark rubbed at his neck, which had been fairly sore lately. Elizabeth added her fingers to the massage effort, which drew a soft, grateful groan out of Mark.
"Poor baby. You're still playing hockey with Dave?"
"Yeah. It's fun," Mark said defensively. She slanted a teasing, knowing look at him.
"That's not quite what you said last week, when you came home all battered up after a night of play. Are you wearing enough padding for these games? It doesn't seem like you ought to be so bruised, just from playing a little innocent hockey." Mark reflected that the comment would have sounded so different coming from Jenn... she would have filled the concerned words with innuendo, implying that he might have really been out with Susan Lewis, rather than playing hockey with a co-worker. Strange, how Jenn had managed to make him feel guilty about being friends with Susan, when she was the one who'd been cheating on him.
"We're still on for six o'clock, right?" Elizabeth smirked at his obvious attempt to change the subject, but let it pass.
"Oh, absolutely. I just have a quick procedure, but it'll only take an hour and then I'm done here."
Dave entered the lounge, looking strangely and uncharacteristically subdued. "What should we do with the body? I heard the kid's mom - Dr Benton's sister - was around here, but I don't know if she's seen it... uh... him yet, and I don't know if we're supposed to send, uh, him down to the morgue, or what." He couldn't help thinking of the last time he'd been connected to someone who died here... poor Lucy, sliced up by the psycho patient. And it was so ironic... so stupid - if he'd been keeping track of Abby, like he was supposed to do, she wouldn't have had to go chasing after Carter all day, and Carter could've kept better track of Lucy.
Then again... Carter hadn't exactly been complaining about Abby's attention. Dave had seen the two of them coming back in together, after Abby had retreated to the roof. He saw the way those two looked at each other... nobody looked at him that way. Nobody except-- well. That had been an interesting night, certainly. Something he wanted to continue, and that was something new for him; usually he was out the door right away the next morning. And he sure as hell never brought anybody home... he'd learned, a long time ago, that girls always wanted to stick around afterwards. It was easier to go to the woman's place, so that it was easier to leave bright and early, before she could start getting any ideas about china patterns. But this had been... different. He forced himself to pay attention to Dr Greene, who was answering him.
"We can't do anything until the cops have signed off on the case, that's for sure. With any luck, we won't need the room again until that's happened."
"Do you think he heard my crack about bangers?" Mark held back a smile at Dave's anxious question. If worrying about Peter's reaction to his words kept Dave from shooting off his mouth again without thinking, so much the better.
"I don't know what he heard, Dave," Mark told him, trying to sound as ominous as possible... and not even pretending to misunderstand who Dave meant.
"I'd better apologize, then, as soon as possible," Dave said worriedly. Mark wasn't so sure that was wise, the state Peter was undoubtedly in at the moment, but he'd noticed that Dave was often too stubborn for his own good (he still wasn't wearing a bike helmet, despite Mark's frequent comments about that - what was it gonna take, a major accident to get the point across?)
* * *
Dave cautiously crept into the trauma room, where Dr Benton was standing over Jesse's body. "Uh... Dr Benton... I wanted to apologize for earlier, in the trauma room, with your nephew. I--"
"Go away." Benton's voice was flat, almost distracted, as he hesitantly touched the remains of Jesse's shirt sleeve. He remembered Jesse being underfoot a lot of the time... just a little kid! How'd he grow up so fast?
"But I wanted to apologize for--" Benton moved so fast that Dave never saw the punch coming - he staggered back against the door, and babbled something that had the surgeon coming at him again. The momentum of Benton's charge thrust them both through the door, and into the midst of some people standing nearby in the hallway; Dave was too busy trying to keep from being hit to notice who all was there.
* * *
Mark stood by the desk and tried not to be too obvious that he was checking his watch, and started when Elizabeth sneaked up behind him and squeezed him affectionately. "Here I am, six on the dot and ready to go!" she chirped. "Wisconsin, here we come!"
"Hey, I love your hat." Elizabeth beamed. Shirley had stared at it in disbelief, then hastily left the room... Elizabeth wasn't sure, but she thought she'd heard wild laughter drifting back in her direction. Romano had simply eyed it, then shook his head and wearily wished Elizabeth a good weekend.
"Thanks. I knew you'd like it." They kissed, as Randi looked on... aside from Benton's nephew coming in and Benton's sister freaking out like that, it had been kind of a boring shift so far. She hadn't even seen too much of Weaver or Kovac yet, and they were always good for a little vicarious thrill... usually they just looked at each other, like they couldn't wait to be off by themselves, but sometimes they held hands or could even be spotted kissing. Randi thought it was terrific, that those two had found each other... she'd always noticed, right from the start, how lonely Dr Weaver seemed to be, and could see how much happier the woman was now.
Mark and Elizabeth's kiss was suddenly interrupted, when the door to the trauma room crashed open, and Peter and Dave burst out into the hallway in a flurry of fists and wildly swinging arms. Mark barely pulled Elizabeth out of the way, and called for Malik and a couple of the security guys for help.
Kerry charged in too, then reeled backwards as Peter's elbow whacked her in the face... she barely caught herself from falling, with her crutch. Well, that was just great, she thought - her bruise from the mugging was just healing, and now she'd probably have a nice big one again. What was going to be next, a bedpan thrown at her by a patient?
She limped away and leaned against the wall, safely away from the continuing scuffle, and noticed that the fight had already been broken up. She sometimes wondered how useful she really was around here... so far, the only use she'd been in a fracas had involved swinging her crutch around. Even with the mugger... she'd hurt him a little, but it had been Luka who'd ended up saving her. Luka took home charts, and half the time she took home piles of bureaucratic crapola that she didn't care about most of the time anymore. There were more and more times that she wondered why on earth she'd ever fought so hard to get this damned job as chief of the emergency department. Every time she brought up the idea of quitting, though, Luka got slightly wild-eyed - he was dead serious about not wanting the job, either. So, unless they got someone who was both willing and able to do the job, she was stuck with it.
* * *
Luka found her in the lounge a little later. "Don't you dare laugh," she warned Luka as she held the cold compress to her face.
"I wasn't planning on laughing. What happened?" He'd intended to ask her about his earlier encounter with Dillon Matthews, but this was obviously not the right time.
"I got in the way of a fistfight. Or rather, I got in the way of Peter's elbow as he was beating up Dave."
"Oh, Kerry...." He moved the compress out of the way long enough to kiss her, then put it back. "Why was Dave being beaten up?"
"Peter's nephew was brought in earlier. I haven't heard everybody's stories yet, but apparently Dave made a remark, before the boy was identified, about him being another gangbanger. He tried to apologize--"
"With his usual fine sense of timing?"
"Mm-hm. They burst out of the trauma room, right in front of Mark and Elizabeth when they were on their way out. Peter stormed off afterwards, and Dave is awaiting my holy wrath, mumbling something about how he was just trying to apologize." He smiled at the acerbic tone of her voice.
"I don't envy him right now."
"Now you are laughing," she complained, but he shook his head and tried to hide his little grin.
"No, no... okay, but you have to admit it's a little absurd?" She tried to maintain her indignant pout, but reluctantly shared the smile... it was pretty obvious that Dave had a fear of and respect for her that was unlike the attitude that most other people here had towards her.
* * *
He left Kerry to nurse her new bruise, after lavishing her with sympathy and kisses, and found Cleo in Exam 2 with a patient. "Cleo? Can I speak to you for a minute? Excuse us, please," he belatedly told the patient - a ten year-old girl with a scraped up arm - and her mother.
"What's up?" He could see that she was stressed from all that had happened today... no surprise there, he thought grimly.
"I think you should go to Peter, hm? I can take your patient, but I think he needs you more, right now. He shouldn't be alone."
"He doesn't need anyone," Cleo said bitterly. "Other people are just a convenience to him." Luka wondered what had happened between them this time... he'd noticed that Peter and Cleo seemed to go through cycles where they varied between being lovy-dovy, and not speaking to each other. Not really how he would prefer to conduct an affair, but it seemed to work for those two.
"You don't really believe that," he insisted. "If you did, you wouldn't still be with him."
"But I--" She gestured at the exam room, and Luka shook his head.
"I said I'd take over for you. Now go." He made a brisk shooing motion, although he smiled as he did it. Cleo returned the smile, and went in the direction of the trauma room. Luka watched her go, and stepped into Exam 2 to introduce himself.
* * *
Cleo peered through the window of the door for a moment at Peter, before she entered. She silently put on gloves, as he'd just done, then filled a basin with water from the sink and brought it to the table where Jesse's body still lay. Peter removed all the blood-soaked packing that had been stuffed into the holes in Jesse's body, in the ultimately vain attempt to repair the damage and save the boy's life, and unhooked the Ambu bag from the tube in Jesse's mouth.
Then the two of them began to clean off the blood that had splashed all over Jesse's body and dried... soft, gentle strokes that moistened the caked blood so that it would come up from the skin. As they washed the boy's blood from his skin, Peter reflected that it seemed almost like a ritual out of the Bible... all they were missing was the scented oil... then washed I thee with water; yea, I thoroughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil... the words went through his mind, unbidden. Neither of them said a word... but Peter's eyes told Cleo everything she needed to know.
* * *
Luka had just signed out, and was casually getting his things out of his locker, when Peter entered the lounge. The guy looked awful, unsurprisingly. "I'm sorry about your nephew," Luka told him. He knew better than to ask how Jackie was doing - he'd heard about her reaction already, and he knew from first-hand experience what a child's death did to a parent.
Peter turned and looked at him, still a little in shock. "Thanks, man," he managed to get out. Luka slipped his coat on, and shut his locker.
"If you ever need to talk, okay?" He squeezed Peter's shoulder quickly, and waited until the other man had shaken his head, before he headed for the door. "All right. Good night... take care of yourself, huh?"
* * *
Kerry paid the driver and got out of the cab, then stood on the sidewalk for nearly a minute before she steeled herself and went up the path to knock on the door. She hadn't been here as much as she would have liked - last time, she'd nearly been scared out of ever coming back - but she tried to make it by, every once in a while. She'd never told Luka where she went, on those times that she took an exceptionally long time to make it home, but she felt strange about bringing up Gabe around Luka... they'd never really talked about the man who'd been Kerry's mentor, and attending before she hired Luka for the job.
The door opened slowly, and the man smiled at her. "Kerry! Hi." Even if she'd never been introduced to him, she would still have known that he was Gabe's son - the resemblance was remarkable. "Come on in... would you like some coffee? There's a fresh pot."
"No... no thank you." She glanced in the direction of the hallway, toward Gabe's bedroom. "How is he today?" Isaiah Lawrence sighed.
"Better than he's been the last few weeks - he might actually know you this time. He's on some new medications, that really seem to be helping him. Can I take your coat?" She shifted some of her weight to her right leg and awkwardly shrugged out of her coat, and let Isaiah have it. He hung it on one of the pegs by the door, as she removed her boots... no sense in getting snow all over the carpet, after all.
They walked down the hallway, and entered the room together. Gabe was lying in bed, listening to a tape of old showtunes and staring out the window. Kerry was struck - and dismayed - by how much worse he looked than the last time she'd seen him... indeed, by how much worse he looked now than he had this time last year, when she'd had to fire him. He looked every one of his sixty-some years, and then a few more.
"Dad? Dad, it's Kerry. She's come by to see you." Gabe turned his head slowly, to look at Isaiah and Kerry, then brightened when he saw her.
"Kerry! It's been a while, hasn't it?" She smiled at that, but her smile faded away at his next words. "Don't you have boards to study for? Not that you've ever needed to do much studying, of course. You've always been the brightest pupil a teacher could ever hope to have."
There was a knock on the front door, and Isaiah excused himself hastily, almost glad to have a reason to leave the room. Seeing his father like this... it was hard to believe in a God who would let something like that happen to a person.
He didn't recognize the tall, dark man standing on the porch; the guy looked foreign, somehow, and while he didn't look hostile - merely curious and very tired - Isaiah suspected he could cause some damage to a person if he wanted to. "Hello?" He'd opened the door just as the man peered at his watch, and saw the puzzled look the man gave him.
"Ah... I'm looking for Kerry Weaver - do I have the right house?"
"Yes... she's back this way. Come on in." The man gingerly stepped across the threshold, looking around almost cautiously at the decor, and removed a large black pea coat when Isaiah offered to take it. "That's an unusual accent..." he began, and the man smiled.
"I'm Croatian. I'm, uh, one of Kerry's coworkers. Luka Kovac. Her, uh, roommate, actually," he added, and Isaiah nodded calmly. They shook hands quickly.
"Isaiah Lawrence. Yes, she'd mentioned a 'significant other'. You're a lucky man."
"Yes, I am," Luka replied honestly. He followed Isaiah back to Gabe's room, where he found Kerry chatting earnestly with a much older version of the man in her med school graduation photo. The man looked up and saw Luka, and smiled.
"Oh! How nice to meet you at last. It's a pity you've shaved your mustache, but you look very nice without it. You seem taller than I'd expected."
"Well... thank you for saying so." Kerry had no idea who Gabe thought Luka was... he'd certainly never had a mustache in the time she'd known him, let alone in the time he'd still been a temp. Luka seemed a little baffled, too, but he was taking things well in stride, and playing along... her sweet, nearly-unflappable Luka.
He squeezed her hand sympathetically, when Gabe asked him how he'd liked working with Alec Guinness and Anthony Quinn, and managed to come up with a plausible answer.
After a while, Kerry noticed the time. "We should probably head home," Kerry tentatively said, then looked to Luka for confirmation. He stared back at her blankly, and she tried again. "You should get some rest," she told Gabe, and he reluctantly agreed.
"Please... come back any time, Mr Sharif. It was a real honor to meet you!" Luka nodded politely, and waved away Isaiah's attempt to apologize as he and Kerry were putting on their coats and shoes.
"There's no need to apologize or explain. I've encountered Alzheimer's patients before. I worked in a nursing home in Tucson for a while, and I... saw interesting things when I was there." His tone of voice didn't invite questions, though - Kerry thought he sounded like Tucson hadn't been a very good experience for him.
"Have a good evening, you two. It was nice meeting you, Luka!" Isaiah waved at them and shut the door, and they headed in the direction of Luka's Volvo, which was parked in front of the house.
"Gabe's an interesting fellow. I can see why you're, uh, devoted to him." She noted his cautious tone, and slipped her hand into his.
"I'm more devoted to you, you know. How'd you know I was here?"
"Randi told me a cab picked you up, after your shift was over. I went home and checked out your address book, and this seemed the most likely place to start looking." He glanced back over his shoulder, at the house. "So this is where you go, sometimes, after work?"
"I should have said something to you earlier..." she began hesitantly, but he shook his head.
"I don't want to control you... I don't want you to think that I'm trying to control you. I also don't want to get a call, saying that you've been in an accident, when as far as I knew, you were someplace else."
"No. I'm sorry." She cuddled up to him, and he put his arm around her to hold her close to him. "So have you ever had a mustache?" He smiled, and shrugged.
"I tried it a few times... the consensus, though, was that I looked better clean-shaven. Jasna and Marko both cried, because their daddy looked so scary, and... uh... Danijela just hated it." His voice faded out, and he cleared his throat and looked away for a moment. Then he cleared his throat again, and unlocked the car door, suddenly very quiet and somber. He opened the door for Kerry, then went around to his side and got in.
She offered him her hand, and he kissed it, pressing it against his lips as hard as he could, until she could feel the teeth through his skin... she could feel him trembling a little, and he moved his head to rub his cheek against her hand. "Trebam te," he said softly
"Imash me," she replied without hesitation.
POST-OPERATIVE NOTES: