Ongoing Conversations
Summary: Charles Harris, interim chief of surgery, orthopedic surgeon, man, father. Snippets of a life. OneShot- Charlie Harris (Alex Reid).
Warning: spoilers for season 5.
Set: during the final episodes.
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
i.
"Have you done this yourself?"
"I – no."
"I see. Not quite reliable advice from your side, then, I guess. Anyway. So I just step into the light?"
"Yes."
"How long have you been doing this?"
"Feels like an eternity."
"You don't look that old."
"Thank you? I guess?"
"Well, everything ends. I've had a good life. Now it's time. Thank you, Doctor Harris."
A blaze of light, a tinkle, like a bell. Then, silence.
Sometimes, he wonders how it feels like.
ii (i).
"Doctor Harris?"
"Jackson?"
"Your patient in room six-oh-five is asking for you. Something about a sax?"
"Oh, yeah, thanks. I'll get it."
He's almost on his way, when…
"Jackson?"
"Doctor Harris?"
"Do you, by any chance, know where I can borrow a saxophone?"
Jackson does, of course, know.
iii (i).
The living. The dead.
They're both part of his life, and he tries – he really, really tries – to attend to both with equal care and measure.
If someone had told him, five years ago, that it would be this way, he would have laughed.
The way they mingle, merge, flow into each other. Like liquid frontiers, shifting day by day. Breaking apart, coming together. Reforming. Humans. Ghosts. One moment alive; the next, not anymore.
And he…
Standing in the middle, separating both.
Unmoving. Unchanging.
ii (ii).
"A concert?"
"A tribute."
On the far side of the entrance hall, he can see Zach and Dawn, side by side. Dana and Alex are whispering, laughing. The residents are clustered, too, listening with rapt attention. There is beauty in music, he thinks.
Shahir is still frowning. "A tribute to what?"
He smiles, shrugs. "To life, I guess. And death."
iv.
"Charlie. Luke's daycare called. The flu is going around. They're closing for today."
"Oh. Great. We're probably already infected."
She laughs, tremulous. Sometimes they still don't know how to act around each other. It's like they moved forward three years and four back again, and the place they are in is too insecure, too unbalanced, to feel entirely comfortable in.
"Hey, Alex? Let's take a day off. Go somewhere with Luke. Spend the afternoon in. What do you think?"
She thinks it's a good idea, even if she refuses to say so. It takes him just a tiny amount of coaxing.
Luke falls asleep sometime in the afternoon, on his lap, and her head drops onto his shoulder, and he sits still, so still, to not wake the two most important people in his life, while a movie on the TV screen flits by meaninglessly.
v.
Dominic is a good guy, asking the questions nobody else does.
He's not sure whether he should be grateful or terrified. Or jealous. Insanely, embarrassingly jealous.
"Do you know where she is?"
"She is probably on her father's farm, wearing one of his old sweaters and eating popcorn for dinner."
"Did she call you?"
"No. I just know."
He is all of it, probably. But he also can also still hear Dana's voice.
Alex and Charlie are the end game.
He does not know whether it is true, but the words give him strength, anyway.
vi.
His days are made up out of ongoing conversations.
People, alive. Ghosts. Patients, colleagues, strangers. But always people. They react differently to the news, but they all need something. That is the way life is, after all.
Everybody needs someone.
vii.
"I don't want to leave her."
"I know."
It is unfair. He has long ago learned, though, that that is the way life is. There is no good and no bad, not simply black and white. Sometimes, men die who still have their whole lives before them. Sometimes, the ones that do not deserve it walk out of his hospital again.
Sometimes, people die, and there is nothing he can do to save them.
"We only met two years ago, but to me, she was it. You know, man? I would have done anything for her."
"You loved her a lot."
"I did, man. I did."
viii.
Sometimes, it is easy. Sometimes, it is not. Sometimes, Charlie wonders. What is worse: leaving, or being left behind?
ix.
"Remember our trip to Germany?"
"Huh?"
Sometimes, Dawn just pops up out of nowhere, and her presence is crisp and familiar, always was. Like mountain air: cold, utterly sharp, invigorating. But while he loves the mountains, he also loves the sea.
Loves it more.
"What was the name of that little hotel at the Northern coast, do you remember?"
"Oh." He thinks about it. "I don't remember, but I know where to look for. I'll text you. Going on a trip?"
She smirks, and, because he knows her, he knows it is a smile that is not meant for the public, and, consequently, not for him. The knowledge makes him smile, too. They've been through so much, have disagreed on fundamental levels. But today, they are friends.
"Zach and I are planning a holiday in Europe."
"That's great," he says, and he means it.
x (i).
"What am I supposed to do now? Oh God, I don't know what to do, what will happen to my kids, I can't just leave them! Please, you have to do something, you have to save me–"
"Sarah. Sarah. Listen to me."
"No, no, nonono, I can't, I can't be dead, this is not possible–"
"Sarah–"
"Don't touch me!"
"Sarah."
She is crying so hard her shoulders are shaking. Her entire body is trembling, and she is crying as if her heart is breaking into pieces.
No, he tells himself. Her heart is broken.
In so many different ways.
"Nobody who is loved is ever truly gone."
"I am scared, Doctor Harris."
Is this what it comes down to, for everyone? Because everyone is afraid. Even he is afraid.
He is terrified.
"You are strong, Sarah. You are brave. You can do this."
x (ii).
Nobody cares who hears ones dying words, as long as someone does.
xi.
"Daddy!"
"Hey, Buddy! How was your day?"
Sometimes, he looks at Luke and sees traces of Joel: the smile, the recklessness, the humor. Then, again, he is all his, his son with his eyes and his softness. And Alex' stunning, beautiful heart.
Small arms wrap around his neck, a small body presses into his shoulder. Luke smells like mac and cheese and baby powder and like peach soap, Alex' favorite, and how is it that holding this person tight is enough to wipe away his nightmares?
"Mama will come home later. What do you say, we have dinner and read something until she comes?"
Of course, it will not be that easy, but it is nice to think of other things. Not of dead psychiatrists, children, men.
To not think about how he is losing his mind.
Luke voices his opinion, pressing his face to his cheek. It is calming. It makes him forget, for a precious time, that his life is a mess.
They go home.
iii (ii).
They stand between him and life, his ghosts, keep him from living in the present. But they also kept him from dying. He stands between life and death, part of neither.
Separating, always separating.
xii (i).
"Charlie."
"Not now, Dawn."
"I haven't said a word –"
"Yeah." He puts down the chart and then pen, lines them up, meticulously. "But I know what you're going to say. And it's not going to change anything."
"Charlie-"
"I don't need to be fixed, Dawn."
xiii.
All these little, broken pieces.
He is an orthopedic surgeon, but he does not know how to fix himself.
xiv.
"What is wrong with you?"
"What?"
"I mean, look at you. Talking to ghosts? Hallucinating? You have it bad, mister."
"Hey. Didn't you want my help?"
"What? Your help?" Laughter is hollow, in this dimension, in this in-between reality and illusion, this world of greys and loneliness. "I'm perfectly happy here. I can do whatever I want and nobody cares. I can spy on the women in the changing rooms! I always wanted to do that!"
"Aaron! Wait! You can't –"
"You know the funny thing, Doc? I can."
xv.
"Luke's better now."
"In kindergarden?"
"Yeah." She smiles so proudly, while, at the same time, preparing the rice cooker. It is the only thing he lets her touch when he is cooking; she has a history of burning even water. "He didn't scream at all, and he's playing nice, now."
He stops, because something in her voice –
"Hey. It's not like he doesn't need you anymore."
"I know." A deep sigh. "It's just a tiny step, but it feels so huge."
"They grow up so quickly," he jokes.
She does not look at him directly. "As long as they grow up with you and me."
They have not talked yet – he still does not dare touch her. But she is more relaxed around him, nowadays, and he dares to hope–
"That sounds fine to me."
xvi (i).
"Did something good happen?"
"Why are you asking?"
"You are smiling."
There are these days.
xvi (ii).
And there are these:
There is something wrong with him and he cannot say what. There is something he has forgotten and it is important, it is vital, someone is dying here and he needs to do something, there is something he has to do, his work, his life, but he cannot for the life of him remember what it is he saw this morning that has caused him to feel so fundamentally wrong, so ill at heart. He tries to reconstruct the scene – the man stumbling along in the middle of the street, his eyes pleading when he says he has to get to work, the cheap smell of cologne mixing with alcohol–
What is real, and what a hallucination?
Then, the smoking ruins of the car behind the curve, and the first thing, incongruously, is not that he thinks I have to help but I need to get to work, too, it is his turn to pick up Luke in the evening and he is looking forward to it, he has planned a dinner for Alex and him –
But then there is the smoking wreckage of a car at the side of the street, and a man he met minutes before who is a ghost, and he did not realize.
But that is not what is bugging him, that is not the reason he feels like he will be violently ill. There is something else, something the man said, what was it–
"Doctor Harris!"
The chief's voice cuts through his fog, finally, and he realizes he cannot stay inside the OP for a minute longer. He cannot explain, he does not know, he can just say, with a feeling so sickening the sensation is almost physical, that he cannot.
He walks out, Doctor Bell's voice ringing in his ears, and he feels nothing.
xii (ii).
„This cannot go on like this."
"I'm fine."
"Charlie. You're not. You're barely sleeping. You walked out a surgery. You can't operate like that."
"I said, I'm fine, Dawn."
"I called the board."
"You did what?"
"Someone had to."
xvi (iii).
He can still hear the cat meowing.
xvii.
"She still loves you, you know."
He does not need to ask who she is.
"She will need you now. She is strong, stronger than I ever was. But even strength has a limit. She lost her father, her brother, her mother – she can't lose you now, too."
He looks at her, at a loss for words. Having a ghost in his apartment should feel stranger, should feel threatening. It did, in the past, and if what the psychic said is true, it will happen in the future, sometimes, too. But right now, all he feels is sorrow.
"Promise you'll stay with her. Promise."
He has learned never to promise anything to his ghosts, has learned the hard way. But this time, his throat too constricted and his heart too aching to answer, he just nods, once.
I promise.
xvi (iv).
There is a voice, deep in the back of his head.
They are everywhere.
How is he supposed to live his life like that? How is he supposed to not drag Alex into his mess? Alex, and Luke, and the beautiful baby girl she is pregnant with?
He remembers another man, another ghost. Who will tether you to life, Charlie?
He always knew who it would be. He just is not sure it will not hurt her.
xviii.
"Take a deep breath. Think of someone you love. It will be alright."
xvi (v).
She is flushed from the run here, her hair disheveled, and she never looked more beautiful.
"Whom are they kidding? More than 50 miracle saves! They should be giving you a medal, Charlie, not evaluate your ability!"
He looks at her, speechless. She huffs in indignation, her hands on her hips. "What?"
The question he asks is simple, and it means so much more to him than just what it seems to be at first glance.
"Where were you five minutes ago?"
Where were you my entire life?
Why is it that she is always there, but it is mostly when he is in trouble that he realizes he will not ever be able to let go of her?
I love you so much.
Her lips are sweet.
xix.
Jobless.
Useless.
But, well, at least not homeless and heartless, and that has to count for something, does it not?
Strangely, his time off is more relaxing than he would ever have expected it to be.
xx.
"What's up, Charlie?"
"Hey, Zach!"
"How's it going?"
"Better, now. By the way, thanks for the whiskey."
"Don't mention it."
Years of being colleagues – of being friends – makes any other words unnecessary.
"You up for a beer tonight?"
"Definitely."
xxi (i).
Italian.
Fluent.
Well, why not? This whole ghost story affair has to be worth something, does it not? And if that means he can talk to an Italian grandmother who teaches him both the Italian language and Italian cooking, then that is a definitive win-win.
She does not even ask when she hears him blabber away in perfect Italian accent, just smiles, and he is again and again stuck by how amazing she is.
"Charlie Harris, will you marry me?"
Just like that, everything falls into place.
iii (iii).
Not separating.
Bridging.
xxii.
"Thank you. Thank you."
She probably will not remember her brief trip to the spirit world, he thinks, later. But she will forever remember her wedding day.
She smiles at him, and tells him that she wants to marry him right now, right here, and his heart slams against his rib cage so hard it hurts, and then starts again, double time. Joyful, jubilant.
Exulting.
He could kiss her for all eternity.
xxi (ii)
All rivers flow towards the sea.
xxiii.
"Charlie?"
"Hm?"
"Are you asleep?"
"Hm."
"Okay."
Despite his half-sleeping state, he can feel the smile in her voice. The warmth of her body so close to him is familiar, relaxing.
"I love you, Charlie."
He falls asleep with her voice in his heart and mind.
xxiv.
"Why is it always a car accident?"
"Oh my God!"
"Ummm… No, actually. Just Doctor Harris."
"Harris? No, that can't be right. Why – what – how –"
"Call me Charlie. Are you alright?"
"How the hell should I know? I'm having hallucinations! I'm fuckin' talking to them!"
"Well…" He has no answer, but he wants to laugh. So this is what it feels like.
"I don't get this. What is happening? Are you dead? A ghost? What are you doing here? Why can I see you?"
Now he does laugh, a tiny little bit, because if he gives in he will scare her: The woman is tall and lithe, with dark hair pulled up into a ponytail and questioning, grey eyes.
Beautiful eyes.
She looks painfully familiar. His mind, racing, refuses to understand, refuses to accept. His heart knows better.
"Looks like I'm not needed anymore."
"What do you mean?"
He sits down – it is not really sitting, actually, but who cares, anything to stop himself from reaching out and touching her and freaking her out even more – and waves at the woman. Tries not to show the shit-eating grin that wants to form on his lips by its own volition, to control the surge of emotion hitting him like hailstones. "Sit. Take out your phone, so nobody notices you talking to yourself. Let me explain some things to you."
xxv.
I have to tell Alex–
xxvi (i).
Dying is the easy part.
It is being alive that requires strength, and fighting spirit, and determination.
It is not like he does not have those anymore. He has her, after all. But he knows, with a security that is strangely calming, that this is it.
Collect the good and the bad and pile up the years.
They have had five imperfect, difficult, wonderful years. What else could he wish for?
Ah, he thinks, distantly, running his hand over the cuffs of his wedding tux. Watches her hands cradle her pregnant belly. Our daughter. I wish I could have watched her growing up.
She is beautiful: strong, dark-haired, fine-boned, with an inner fire that almost blinds him. So much like her mother.
Thank you.
Are you ready, Doctor?
"I love you, Charlie. Forever."
Yes, he thinks, distantly. I am.
xxvi (ii).
And then, he does not think anything anymore.
xxvii (i).
The hand draws a heart.
It is a strong hand, fine-boned. A surgeon's hand. Fragile and capable.
He watches, mesmerized.
The ocean waves lap at the beach, leaving ripples in the sand. Washing away all signs of life. Leaving, and returning again.
When the sand once again is white and untouched, he begins again.
Over. And over.
And over.
xxviii (i).
There is no time. There is no life. There is no meaning, here, no pretext. Just existence.
He draws.
xxvii (ii).
Sometimes, he thinks he remembers something –
It is gone as quickly as it has come.
xxviii (ii).
White sand. Endless ocean.
The waves leave no trace of his existence.
Hearts and hearts and hearts and hearts.
xxvii (iii).
When has he stopped hearing the sound of the ocean?
xxviii (iii).
The hands draw.
A half-shape, a tip. Another turn, another half-circle. He has been using the same twig forever.
Where did it even come from?
He wishes he could remember. But he does not care, either. If there is no time, there is no need for a present or a past. No need for memory. No need for anything.
The hands draw.
xxvii (iv).
Its color – it reminds him of something. But he cannot remember.
xxix.
And when he looks up, there is a woman walking towards him.
A white dress.
A white veil.
White flowers.
Her auburn hair trails in the breeze; the colors around her are so vibrant he needs to blink multiple times.
"Charlie."
Her voice sounds like a song, a whisper, a joyful melody. He stands, transfixed, watching her approach.
Charlie.
The voice, the shape of her face, the ocean-grey of her eyes. This woman is familiar to him.
Charlie.
He blinks, takes in her brilliant smile, her beautiful hands, her slender arms. Her hair dances in a breeze that had not existed mere seconds ago. She moves so slowly.
(Time does not matter. Did not matter before. Why does it, now?)
The answer is simple: because around her, everything matters.
Charlie takes a deep, deep breath, and tastes the ocean breeze.
"Alex."
She smiles, brilliantly.
xxx.
"You shouldn't be here. Not yet."
"It's been fifty years, Charlie."
He has forgotten the warmth of her skin, how perfectly she fits against him.
"How are they?"
Her eyes are mirrors. Charlie can only see himself in them, and eternity. "They are beautiful. Everything we ever dreamed of."
He kisses her, her lips and her smile. The ocean rolls in the distance; suddenly, he can hear it again.
It was worth every second of it.
She tells him about the kids. How Luke broke his wrist when he fell off a window sill when he was nine, and how Charlotte, who worshipped her elder brother, refused to leave him at the hospital and, instead, began making friends of all of the physicians there. How she bought her father's farm and they lived there, together, the three of them. How Luke went off to college, and Charlotte to med school. How they came back every few months, to spend time with her. They are her whole world, he can hear it from the smile in her voice, the tears in her eyes. She tells him about her illness. Luke's wedding, and the speech Charlotte gave that reminded her of him.
You were with me, every day.
Charlie can feel the truth of her words in every syllable she whispers, in every beat of her heart. Alex catches his hand, holds it to her chest.
Always.
There exist no words to answer her, to describe how much he loves her: this brilliant, beautiful, strong, imperfect, amazing woman. He brings her hand to his lips; kisses it, and, from her eyes, knows she understands.
The light, when they step through, is warm.
He carries the ocean with him.
All rivers flow to the sea.