Rating: K+
Summary: "...She doesn't want your love, your loyalty, your friendship, she wants your body. She sees just a body, and she doesn't see your fears and nightmares, she doesn't want to see them, no one wants to..." A 'fill-in-the-thoughts' scene from "Hindsight."
Disclaimer: If the characters belonged to me, would I be writing fan fiction? Nope. I would be writing scripts. Most of the dialogue of the fic borrowed from David Zabel, who wrote "Hindsight."
Spoilers: The scene in Luka's apartment in "Hindsight", small references to episodes from seasons 7 through 9.
Acknowledgements: No superhero was ever complete without a sidekick, and thus no writer is ever complete without betas. So without much further ado, I thank my regular beta Caran for managing to beta my new batch of fiction despite weird accidents at play rehearsal, and to my new beta reader Sam, who bravely found all the examples of my rare but deadly "creative spelling." I also thank Jelena for helping me out when my meager Croatian reached its limits. Also thanks to the people who graciously reviewed "Lament" - especially to BlackFlower, who pointed out a mistake in the dialogue.
I'm drunk, so drunk that even I know that I'm about to fall down or make a fool out of myself. Erin has finally located my apartment keys in one of my pockets and is opening the door while I am leaning on the wall, all of my strength concentrated on not dropping my coat. How did I sink so low? I have never consciously gotten drunk just to drown my sorrows, but I guess there's a first time for everything. I'm showing classic signs of addiction – neediness, inability to stop the cravings, willingness to sacrifice everything to it despite knowing that it is bad for me. Abby's addiction was alcohol, Carter's painkillers, and mine is women. They are bad for me, I hate myself after I sleep with them, yet I continue, hurting them and myself. After my disastrous affairs with Chuny, Kathy and Heather, I switched to high-class "escorts" – they cost a lot, but they are safe, and the only one who gets hurt is me.
After she gets the door open, Erin gently directs me into the apartment and I stumble inside, feeling awkward and clumsy, throwing my coat in the general direction of the couch. I'm either going to fall down on the floor and throw up now or somehow get to bed and throw up there. My knees seem to be made of jelly and the beer and liquor I drank at the party are combining into something resembling sulfuric acid in my stomach. I've drunk a fair share of alcohol in my life. I've been to places where I drank vodka from glasses the size of a small bucket. Yet here I am, drunk on cheap American beer and under-ten-dollar whisky, sick to my stomach and wishing I never went to that party in the first place. When I'm drunk, my thoughts become too pretentious and melodramatic, and I think about things I conveniently ignore when I'm sober.
"Where's the bedroom?" Erin asks, and I feel a need to hold up my false front. At work, they think that I'll sleep with anything that's female. Maybe I should prove them right, once again. I'm the sexy hunk from the Balkans, and you know what they say about men from Southern Europe - they're hot lovers, great body, and etcetera… I should be allowed to be a cliché for a while. Why should I be alone in my apartment, forgotten by everyone, if I can pretend to be loved? The gossipers at work don't know that I lost my virginity on my wedding night and remained true to my wife for many years after her death, and even if they knew, they wouldn't care. Loyalty and love are nothing anymore. You are expected to sleep around, monogamy is thought of as strange, and abstinence is a horrible word. Sex, drugs, rock'n'roll – sensationalism is fun, it sells, it fuels gossip, it's a great conversation topic. Anyway, I should get back to playing an irresponsible drunken fool before I think myself into a depression.
I laugh idiotically and try to look seductive, but fail desperately, since my head is spinning and I need to sit down. I take my pager and wallet out of my back jeans pocket, and toss them on the table. "You go too fast. Let's talk sweet nothings first." I lean on the edge of the table and wish for some "sweet nothings" to carry me away into oblivion. Maybe I will get to lose myself tonight again, just as I have during many nights in the last couple of months… No – I won't, since right now I wouldn't be able to "get it up" if my life depended on it, because I've drunk enough alcohol to kill any sexual desire I might have had towards any human being. Even if Abby walked in here right now and said that she'll be back with me if I make love to her, I still wouldn't be able to do it. Also, I'm about to pass out, and I am acutely aware that this will happen in the next fifteen minutes, so even if I magically be able to "do it", my partner still won't be satisfied… and I like to live by that great American slogan – "Satisfaction guaranteed." But I do need to maintain my false fame at work, so I will pretend to be interested – what harm is there from a short kiss?
"You need to go to sleep."
Erin, you speak words of wisdom. I do, I do, but I am so drunk I can't remember how many rooms my apartment has and where the bathroom is, much less where the bed is. My hands feel cold and I press them together, trying to make them warm. I look at Erin, trying to get myself to look at her as an object of desire. She's young, pretty, intelligent, and all of that can't make me attracted to her, because I still love Abby. Abby probably thinks I've gone crazy after my dim-witted behavior at the party. I saw her, standing there without Carter, alone and finally told her that I missed her. As she talked about cup of coffee, dinner and pizza, all of which only came with Carter's presence, I touched her shoulder, wanting to hold her for a moment, wanting to get rid of some of my obsession, to resolve the mess that is going on in my head. She understood that I couldn't think straight and rightfully told me not to make another mistake, and then she left with Carter at her side, while I stood there, still smelling her perfume, feeling like I was standing barefoot in the snow instead of Susan's warm bedroom.
Abby, moja lipa Abby. She doesn't love me anymore. I want to stop loving her, but I cannot, so I remain in love with her, watching her, wanting everything to finally be all right for her. I understand that she loves Carter, but he has to make her happy for me to stop loving her. She doesn't look happy. I would give anything to make her feel better but I always do everything wrong when I try to help, so I try to stay away. I don't know how to talk to her anymore. Every time I try to talk, I remember nights when we lay in bed together, when I listened to her heart beating, happy that I was alive. Abby was my only friend, and ever since the hospital lockdown, when I assume she became Carter's girlfriend, I have been losing her. When she wasn't with Carter, we could talk. When she stayed at my apartment after that fucking lowlife Brian attacked her, we had fun. We were not intimate, but I enjoyed her presence, and understood many things about her I couldn't when we were together. Every day, she forgets something about me, and every day I die a little. Some would find my love excessive and futile, but I still need to believe in something, someone, and I can't believe in myself anymore.
I used to be jealous of Carter, but now I sometimes feel sorry for him. Although he sometimes doesn't realize it, he is often just like me, lonely and insecure, addicted to love, needing to love Abby to run away from his own problems. Thankfully, unlike me, he has friends that will help him if he stumbles, and who will direct him back on the right path. If he made Abby happy, I would let her go, but he doesn't make her happy, doesn't realize why she isn't happy. After Abby started to occasionally drink again, he confronted me angrily, and said something that stuck with me for a long time – "If you are not helping her, you're hurting her." He spoke the truth, the bitter truth I've been ignoring, but he didn't know that Abby resists the help she needs, that she has helped others for so long that she doesn't know how to be helped anymore. My father once said that everyone has a right to screw up their own lives, and that no one else is responsible – whatever you do, you have to answer for, and you or others can't blame your friends or loved ones for what you are doing. To be helped, you have to want the help, and even if you don't have anyone who wants to help you at that particular moment, one day someone will.
It's a really, really bad idea for me to drink, because I'm about to start crying from all of these thoughts, and it would be quite embarrassing for me to cry in front of Erin. I'd better get back to my seduction, or better to say, my poor attempt at it. I should keep my brain out of this and let my body do that for me, since I've been told I look very good for my age, and that women find me handsome. Here! I'm philosophizing again… I will myself not to think and call out: "Hey, Erin…"
She smiles slightly and moves closer to me.
"Yeah?" she inquires, probably wondering what my inebriated mind will come up with next.
"You are a very pretty girl," I say, trailing my fingers down her chest, lightly, almost not touching her. She looks a little bit like Abby in the dark, when she still didn't have those awful blonde streaks in her hair. If I close my eyes, I can pretend that Erin is Abby or my wife. I should not close my eyes, I should try to think of Erin as Erin and not as an exorcist of my ghosts, of Erin as a beautiful young woman all by herself, and not compare her to the two women I've lost. But despite all of my attempts not to, I compare her to them. Erin is a medical student – Abby was a medical student when I met her. Danijela was about Erin's age when she died… This is definitely not what I should be thinking about when thinking of kissing a woman, so I force myself to glance at her breasts, but fail to elicit any lewd thoughts.
I look up to see Erin beginning to lean towards me, and my dark side laughs at me. She wants you, it says. She doesn't want your love, your loyalty, your friendship, she wants your body. She sees just a body, and she doesn't see your fears and nightmares, she doesn't want to see them, no one wants to. No one will ever love you, Luka, you lost the only woman that loved you unconditionally, you did not save her. You were not strong enough keep the other one, the one who you thought would break down the spitefulness and anger you were carrying around inside you. All you have left is your pathetic lonely life, which isn't worth anything, and you can do everyone a favor by ending it…
I shudder and ignore these thoughts, concentrating on the kiss. Our lips touch, and I want to kiss her, to be passionate, to forget that I am drunk and lonely and without a soul in the world to call me a friend, but I accidentally look into her eyes and desperately want to disappear. What am I thinking? she is so much younger then me, she is someone's daughter. What would I think if some drunken old idiot would kiss my Jasja like this? Our lips remain pressed together, but Erin doesn't really want to kiss me, and for me this kiss is like kissing my own daughter in a filthy, sinful way. Erin ends the uncomfortable silence with a quick kiss that produces a smooching sound children's kisses make, and I feel even more ashamed.
"You know, if you're trying to seduce me, this is a very unconventional approach."
Erin manages a small smile as she says it, but she still looks nervous and I decide to drop the false charade, because I know what I must look like to her right now and what she must be thinking. She is alone in a strange apartment, with a drunken man who is bigger and stronger than her, and whose advances she has just refused. If I were a woman, I would definitely not want to be in a situation like this. I put my hands on her shoulders, and attempt to look friendlier, although I must still look like an idiot.
"Really?" I am thankful to her for her banter, for not running out on me at this very moment. I hope she will meet a nice young man or woman, and will be happy. I hope she will never run across people like me.
"You are supposed to get the girl drunk." At least she is finding the humor in the situation, so that's good.
"I thought you were," I say stupidly, knowing that she couldn't have been, since she drove me home. All of that deep thinking has left me feeling confused, and closer to passing out then I was before.
"The bedroom?" Erin asks pointedly. Well, there is one rational person in this apartment and I'd better listen to her before I fall down on the floor.
"I think it's up there," I say, still not sure how many floors there are in my apartment. One, two, none, half - I laugh again, and take my hands off her shoulders so we can set out in search of the bedroom. Erin promptly determines that my bedroom is on the second floor of my apartment, and finds the stairs. After that, we discover that I can't go up the stairs by myself, so she takes two handfuls of my shirt and proceeds to carefully push me upstairs. I am suddenly stricken with an urge to sing, but can't raise my voice above a whisper. All that comes to my mind is a line from an old folk song, somehow seeming appropriate for the occasion.
"Di je bija, da je bija, lipo mu je bilo..." I mumble. Wherever he was, he had a good time… Before I can remember the rest of the song, we discover my bedroom. When I get inside, I nearly smash my face into the wall, but do manage to find the light switch quite fast. The light hurts my head and I am dizzy for a moment, trying to figure out where exactly the bed is. At that moment, I remember that there is a good reason for "Luka Don't Dance", and I should have not ignored it, even if I was drunk. Even though I seem to be impersonating a hormone-crazed teenager lately, I definitely don't have a body of a teenager, and now it is letting me know how much it hates me with fiery pain in the leg that was broken many years ago. Thank god for painkillers, since I will be able to take some for the pain once I sleep off the alcohol. My left leg continues the body's revenge by refusing to work and the right one gets entangled with it. Erin realizes that I need some help to get to the bed, so she puts one of my arms around her shoulders and directs me to the bed.
"You're staying here tonight?" Please say yes, Erin. I can't sleep another night in this empty apartment that is filled with ghosts who torment me night after night. I need someone to whom I can offer breakfast, whom I can give a towel to use, someone who needs me even for a silly, small reason.
"I'm going to sleep on the couch." Smart choice. But I've still got strike three.
"Ooh… there's more room in the bed." If only I could tell her how much I need to feel someone's warmth tonight, to hold another human being just to know that I am still alive
"There always is," she retorts, and I understand her. Three strikes and you're out… Erin disentangles herself from me, and my legs give out, so I gracelessly flop down on the bed. Just when I realize that it would be quite uncomfortable to sleep in shoes, Erin kneels on the floor and starts to untie the laces.
"No, no, no - I can do it," I protest, feeling embarrassed, but I would probably fall of the bed if I tried to take my shoes off by myself, so it'll probably less embarrassing for me if I let her do it.
"No, no I got it," she says, continuing to untangle the knotted shoelace. I prop my face with my hand, and look down on her, feeling somewhat sleepy.
"You don't have to work tomorrow, right?"
If I have to work tomorrow with the hangover that I suspect will destroy about half of my brain cells, I will probably end up killing someone – a patient or myself. Luckily for the patients, I'm off tomorrow, and the only place I'll be will be my bed, where I'll spend all day with my trusty painkillers and a salad bowl doubling as an emesis basin.
"No, no, no, no - no work," I mutter, probably sounding hysterical.
"That's good." Her fingers continue to struggle with the stubborn shoelace, and a minute later, she pulls off my left shoe. I am not sure if I'm wearing boots or shoes. It's complicated here. They give shoes so many different names and they consider so many different shoes boots – or is it boots they consider shoes? Erin reminds me of Mama. Although I can now think in either English or Croatian, I always think of her as Mama, never Mom or mother, even if I say that she is "Mom". Mama used to have to untangle the mess I managed to turn my shoelaces into. I sat on the chair in the hall and she kneeled in front of me tugging at the laces until something gave and the shoe finally came off. After she was done, she lectured me about tying my shoelaces properly, and I used to bend over and give her a kiss on the cheek. No – this is not a good train of thought right now…
I should go to sleep soon. I'm getting confused. Erin pulls hard at the second stubborn shoelace, and it comes loose. She pulls off my other shoe. I glance at her hands, and a random thought occurs to me out of nowhere. Before I can think more about it, it slips out.
"Why do you want to be a doctor?"
She looks up and smiles, looking slightly puzzled by my inquiry.
"I don't know. Good at science." Tears suddenly fill my eyes and I'm afraid to blink, to allow the tears to escape. She sounds so pure, so naïve, so like me when I was asked in my first year of medical school why I wanted to be a doctor. Over time, I understood that being good at science was definitely not what made a doctor. Being a father taught me to take care of people, to understand that one had to treasure every life like your own, or the life you helped create. I did not understand the true meaning of healing until I had to stitch a laceration on an old woman's arm using vodka as the disinfectant, without any anesthesia, knowing that the woman was in terrible pain from my efforts but that I was actually helping her.
"I became a doctor to take care of people. To heal them…" I sigh deeply and attempt to smile, but my eyes start rolling back in my head and I fall back on the pillow, since my weary brain can't support my body anymore. I think of the old saying, "Physician, heal thyself" and feel the emptiness enveloping me again. I heal people, day by day, insert myself into their lives for an hour or two, sometimes get hurt by them, but then they leave, and I understand that I am the one who needs to be healed, because I will never truly heal them if I cannot heal myself. But I am too weak to take up this task alone and no one else wants to help me, so I am left to die a slow death, killing myself day by day.
"You do. Every day," she says, probably confused by my dejectedness. Poor girl. She doesn't know that I can't heal anyone anymore, that I am worthless, that I am sicker then some of my patients. She doesn't know how often I wish that I could have died instead of Mark Greene. God is truly unfair when choosing who will die. People who finally get everything together are struck down before they can accomplish what they wanted, and people who want to die never do. Mark is dead, ripped away from a loving wife and daughters who could have used many more years of his presence, and I am alive, gradually fading away and healing no one…
"…But strangers. Only strangers. And not tomorrow…" I can't keep my eyes open anymore, I am not even making sense to myself and I am sure I won't remember any of this tomorrow. Erin has put a blanket over me and is moving around the bed, tucking me in. Even though she doesn't know, she helped me a little tonight by not giving in to me, made me think about some things I haven't thought of for a while. As I fall asleep, I whisper "Laku noc," to her and to my ever-faithful ghosts…