Title: Pretty Boxes
By: Julexer
DISCLAIMER: "ER", the characters and situations depicted within are the property of Warner Bros. Television, Amblin Entertainment, Constant C Productions, NBC, etc. They are borrowed without permission but without the intent of infringement. The story presented here is written solely for entertainment purposes, and the author is not making a profit.
Please do not post or distribute without the disclaimer above, or without the permission of the author.
Feedback is welcome and appreciated. Write to julexer@hotmail.com
Thanks SO SO SO much to Lori for reading and reviewing and otherwise feeding my ER addiction.
SUMMARY: The Greene family has a visitor from England.
RATING: PG-13
At the kitchen table, Ella spread peanut butter on sourdough toast. "We've got to get crunchy, Dad. This creamy stuff is gross. What time is she getting in?"
Mark was hastily assembling his own breakfast. "Around one-thirty." He looked up. "I like creamy peanut butter."
She rolled her eyes and laughed quickly. "Okay. Mom likes crunchy, though, and we need to go to the store soon. Are you almost ready?"
He swigged his juice. "Sure, sure. I'm off today, anyway. Give me five minutes and I'll meet you in the car."
In the Acura on the way to school, Ella slumped in her seat. "I wish I didn't have school."
Mark looked over at her. Normally, Ella adored school, loved her friends and got very good grades. "Why, what's the matter?"
She sighed dramatically. "I just don't want to have to wait to see Mom, that's all."
He laughed. "Right, because a few hours is so long after you already waited ten days!"
"Dad!" She socked him in the arm.
He was still chuckling. "What, you didn't like having ten days alone with your old dad?"
She rolled her eyes, smiling. "Don't worry, I did. But I missed her anyway." Her gaze drifted out the window.
Mark pulled up to the middle school, and reached over to tug Ella's ponytail before she got out. "I know you did. I missed her too; it'll be great to have her back."
She smiled, waved, and disappeared into one of the crowds of preteens waiting for the first bell to ring. Mark headed for the grocery store, the first stop on his list for putting the house back together before Elizabeth returned.
At home, he put away the groceries, which led to cleaning out the refrigerator, especially the remains of several takeout dinners he'd been talked into ordering. He vacuumed, tidied the living room, and made the bed, even though he'd sort of enjoyed sleeping in it unmade during the past week or so.
He finally resigned himself to cleaning the bathrooms and was headed downstairs with an armload of damp towels when he passed the closed door to Ella's room. Cringing because he'd forgotten last night's resolution to ask her to clean it, he cracked open the door and peered inside.
Since he was expecting to see the usual pit of unfinished art projects and scattered laundry and sports equipment, the neatly made bed, tidy desk, and undeniably visible expanse of carpet astonished him. He'd nearly forgotten the color of Ella's carpet; she must be excited indeed for Elizabeth's return.
Mark stuffed the load of laundry in the washer and quickly put together a sandwich at the island in the kitchen. He ate it slowly over some research materials for a new study on geriatric care in the ER that Kerry had been leaning on him to help organize, and the next time he looked up at the clock it was finally time to leave for the airport.
At the gate, he strained to see the plane as it appeared in the sky and maneuvered over at a snail's pace. He was very glad she'd gone through customs in New York; this was just a simple domestic flight. It suddenly hit him that they'd never been apart for this long since they'd been married, just as he finally saw her, deep in the tunnel, her leather carryon over one shoulder.
She looked exhausted, the colors of her skin and hair slightly dulled and her clothes lacking their usual crispness. But when she saw him she smiled and the lines around her eyes smoothed out; she smiled all up the way up the tunnel and finally caught him up in a long, deep kiss he suddenly realized he'd been waiting ten days for.
"I missed you," she said, pulling back, her fingertips lingering on his jaw for one extra moment.
He couldn't stop grinning. "I missed you, too. We both did. How were the flights?"
She laughed. "Dreadful. Just awful. I'm so glad they're over."
At home, they made good use of the freshly made bed and the hours before Ella would return from soccer practice. Afterward, Elizabeth dropped off almost immediately, finally able to relax between her own sheets after the trip and the long, cramped flights.
Mark spent a few moments basking in the pleasure of a bed warmed again by someone else and lightly fingering the red curls that had spilled onto his pillow. Then, noticing the light beginning to change, he ventured downstairs to start dinner.
The lasagna was two layers deep in the pan when Ella burst through the front door, flushed and the curls around her temples damp from soccer. "Hi, Daddy. Where is she? She's home, right?"
"Yeah, yeah, she's home. But wait, she's sleep -" but Ella had already zoomed up the stairs, her bag and cleats abandoned next to the door.
She remembered herself in time, though, and tentatively peeked around the door at her mother in the bed. "Mom?" Elizabeth did not stir, and Ella knelt before her, searching her face for signs of consciousness.
Finally, the sage-green eyes opened reluctantly, and Elizabeth's face slowly lit up at the sight of her pink-cheeked daughter waiting eagerly for her to wake up. "Ellie." She sat up, making room for Ella to climb in, shin- guards and all.
Ella hugged her mom long and hard, and Elizabeth was, as usual, momentarily surprised at the fire and strength contained in the small, wiry frame. She was surprised again at the tears she noticed in the green eyes when she pulled back to study Ella's face for any changes that might have transpired in her absence.
"What's the matter, sweetheart? What's this about?" She caught one furtively escaping tear with her thumb, her eyebrows raised in concern.
Hastily, Ella ducked her head and rubbed at her eyes. "Nothing, nothing, really. I just missed you. How was London?"
Elizabeth leaned back against the pillows and stretched her spine. "Oh, well, London was fabulous," she said conspiratorially.
Ella laughed. "Was it exciting? What did you do?" she asked, remembered the magic of London at Christmas the winter she was five.
"No, no, it wasn't all that exciting, really," her mother assured her. "You'd have been bored silly. Grandpa wished you were there, though."
Ella's eyes lit up. "He did? What did he say?"
"Well, at the dinner we went to to celebrate his retirement - and it was very fancy, stuffed with boring British surgeons - they toasted him and he stood up to thank them. He said he was lucky to have me there, and that the only thing that would make the evening more complete was the presence of his granddaughter."
Ella nearly squealed with delight. "He must be very proud that you're a surgeon too."
Contemplatively, Elizabeth studied her daughter. "Yes, I think he is."
Ella stretched along the length of the bed, belly-down and with her chin in her hands. "Did you do anything else fun?"
Her mother laughed. "I'm telling you, you'd have found it quite boring. There were several events at the hospital and at the office where he had his practice and I saw a lot of my friends from when I was in school."
Ella wrinkled her nose. "Did you see Grandma?"
"Once - we met for lunch. She said to say hello to you, of course."
Her daughter's eyes widened. "Only once, in the whole ten days? Didn't she go to the dinner?"
"No, you know she and Grandpa don't see each other very often; she wouldn't be interested in a dinner to celebrate his career."
Ella, who adored both her grandparents, found this slightly unbelievable. "But -"
"Dinner!" came Mark's call from downstairs. His wife and daughter looked up.
Elizabeth inhaled appreciatively. "That smells wonderful, doesn't it? What's Daddy making for us?"
Ella hadn't noticed in her rush to bolt upstairs. "Don't know, something Italian, I guess."
Late that night, Elizabeth found herself unable to sleep and tried to keep busy getting some paperwork in order at the kitchen table. She looked up as Mark came up from the basement where he had, no doubt, been engaged in one of his endless projects that never seemed to appear above ground. "Remind me why I agreed to work tomorrow?" she asked, her eyes underscored by dark circles.
"Simple," he said, sitting across from her and watching her sympathetically. "You're a masochist."
She exhaled, regarding him across the table. "Right. Thank you," she said coolly, working hard to keep from smiling.
He laughed gently. "You're going to be exhausted. Can't you call in sick?"
She sighed. "No, Robert would probably come hunt me down at the house."
"Oh, we don't want that. You'd better go in."
She laughed back at him "It won't be so bad. I really am looking forward to getting back to work. I just wish I wasn't going to be so tired tomorrow."
"Insomnia?"
"Nothing serious. My clock's just off."
"Anything I can do?"
She looked up. "Well, there's not much else I can do here . . . will you come to bed? Maybe I'll be able to sleep." She put the papers away and they ascended the stairs. At Ella's door - open to show off the cleanliness of the room - Elizabeth stopped.
Ella slept hard, fingertips and eyelids flickering and the bedclothes in a mess. Her mother watched as she turned slightly and mumbled some unintelligible dreamspeech.
Elizabeth leaned back against Mark's chest and he clasped her around the waist. "I missed her in England . . .she's changing so quickly these days."
He smiled in agreement, and she arched her spine in pleasure as he rubbed her neck and shoulders. "Maybe we should take her to England again sometime. I'm sure your parents would love to see her."
She paused. "Actually, I've been meaning to talk to you about that."
"About what?"
She turned to face him, then pulled him gently, by the arm, down the hall into their bedroom. "Daddy and I were talking about him coming to visit for awhile sometime soon."
"Oh?"
"Now that he's retired, he'd really like to see more of Ella."
"And of you, too, I'm sure."
She smiled. "Not to mention the fact that he's probably going to find retirement unbearably dull if he's got nothing to occupy his time."
Some of the grayness of the early morning was beginning to fade as Mark stretched out his hamstrings after his run, leaning against the big tree in front of the house. He went in the front door just as Elizabeth came down the stairs, dressed in a long dark skirt and a silky lavender jacket.
"Morning," she said, leaning in for a quick kiss as she twisted her hair into a knot, then grabbed her bag.
"Morning," he replied. "You look better - sleep well?"
"Yes, thank you. I'm off tomorrow, thank God. Guess I'll have to catch up then."
"Breakfast?"
"No, I'm late already. See you later!"
Mark went to the kitchen to eat breakfast before he showered. He had just slathered a perfectly toasted bagel with cream cheese and raspberry jam when Ella raced down the stairs, hair flying, landing on the hardwood at the bottom with a thunk that made Mark wince. "Dad! You have to take me to school, now!"
Startled, Mark looked at her over his bagel. "Now? We've got half an hour."
"No, no! I'm doing a presentation with Sasha in first period and I promised her I'd be there early to set up. Can we please go?"
Mark rolled his eyes. "Maybe you could have mentioned this earlier?"
Ella all but stamped her foot in frustration. "Dad, please! I am so late!"
Heaving a sigh, he resigned himself to juggling the bagel over the steering wheel of the Acura. Tense and poised for flight in the passenger's seat next to him, Ella looked over. "Dad, what are you wearing?"
Mark looked down at his running clothes. True, his sweats were spattered with mud and probably worse from the knees down, and his T-shirt was from a 5K he'd run at least seven or eight years ago. But he didn't think he needed fashion tips just now from the kid who had just rushed him out of the house without even a shower. He returned her look, his eyebrows raised.
"Never mind. Sorry."
Elizabeth had just barely slipped into the elevator on her way down from the garage, and was breathing a sigh of relief that she wouldn't be any later than she already was, when she looked up and realized she was sharing the car with the very man she'd been hoping to avoid for at least a few more hours. So close, she thought to herself.
"Lizzie!" exclaimed Robert. "Wonderful to see you. How was - London, right? They finally took the old scalpel away from your dad?"
She was working hard to keep the sour taste in her mouth from affecting the cast of her features. "My father retired, yes."
The elevator opened onto the surgical floor and they stepped out. "Well, I trust you're not too out of practice!" he returned, apparently as a sort of greeting, and departed for his office.
Trying to breathe slowly and regularly through her nose, Elizabeth headed for the desk, where she ran into Shirley. "Dr. Corday, welcome back. How was your trip?"
"It went very well, thank you, Shirley. It's good to be home, though. How is everything here?"
"Same old, same old. You're scheduled for a small bowel resection later this morning."
"Great. Thank you," she said, and went to her office.
On her desk sat a lovely flower arrangement, the same one Mark had been sending for years. She'd once gone into the shop where it came from to buy flowers to put on the grave of a friend, and the Vietnamese couple who owned it had recognized her by name.
She put the flowers on the corner of her desk closest to the window and sat down. She was only fifteen minutes into the stack of charts that awaited her when one of the OR desk clerks knocked on the door. "Come in."
"Hi, Dr. Corday. Dr. Romano says to tell you that Dr. Edson's called in sick."
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows and waited. "And?"
"And he's supposed to be covering the ER today. Dr. Romano says that since he's not here, you're it." She shut the door with a bang.
Mark's shift that evening ran until midnight, so Elizabeth planned a quiet dinner with Ella as soon as they got home.
"How was practice?" Elizabeth asked as she ladled bean soup into two bowls.
"Today's Wednesday. No practice today." Ella took salad dressing out of the refrigerator and shook it up.
"Oh." Her mother frowned. "What did you do after school, then?"
"Went to Sasha's."
"Oh. What did you two do?"
"Nothing, really."
Elizabeth poured water from the Brita for herself and milk for Ella. "Yuck, Mom. I hate milk."
"Since when? You've always liked milk."
"No way. The whole animal mucous thing turns me off." Ella held her nose and mooed, which was so funny that Elizabeth nearly dropped the soup she was ferrying to the table.
Ella was dancing to some unheard rhythm in her head as she doused the salad at the island. "Mom, can I be a vegetarian?"
Elizabeth plucked the dressing bottle from her hands and returned it to the refrigerator just before the salad became soup as well. "A vegetarian? Why would you want to do that?"
"Rachel's a vegetarian."
"That's true. Rachel also has a ring in her nose. Do you want to do that, too?" She held up her hand. "Don't answer that."
"Mom! Gross. I just don't like meat."
"You liked meat two weeks ago."
"So?"
"Ella, if you really want to be a vegetarian, that's fine. But you ought to have a real reason for doing it, is what I'm saying."
Ella dug into her soup with gusto. "Okay. Can we get a dog?"
"What? We don't have time for a dog."
"Sure we do. It's almost summer."
"You'll have practice and camp and things. And a dog lasts longer than a summer, you know."
"I know." They ate quietly for a few moments, Ella methodically picking out the red beans and lining them up next to her lettuce.
"Ella, how would you feel about Grandpa coming to visit?"
She looked up. "From England? Really?"
"Yeah. Dad and I talked about it and today I spoke to Grandpa. Now that he's not working -"
Ella rocketed from her chair and danced around the kitchen, emitting high- pitched sounds of glee.
"Hey, hey! Will you sit?" Elizabeth pointed at the chair and the soup that Ella had very nearly upset, laughing ruefully. "You really ought to have practice every day."
The following Saturday afternoon Mark drove Ella and Sasha, who had spent the night, to their soccer game. Sasha had been one of Ella's best friends for years; much daughter-exchanging happened between Mark and Elizabeth and her parents and she was a pleasure to have around.
Mark looked over as Ella yawned in the passenger's seat next to him. "See, I told you staying up so late would make you tired for the game."
Ella wasn't worried. "It's okay. We've beaten this team twice already, easy."
His daughter was the indisputable star and spirit of her beloved team and Mark had learned long ago to take her word in nearly all soccer-related matters. "What were you two doing last night, anyway? I didn't hear the TV."
"Me and Sasha are writing a play."
"Really?" This was a new one - Ella had exhibited a brief interest in the stage around the time Rachel had gotten her B.A. in theater and headed for New York, but at the time it had seemed short-lived. "What's it about?" He pulled into the parking lot of the soccer field.
Sasha piped up from the backseat. "We don't know yet."
Ella grabbed her water bottle and girls jumped out. "Yeah, we won't know what it's about 'till we're finished."
Ella had been right. Her team easily crushed their opponents. Mark, on the sidelines, watched with pride and a touch of wonder as his daughter darted almost effortlessly around the field, turning up in all the right places with the ball. He'd been to dozens of her games, but her excitement and focus at each one was contagious. She loved to play, and it showed. This passion, coupled with the undeniable raw talent that was becoming more and more apparent with each new season, was already earning her some extra attention. She'd be twelve later this spring, and she still had two more years of middle school, but some of the coaches at the high school level were beginning to take notice.
This game was a particularly brilliant effort by her team. Nearly every goal was smoothly strategized and neatly executed, and as the team reassembled afterwards Ella trotted confidently back to position, her face clear and determined. She was small, but very well put-together, certainly well-equipped for fancy dribbling, powerful passes and quick bursts of speed.
After it was over and the girls had shaken hands with the other team, Ella drank long and deep from her water bottle. Mark had a towel ready for her. "Thanks, Dad," she said, mopping her face and neck.
"You're welcome. You looked great out there - I almost felt sorry for the other team!"
She laughed, but quickly, not overly concerned. "They've got some good defense, but their forwards aren't aggressive enough. They were a lot better than last time, though - by the end of the season they'll probably be pretty good." She had taken off her cleats, their bottoms clotted with wet grass, and was peeling off her socks and shin-guards. Slipping into flip-flops, she looked up at Mark. "Hey, can I spend the night at Sasha's?"
He laughed. "Payback time, huh? Sure, if it's okay with her parents."
"Thanks. So I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Sure, just call, one of us should be home. Hey, don't stay up too late, okay?"
She grinned, but with a definite gleam in her eye, Mark thought. "Sure, Dad."
By the time Elizabeth got home from her shift that evening, Mark was just taking two steaks off the grill and covering them with mushrooms.
"Oh, Mark, that smells amazing," she said, setting down her things and looking for something to do.
"No, no, don't do anything, just sit down," he admonished her. "It's almost ready."
She obeyed, sinking into her chair and eyeing the food he set before her. "This is a treat," she observed. "Have you heard Ella's latest?"
"What? Oh, the vegetarian thing?" he laughed, spearing a perfectly cooked morsel of beef.
"Yes. She'd be missing out tonight. . . where is she, anyway?"
"Sasha's."
She laughed. "Two nights in a row? Did you ask about homework?"
Guiltily, he shook his head and took more asparagus.
Exasperated, she chided him. "Mark, you've got to remember about these things."
"Oh, come on. She always gets her homework done. We've got nothing to worry about."
She tried not to smile. "You're right, that's true."
They ate without speaking until Mark asked how her shift had been. "It was fine. I haven't worked weekends in so long, though."
"Ah, the joys of self-scheduling in the life of the Associate Chief. . .!"
She laughed again. "Yes, well, I'm paying for it now!" She topped off each of their wine glasses. "Oh, I spoke to my dad today and he's all set to come next weekend."
"Oh, good."
"It's so strange to think of him not working. Surgery is such an important part of who he is - he's always been a surgeon for as long as I've known him."
Mark watched her. "That's the way it's been for Ella, too. You've always been a surgeon."
"Yes, but it's different for her, I think. I saw so little of him since I was away at school. . . I had to form my impressions of him based on so little information."
"What were your impressions of him when you were a kid?"
She thought for a moment. "Well, I knew that he loved me. But it really wasn't like he knew me all that well - I only saw him when I was on holiday and then I was usually on my best behavior."
Mark laughed; Elizabeth's boarding school exploits had been vividly described to him by a few of her childhood friends he'd met since their marriage.
She smiled, knowing exactly of what he was thinking. "He was thrilled that I went into science and medicine - he never said so but I think he was very relieved that I took after him in my academic interests. He never took my mother's work seriously." She paused. "I often wondered if he'd have felt differently if I'd had a brother."
Mark really couldn't say, of course; he didn't know Charles well enough to judge if this insecurity of Elizabeth's was reasonable.
She smiled again, easier this time. "We've really been much closer since I was an adult." She reached across the table to touch Mark's hand. "I'm just glad Ella is growing up here, with both of us."
Elizabeth had planned to pick her father up at the airport, but he insisted that he was just going to rent a car as soon as he got in. She argued, but half-heartedly; one stubborn streak could easily recognize another.
Instead she tried to engage her husband and daughter in cleaning the house in anticipation of Charles's arrival. Her efforts to mobilize the troops, though, were somewhat less than fruitful.
Mark was slumped at the kitchen table, bent over the Sunday paper and a massive cup of coffee, bleary-eyed from his late shift the night before.
Ella lounged spinelessly around the house, draping herself in various dramatic positions in the spirit of a southern belle being fanned with peacock feathers.
"Ella, is your room clean?" asked Elizabeth as she vacuumed around her in the living room.
"Uh huh."
Elizabeth peered into her face. "Is that what I'm going to see if I go upstairs and open the door?"
Ella avoided her eyes, heaving another theatrical sigh.
"Clean it." She disappeared into the bathroom with several bottles and rags. "I'm serious!" she called. "All I'm asking you to do is clean your room!" Sloshing sounds rang out. "Mark!"
Mark grunted, staring blankly at the sports page.
"Mark, it's one o'clock in the afternoon! He's supposed to be here soon!"
"Uh huh."
"You said you were going to clean the kitchen, remember?" She emerged from the bathroom.
He tried to look awake. "Yeah, yeah, I remember." Her hands on her hips, Elizabeth raised her eyebrows.
He jumped up. "Okay, okay, yeah, I'll do it." He carried his cup to the sink.
"Thank you." She turned back to her daughter. "Ella!"
Ella had migrated from the living room to the stairs. "Yeah, I'm going."
Her mother stood before her, taking in the contradiction to these promising words that was before her eyes. "Ella."
"What."
"If you don't get up off the stairs this minute and go clean your room, I'm going to throw everything that's on your floor right now into a big garbage bag and put it out on the curb to be incinerated."
Elizabeth looked around the table that night and thought to herself that the difficulty of getting the house ready had been worth it. Everything looked beautiful. Ella, her nesting instincts aroused by rearranging the junk on her bedroom floor, had volunteered to set the table, with silver candlesticks and prettily folded napkins. Mark had put together a wonderful dinner - she even spied Ella happily chowing down on the roasted chicken.
And there was her father, at the other end of the table. In England, his appearance had surprised her somewhat; she hadn't seen him for a few years and suddenly he seemed old. But here, away from the formal dinners and stilted conversations surrounding his retirement, she was reassured to see exactly the same man he'd always been.
Ella was deeply engaged in filling her grandfather in about her soccer team. Charles listened with obvious delight and amusement at her confident animation. He caught Elizabeth's gaze for a moment, and the pure warmth and pride in his eye paused her for a second. How well she recalled longing for moments like this with him, and the happy security each one afforded her.
Ella, she realized, could not see the value of such joy - she had been the object of such a gaze from her own father nearly every day of her life. It was with a touch of regret that Elizabeth smiled back at Charles.
Long after the food had disappeared, they lingered at the table. Charles was fairly familiar with what Elizabeth did at work every day, but he was eager to hear more about Mark, having been far removed from the casualty department for many years. And Ella had always been far more captivated by her father's tales of gunshot victims and drug overdoses than her mother's revisitings of appendectomies and laparotomies - tonight she leaned in, hoping for gory details.
Finally, Elizabeth noticed the drooping eyelids of both her father and her daughter. "Dad, your flights must have been tiring."
He looked up in agreement. "Ghastly, they were."
Ella jumped up. "Grandpa, I'll take you to the guest room. It used to be Rachel's room . . ." The two moved down the hall, Charles thanking Mark for the excellent meal.
Mark stood and began to clear the table. "Remember when she used to be shy?"
Elizabeth laughed, following him with more dishes. "She was never shy - just waiting until she had something to say."
The next morning, Elizabeth had already taken off for work in the Mustang when Mark, hurriedly getting papers together that he needed to present to Kerry, looked at the clock above the oven. He started to bellow for Ella, but at the last second remembered that Charles was likely still asleep. Instead, he charged up the stairs and into her room. Finding her still buried beneath her pillows and stuffed animals, he shook her awake. "Ella, what are you still doing in bed? We're late, you've only got ten minutes!"
"Whaa -?" she moaned. "Dad, no school."
"What do you mean, no school?"
She regarded him blearily, her hair tangled across her cheeks. She was making a valiant effort to cross the bridge to consciousness, but the words weren't coming easily. "It's, uh, teacher. . . teacher. . ."
"Teacher conferences?"
She nodded gratefully and burrowed deeper into the bedding.
Mark was exasperated, though. "Could you possibly tell me about these things any later?"
Ella's voice was muffled. "Whaddya mean?"
"I've got a shift today! What am I going to do with you? Why didn't you tell me about this?"
"Well. . .I told Mom." She rolled over and peered up at him through her lashes. "And anyway, I was gonna do stuff with Grandpa."
Mark was getting more and more agitated as the minutes ticked by. "But he doesn't know either! And he's probably got things planned -"
"Nothing that can't wait," interrupted Charles, who was already dressed and dapper, from the doorway. Ella smiled blissfully and promptly fell back asleep.
Mark turned, flooded with gratitude. "Are you sure? We could call one of her friends -"
"No, no. A whole day with my granddaughter? That's why I came, Mark!" He stepped aside. "Go to work. We'll see you tonight."
Late that morning, Elizabeth pushed heavily through the doors of Trauma One, stripping off her gloves and disposable gown. The young man had been a mess; several gunshot wounds from a street encounter with the police had made his chances so remote that she'd known it was hopeless five minutes after they'd begun. What was more disturbing was the reaction of Dr. Kovac; once Pickman had reported that this was a convicted rapist who had violated parole, he'd seemed to give up entirely. Elizabeth didn't like having the feeling that she needed to convince another doctor to do his best for a patient, and it seemed to be happening more and more lately with Dr. Kovac.
Susan breezed by toward the admit desk. "Oh, Elizabeth," she said. "Mark's looking for you."
"Thanks," she said, falling in behind her. Mark wasn't anywhere to be seen, though. Susan and Elizabeth both stopped short at the sight of Randi, who was poured into a black leather spaghetti-strapped vest with silver studs.
"Uh, Randi," began Susan, bravely. "Have you seen Mark?" Randi vaguely nodded in the negative. Susan blurted, "Aren't you cold in that?"
Randi looked up from her catalogue, genuinely puzzled. "In what?"
The two doctors regarded her for a second, then turned down the hall. "I guess that means it's springtime now," remarked Elizabeth.
Susan laughed. "Some groundhog. Hey, if you see Mark, tell him I need him to look at a chest film in two."
Elizabeth nodded and went to see if Mark was in the lounge.
"Hey," he said, pouring coffee.
"Hi. You were looking for me?"
"Oh, yeah. Did Ella tell you today was teacher conference day?"
Elizabeth clapped her hand over her mouth. "Mark, I completely forgot. I'm so sorry. What -"
"Not to worry, your dad saved our hides."
She sighed. "Thank goodness."
"Do we, uh, actually have a conference with her teacher or anything?"
"No, she said we would have gotten a notice if we did." She turned to go. "Hey, lunch later?"
He grimaced. "Meeting with Kerry, sorry."
"That's all right. I'll see you tonight. Oh, Susan needs a consult in two."
He raised his cup in a salute, then followed her out the door.
Elizabeth was just getting off the phone with a Dr. Katz at Rush who was trying to arrange privileges at County when she heard an unmistakable voice chattering down the hall. ". . .and then, at the science fair, my plants won a prize! It was fun, but. . ." and Ella and Charles burst into her office.
"Daddy!" she exclaimed, getting up. "It's a surprise to see the two of you here."
"Well, darling, we thought we'd get lunch. And then we thought you might like to go along. If you have time, that is."
"Oh! Well, yes, I have time for something quick. Let me just check in at the desk and make sure nothing's come up."
On their way down the hall, the threesome ran into Dr. Romano. "Well, isn't this the family picture!" he said. "Good to see you again, Charles."
"Robert," Charles replied, nodding. Elizabeth took a shot at steering them toward the elevator, but was too late.
"And Ella! We don't see you up here too often. Keeping busy, I'll bet. What is it that you play?"
"Soccer," Ella replied, looking him straight in the eye.
"Soccer! Wonderful, wonderful. Yeah, I've heard those girls' teams can be pretty tough."
"Actually," said Ella, completely unfazed. "We've beaten every boys' team in our division."
Ella begged to go to her favorite Italian dive downtown, so it was over pasta and garlic bread that they sat down to eat.
Midway through her fettucine, Ella sat back and sighed with contentment.
"What?" asked her mother, smiling indulgently.
"I love fettucine. And I love days off from school even more."
Both Elizabeth and Charles laughed at this. "Don't you like school?" asked her grandfather.
"Oh, sure. Yeah, I like school."
He wound spaghetti around his fork. "What's your favorite subject?"
She thought, a piece of bread frozen in her hand halfway between the plate and her mouth. "Ummm, English. No, science. No, history. I don't know. . .I like Spanish, too."
"Spanish? You're taking Spanish?"
Ella nodded.
"Your mother took French, you know."
Elizabeth laughed. "Not very successfully, I'm afraid."
"That isn't true. You did perfectly well in French."
"My grades were fine, you're right."
"Then what - oh, I know what you're thinking! It was a French teacher, wasn't it?"
She shook her head. "I can't recall."
"Oh, but you can! Don't tell me Ella hasn't heard this story!"
"Don't tell her. You'll just give her naughty ideas."
Ella, though, was of course twitching with intrigue by this point. "Tell me!"
"Well," began her grandfather, pointedly ignoring Elizabeth's look of steel. "You have to understand that your mother and her boarding school chums were perfectly horrible little terrors - a headmaster's nightmare."
"A nightmare?" Elizabeth was indignant.
"A nightmare. Anyway, one night all of them were outside long past their bedtime."
"Long past," agreed Elizabeth.
"And, I believe, one of them had received a bad mark from this particular French teacher." Ella's eyes were getting wider and wider. "So they armed themselves with toilet paper and eggs and such, and went at it. Oh, yes, and what did you do to that poor woman's car?"
Elizabeth had hidden her face in her hands, so her voice was muffled. "We stuck a banana in her tailpipe."
Ella stared at her for a moment in silence, then squealed, "A banana?"
Miserably, Elizabeth nodded, but Ella could definitely see the smile of unmistakable pride she was trying to hide. "What happened?"
"Naturally, she knew who had done it," Charles continued.
"How?"
"It was fairly obvious," Elizabeth replied dryly.
"So, after that, French was never her favorite subject."
On Thursday night, Mark had an evening shift and Ella was at Sasha's until nine, doing a science project, so Elizabeth had her father to herself. They had a quiet dinner with good red wine, which they continued to drink after they moved to the sofa in the living room.
"So, how do you like retirement so far?"
He chuckled. "I'm certainly enjoying this part of it." She smiled. "I'm afraid things back in England will be fairly dull, though."
She tucked one foot underneath herself, and sipped from her glass. "I'm sure you'll find something to do. You could never be idle. And don't forget, you're always welcome here."
He smiled back, looking for a moment at Elizabeth, lovely in her beautiful home. She certainly looked well, he thought, and settled. A few years ago he'd worried about her for awhile, when she and Mark had unsuccessfully tried for another baby. They'd never really talked about it, but she hadn't seemed to dwell on it, either.
"Ella's grown up so much since I saw her last," he commented, and was rewarded with the biggest smile yet from his daughter.
"I know. All of a sudden, she's interested in everything. And, really, you'll have to see her on the field while you're here, she's amazing."
He sat back. "I think she'll make a doctor, don't you?"
This gave her pause. "Daddy, I don't care if she becomes a doctor or not. It's far too early to say that."
He raised his eyebrows. "I could tell with you at that age."
"Could you?" What was this sudden hot wave of anger she felt coming over her? "How? You didn't even know me when I was eleven."
"Elizabeth, of course I knew you."
"No, you didn't. When I was Ella's age, I knew I would be a surgeon. But it didn't have anything to do with me. It was all about you."
He was completely taken aback. "Elizabeth -"
"It was so important to me to have something that we could share - I thought it was the key to your approval." She looked at him, hard. "And wasn't I right?"
His face registered disbelief. "Are you saying you regret going into medicine?"
She sighed. "No, of course not. By the time I was actually studying it, my adult good sense had begun to kick in. I loved it so much that I knew I could never do anything else." She looked sidelong at him. "Maybe that part is genetic, I don't know. And if it turns out to be in Ella's genes too, then so be it."
"Elizabeth, I didn't want to force you to do anything. Your mother was the one. . . she wanted to shape you into something else - something that would fit into a pretty, beribboned box."
"Fortunately, she got over it right about the time I was expelled from ballet," she returned dryly.
"For making one of the other girls cry," he chuckled.
She smiled too, but quickly grew serious again. "But, Daddy, don't you see? You wanted me to fit in a box, too, just a different kind." At his protest, she asked, "How would you have felt if I hadn't become a surgeon? If I had studied astronomy like Mother? Or if I was an artist or a musician or something?"
"But you're not. You are a surgeon."
She sighed a big sigh. "You're right. I am a surgeon. And if someday Ella finds as much happiness in surgery as I have, or in the ER like Mark, I'll be content. But what I'm saying is that I'll be just as content if she finds that happiness playing soccer, or writing stories, or something else she hasn't yet discovered. Right now, she's so undecided, and I'm glad of it. She doesn't need to fit into any box."
He was quiet, watching her rake a hand through those irrepressible curls. He smiled and sipped his wine, clearly considering what she had said, but she wasn't sure if he would ever really see.
That night, long after her daughter and her father had gone to bed, Elizabeth sat up in her study, unable to sleep and catching up on the last bits of paperwork that had been neglected during her trip to England.
She stopped at the sound of Mark's key turning quietly in the lock of the front door. He padded upstairs and poked his head in the door. "Hey."
"Hey."
She looked tired, he thought. Maybe more than tired. "What are you still doing awake?"
"Couldn't sleep. I'm not on until afternoon tomorrow, anyway."
He watched her for a moment, then held up one finger. "Don't move." He disappeared again.
He came back carrying two spoons and a pint of Ben & Jerry's Triple Caramel Chunk, and led her by the arm to the small sofa along the far wall.
She laughed. "Who knew Robert would start such a sinful tradition?"
He silenced her with a spoonful. "No discussion of nutritional content allowed."
She smiled, and looked into his eyes, and leaned over and kissed him for a long time, enjoying the sweet stickiness of both their lips from the ice cream. She settled comfortably into curve of his side so that her head fit perfectly into the groove above his collarbone. This, she realized, was why she was still awake.
On Saturday, Ella had a very important game, so all four of them piled in the Acura and went, picking up Sasha on the way.
Both girls were considerably more quiet than they usually were before a game, although Sasha, a long-time admirer of the British accent, was clearly enthralled with Charles's.
Mark wished them luck as they hopped out of the car and headed for the field to stretch and warm up. "Thanks," said Ella. "We'll need it."
"Wow," commented her mother after the girls were out of earshot. "This must be a big game; she's never nervous."
Charles had never seen Ella play before, and at first he was more than a bit taken aback by the almost vicious ferocity demonstrated by all the young players. Ella soon calmed down, though, and settled into her familiar and successful patterns of strategy.
Elizabeth was torn throughout the game between watching Ella and watching Charles watching Ella. He was soon very involved, cheering right along with Mark and joining in with the collective groans of the parents when the other team's goalie, a tall, talented girl, kept making incredible saves.
On the field, Ella never let her frustration get the better of her. She was much too focused for that, and usually too far ahead in the score. Today, though, Elizabeth could see a slight knitting of her brow, and there was something in her energy that seemed more like desperation than it ever had before. Mark and Elizabeth shared a look of raised eyebrows, concerned.
At half-time, though, she assumed her usual role of helping to pump up the team, slicking back the sweaty wisps that had escaped from her ponytail and tightening the laces on her cleats.
She returned to the field afterwards much more like her usual self. She flashed a big grin at her parents and grandfather, then got right down to business. Down at the defense line, she neatly intercepted a pass and was halfway down the field before anyone else reacted.
A long, wiry halfback nearly stole her ball, but she faked left and drove hard, springing off the energy in her knees. Finally, as the defense closed in, she took a big risk, aiming long at the upper left corner of the goal.
And scored. All the focused tension in her body disappeared completely for an instant. The crowd roared and Mark gave her a big thumbs-up. The pure joy on Ella's face as she recovered and headed back to position was so brilliant that as Elizabeth looked over at her father, she thought maybe now he did see after all.
THE END
By: Julexer
DISCLAIMER: "ER", the characters and situations depicted within are the property of Warner Bros. Television, Amblin Entertainment, Constant C Productions, NBC, etc. They are borrowed without permission but without the intent of infringement. The story presented here is written solely for entertainment purposes, and the author is not making a profit.
Please do not post or distribute without the disclaimer above, or without the permission of the author.
Feedback is welcome and appreciated. Write to julexer@hotmail.com
Thanks SO SO SO much to Lori for reading and reviewing and otherwise feeding my ER addiction.
SUMMARY: The Greene family has a visitor from England.
RATING: PG-13
At the kitchen table, Ella spread peanut butter on sourdough toast. "We've got to get crunchy, Dad. This creamy stuff is gross. What time is she getting in?"
Mark was hastily assembling his own breakfast. "Around one-thirty." He looked up. "I like creamy peanut butter."
She rolled her eyes and laughed quickly. "Okay. Mom likes crunchy, though, and we need to go to the store soon. Are you almost ready?"
He swigged his juice. "Sure, sure. I'm off today, anyway. Give me five minutes and I'll meet you in the car."
In the Acura on the way to school, Ella slumped in her seat. "I wish I didn't have school."
Mark looked over at her. Normally, Ella adored school, loved her friends and got very good grades. "Why, what's the matter?"
She sighed dramatically. "I just don't want to have to wait to see Mom, that's all."
He laughed. "Right, because a few hours is so long after you already waited ten days!"
"Dad!" She socked him in the arm.
He was still chuckling. "What, you didn't like having ten days alone with your old dad?"
She rolled her eyes, smiling. "Don't worry, I did. But I missed her anyway." Her gaze drifted out the window.
Mark pulled up to the middle school, and reached over to tug Ella's ponytail before she got out. "I know you did. I missed her too; it'll be great to have her back."
She smiled, waved, and disappeared into one of the crowds of preteens waiting for the first bell to ring. Mark headed for the grocery store, the first stop on his list for putting the house back together before Elizabeth returned.
At home, he put away the groceries, which led to cleaning out the refrigerator, especially the remains of several takeout dinners he'd been talked into ordering. He vacuumed, tidied the living room, and made the bed, even though he'd sort of enjoyed sleeping in it unmade during the past week or so.
He finally resigned himself to cleaning the bathrooms and was headed downstairs with an armload of damp towels when he passed the closed door to Ella's room. Cringing because he'd forgotten last night's resolution to ask her to clean it, he cracked open the door and peered inside.
Since he was expecting to see the usual pit of unfinished art projects and scattered laundry and sports equipment, the neatly made bed, tidy desk, and undeniably visible expanse of carpet astonished him. He'd nearly forgotten the color of Ella's carpet; she must be excited indeed for Elizabeth's return.
Mark stuffed the load of laundry in the washer and quickly put together a sandwich at the island in the kitchen. He ate it slowly over some research materials for a new study on geriatric care in the ER that Kerry had been leaning on him to help organize, and the next time he looked up at the clock it was finally time to leave for the airport.
At the gate, he strained to see the plane as it appeared in the sky and maneuvered over at a snail's pace. He was very glad she'd gone through customs in New York; this was just a simple domestic flight. It suddenly hit him that they'd never been apart for this long since they'd been married, just as he finally saw her, deep in the tunnel, her leather carryon over one shoulder.
She looked exhausted, the colors of her skin and hair slightly dulled and her clothes lacking their usual crispness. But when she saw him she smiled and the lines around her eyes smoothed out; she smiled all up the way up the tunnel and finally caught him up in a long, deep kiss he suddenly realized he'd been waiting ten days for.
"I missed you," she said, pulling back, her fingertips lingering on his jaw for one extra moment.
He couldn't stop grinning. "I missed you, too. We both did. How were the flights?"
She laughed. "Dreadful. Just awful. I'm so glad they're over."
At home, they made good use of the freshly made bed and the hours before Ella would return from soccer practice. Afterward, Elizabeth dropped off almost immediately, finally able to relax between her own sheets after the trip and the long, cramped flights.
Mark spent a few moments basking in the pleasure of a bed warmed again by someone else and lightly fingering the red curls that had spilled onto his pillow. Then, noticing the light beginning to change, he ventured downstairs to start dinner.
The lasagna was two layers deep in the pan when Ella burst through the front door, flushed and the curls around her temples damp from soccer. "Hi, Daddy. Where is she? She's home, right?"
"Yeah, yeah, she's home. But wait, she's sleep -" but Ella had already zoomed up the stairs, her bag and cleats abandoned next to the door.
She remembered herself in time, though, and tentatively peeked around the door at her mother in the bed. "Mom?" Elizabeth did not stir, and Ella knelt before her, searching her face for signs of consciousness.
Finally, the sage-green eyes opened reluctantly, and Elizabeth's face slowly lit up at the sight of her pink-cheeked daughter waiting eagerly for her to wake up. "Ellie." She sat up, making room for Ella to climb in, shin- guards and all.
Ella hugged her mom long and hard, and Elizabeth was, as usual, momentarily surprised at the fire and strength contained in the small, wiry frame. She was surprised again at the tears she noticed in the green eyes when she pulled back to study Ella's face for any changes that might have transpired in her absence.
"What's the matter, sweetheart? What's this about?" She caught one furtively escaping tear with her thumb, her eyebrows raised in concern.
Hastily, Ella ducked her head and rubbed at her eyes. "Nothing, nothing, really. I just missed you. How was London?"
Elizabeth leaned back against the pillows and stretched her spine. "Oh, well, London was fabulous," she said conspiratorially.
Ella laughed. "Was it exciting? What did you do?" she asked, remembered the magic of London at Christmas the winter she was five.
"No, no, it wasn't all that exciting, really," her mother assured her. "You'd have been bored silly. Grandpa wished you were there, though."
Ella's eyes lit up. "He did? What did he say?"
"Well, at the dinner we went to to celebrate his retirement - and it was very fancy, stuffed with boring British surgeons - they toasted him and he stood up to thank them. He said he was lucky to have me there, and that the only thing that would make the evening more complete was the presence of his granddaughter."
Ella nearly squealed with delight. "He must be very proud that you're a surgeon too."
Contemplatively, Elizabeth studied her daughter. "Yes, I think he is."
Ella stretched along the length of the bed, belly-down and with her chin in her hands. "Did you do anything else fun?"
Her mother laughed. "I'm telling you, you'd have found it quite boring. There were several events at the hospital and at the office where he had his practice and I saw a lot of my friends from when I was in school."
Ella wrinkled her nose. "Did you see Grandma?"
"Once - we met for lunch. She said to say hello to you, of course."
Her daughter's eyes widened. "Only once, in the whole ten days? Didn't she go to the dinner?"
"No, you know she and Grandpa don't see each other very often; she wouldn't be interested in a dinner to celebrate his career."
Ella, who adored both her grandparents, found this slightly unbelievable. "But -"
"Dinner!" came Mark's call from downstairs. His wife and daughter looked up.
Elizabeth inhaled appreciatively. "That smells wonderful, doesn't it? What's Daddy making for us?"
Ella hadn't noticed in her rush to bolt upstairs. "Don't know, something Italian, I guess."
Late that night, Elizabeth found herself unable to sleep and tried to keep busy getting some paperwork in order at the kitchen table. She looked up as Mark came up from the basement where he had, no doubt, been engaged in one of his endless projects that never seemed to appear above ground. "Remind me why I agreed to work tomorrow?" she asked, her eyes underscored by dark circles.
"Simple," he said, sitting across from her and watching her sympathetically. "You're a masochist."
She exhaled, regarding him across the table. "Right. Thank you," she said coolly, working hard to keep from smiling.
He laughed gently. "You're going to be exhausted. Can't you call in sick?"
She sighed. "No, Robert would probably come hunt me down at the house."
"Oh, we don't want that. You'd better go in."
She laughed back at him "It won't be so bad. I really am looking forward to getting back to work. I just wish I wasn't going to be so tired tomorrow."
"Insomnia?"
"Nothing serious. My clock's just off."
"Anything I can do?"
She looked up. "Well, there's not much else I can do here . . . will you come to bed? Maybe I'll be able to sleep." She put the papers away and they ascended the stairs. At Ella's door - open to show off the cleanliness of the room - Elizabeth stopped.
Ella slept hard, fingertips and eyelids flickering and the bedclothes in a mess. Her mother watched as she turned slightly and mumbled some unintelligible dreamspeech.
Elizabeth leaned back against Mark's chest and he clasped her around the waist. "I missed her in England . . .she's changing so quickly these days."
He smiled in agreement, and she arched her spine in pleasure as he rubbed her neck and shoulders. "Maybe we should take her to England again sometime. I'm sure your parents would love to see her."
She paused. "Actually, I've been meaning to talk to you about that."
"About what?"
She turned to face him, then pulled him gently, by the arm, down the hall into their bedroom. "Daddy and I were talking about him coming to visit for awhile sometime soon."
"Oh?"
"Now that he's retired, he'd really like to see more of Ella."
"And of you, too, I'm sure."
She smiled. "Not to mention the fact that he's probably going to find retirement unbearably dull if he's got nothing to occupy his time."
Some of the grayness of the early morning was beginning to fade as Mark stretched out his hamstrings after his run, leaning against the big tree in front of the house. He went in the front door just as Elizabeth came down the stairs, dressed in a long dark skirt and a silky lavender jacket.
"Morning," she said, leaning in for a quick kiss as she twisted her hair into a knot, then grabbed her bag.
"Morning," he replied. "You look better - sleep well?"
"Yes, thank you. I'm off tomorrow, thank God. Guess I'll have to catch up then."
"Breakfast?"
"No, I'm late already. See you later!"
Mark went to the kitchen to eat breakfast before he showered. He had just slathered a perfectly toasted bagel with cream cheese and raspberry jam when Ella raced down the stairs, hair flying, landing on the hardwood at the bottom with a thunk that made Mark wince. "Dad! You have to take me to school, now!"
Startled, Mark looked at her over his bagel. "Now? We've got half an hour."
"No, no! I'm doing a presentation with Sasha in first period and I promised her I'd be there early to set up. Can we please go?"
Mark rolled his eyes. "Maybe you could have mentioned this earlier?"
Ella all but stamped her foot in frustration. "Dad, please! I am so late!"
Heaving a sigh, he resigned himself to juggling the bagel over the steering wheel of the Acura. Tense and poised for flight in the passenger's seat next to him, Ella looked over. "Dad, what are you wearing?"
Mark looked down at his running clothes. True, his sweats were spattered with mud and probably worse from the knees down, and his T-shirt was from a 5K he'd run at least seven or eight years ago. But he didn't think he needed fashion tips just now from the kid who had just rushed him out of the house without even a shower. He returned her look, his eyebrows raised.
"Never mind. Sorry."
Elizabeth had just barely slipped into the elevator on her way down from the garage, and was breathing a sigh of relief that she wouldn't be any later than she already was, when she looked up and realized she was sharing the car with the very man she'd been hoping to avoid for at least a few more hours. So close, she thought to herself.
"Lizzie!" exclaimed Robert. "Wonderful to see you. How was - London, right? They finally took the old scalpel away from your dad?"
She was working hard to keep the sour taste in her mouth from affecting the cast of her features. "My father retired, yes."
The elevator opened onto the surgical floor and they stepped out. "Well, I trust you're not too out of practice!" he returned, apparently as a sort of greeting, and departed for his office.
Trying to breathe slowly and regularly through her nose, Elizabeth headed for the desk, where she ran into Shirley. "Dr. Corday, welcome back. How was your trip?"
"It went very well, thank you, Shirley. It's good to be home, though. How is everything here?"
"Same old, same old. You're scheduled for a small bowel resection later this morning."
"Great. Thank you," she said, and went to her office.
On her desk sat a lovely flower arrangement, the same one Mark had been sending for years. She'd once gone into the shop where it came from to buy flowers to put on the grave of a friend, and the Vietnamese couple who owned it had recognized her by name.
She put the flowers on the corner of her desk closest to the window and sat down. She was only fifteen minutes into the stack of charts that awaited her when one of the OR desk clerks knocked on the door. "Come in."
"Hi, Dr. Corday. Dr. Romano says to tell you that Dr. Edson's called in sick."
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows and waited. "And?"
"And he's supposed to be covering the ER today. Dr. Romano says that since he's not here, you're it." She shut the door with a bang.
Mark's shift that evening ran until midnight, so Elizabeth planned a quiet dinner with Ella as soon as they got home.
"How was practice?" Elizabeth asked as she ladled bean soup into two bowls.
"Today's Wednesday. No practice today." Ella took salad dressing out of the refrigerator and shook it up.
"Oh." Her mother frowned. "What did you do after school, then?"
"Went to Sasha's."
"Oh. What did you two do?"
"Nothing, really."
Elizabeth poured water from the Brita for herself and milk for Ella. "Yuck, Mom. I hate milk."
"Since when? You've always liked milk."
"No way. The whole animal mucous thing turns me off." Ella held her nose and mooed, which was so funny that Elizabeth nearly dropped the soup she was ferrying to the table.
Ella was dancing to some unheard rhythm in her head as she doused the salad at the island. "Mom, can I be a vegetarian?"
Elizabeth plucked the dressing bottle from her hands and returned it to the refrigerator just before the salad became soup as well. "A vegetarian? Why would you want to do that?"
"Rachel's a vegetarian."
"That's true. Rachel also has a ring in her nose. Do you want to do that, too?" She held up her hand. "Don't answer that."
"Mom! Gross. I just don't like meat."
"You liked meat two weeks ago."
"So?"
"Ella, if you really want to be a vegetarian, that's fine. But you ought to have a real reason for doing it, is what I'm saying."
Ella dug into her soup with gusto. "Okay. Can we get a dog?"
"What? We don't have time for a dog."
"Sure we do. It's almost summer."
"You'll have practice and camp and things. And a dog lasts longer than a summer, you know."
"I know." They ate quietly for a few moments, Ella methodically picking out the red beans and lining them up next to her lettuce.
"Ella, how would you feel about Grandpa coming to visit?"
She looked up. "From England? Really?"
"Yeah. Dad and I talked about it and today I spoke to Grandpa. Now that he's not working -"
Ella rocketed from her chair and danced around the kitchen, emitting high- pitched sounds of glee.
"Hey, hey! Will you sit?" Elizabeth pointed at the chair and the soup that Ella had very nearly upset, laughing ruefully. "You really ought to have practice every day."
The following Saturday afternoon Mark drove Ella and Sasha, who had spent the night, to their soccer game. Sasha had been one of Ella's best friends for years; much daughter-exchanging happened between Mark and Elizabeth and her parents and she was a pleasure to have around.
Mark looked over as Ella yawned in the passenger's seat next to him. "See, I told you staying up so late would make you tired for the game."
Ella wasn't worried. "It's okay. We've beaten this team twice already, easy."
His daughter was the indisputable star and spirit of her beloved team and Mark had learned long ago to take her word in nearly all soccer-related matters. "What were you two doing last night, anyway? I didn't hear the TV."
"Me and Sasha are writing a play."
"Really?" This was a new one - Ella had exhibited a brief interest in the stage around the time Rachel had gotten her B.A. in theater and headed for New York, but at the time it had seemed short-lived. "What's it about?" He pulled into the parking lot of the soccer field.
Sasha piped up from the backseat. "We don't know yet."
Ella grabbed her water bottle and girls jumped out. "Yeah, we won't know what it's about 'till we're finished."
Ella had been right. Her team easily crushed their opponents. Mark, on the sidelines, watched with pride and a touch of wonder as his daughter darted almost effortlessly around the field, turning up in all the right places with the ball. He'd been to dozens of her games, but her excitement and focus at each one was contagious. She loved to play, and it showed. This passion, coupled with the undeniable raw talent that was becoming more and more apparent with each new season, was already earning her some extra attention. She'd be twelve later this spring, and she still had two more years of middle school, but some of the coaches at the high school level were beginning to take notice.
This game was a particularly brilliant effort by her team. Nearly every goal was smoothly strategized and neatly executed, and as the team reassembled afterwards Ella trotted confidently back to position, her face clear and determined. She was small, but very well put-together, certainly well-equipped for fancy dribbling, powerful passes and quick bursts of speed.
After it was over and the girls had shaken hands with the other team, Ella drank long and deep from her water bottle. Mark had a towel ready for her. "Thanks, Dad," she said, mopping her face and neck.
"You're welcome. You looked great out there - I almost felt sorry for the other team!"
She laughed, but quickly, not overly concerned. "They've got some good defense, but their forwards aren't aggressive enough. They were a lot better than last time, though - by the end of the season they'll probably be pretty good." She had taken off her cleats, their bottoms clotted with wet grass, and was peeling off her socks and shin-guards. Slipping into flip-flops, she looked up at Mark. "Hey, can I spend the night at Sasha's?"
He laughed. "Payback time, huh? Sure, if it's okay with her parents."
"Thanks. So I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Sure, just call, one of us should be home. Hey, don't stay up too late, okay?"
She grinned, but with a definite gleam in her eye, Mark thought. "Sure, Dad."
By the time Elizabeth got home from her shift that evening, Mark was just taking two steaks off the grill and covering them with mushrooms.
"Oh, Mark, that smells amazing," she said, setting down her things and looking for something to do.
"No, no, don't do anything, just sit down," he admonished her. "It's almost ready."
She obeyed, sinking into her chair and eyeing the food he set before her. "This is a treat," she observed. "Have you heard Ella's latest?"
"What? Oh, the vegetarian thing?" he laughed, spearing a perfectly cooked morsel of beef.
"Yes. She'd be missing out tonight. . . where is she, anyway?"
"Sasha's."
She laughed. "Two nights in a row? Did you ask about homework?"
Guiltily, he shook his head and took more asparagus.
Exasperated, she chided him. "Mark, you've got to remember about these things."
"Oh, come on. She always gets her homework done. We've got nothing to worry about."
She tried not to smile. "You're right, that's true."
They ate without speaking until Mark asked how her shift had been. "It was fine. I haven't worked weekends in so long, though."
"Ah, the joys of self-scheduling in the life of the Associate Chief. . .!"
She laughed again. "Yes, well, I'm paying for it now!" She topped off each of their wine glasses. "Oh, I spoke to my dad today and he's all set to come next weekend."
"Oh, good."
"It's so strange to think of him not working. Surgery is such an important part of who he is - he's always been a surgeon for as long as I've known him."
Mark watched her. "That's the way it's been for Ella, too. You've always been a surgeon."
"Yes, but it's different for her, I think. I saw so little of him since I was away at school. . . I had to form my impressions of him based on so little information."
"What were your impressions of him when you were a kid?"
She thought for a moment. "Well, I knew that he loved me. But it really wasn't like he knew me all that well - I only saw him when I was on holiday and then I was usually on my best behavior."
Mark laughed; Elizabeth's boarding school exploits had been vividly described to him by a few of her childhood friends he'd met since their marriage.
She smiled, knowing exactly of what he was thinking. "He was thrilled that I went into science and medicine - he never said so but I think he was very relieved that I took after him in my academic interests. He never took my mother's work seriously." She paused. "I often wondered if he'd have felt differently if I'd had a brother."
Mark really couldn't say, of course; he didn't know Charles well enough to judge if this insecurity of Elizabeth's was reasonable.
She smiled again, easier this time. "We've really been much closer since I was an adult." She reached across the table to touch Mark's hand. "I'm just glad Ella is growing up here, with both of us."
Elizabeth had planned to pick her father up at the airport, but he insisted that he was just going to rent a car as soon as he got in. She argued, but half-heartedly; one stubborn streak could easily recognize another.
Instead she tried to engage her husband and daughter in cleaning the house in anticipation of Charles's arrival. Her efforts to mobilize the troops, though, were somewhat less than fruitful.
Mark was slumped at the kitchen table, bent over the Sunday paper and a massive cup of coffee, bleary-eyed from his late shift the night before.
Ella lounged spinelessly around the house, draping herself in various dramatic positions in the spirit of a southern belle being fanned with peacock feathers.
"Ella, is your room clean?" asked Elizabeth as she vacuumed around her in the living room.
"Uh huh."
Elizabeth peered into her face. "Is that what I'm going to see if I go upstairs and open the door?"
Ella avoided her eyes, heaving another theatrical sigh.
"Clean it." She disappeared into the bathroom with several bottles and rags. "I'm serious!" she called. "All I'm asking you to do is clean your room!" Sloshing sounds rang out. "Mark!"
Mark grunted, staring blankly at the sports page.
"Mark, it's one o'clock in the afternoon! He's supposed to be here soon!"
"Uh huh."
"You said you were going to clean the kitchen, remember?" She emerged from the bathroom.
He tried to look awake. "Yeah, yeah, I remember." Her hands on her hips, Elizabeth raised her eyebrows.
He jumped up. "Okay, okay, yeah, I'll do it." He carried his cup to the sink.
"Thank you." She turned back to her daughter. "Ella!"
Ella had migrated from the living room to the stairs. "Yeah, I'm going."
Her mother stood before her, taking in the contradiction to these promising words that was before her eyes. "Ella."
"What."
"If you don't get up off the stairs this minute and go clean your room, I'm going to throw everything that's on your floor right now into a big garbage bag and put it out on the curb to be incinerated."
Elizabeth looked around the table that night and thought to herself that the difficulty of getting the house ready had been worth it. Everything looked beautiful. Ella, her nesting instincts aroused by rearranging the junk on her bedroom floor, had volunteered to set the table, with silver candlesticks and prettily folded napkins. Mark had put together a wonderful dinner - she even spied Ella happily chowing down on the roasted chicken.
And there was her father, at the other end of the table. In England, his appearance had surprised her somewhat; she hadn't seen him for a few years and suddenly he seemed old. But here, away from the formal dinners and stilted conversations surrounding his retirement, she was reassured to see exactly the same man he'd always been.
Ella was deeply engaged in filling her grandfather in about her soccer team. Charles listened with obvious delight and amusement at her confident animation. He caught Elizabeth's gaze for a moment, and the pure warmth and pride in his eye paused her for a second. How well she recalled longing for moments like this with him, and the happy security each one afforded her.
Ella, she realized, could not see the value of such joy - she had been the object of such a gaze from her own father nearly every day of her life. It was with a touch of regret that Elizabeth smiled back at Charles.
Long after the food had disappeared, they lingered at the table. Charles was fairly familiar with what Elizabeth did at work every day, but he was eager to hear more about Mark, having been far removed from the casualty department for many years. And Ella had always been far more captivated by her father's tales of gunshot victims and drug overdoses than her mother's revisitings of appendectomies and laparotomies - tonight she leaned in, hoping for gory details.
Finally, Elizabeth noticed the drooping eyelids of both her father and her daughter. "Dad, your flights must have been tiring."
He looked up in agreement. "Ghastly, they were."
Ella jumped up. "Grandpa, I'll take you to the guest room. It used to be Rachel's room . . ." The two moved down the hall, Charles thanking Mark for the excellent meal.
Mark stood and began to clear the table. "Remember when she used to be shy?"
Elizabeth laughed, following him with more dishes. "She was never shy - just waiting until she had something to say."
The next morning, Elizabeth had already taken off for work in the Mustang when Mark, hurriedly getting papers together that he needed to present to Kerry, looked at the clock above the oven. He started to bellow for Ella, but at the last second remembered that Charles was likely still asleep. Instead, he charged up the stairs and into her room. Finding her still buried beneath her pillows and stuffed animals, he shook her awake. "Ella, what are you still doing in bed? We're late, you've only got ten minutes!"
"Whaa -?" she moaned. "Dad, no school."
"What do you mean, no school?"
She regarded him blearily, her hair tangled across her cheeks. She was making a valiant effort to cross the bridge to consciousness, but the words weren't coming easily. "It's, uh, teacher. . . teacher. . ."
"Teacher conferences?"
She nodded gratefully and burrowed deeper into the bedding.
Mark was exasperated, though. "Could you possibly tell me about these things any later?"
Ella's voice was muffled. "Whaddya mean?"
"I've got a shift today! What am I going to do with you? Why didn't you tell me about this?"
"Well. . .I told Mom." She rolled over and peered up at him through her lashes. "And anyway, I was gonna do stuff with Grandpa."
Mark was getting more and more agitated as the minutes ticked by. "But he doesn't know either! And he's probably got things planned -"
"Nothing that can't wait," interrupted Charles, who was already dressed and dapper, from the doorway. Ella smiled blissfully and promptly fell back asleep.
Mark turned, flooded with gratitude. "Are you sure? We could call one of her friends -"
"No, no. A whole day with my granddaughter? That's why I came, Mark!" He stepped aside. "Go to work. We'll see you tonight."
Late that morning, Elizabeth pushed heavily through the doors of Trauma One, stripping off her gloves and disposable gown. The young man had been a mess; several gunshot wounds from a street encounter with the police had made his chances so remote that she'd known it was hopeless five minutes after they'd begun. What was more disturbing was the reaction of Dr. Kovac; once Pickman had reported that this was a convicted rapist who had violated parole, he'd seemed to give up entirely. Elizabeth didn't like having the feeling that she needed to convince another doctor to do his best for a patient, and it seemed to be happening more and more lately with Dr. Kovac.
Susan breezed by toward the admit desk. "Oh, Elizabeth," she said. "Mark's looking for you."
"Thanks," she said, falling in behind her. Mark wasn't anywhere to be seen, though. Susan and Elizabeth both stopped short at the sight of Randi, who was poured into a black leather spaghetti-strapped vest with silver studs.
"Uh, Randi," began Susan, bravely. "Have you seen Mark?" Randi vaguely nodded in the negative. Susan blurted, "Aren't you cold in that?"
Randi looked up from her catalogue, genuinely puzzled. "In what?"
The two doctors regarded her for a second, then turned down the hall. "I guess that means it's springtime now," remarked Elizabeth.
Susan laughed. "Some groundhog. Hey, if you see Mark, tell him I need him to look at a chest film in two."
Elizabeth nodded and went to see if Mark was in the lounge.
"Hey," he said, pouring coffee.
"Hi. You were looking for me?"
"Oh, yeah. Did Ella tell you today was teacher conference day?"
Elizabeth clapped her hand over her mouth. "Mark, I completely forgot. I'm so sorry. What -"
"Not to worry, your dad saved our hides."
She sighed. "Thank goodness."
"Do we, uh, actually have a conference with her teacher or anything?"
"No, she said we would have gotten a notice if we did." She turned to go. "Hey, lunch later?"
He grimaced. "Meeting with Kerry, sorry."
"That's all right. I'll see you tonight. Oh, Susan needs a consult in two."
He raised his cup in a salute, then followed her out the door.
Elizabeth was just getting off the phone with a Dr. Katz at Rush who was trying to arrange privileges at County when she heard an unmistakable voice chattering down the hall. ". . .and then, at the science fair, my plants won a prize! It was fun, but. . ." and Ella and Charles burst into her office.
"Daddy!" she exclaimed, getting up. "It's a surprise to see the two of you here."
"Well, darling, we thought we'd get lunch. And then we thought you might like to go along. If you have time, that is."
"Oh! Well, yes, I have time for something quick. Let me just check in at the desk and make sure nothing's come up."
On their way down the hall, the threesome ran into Dr. Romano. "Well, isn't this the family picture!" he said. "Good to see you again, Charles."
"Robert," Charles replied, nodding. Elizabeth took a shot at steering them toward the elevator, but was too late.
"And Ella! We don't see you up here too often. Keeping busy, I'll bet. What is it that you play?"
"Soccer," Ella replied, looking him straight in the eye.
"Soccer! Wonderful, wonderful. Yeah, I've heard those girls' teams can be pretty tough."
"Actually," said Ella, completely unfazed. "We've beaten every boys' team in our division."
Ella begged to go to her favorite Italian dive downtown, so it was over pasta and garlic bread that they sat down to eat.
Midway through her fettucine, Ella sat back and sighed with contentment.
"What?" asked her mother, smiling indulgently.
"I love fettucine. And I love days off from school even more."
Both Elizabeth and Charles laughed at this. "Don't you like school?" asked her grandfather.
"Oh, sure. Yeah, I like school."
He wound spaghetti around his fork. "What's your favorite subject?"
She thought, a piece of bread frozen in her hand halfway between the plate and her mouth. "Ummm, English. No, science. No, history. I don't know. . .I like Spanish, too."
"Spanish? You're taking Spanish?"
Ella nodded.
"Your mother took French, you know."
Elizabeth laughed. "Not very successfully, I'm afraid."
"That isn't true. You did perfectly well in French."
"My grades were fine, you're right."
"Then what - oh, I know what you're thinking! It was a French teacher, wasn't it?"
She shook her head. "I can't recall."
"Oh, but you can! Don't tell me Ella hasn't heard this story!"
"Don't tell her. You'll just give her naughty ideas."
Ella, though, was of course twitching with intrigue by this point. "Tell me!"
"Well," began her grandfather, pointedly ignoring Elizabeth's look of steel. "You have to understand that your mother and her boarding school chums were perfectly horrible little terrors - a headmaster's nightmare."
"A nightmare?" Elizabeth was indignant.
"A nightmare. Anyway, one night all of them were outside long past their bedtime."
"Long past," agreed Elizabeth.
"And, I believe, one of them had received a bad mark from this particular French teacher." Ella's eyes were getting wider and wider. "So they armed themselves with toilet paper and eggs and such, and went at it. Oh, yes, and what did you do to that poor woman's car?"
Elizabeth had hidden her face in her hands, so her voice was muffled. "We stuck a banana in her tailpipe."
Ella stared at her for a moment in silence, then squealed, "A banana?"
Miserably, Elizabeth nodded, but Ella could definitely see the smile of unmistakable pride she was trying to hide. "What happened?"
"Naturally, she knew who had done it," Charles continued.
"How?"
"It was fairly obvious," Elizabeth replied dryly.
"So, after that, French was never her favorite subject."
On Thursday night, Mark had an evening shift and Ella was at Sasha's until nine, doing a science project, so Elizabeth had her father to herself. They had a quiet dinner with good red wine, which they continued to drink after they moved to the sofa in the living room.
"So, how do you like retirement so far?"
He chuckled. "I'm certainly enjoying this part of it." She smiled. "I'm afraid things back in England will be fairly dull, though."
She tucked one foot underneath herself, and sipped from her glass. "I'm sure you'll find something to do. You could never be idle. And don't forget, you're always welcome here."
He smiled back, looking for a moment at Elizabeth, lovely in her beautiful home. She certainly looked well, he thought, and settled. A few years ago he'd worried about her for awhile, when she and Mark had unsuccessfully tried for another baby. They'd never really talked about it, but she hadn't seemed to dwell on it, either.
"Ella's grown up so much since I saw her last," he commented, and was rewarded with the biggest smile yet from his daughter.
"I know. All of a sudden, she's interested in everything. And, really, you'll have to see her on the field while you're here, she's amazing."
He sat back. "I think she'll make a doctor, don't you?"
This gave her pause. "Daddy, I don't care if she becomes a doctor or not. It's far too early to say that."
He raised his eyebrows. "I could tell with you at that age."
"Could you?" What was this sudden hot wave of anger she felt coming over her? "How? You didn't even know me when I was eleven."
"Elizabeth, of course I knew you."
"No, you didn't. When I was Ella's age, I knew I would be a surgeon. But it didn't have anything to do with me. It was all about you."
He was completely taken aback. "Elizabeth -"
"It was so important to me to have something that we could share - I thought it was the key to your approval." She looked at him, hard. "And wasn't I right?"
His face registered disbelief. "Are you saying you regret going into medicine?"
She sighed. "No, of course not. By the time I was actually studying it, my adult good sense had begun to kick in. I loved it so much that I knew I could never do anything else." She looked sidelong at him. "Maybe that part is genetic, I don't know. And if it turns out to be in Ella's genes too, then so be it."
"Elizabeth, I didn't want to force you to do anything. Your mother was the one. . . she wanted to shape you into something else - something that would fit into a pretty, beribboned box."
"Fortunately, she got over it right about the time I was expelled from ballet," she returned dryly.
"For making one of the other girls cry," he chuckled.
She smiled too, but quickly grew serious again. "But, Daddy, don't you see? You wanted me to fit in a box, too, just a different kind." At his protest, she asked, "How would you have felt if I hadn't become a surgeon? If I had studied astronomy like Mother? Or if I was an artist or a musician or something?"
"But you're not. You are a surgeon."
She sighed a big sigh. "You're right. I am a surgeon. And if someday Ella finds as much happiness in surgery as I have, or in the ER like Mark, I'll be content. But what I'm saying is that I'll be just as content if she finds that happiness playing soccer, or writing stories, or something else she hasn't yet discovered. Right now, she's so undecided, and I'm glad of it. She doesn't need to fit into any box."
He was quiet, watching her rake a hand through those irrepressible curls. He smiled and sipped his wine, clearly considering what she had said, but she wasn't sure if he would ever really see.
That night, long after her daughter and her father had gone to bed, Elizabeth sat up in her study, unable to sleep and catching up on the last bits of paperwork that had been neglected during her trip to England.
She stopped at the sound of Mark's key turning quietly in the lock of the front door. He padded upstairs and poked his head in the door. "Hey."
"Hey."
She looked tired, he thought. Maybe more than tired. "What are you still doing awake?"
"Couldn't sleep. I'm not on until afternoon tomorrow, anyway."
He watched her for a moment, then held up one finger. "Don't move." He disappeared again.
He came back carrying two spoons and a pint of Ben & Jerry's Triple Caramel Chunk, and led her by the arm to the small sofa along the far wall.
She laughed. "Who knew Robert would start such a sinful tradition?"
He silenced her with a spoonful. "No discussion of nutritional content allowed."
She smiled, and looked into his eyes, and leaned over and kissed him for a long time, enjoying the sweet stickiness of both their lips from the ice cream. She settled comfortably into curve of his side so that her head fit perfectly into the groove above his collarbone. This, she realized, was why she was still awake.
On Saturday, Ella had a very important game, so all four of them piled in the Acura and went, picking up Sasha on the way.
Both girls were considerably more quiet than they usually were before a game, although Sasha, a long-time admirer of the British accent, was clearly enthralled with Charles's.
Mark wished them luck as they hopped out of the car and headed for the field to stretch and warm up. "Thanks," said Ella. "We'll need it."
"Wow," commented her mother after the girls were out of earshot. "This must be a big game; she's never nervous."
Charles had never seen Ella play before, and at first he was more than a bit taken aback by the almost vicious ferocity demonstrated by all the young players. Ella soon calmed down, though, and settled into her familiar and successful patterns of strategy.
Elizabeth was torn throughout the game between watching Ella and watching Charles watching Ella. He was soon very involved, cheering right along with Mark and joining in with the collective groans of the parents when the other team's goalie, a tall, talented girl, kept making incredible saves.
On the field, Ella never let her frustration get the better of her. She was much too focused for that, and usually too far ahead in the score. Today, though, Elizabeth could see a slight knitting of her brow, and there was something in her energy that seemed more like desperation than it ever had before. Mark and Elizabeth shared a look of raised eyebrows, concerned.
At half-time, though, she assumed her usual role of helping to pump up the team, slicking back the sweaty wisps that had escaped from her ponytail and tightening the laces on her cleats.
She returned to the field afterwards much more like her usual self. She flashed a big grin at her parents and grandfather, then got right down to business. Down at the defense line, she neatly intercepted a pass and was halfway down the field before anyone else reacted.
A long, wiry halfback nearly stole her ball, but she faked left and drove hard, springing off the energy in her knees. Finally, as the defense closed in, she took a big risk, aiming long at the upper left corner of the goal.
And scored. All the focused tension in her body disappeared completely for an instant. The crowd roared and Mark gave her a big thumbs-up. The pure joy on Ella's face as she recovered and headed back to position was so brilliant that as Elizabeth looked over at her father, she thought maybe now he did see after all.
THE END