The Only Thing Certain

Disclaimer: Don't own them don't claim to own them, this story is purely for entertainment purposes and no money will ever be made off my writing sadly.

Chapter One: Dare to Dream

When we dare to dream, is when we realize what we can fully accomplish with our lives, for a person who never dares to dream, will seldom act. I dared to dream, and it was where that dream took me, that changed my life forever. I found out that life is only what we make of it, we are given one short shot here and we must make what we can from it. Destiny, fate, chance, luck, they are all intertwined, one affecting the other leading us blindly along some previously predetermined path. There are however two things that we can be certain of, one is that will we live and the second is that we will all in due time die. It is this death that we can most always be certain of.

After the diagnosis I found myself spending as much time as I could with my family. It at the time just seemed like the right thing to do, but as time passed I realized that there was still more that I needed to do. It almost felt as if I was forgetting to do something that was important to me as a person, and while my family was the most important thing to me, this was pulling at me to do too.

It was that diagnosis in the spring of 2002 that sent my world reeling. I never thought that it would happen to me. This was something that happened to other people but not to me. I thought that the low back ache was from the long hours of working and constantly picking up children that the stomach pain was from the way that I had been eating. Being a physician I didn't always have the best of eating habits. I thought that I was just feeling the effects of getting older, I was no longer a spring chicken and that my activities had started to catch up with me. I finally broke down and went into the doctor and when I told him everything that had been going on found myself having to see my gynecologist, who told me the grin news. There was no family history that I knew of, of anyone having this, and it blew me away. I should have recognized the signs or at least realized sooner that something was horribly wrong, but yet I had turned a blind eye to everything accounting it to something else.

I had left Chicago in 1998, feeling the pull of being homesick, I returned to Philadelphia to finish my residency. I felt more at home there than I did any place else at the time. Yet somehow I had always regretted the way in which I had left, and the friends that I had left behind. That was a little over six, well no probably close to seven years ago. I highly doubted that the people I had worked with were still there but I needed to go and find out for myself. But I think the thing that was driving me to go, was that there was a friend there that I needed to be able to say goodbye to. While we parted friends, kept in touch with sporadic letters, I just didn't think that this was something that I should tell him over the phone or in that rare occasion that a letter was sent.

I knew he was still in Chicago and had a brief knowledge of what had been going on since I had left. That much we had managed to constantly tell each other. While it seemed as if he was never going to find that right woman and settle down no matter how close he came. It was his life that I knew the most about. But I hadn't heard from him in almost a year and I had to wonder if something hadn't happened and he was no longer in Chicago. I was about to find out because I didn't have much time left.

I pulled the rental car into the parking lot for Country General. The building had changed a lot since I had last been there. The diner across the street where we had spent several hours after shifts, before shifts, during shifts at no longer there. It almost seemed as if I was the one that was out of place here now. Slowly I managed to make my feet move and carry me towards those double sliding doors that marked the entrance to the hospital's ER.

Walking inside, I was amazed at how things had changed, not shocked to see the waiting area full of people. More that they had really updated the security system, getting that badge probably would have been a lot worse than when I had first gotten mine that fateful day after Mark's attack. What a way to start a residency, which was probably one of the few things that I would never forget. I walked up to what I assumed was the triage nurse.

"Excuse me," I said in my nicest and most pleasant tone. Not wanting to bother them, because I could see that they were clearly busy, but there was no other way that I was getting in there unless I got buzzed back.

"Take a seat and I will be with you as soon as I can." Was the response that I was given.

"I'm here to see Dr. Carter." I said trying not to be a pain in the ass.

"Take a seat and he'll get to you in time." The voice repeated getting shorter in tone with me.

I was not getting any where with this approach time and it became apparent that it was to change tactics. "I'm not a patient." I say now with a different tone in my voice, "I'm a doctor."

"He's with a patient right now." I am told, as the voice continued on, "he will be with you as soon as he can."

"Could you please tell him that Anna Del Amico is here from Philadelphia and is waiting for him?" I say back to her, "really please this is rather important." I added that to make myself feel better.

"Yeah," she looks at me as if I am insane.

My eyes dart around the room a few times looking for someone, anyone who might even be a tiny bit familiar. There had to be someone left around here other than Carter that I would recognize and who might just recognize me. "Jerry." I call out as I see the old familiar desk clerk back there. Never hurts to go around a triage nurse when you can, they tend to be rather grouchy being stuck working triage the one place that no one wants to work, nothing could be worse than triage.

"Dr. D!" I hear the big loud voice calling back, "is that really you?"

"Ha yeah, the one and only," I reply back to him with a soft laugh, "Dr. Carter working?"

"Yeah he is." I watch as he moves over to the door to let me back much to the triage nurse's dismay. But it's not like I am some psycho hell bent on getting revenge upon the staff here. All I want to do is visit a few old friends before the end is near.