The Answer to Our Lives
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of ER. They belong to Warner Brothers, NBC and some other talented people. I am just borrowing them for a creative outlet, which is profitless.
Carter stood on the roof of the hospital. Looking up at the stars that were shinning down on Chicago. The roof was a place to escape the hectic life of the ER. He had spent many hours up here during his time at County. The solitude of the roof was a welcome relief after being so busy downstairs.
They had been swamped with patients all day and he was pulling a 36-hour shift. He was missing Abby. Being close to her, spending time with her and most of all lying next to her watching her while she slept. After all this time, he still couldn't believe that they were together. What a road they had traveled. From her being with Luka and being his sponsor to them being a couple. Oh how he loved her and it felt so good to be able to openly love her. Not being afraid of pressuring her when she was with someone else.
Yet there relationship had been anything but smooth. It was filled with bumpy spots, yet she was always able to put a smile on his face when he needed one. And he had turned out to be the rock in her life now. He had no intention of leaving her out in the cold to deal with Eric and Maggie.
Her brother had recently been diagnosed as bi-polar and Abby was having a hard time dealing with it. Maggie had insisted that she was able to care for him better than she ever could. They had some bond now that they were both bi-polar. When they went back to Michigan Abby told them not to bother calling her cause she was done with them. She wasn't going to get hurt by her family anymore.
Carter had meant what he said when he told her that he would always be there for her, but Abby didn't want to seem to let him in any closer than what he was now. She seemed to be holding something back from him. He wanted her to know that she could trust him. He wanted to be more than just her lover; he wanted to be her friend and confidant. To be the one that she could tell anything to with out fear, no matter what it was. But how could he get her to see this. That he wanted more from her than just company and sex.
John was lost in thought and didn't hear her come out onto the roof. Elizabeth liked the solitude that the roof gave her. She came up here when she missed Mark the most. If she needed to shed a tear or two up here no one would notice and most of all no one would ask any questions. She was surprised to see Carter standing there. She could tell that he was either lost in though or on another planet. It had been a busy day in the ER. She had been paged down there several times already for surgical consults and had ended up sending four patients up to the OR.
"Carter, you okay?" She asked him.
"Oh yeah Dr. Corday." He said, hearing her voice snapped him back into reality. Not that he wanted to be there. "I was just thinking."
"Around here this seems to be the best place to do that. I come up here a lot now." She said looking down at the ground. She hadn't expected anyone to be here.
"I used to come up here a lot. I had several talks with Lucy up here when she was my med student."
"Oh I see." That was all that Elizabeth could muster to say. She knew that Lucy's death had been very hard on Carter.
"It's okay. Are you okay? I thought that you'd be in surgery with everyone that we had to send up there today." He said to her.
"Nope, that's one of the perks of the job that Romano gave to me. I can either do all I want or pass it off to others. Right now, with all your surgery consults going upstairs, it is one of those passing off periods. Besides I am almost off anyway. I don't want to be late getting home to Ella." She explained to him.
Carter looked at her. "Did you want to be alone? I can go back down to the grind."
"It's okay Carter. It's just that I come up here for a breath of air when things get to overwhelming for me." She said.
"I can understand that. I know that it must be hard going down to the ER with Mark gone."
Elizabeth nodded her head as a tear started to fall. She wasn't going to lie to Carter. But still she hated for him or anyone to see her cry now. After all it had been over 6 months now. She shouldn't be crying on the job.
Carter put his arms around her and gave her a hug. "We all miss him. It's okay to cry still. After super surgeon mom, you're only human."
"Yeah I guess that I am." She said wiping the tears from her eyes.
"I'd better get back down their before Weaver comes looking for me." He said.
"That might not be a bad idea." Elizabeth said laughing. She knew that for Carter, Weaver was almost as bad as working with Romano.
She watched as he headed off back down off the roof toward the ER.
Carter headed back down to the ER. He was half way thru his shift. The days were getting harder to handle. And he didn't know where things were going with Abby. Some day's things between them were really good and other days; he just didn't know where he stood with her. He knew that he loved her, but it was almost as if she didn't want him to love her. She didn't want to let him get close to her. It was almost as if she didn't want to let herself become totally open with him. He couldn't fully understand why either. He wasn't sure if it was because of what had happened with Richard, with Luca or if it was just she.
For all he knew it was because she was drinking again. He knew that she had started several months ago. That she was drinking the night that Brian had assaulted her. He told her where he stood with the drinking. He didn't want to be an enabler. He didn't need to be around it either. He didn't want to be selfish, but he was still a recovering addict and he didn't want to be sucked back into that world ever again. Getting clean was the best thing that he ever did. The stabbing was the start of his downward spiral that he had worked so hard to overcome. He didn't know where this was going. He knew what he wanted, but he didn't know if she wanted it, that was the bigger question.
Carter knew that he needed to confront Abby on this and see what she really wanted. He didn't know how to get them on the same page. He didn't know if it was even possible for them to be on the same page anymore. He wanted a family; she didn't want to have kids. She was afraid that she would pass the bi-polar on to them. He had dreams of the typical American home. White picket fence, kids in the back yard, and a dog.
Could they be happy together? He hoped so. They had been together for almost three months now, ever since the Small Pox scare. He had loved her for a long time though, but the opportunity for them to be together before now just never seemed to materialize. There was always something there to keep them apart. If it wasn't one thing it was another. He pushed his way into the ER. Patients were starting to stack up and he could see Weaver was on the warpath.
He hated to work with her when she was this way, but then for the most part when it came to the ER that was the way that she always was. He glanced down the hallway and saw her. There Abby was talking with a young patient trying to calm them down. She smiled at him when their eyes met. He needed a reason, some sort of a sign that this was going to work. He needed her to tell him what she wanted. What he needed to do to make her happy.
"Carter!" Weaver bellowed at him.
"What Kerry?" He barked back at her.
"If you're not seeing a patient in less than 5 minutes, I am going to have you doing nothing but impactions for a week." She barked.
Good ole Kerry nothing like scaring your colleagues into working. The last thing that Carter wanted was to be stuck doing that for a week. He'd rather have his teeth pulled. He took the first chart that was on the rack and headed down the hall. He stopped next to Abby to talk with her for just a second.
"Do you have a minute?" He said looking at her.
"I'll be right back Jeremy." She said to the young man sitting on the gurney. "Yeah. I do what is it?"
"What time are you off?" He asked.
"In an hour." She said.
"I'm off at seven. Do you mind if I stop by?"
"No that's fine." She said, "But I really need to get back to my patient if you don't mind."
"I'll talk to you later." He said walking off. He didn't know what to make of what she had just said to him. She was distant, but he had also pulled her away from a patient. She was so hard to read at times, so different from him. Carter was an open book. He had always worn his emotions on his sleeve and wasn't afraid to show them at anytime. She seemed to keep everything bottled up inside of her. He thought that she might be a time bomb waiting to go off. She was his tornado in the Chaos theory. There was no denying that. She always had been. It was almost as if Murphy himself was plotting against them. Oh well off to busy himself with the endless stream of patients that was life at county.