So after last Saturday's episode, I obviously couldn't leave it alone. Slightly disappointed with the lact of Cal and Ethan together, but I did enjoy hearing Cal talking about his brother, and being relieved that Ethan is his brother by blood.
I'm going to mix up a few things in this story. There are going to be a few spoilery bits from the winter trailer and I am possibly changing the timeline a bit for my own purposes.
As usual I own no-one that you recognise. Hope you enjoy.
There's Nothing To Forgive
"He can't find out like this Charlie, he just can't!" Dr Caleb Knight pleaded with the senior nurse.
"Then you should have told him sooner Cal - I did keep telling you..." the older man sighed.
Cal rubbed a hand through his hair, "I know I should have but...the time was never right."
"And it is now?" Charlie took hold of the young doctor's elbow and led him away from the cubicle that they had just been working in, "Need I remind you Cal, that that's your birth mother in there in distress with possibly not very long left..."
"Why did she have to come to this hospital though? It's a fair distance from her home," Cal responded.
"You heard what she said, she wanted to see Ethan and I think she needs to see him so she can find some closure."
Cal nodded his understanding, but it didn't make telling his brother any easier, "Look, Cal, go and get a break and have a think about what you're going to say to Ethan and take it from there," Charlie suggested.
Cal glanced at the curtain to the cubicle that contained his dying mother, his eyes filling slightly, then patted Charlie's arm and made his way to the staff room.
Twenty minutes later, Cal swept open the curtain to his mother's cubicle - his heart stopping for a fraction of a second when he saw the picture in front of him.
His mother was propped up in the bed, her eyes closed, already looking like she had breathed her last. Charlie was on her left hand side checking the monitors and adjusting the oxygen, while on her right hand side stood Ethan, writing something in her notes, "What the hell?" was out of his mouth before he could stop it.
"Ah, Caleb, I believe this is your patient..." Ethan started, stopping when he noticed the unspoken conversation between his brother and Charlie, "Alright, would someone please tell me what's going on? You have been having these silent conversations for a couple of weeks now, why? Are you keeping something from me Cal?"
He would have laughed at his brother's mouth opening and closing almost like a fish, but he was far to irritated to find it funny, "He needs to know Cal," Charlie prompted.
Ethan watched as his brother almost deflated in front of him, "Not here," was all he said as he turned on his heel and scurried off. Shocked, Ethan looked towards the older man, "Go with him - she's stable enough at the moment."
Ethan found his brother pacing nervously in the staff room, "Cal what's going on?"
His brother stopped pacing and just stared at the younger man, fear radiating off him, "Cal, you need to tell me, you're scaring me now..."
"We're adopted!" he blurted out without thinking.
Ethan began to chuckle, "That's a good one Caleb...even for you..." he noticed that his older brother was not laughing, if anything, it looked like he might cry.
"What do you mean, we're adopted?"
"I mean, that I found out that our mum wasn't our real mum..."
"How? Why? I don't understand?"
"When I had the paternity test done, I noticed that my blood group was O and I remembered that mum's was AB, and as we know if a parent is AB their children will not be O, so I looked into it a little further and I found out that I was adopted..." he stared hard at his little brother as he tried to digest what Cal was saying.
"O...k...but that doesn't explain your "we're adopted" speech."
"I found my birth mother..."
"What?" Ethan looked shocked.
"Well actually, Charlie found her..."
"You told Charlie but not me? Not your brother!"
"I was going to tell you Ethan, really I was, but I wanted to find out more first. I knew you'd have questions and I wanted to be able to answer them," Cal told him honestly.
"So you found her...?"
"Yes - and in doing so I found out that you are my brother, my blood brother, and that we were both adopted by mum together..."
Suddenly Ethan gasped, "That woman...that woman that I was just treating...is our mother? That's why you were giving Charlie daggers when you saw me treating her - she's our mother."
Ethan speared Cal with his gaze as he waited for an answer. Cal swallowed hard as he nodded his head slowly.
"Whoah," Ethan breathed as he rubbed his hands over his face.
"Are you alright?" Cal asked, "This is not how I wanted to tell you..."
Ethan's eyes were bright, "She's dying Cal. She's got Huntingdons..."
"I know," the older man breathed.
"How long have you known?" Ethan could feel anger beginning to pulse through his veins.
"Only a couple of days, I swear. I went to her house with Charlie and that's when...well that's when I found out. First of all I was estactic to find out that you were my real brother as that had been my actual greatest fear in all of this, but then...mum..."
"And you didn't think to tell me all this as soon as you found out? I'm your brother for god's sake..."
"I wanted to tell you straight away honestly I did. It was tearing me apart keeping it all inside me, but I was trying to protect you..."
"You should have told me straight away Caleb, especially after you found out she was ill! I had a right to know!" Ethan's voice was rising now, but he didn't care. Cal had done it again! He had taken something so life changing to both of them and made it about him, how he couldn't bring himself to tell Ethan, what it had been doing to him!
"Everything is always about you..." Ethan sneered, causing Cal to stop in his tracks.
"That's not true - like I said I was trying to protect you!" he insisted as he took a step towards the increasingly irrate young man.
"You were trying to protect me? No! It's always about you...I'm sick of it..." then he launched himself at the shocked doctor, fists flying.
"Ethan, stop it, what's got into you?" Cal tried to defend himself, but found the air knocked out of him as Ethan landed a punch in stomach. He lashed out, catching Ethan on the cheek and sending the younger man stumbling into a stool, "Eth...stop..."
Ethan pulled himself up and made his way to the door, only stopping when Cal put his hands on his shoulders to keep him in place, "Let me go," he growled.
"No Ethan, we need to talk about this..."
"Let...me...GO!" he screamed as he landed a punch to his older brother's nose, causing the older man to let go.
"Dr Hardy! My office...NOW!" Connie Beauchamp's voice reverberated around the now quiet ED - all eyes were on the two brothers.
Ethan didn't look at Cal as he obeyed his boss.
Ethan stepped into Connie's office, closely followed by the lady herself, who closed the door quietly, then stepped round him to sit in her chair. She stared closely at the young doctor, noticing how he wouldn't look at her and how he wrung his hands as he waited, "Care to tell me what was going on just now?"
"Just brother stuff..." Ethan whispered, not wanting to elaborate.
Connie sighed. She knew the basics of what was going on as she had collared Charlie earlier after she had seen him talking to Cal.
"Ethan sit down, please," she asked kindly. She hated to see anyone this upset, especially the normally quiet, conscientious, hard working doctor that stood in front of her.
Ethan sat, still not looking at her, "Charlie has told me some of what's been going on..."
"You probably know more that me then," he spat, causing the clinical lead's eyes to open wide in surprise.
"I'm sure it was a big shock to you...but Cal..."
"But Cal spun it so that it was all about him, and how he had agonised over how he was going to tell me, yadda yadda..."
"That's not what I heard from Charlie. He told me that at first he was distraught by the fact that he didn't know if you were really his brother or not - that was the only thing that mattered to him. Then he found out that you were - but then the illness...you obviously know that it's hereditary, he was only worried about you getting it, not himself, but you. Apparently, he got angry with your mother for not telling your adoptive parents when you were younger, but only because he was scared for you. He's not the same man as he was two years ago Ethan, you know that better than most...give him some credit."
Ethan felt a tear track down his face, as the anger disappeared, so he roughly wiped it away as he lifted his head up to look at his boss, "I know," he whispered, "It's just...well he confided in Charlie and not me. Am I that hard to talk to? Then he knew about the illness and still didn't tell me...it's no wonder he's been so wound up these last couple of weeks...the idiot!"
Connie smiled sincerely at the young man, who had visibly calmed down and was now actually listening to what was being said.
Ethan stood up from the chair and stepped into the door way, "I'm very sorry for my conduct earlier, Mrs Beauchamp - you can rest assured that it won't happen again. It's been a bad day."
"We all have bad days, Ethan - but it's how we cope with them that counts," she smiled.
He smiled shyly at her and gently closed the door behind him.
As he made his way towards cubicles, his head spinning full of thoughts and emotions, a flustered Lofty walked into him, "Oh sorry. Oh Ethan, I'm glad it's you, Charlie asked me to find you...the patient in cubicle 4, she needs you," he told him as he spun off in the other direction.
Ethan felt his stomach turn to ice as he strode towards the curtain. He reached for the curtain with a quivering hand, pulling it slowly open. The first thing he noticed was Cal's pained expression and Charlie's concerned face. He glanced over to their patient, noticing her eyes were open, ever so slightly. He gasped a little as he saw his brother's eyes staring back at him. He reached over and put his hand on Cal's shoulder, "I'm sorry," he whispered, making the older man smile.
"Micheal..." she breathed.
"I told you mum, we're not Steven and Michael, we're Cal and Ethan," Cal gently explained, while Ethan swallowed away the emotion that he had felt when he had heard Cal call this woman 'mum'.
"Ethan," she tried again. Ethan suddenly felt at a loss. He didn't know this woman, not at all, yet she knew his name and it kind of felt right. He took a step forward taking her hand in his as she offered it, "You...are...so handsome...and a doctor too? My two boys, both doctors...so proud..." she kept breathing deeply as she was finding it harder and harder to catch her breath after speaking.
Ethan felt his eyes sting, he didn't know what to say, "I..."
He stopped when he felt her hand squeeze his once more, "I'm...so...happy...that I got...to meet...you both..." she let her head move to the other side in order to get a glimpse of Cal.
"I'm glad we got to meet you," Ethan told her, even though he wasn't that sure at that moment in time.
Her breathing became more laboured as she pulled him towards her a little, "I'm...sorry...for...everything...I wanted to tell you...but...I couldn't...I couldn't...please...forgive...me..."
Ethan swallowed hard, "You thought you were doing the right things for us so there's nothing to forgive mum...nothing..." he looked over at Cal who had tears cascading down his cheeks. He then turned his attention back to their mum, whom he had just met and was about to lose, "Just rest now..." he whispered as her eyes closed and she took her last breath.
Hearing the monitor, Charlie, who had left the brothers alone earlier, walked back in and switched it off. He laid a gentle hand on Cal's arm, who looked at him with teary gratitude. Ethan placed his mother's hand back on the bed, "I'll leave you to it," he told the two other men as he backed out of the cubicle, leaving his brother and the senior nurse staring at each other in shock.
A few minutes later, paperwork finished, the two men began to gently wash her face until suddenly the curtain was almost torn off the rail, "Charlie...we need you..." Lofty told him panting from his obvious dash through the department. Charlie looked confused to Cal, who shrugged his shoulders. They were surprised when Connie appeared behind the curly haired nurse, "Cal you're needed in Resus too...it's Ethan."
The older brother felt his stomach lurch, "What do you mean?"
The clinical lead took a few steps towards him, her face set, "We believe that he's having a major panic attack. We've had to put him on oxygen. I almost sedated him but we thought that he might settle with you," she told the shocked young man.
Cal was torn. He wanted to prepare his newly found mother for her last journey, yet his little brother needed him. Connie could see his turmoil, "I've got this Cal. He needs you now more than ever," was all she said.
Within seconds he was pushing the doors to Resus open, searching for his brother.
He found him with Robyn by his side, whispering to him, trying to calm his breathing. Cal could see the thin sheen of sweat on his forehead and the paleness in his face. He quickly strode over to him,"You trying to give me more grey hairs?" he joked, his forced smile sliding off his face at the look of sheer misery on his brother's face. Robyn chuckled as she patted Ethan's arm, "I'll leave you to it," she told them.
Cal's eyes never left his brother, who was now starting to breathe a little easier, some colouring returning to his face, "You ok?" he asked.
Ethan's eyes locked with his as he nodded. He pulled down the mask, "I'm sorry Cal, I just couldn't cope with it all," he gasped out. Cal took a step towards him and gently put the mask back in place.
"Shh, don't speak. This is down to me, as it always is. I shouldn't have waited this long to tell you..."
"I just can't believe it," Ethan told him, shaking his head, "Two mothers and we've lost them both!"
"Once again little brother, it's just the two of us," Cal smiled.
Ethan smiled through the mask, "What happens now?"
"Now, we pull together like we always do, and we get through it. It's all a bit raw at the moment but after the break, we will need to talk about what we do next...Oh God..." Cal started running his hand through his hair nervously once more, until he felt the gentle touch of his brother halting his movements, "It's going to be ok Cal," Ethan whispered from behind the mask as his eyes began to close, exhaustion creeping up on him.
"I just hope you can forgive me for making a massive mess yet again," Cal told him.
"Like I told mum, you thought you were doing the right thing...there's nothing to forgive."
Hope you enjoyed it. I wanted to get a reaction out of Ethan, but I also wanted the brothers together in the end. I wonder what the show will have in store for us?