Broken Dreams and Blue Skies by Rosa17

Rating: PG13

Authors Note: Thank you for all the reviews for Back Again, like Alone it was a stand alone. At the moment I have no plans to write a sequel to Alone, but it is still a possibility for the future. Also updates for this story will be at the most weekly, possibly less frequently.

Summary: Takes place post S11. Carby of course. Will Abby and Carter ever re-unite. Read to see if they do. Warning possibly one or two spoilers from S11

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters.

Chapter 1

The rain hit the windowpane loudly, fleetingly dragging Abby out of her daydream. The puddles on the ground outside were doubling by the minute a bit like her really, although not every minute, every week, maybe.

She pouted and shifted her gaze to the sky, which was a wintry grey. Typical for the time of year, dark, dreary late November. Dark, dank, like her life. No, that wasn't fair, she was doing well really, it was just that things never went according to the way she had planned. She didn't plan much though, that way she was not disappointed when things went wrong. She had to rely on herself. Abby owed it to herself, herself and her baby.

Abby began to bite her bottom lip as she thought back to the events leading up to this situation which she was now in. It was strange that it had begun with a simple coffee and pie 'on Carter' a mere six months earlier, one fine sunny May afternoon. He had had a surprise leaving party the previous day but Abby had been stuck in trauma and missed the entire thing. So much so that when she arrived there wasn't even so much as a sausage roll left, let alone Carter himself. So when he offered the coffee and pie she had readily agreed.

She felt a certain sadness, a finality that he was leaving for good. Things had never really been the same since he had come back and announced that he was in love with Kem and looking forward to becoming a father. Of course that had gone unexpectedly and horribly wrong and he was left alone.

After a shaky start, they chatted together like the old times until the café closed and Carter gave Abby a ride home. She supposed the mistake was inviting him in for a coffee, but she didn't want the evening to end and for him to leave, if she was honest with herself. Leave not only her apartment but also her life, forever. She had absolutely no doubt in her mind at that moment that he would never be returning to Chicago.

"I've missed this, us" he said to Abby as he threw himself down on the sofa and watched her as she busied herself making the drinks. She wasn't really sure what he meant. 'Them' as an 'us', for that had been so long ago now. So much had happened to both of them since they had been a couple.

Maybe if she had not chosen to sit next to him on the sofa things would have turned out differently, she mused. One last night of passion. Probably her last night for a very long time. She was hardly going to forge a new romantic relationship whilst trying to complete her residency and taking care of a young baby, plus with the added constant worry and burden of Maggie and Eric. Although they appeared to be doing okay at the moment she knew that you could never tell when all that would alter.

She sighed once more, remembering how he had trailed his finger down the side of her face before he moved into kiss her gently at first then becoming more urgent. It seemed that one moment there they were on the sofa kissing and the next were lying amid damp tangled sheets half covering their sweat ridden bodies.

She still couldn't believe that what seemed a lifetime ago was only actually a little over six months. During that time she had written to Carter, not once, or twice, but three times. But he hadn't replied by letter, phone or e-mail, nothing. She took the time to comfort herself with the knowledge that he hadn't contacted Susan or even Luka either. Abby knew that Carter had gone to start a new life, but she hadn't imagined that he would sever all his old relationships completely.

Then on the other hand something awful might have happened to him and nobody had yet discovered it. No, she stopped herself mid thought, that had not happened, would not happen, could not happen. He was alive and well and happy, many, many miles from here. Many miles from her and their unborn son.

She just wished Carter knew, of course if he had read the letters he would know. She had told him she was pregnant in the first, told him that she was keeping it in the second and in the third told him that it was a boy. Maybe, she decided it was too painful for him to imagine, to contemplate, another child, a son. Perhaps it was because she was going to be the child's mother and he didn't love her, not that she expected him to, love her that was. But one thing she didn't understand and that was why he, John Carter had not even acknowledged their unborn baby, she just didn't understand it at all. She had thought it possible that one of the letters had been lost in the mail, but not all three of them and she had checked the address every time. Plus she had sent a copy of the third letter addressed to Dr J Carter, care of Jack Carter in Boston. She supposed he might have moved on though.

"If you ever need me Abby" he had told her, the morning after the night before "anytime" and he had given her a scrap of paper with his new address on.

It was odd she could picture him exactly as he had been on that morning standing in her doorway, hear his voice as though he was in the room with her, here, now.

She didn't expect him to come running back to Chicago, but he had every right to be part of their child's life.

The wailing of an ambulance siren jolted her once more back to the present, which was the doctor's lounge at County.

"Hey! Abby!" called Frank popping his head round the door. "Multiple trauma, all hands on deck, including yours" he added.

"Be right there" she answered softly and he paused for a moment giving her a concerned look before heading back to the desk.

Abby grabbed her stethoscope and threw it around her neck before leaving the safe haven of the lounge to see what trauma room had in store for her that afternoon.