Author's Note: Out of the depths of the boredom that are Easter holidays from university, the joy of Channel 4 showing season 7 again, and our love for the dark angst of that series, Anna (aka Charlie) and I have decided to embark upon a very lengthy fic project.

We're going to try and post-ep most of season 7, through the eyes of Abby (me) and Carter (her). We're going to explore the development of the Carby relationship, and both characters' individual developments through this series, and maybe beyond. Some are focused solely on the characters, some on their other relationships, some on just the two of them, some are just plain bizarre.

'Homecoming' is the first episode we're working with, because, well, we felt like it, and also it's the first episode of that season, so it's logical. Really it is.

Though each post-ep is our own individual work, it'll help with your understanding of this post-ep series as a whole if you read ours in tandem – you'll get both points of view of events which come up and you might miss bits otherwise.

Write something to us, please, whether you love the idea but hate the fics, hate the idea, loved all of it, any comments or criticism or anything, we'd love to have it all.

E-mail: promisesanddisappointments@hotmail.com

Disclaimer: neither mine, nor Anna's, nor our joint possessions. Much as our deluded little minds think so at times.

Summary: If you've forgotten much of what happens for Abby in this episode: at the start of the episode, she's still a med-student, working with Luka; they pretend to work on an old lady who is definitely dead, for the sake of her husband, we see Abby being very sympathetic to the husband. She and Luka have a chat where she tells him she's divorced, Weaver then tells Abby that because of a delinquent tuition cheque (meant to have been paid by her ex-husband) she won't be covered as a med-student for the next 3 months. Abby storms out of the ER, ignoring Luka who calls after her. Next, we see her at a driving range, where Richard is. They have a major row, all in all, we see that the divorce was a good idea ;o)

And that should cover all you might need to know.

Thanks: To IAS (aka KenzieGal) and Lanie (aka SunniSkyes) for setting the aims for post-ep writers with their incredible season 9 series. No journals in ours, our plagiarism extends only so far. And to Anna, my dude, for voicing Carter's inner psyche and participating in many random and bizarre chats.

~*~*~*~

Temporary Arrangements

~*~

They'll throw opinions like rocks in riots
And they'll stumble around like hypocrites
And is it just me or is it dark in here?
You may never be or have a husband
You may never have or hold a child
You will learn to loose everything
We are temporary arrangements

And they wonder why you're frustrated
And they wonder why you're so angry
Is it just me or are you fed up

'No Pressure Over Cappucino' Alanis Morisette

~*~

Chicago County Hospital, mid-shift.

Continuing round the hospital, following the job which I love more and more as I seem to be able to do increasing amounts of it with less worry, I think of Dr Kovac, the discussion we've just had, and the patient we've just treated – or pretended to. It's probably not a good idea to be practicing medicine while swimming through your own reflections on your life, but I've done it so often it seems normal; and I think perhaps it is in this place when I venture a glance at some of my co-workers.

He said working without hope for the prayers of the relatives was part of the job; I suppose it is. We have to care for those left behind as well as those who need our medical help. It's just another way in which Dr Kovac appears to be the perfect hero for every girl – tall, dark, handsome, European, kind, and with a touch of mystery; but I've always distrusted the idea of perfection, it seems too right, too easily broken apart by the slightest touch from me. I remember when I started working here saying something about the image he radiates and the nurses agreeing with me. Yet I still know nothing about his life; talking to him today about my marriage I realise I know nothing about his, nothing about his life in Croatia, nothing about his life in America. He seems to have cut himself off from his past with as much force as possible, cutting out the pain of a tumour with a scalpel. I understand that. It's what I do. There is some deep grief inside him, something which I think I saw behind his words today.

"He could be worse off if he thought he was responsible."

"He does. He's alive, she's not."

Those words held such bitterness, though his tone seemed as conversational as he ever becomes. I guess it's a reference to the death of his wife, a glimpse into his psyche where he battles with the demons over the fact that his wife died and he is still alive. Yet he seems to live life rather than gliding through it untouched, and he still cares for people and patients. He is the one doctor who has, since Dr Carter, ever seemed to care about me as a person as well as a student who needed to be taught and supervised. I think that was why I found it so strange talking to him about Richard, I don't know how to talk to people about it, why I was so gauche in our conversation.

"I'm sorry about your divorce."

"Don't be. I'm not."

He offers sympathy about my marriage, whose ending caused me less grief than the ending of his did him, and I respond with defensive humour.

"Lockhart – that your name or his?"

"His. But I'm keeping it. It's the one good thing I got out of the whole mess."

What a line Abby.

I guess I've been lucky to work with Dr. Kovac since Dr Carter left. Dr Carter – I wonder how he is; nobody speaks of him really and nobody has said anything to me about him since that day, which will forever be crystal clear for me, back in May. I wonder why I cared so much when I saw him, in that trauma room; in some strange way, his action cut me to the core. Maybe because I still felt some of that connection. The connection I thought there was on the rooftop before it all went so wrong on Valentine's Day? His words on that evening somehow reached me deeper than any others from anybody else could have done. Maybe because…because he's a fellow addict. And one I felt so much understanding for. He thought nobody could read him, but in some strange way I saw what he was thinking, because I'd been there. I knew why he was in his mental hell, and maybe that was why he seemed so hurt when he knew I'd reported him. Why he retaliated so quickly with such a flashing denial against me personally.

"Maybe you're the one on drugs Abby. Yeah, I think I saw you with a needle once."

I think that maybe that was why it almost killed me to tell Dr Greene; because I knew they wouldn't understand what he was doing, wouldn't understand the inner demons within that scream out to be silenced, demons which drove him to this ultimate self-destruction we seem to have shared. Not that we've really shared anything. I did understand, and I betrayed him by turning my back on that, by casting it off onto others who had no personal chains to his situation. I was a coward, I should have told him then, I have to tell him when, if, he comes back. I need him to understand that I did understand.

The death of the old lady today brought me back to the first death under my care in this ER, and Dr Carter's understanding on the roof. The woman today and her husband had obviously cared for each other for years, and while I can distance myself from the patients themselves better more easily now, for my own sanity and self-preservation, I understood what Dr Carter truly meant.

"You never get used to it."

No. You can't get used to the death of an old person, you can't accept that anyone has to die, you can't get used to watching someone's heart breaking into pieces too small to pick up and glue back together again, as they realise the companion of their life is gone never to return to them. The broken husband needed to be with his wife even in death.

"Can I stay with her?"

"As long as you like."

Is there something else I could have said? Something else that perhaps would have helped him to make more sense of the tragedy which has torn his life apart. I wonder if Dr Kovac or Dr Carter would have made him feel better somehow. Would have known what to say.

Selfishly, I wonder if I'll ever know companionship and love that means a whole life like that. I am a bitch.

~*~

Travelling, mid-afternoon

Leaving the hospital, and looking at my watch, I know exactly where he'll be. At the driving range, the same place he's always gone to on a Thursday afternoon for the past three years. The place he used as his explanation for where he was when he was screwing one of his 'flings', another of the huge number of women he preferred to spend time with rather than me. And, the reason for my acceptance of his flimsy excuses and lies for so long – it didn't really reflect that much of a change in his behaviour. We never thought a couple should live in each other's pockets, but it seems it is in fact possible to go too far in the other direction quite easily as well. We never could cope with being on top of each other; we never wanted to be able to read exactly what the other was thinking and doing. We thought that was a good thing at the time – sure, a good thing in the build up to the hellish divorce it has been proven to be. Maybe we never were the perfect couple we thought we were.

I walk through the crowd of janitors striking to try and raise their salary by a meagre dollar, which the hospital administration refuses them. I envy them as I shift the barriers blockading the ambulance bay, smiling at the couple of workers I recognise and nodding at them to show some vague level of support; I envy them because they can and do fight for what they want, what they need. Their fight isn't destroyed by wracking human passions, like those between Richard and me. I am unable to even fight properly for what he owes me for; all I feel when with him is such burning, bitter hatred that it kills my strategy and leaves me screaming, incompetent, at him again. This time I resolve to speak clearly, this time I resolve to get what I want, what I deserve for the hell I lived with him. This time will be the time I sort it all out. Though it's too late now, Weaver made that clear.

"You don't understand Abby. Once a clerkship is pulled, it's pulled. You have to wait until the next academic quarter."

Three months before I can start my medical training again. One year behind on my programme – damn Richard, his determination to irreparably fuck up my life seems to never die. This time it will never happen again. He owes me, and I will get it from him.

I remember happier times though. Times before it went wrong, before Maggie relapsed yet again, before I discovered the depths of happy oblivion which I could reach with alcohol, before Richard decided screwing whores was worth the risk he took with our marriage, worth the destruction of me and us. Before…before my abortion. That, cliché-ridden as the whole affair was and still is, really was the beginning of the end I think – there was no way for us to return from that situation. In that way, I guess I was as much to blame for the divorce as him; he may have increased our physical separateness, but it was me who separated us so far emotionally. I hastily shove thoughts of that time to the back of my mind, I never think of that for long, it's behind me, it's over. The happier times; times when we laughed, times when we totally understood the each other, times when we clicked in every way and thought we could survive the world and my family. College, our wedding, our first apartment. What could have been had life not decided to play games with me once again is so clear in every way and so different from the mess I seem to be scrambling through in a desperate attempt to even survive it all. Don't look back, don't look back.

~*~

Grocery store, on the way home

The shelves of alcoholic drinks in the grocery store tempt me so much; the desire for alcohol doesn't seem ever to diminish as I work through life trying to remain sober. This day has been hellish, and I haven't felt as close to relapsing in a long while. I wonder why I've even come grocery shopping now, there's nothing I need particularly. I could do my grocery shopping Monday night, as I always do, as part of the routine I've tried to develop on my own. Part of the routine that I've come to depend on, which is my only security now.

I need something to fall back on, something to focus on to draw my mind away from the clear liquor which is screaming out to me to be placed in the basket. But I know that if I fall now I will never be able to climb back. I have to keep proving it to myself; I have to keep saying the same things to myself to get through this. Alcohol makes it all better now, but so much worse in the morning. I know that, I know I have to kill my dependency on it. I will do so, I have to do so. I had done. It's behind me now, I did it without Richard – though it tore us apart, it drove him to his 'whores'. I know it was my fault, the past, but it still has the power to come back to me clearer than my present.

I wander round the store, gazing at the displays, unable to decide on anything to buy. My mind won't focus on the products in front of me, instead it drifts through my memory from the full colour snapshots I see inside of me, ranging from my day today to the longer, panoramic, black and white films from further back in my life. Turning into a new aisle I see shelves of powders for hot drinks stretching away from me, shelves along which I look for a jar that will comfort me as hot drinks are supposed to. In the middle of the aisle is a selection of jars of Horlicks, a sight that sends my mind rooting through the oldest, least worn cinema reels of my past. My father used to make Horlicks for Eric and me when we were younger, before we were sent to bed, I don't think I've drunk it since he left. It rings back to a time in my life when I wasn't responsible for the craziness surrounding me, for the walls crashing down, a time when there was someone to do the worrying for me, someone I depended upon. Maybe it will bring me some comfort, with a newfound resolution I decide to try it again. 'A soothing malt drink which promotes natural sleep' the jar tells me. 'Soothing' and 'natural sleep' in the same jar? It's worth a try, I decide. Having made one decision to turn to food for my source of comfort this evening, the rest of my shopping seems to become more obvious. Ice cream, pizza and magazines.

~*~

Home, End of a day

Reaching home, my 'condo' as my son-of-a-bitch ex-husband calls it, the apartment he is paying for right now – I insisted that if the whore had apartment, I should get one too - I dump the groceries on the cheap plastic kitchen side; I'll unpack later, I never buy anything particularly perishable. Right now I need a cigarette, and I fumble in my pocket for the pack of 20 Malboro' Lights and my matches which are always there. Cigarettes have been my constant companions for many years, unlike people and alcohol they don't mess with my emotions and their dark bitterness reflects me inside. It also warns so-called sympathetic listeners off, smokers don't appreciate intrusions upon their lonely nicotine reflections. Cigarettes create a hazy barrier between me and the world, but I'm grateful for any protection I can get nowadays, I don't like the world reaching me anyway, it's too dangerous.

I glance at the clock and notice that it's 6.30pm, too late now to call my lawyer, the promise I yelled at Richard as my parting declaration of continuing our war.

"You are in violation of our divorce agreement. I am hiring a lawyer, and I am getting my tuition money."

"Take it all. Take the debt with it."

I don't particularly want to continue this fighting, it drains me emotionally and physically, yet I still fill with a burning hatred when I think of how much of me I gave to that bastard, and the pittance I receive in turn.

"I only fed, clothed, sheltered you."

That surely meant something to him? Didn't it? Our plan to put each other through med school seemed so eminently workable so long ago. I may not be worth much, but the guy I fell in love with would have deemed it fair, even in divorce, to pay me what he'd promised. To ensure that we'd given off the same amount at the end.
Where did that guy go? To the sluts who gave him something that I apparently couldn't, something I didn't realise he needed. I can't claim that I changed and became bitter – my bitterness has been a part of me for years, a result of my life with my mother. But what happened to us as a couple?

Abortion, alcoholism, cheating – we had no chance of making it really. Life would be so much easier if I could point at a particular event and declare that that was where it all went wrong, that that is where we can place the blame for the collapsing rubble that is our marriage. Instead, everything mounted up to start this blazing, unstoppable, fire, as it always does. Small emotions and events built into minor calamities, which worked together to wreck everything I'd struggled for. Story of my life. Bitter? Me?

I wonder how long it will take me to solve my life. I wonder if, in fact, that will ever be possible or even something I will be able to realistically contemplate. Richard's harsh and bitter words have throbbed in my brain since I heard them.

"I didn't make you unhappy, depressed and miserable. You did that all by yourself."

Well, yeah, maybe I did, but he didn't help. I thought marriage was supposed to be a source of support? Trying to label our marriage as that makes me laugh, bitterly, but it's the first sign of my, apparently fast disappearing, warped sense of humour that I've seen in days and I suppose I should be grateful I can at least still physically laugh. I was beginning to wonder. I should be used to him, to this, by this stage; the divorce was supposed to free me from the hatred we felt for each other, and it hasn't. I guess there really are no easy solutions to anything, but that never seems to stop me searching for them.

I've wanted to be a doctor for years, they often say that kids who have a lot of contact with illness grow up wanting to work as doctors or nurses, I guess that could be true for me. Following that logic, I should be interested in mental illness it seems, but I was never going to want to work in a psychiatric department, never wanted to put myself through that from any active choice. My mother isn't my choice, you can't choose your relatives, a fact which has been the curse upon my life. Not that I seem to do that much better with those I do choose – Richard may have been different to Maggie, but he wasn't a better thing in any way, it turned out.

Med-school was my chance to change my life, my chance to think that if Richard put me through it, maybe he wasn't the inhuman demon wrecking my life he seems to want to be, but I've been betrayed again. My chance is gone. I'm not sure I can ever change my life in any notable way now. Seeing those med-students today beginning their ER rotations made me realise how I can never be one of them, perhaps never again. They were so young, so believing in the good that we do and the worthiness of their calling to be a doctor. I'm too old to be one of them, have lived too much. I'm too harsh to be one of them; I have too many edges from life to be the kind of doctor they will all become. Though Dr Kovac and Carter both have edges of splintered glass, and they are better at caring than I have ever been or ever will be.

OB nursing is where I'm headed again I guess – the joy of new life to distract me, hopefully, from the dying pain of my own.

I curl up on the sofa, Horlicks on the table beside me, and turn the television on, flicking through the channels. There is nothing on at 2.30am, never is. But it's the only companion I have right now. I won't be sleeping tonight, I know this pattern. It has become my best friend in recent months.

~*~*~*~

Author's Note: Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it at least slightly. If you haven't already, toddle over to Anna's fic and read hers – but, if you felt like leaving me a review before you leave, I'd be forever grateful :o) This is a big project, and while we might continue it anyway, we'd like to know that at least one person was reading it.