As Mark walked up the street that he now called home it struck him how well presented all the houses were. There was, however, one notable exception – his own. No wonder Susan wasn't really getting on with the neighbours, he thought. But both time and money were tight and neither of them had the energy or inclination to do anything about it. But maybe that was about to change. He was up for ER chief next year – albeit against Kerry Weaver, who was a shoe-in – but the extra cash would come in very useful for some home improvements. Both of them had agreed that an apartment in Chicago was no place to bring up their son, and so they had moved into the outlying suburbs. They thought they had struck lucky with this house; it needed a lot of work but it was in a very good neighbourhood and, in time, they had planned to do it up. The exterior of the house was fine, but since they had moved in they had allowed the garden to become overgrown. Thinking about it, Mark realized that neither of them had a single piece of gardening equipment between them from their Chicago days – they would have to buy it all new. Then there would be the endless hours of mowing, weeding, planting, watering…he started to see why it wasn't high on their list of priorities. If only somebody could do it for them…of course! He would hire a gardener. To hell with the money – it would buy them precious time to do fun stuff with their son. But he wouldn't tell Susan. It would be a surprise. She'd love it!
Meanwhile, Susan was getting anxious: she had put Jake down almost two hours ago now and there was still no sign of Mark. If he was going to stay late at the hospital – cover for someone, stay with a patient until they were out of the woods, help out with a mass trauma – surely he could've found thirty seconds to call her and let her know. He could even have had a nurse do it, or one of the clerks – that's what they're there for, after all. Mentally, Susan stopped herself - what was she thinking? She of all people knew what life was like in the ER – he probably hadn't even realized the time. How many times had she missed appointments, meetings, dates – all because she had got caught up in the ER vortex. And when you've had that sort of day, the last thing you want is to have to apologize to someone for having done your job properly - for saving lives, for giving a damn. She had promised herself that she would never get annoyed with Mark over his work commitments. The fact that they both shared the experience of being an ER doc was one of the fundamentals of their relationship: how could she be annoyed at him for refusing to compromise patient care on her behalf? And yet, she was annoyed. She had spent the day hanging around the house, changing diapers, cleaning up sick. The highlight of her day so far had been having what could very loosely be termed an 'adult' conversation with the vacuous souls who were now her neighbours. She thought things couldn't get much worse, but facing another night alone was the icing on the cake.
She grabbed the baby monitor, got herself a beer from the fridge and headed for the back porch. They had no garden furniture, so she made do with sitting on the step. She looked out at their yard. It was crazy. The grass hadn't been cut for at least a couple of summers, and now it looked alive with hundreds of insects hovering over it in the evening light. The heat of the summer had dried out the grass to a light brown colour, which actually looked, now she thought about it, quite spectacular: the sun was setting and the grass took on a kind of burnt orange hue. She had always loved the sunset, but it took on an added significance now – it reminded her of her visits to Suzie in Arizona. On her last visit, Suzie had just discovered that it was the Earth turning, rather than the sun going down, that caused the sunset. Every time Susan went to visit, she came back to Chicago with one more memory, one more shared experience that her mind might bring up at any moment, bringing with it a little bit of Suzie into her day. She loved those moments. Jake may well have been her first born, but deep down, she still considered Suzie to be her first child. She missed her more than ever now that she didn't have work to distract her: sure, Jake kept her busy, and she loved him, but nothing compared to working in the ER for pure escapism. At work, she simply hadn't had the time to think of anything else but the patients in her care. Now, with all this time on her hands, with Mark barely around, she found herself wondering if she had made the right decision.
Should she have gotten off that train? Where would she be now? Sometimes, she indulged herself, letting her mind wonder over the possibility that somewhere, in an alternative universe, was a Susan Lewis living in Arizona, working great hours at a quiet hospital and seeing Suzie as often as she liked. This Susan Lewis watched the sun go down every night, helped Suzie with her homework. She didn't deal with the horrors of an inner-city trauma center. She had gotten over the crush she had had on Mark Green, realized that it was the very fact that he so painfully obviously loved her, that he had been there and consoled her when she missed Suzie, that made her want him in the first place. Maybe, in another world, she had even started seeing someone new. And then maybe, one day, Chloe just disappeared again and this time the judge said that Suzie was hers, officially, forever…
'Hey' Mark stood in the doorway, his back pack still on his shoulder, trying and failing to stop himself from grinning.
'Can I join you?' he asked as he walked over to the step and crouched behind Susan, placing his arm around her neck and softly, slowly kissing her cheek. She looked into his eyes and smiled.
'Sure' she said.
