If I Have Not Love
Part Two***********************************
If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my
body to the flames, but have not love I gain nothing.
***********************************
Jing Mei slumped over onto the couch after a long evening of endless patients. She'd never thought she'd miss it until she was forced to resign. A part of her didn't miss the smelly patients, the anger she felt whenever she thought about Weaver, the insatiable hunger of the public demanding to be seen. Nope, she didn't miss that.
But she had missed the comradary of each doctor leaning over the operating table, yelling short precise commands to the nurses and other assisting doctors. Jing Mei had missed the happiness she felt as a child, man or woman took another breath of life. She had missed each of the annoying and nosy employees of County General.
Especially one nosy and annoying employee of County General.
No, I will not think about that.
Jing Mei knew she never stood a chance, not that she'd thought about it much. But thoughts on those oh-so-rare occasional days, when hormones got the best of her, she would daydream.
She shook her head and slid off the couch. What had gotten into her?
Jing Mei began peeling off her smelly disinfected clothes that luckily hadn't been puked on or received any blood spurts during surgery.
She walked into her bathroom and turned the shower knob. Steam began wafting up and filling the somewhat small bathroom. "Oh, what a night," she sighed.
Her hand smoothed the top of her black hair. Slowly rising, Jing Mei glanced at herself in the mirror. Her face was pale, too pale for an Asian woman, which was part of the pride of her family. If she hadn't the narrow eyes, she could pass for a white woman.
Jing Mei had endured the fire and scorn of her family as she told them she put little Michael up for adoption. It wasn't a loud shouting match, or a barrage of insults. That was why it hurt. It was their quiet inability to look at their once pride and joy. It was her inability to be able to explain the stupid mistake she had made and not wanting to make the beautiful baby she had held in her arms, pay for that mistake.
In some instances, Jing Mei would think to herself as she was treating a patient, 'Is this enough? Have I helped enough people? Have I paid enough for the mistake I so eagerly made?' Hoping against all hope that saving someone's life might in return save hers.
Jing Mei took a deep breath, leaning on the bathroom sink. She was tired of explaining it. They would never understand. They didn't want to.
With a tear escaping beneath the tightly squeezed eyelids, Jing Mei walked out of the bathroom and went to her bedroom. As she slipped into her bathrobe, Jing Mei pulled the bobby pins out of her tightly twisted hair.
Even if she donated her heart on a silver platter to some dying child, Jing Mei would never be that daughter again.
» * »
John sat looking out on the expanse of landscape that his Grams had easily paid for. He couldn't sleep. He never seemed to be able to sleep. It was something that seemingly escaped him these days. Or the past several months.
Even imagining being with Abby didn't seem to set his mind at peace anymore. Not that it really ever had; the thoughts awakened him, more than anything.
Poor. How he once used to dream about giving everything he had, the money that put him on planes flying away from his parents to the big huge house on the hill which made him a stuck up rich boy, all of that, just to be normal. To be loved.
How John had imagined things would be different if his parents showed him how to actually live in this world and with it's people, rather than just walk on top of them or pay them off. Like money would heal the wounds inflicted upon children by their parents.
The embers of the cigarette glowed in the darkness of the night. 'He really needed to quit smoking these things,' he thought to himself.
He had hated the barrage of questions that Susan and Abby continued to throw at him at the college. John hadn't been expecting them. He hadn't been expecting to be ganged up on.
'Abby? Okay, maybe just a little. Okay, and Susan was one for teasing,' he said to himself.
It baffled him to think that another relationship had ended, like all of his other relationships -- and not just the romantic kind. Benton, who had been his mentor and teacher, gone – off to another hospital so that he could spend time with Reese.
Carter considered Benton emotionally defunked too. He never imagined Benton to actually end up finding love with Chloe and making it really work. John had always been able to relate to Benton in a way, even though it seemed he was the complete opposite of John. They thought the same way, in regards to women. Work came first, then the women.
'Obviously it hadn't worked with Benton,' he chided himself. 'Look how it ended with Carla and Elizabeth. It took a strong woman like Chloe to prove to Benton that work isn't all it's cracked up to be. She showed him that loving someone accomplished something. Being the best surgeon and saving all the lives in the world didn't fill up the emptiness in your own.'
John took a last drag out of his cigarette and walked back up to the house.
Please R&R! I hope you guys like it. Keep in mind that it is my first Jinter fanfiction. Be kind!