Disclaimer: They're not mine
Spoilers: None past Season 10's "Dear Abby"
Pairing: Luby
Rated: T or PG-13, to be safe.
Summary:Luby Set mid-season 10. Luka, sick with malaria, comes home.
You guys must be so sick of me starting these things going, "Oh, I'm so sorry for how long this took…blahblah…" – and then taking just as long the next time around. This must be the record though ; I've taken ages with this! And I truly am sorry – but you have no idea how busy I've been. Basically, the short version is that something pretty cool happened to my writing 'career' – for want of a better word – and, as cool as it's been, it's been seriously time-consuming. So this chapter is a bit longer for compensation. I hope you like it, I hope you love it.
And as ever – thanks to my loyal reviewers, you're excellent! That's thanks to, Kat. D, breakthefloor22, Jemiul, Peaky, xEllax, HumanShield, Bianca, 42-Sporks- and twinmuse. These reviews as always remind me just how much I owe it to you guys to keep this going! Thanks very much. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx
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Kisangani Dreams. Chapter Seven. This Time
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"If I kiss you where it's sore, will you feel better...? Will you feel anything at all?"
REGINA SPEKTOR
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This journey is much more bumpy, Luka considers as he rattles, strapped to a gurney, in the back of an ambulance. His eyes sting and ache whenever he chances opening them to the bright white electric lights, clinging onto the underside of the ambulance roof as it hurtles through the inner city Chicago streets. Empty streets – 2am.
Abby doesn't say a word as the paramedics strap heart monitors onto him and take his vitals. She just sits beside him and holds his hand so discretely that neither of them are even aware of it. Luka notices, though, at the last minute, as the paramedics yank him sharply out of the ambulance into County General's parking bay out in the suffocating summer night and he feels the palm of his left hand suddenly cold in her absence.
"Luka Kovac," Dr. Chen's crisp voice sounds from somewhere above his head. "Welcome back to County."
She reaches over him and takes his chart from the paramedics. He doesn't see that, though – eyes closed against the night – and, together with the paramedics, Abby and other curious coworkers, Jing-Mei Chen leads Dr. Kovac back into County General hospital – gurney wheels clattering along the tarmacked ambulance bay like the dodgy casters of an old K-Mart trolley.
"What's his temp?" Chen calls out to the paramedics as they roll him along.
"110," comes the sharp reply.
Abby falls back from the gurney, stunned for a moment. 110 degrees? How did that get so high so fast? She stares after the gurney carrying Luka as it continues through the ER doors and away down the halls. She had been totally clueless about the whole thing. How…? The gurney turns a corner and rolls out of sight down the corridors.
Abby runs to catch up.
-
The lights overhead are so strong that Luka's eyes burn and water. He can't keep them open for very long and it makes everything even more confused.
"It's alright, Luka," Dr. Chen tells him calmly. "The malaria just developed a resistance to the chloroquine – we've both seen it happen. We're just gonna put you on something stronger, okay?"
He nods an okay and feels a pinch at the crook of his elbow as Jing-Mei puts a different IV in. IV primaquine – he feels it slip, ice-cold, into his vein. Stronger, he can feel it, this is stronger. Within a few minutes, Luka feels himself foggily slip out of consciousness once again – more gently this time, more controlled. In that brief second of clarity between fading away and blacking out completely, a tug in his heart wonders where Abby went.
He hopes… he hopes she isn't blaming herself.
Abby watches at the door as Luka, attached to a fresh bag of IV primaquine, falls back unconscious. Shit, she thinks, why the hell did she have to insist on taking him home with her? He wasn't a goddamned abandoned pet or something. Jesus!
The temping nurse appears at Abby's side as she gazes in through the window.
"Mrs. Kovac – you can go in and sit with him if you like," the nurse offers.
"Hmm?" Abby starts suddenly, before realising. "Oh, no – I'm not…" she begins to explain before being cut off by someone calling down the hall.
"Abby?" Susan Lewis smiles and heads down the familiar corridors towards her. Abby puts on a smile and draws in a breath.
"Hey Suze," she greets.
Susan glances in through the window at the unconscious Dr. Kovac lying in an ER bed. Then she turns back to Abby and touches her shoulder lightly, "How are you holding up?"
"Me? I'm fine," Abby answers. "It's Luka I'm worried about."
Worried – yes, Susan can tell that much from the frown heavy on her friend's face and the smudgy dark shadows beneath her eyes. Susan bites back the urge to tell Abby to give herself a break. She wanted to help her friend – make her see what she saw - but Abby was stubborn, like John Carter was, and she was determined to carry through everything she started.
That's another reason why she and Carter lasted so long – through the grit and determination to make something of a month, two months, five, a year. It was a test of endurance, every time they fought with each other and saw their own worst qualities reflected in each other's eyes. It was a competition, to see which of them could continue to love after another shouting match. Their love was furious, bitter and then, finally – over. They left each other reeling, quiet and empty.
"Just don't forget to take care of yourself, okay, Abby?" Susan decides upon saying, lightly.
"Yeah," Abby mutters distractedly and Susan follows her gaze back to Luka. Abby sighs. "God, Susan – I really let him down."
But Susan shakes her head quickly, "No – Abby, you didn't." She tells her firmly. "Listen, this would've happened anywhere, and you really looked after him – he wanted you to and you did."
Still, Abby bit her lip and kept her frown. "But if he'd been here, then at least…"
"Listen, Abby," Susan cuts her off. "Luka's still gonna be out cold like this until tomorrow afternoon, at the earliest."
"I know." Abby answers shortly, her eyes fixed on the man in bed. Susan pauses – she hadn't taken the hint.
So she persists gently, "Well, maybe you should head home and get some rest, Abby, don't you think?"
Abby says nothing, but turns back to Susan – blinks her tired eyes once, twice.
"You know, so you'll be okay to take care of Luka again…" Susan tries.
This time she gets a response, and Abby quickly shakes her head. "Oh no," she says. "I don't think it's a good idea to trust me with Luka anymore. I'll only screw it up again."
"That's not true."
Abby rolls her eyes, "Susan –"
"Abby." Susan interjects sharply. Pause. She looks at Abby hard, honest – "That's not true." For once, Abby doesn't try and prove her wrong again, doesn't try to insist her own incompetence.
"Besides," adds Susan, after the silence. "Everyone in this building knows that Luka only wants you to take care of him. Ask him tomorrow – he'll still want you."
The words, "That's not true" flash through Abby's mind again, but she doesn't voice them. Instead, she shivers beneath her coat and stands there in the silence. She hadn't had time to change before rushing out with Luka and the EMTs and, anyway, it had been the last thing on her mind. So she stood there, cold under the ER's over-zealous air conditioning system, with her baggy pyjama t-shirt and shorts beneath her coat.
She sighs.
"Maybe you're right," she says. "Maybe I should go home."
And she doesn't take that last glance through the exam room window at Luka Kovac; she doesn't think she can handle looking at his pale, thin face, unconscious on his pillow again.
-
Susan was right about one thing – she did need to get some rest, in a major way. As soon as she unlocks her front door and falls into the empty – achingly empty – apartment, she stumbles towards her bedroom and collapses into bed. It isn't until she's lying on her bed, staring at the same ceiling Luka's stared at for days, that she realises that she hasn't slept in this bed for a while and, not just that, she hasn't changed the sheets after Luka.
She can still smell him on the sheets. Not a bad thing, she considers sleepily, before the more lucid part of her brain demands to know why she thought that. She didn't know why – she just liked it, that's all. It was comforting, somehow. She missed him, even.
This is getting into dangerous territory, Abby – she tells herself, hazily. You can't start falling for Luka all over again. This was supposed to be a platonic thing. A friend-helping-friend thing. A friend, a friend.
But – what with the lingering sense of Luka lying on these sheets just hours before and the stuffy heat crawling around the room – when Abby drifts off to sleep, she start to dream, starts to remember – the height of summer 2001, and a busted air conditioning system in Abby's apartment.
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When she comes home from a late shift at work, Abby can already hear loud, angry Croatian coming from the bedroom. A smile touches her lips; she couldn't understand what he was saying, exactly, but she would've bet money on some kind of four-letter word.
"Luka?" she calls into the apartment. "Forget it – the air con people are coming on Thursday. It probably needs new parts or something; you won't be able to fix it."
There's silence as she kicks off her shoes and gets a drink of water from the kitchen until Luka emerges from the bedroom with a small smile on his face.
"No harm in trying, right?" he offers lightly. "Especially as long as you're not letting me get anywhere near you in this weather."
"I never said that!" Abby protests. Luka raises his eyebrows.
"Last night, I think you said – 'Touch me and I'll kill you'." He tells her and Abby can't stop the grin crossing her face. She takes a step closer to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him softly.
"Well, I…" and then she stops – it's far too hot, pressed up close to him – and breaks away. "Sorry!" she says. "It's just that it's 100 degrees outside! Sex just seems like the worst idea right now!"
Luka shrugs his shoulders, though, unperturbed. "I thought you might say something like that," he answers calmly. "So…" and he takes her hand, leading her into the bedroom.
What she sees inside their bedroom makes Abby burst out laughing – electric fans, standing ones, table ones, rotating ones, packed in every corner of the room and networks of wires leading out to various power points, whirring and turning like a crazy miniature army.
"This is insane!" she laughs. "How…?" Luka shrugs again and fails to hide his smile.
"There was a sale on at Sears," he says, as though that explained it. "What do you think?"
"I think…" she begins, wandering about the room – it was a lot cooler than it had been last night, and the night before that – nights spent pushing Luka away and trying to sleep in the Chicago heat-wave. "I think it'll do just fine."
Abby kneels on the bed and pulls him close, and, this time, stays close. Later that night, she'll lie awake – Luka, asleep, still holding her tightly – and listen to the fans, like the sound of a thousand toy helicopters shuddering, and smile – happy, for once, to just be there with him.
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