Disclaimer: I don't own ER. Sorry, I'm turning up the angst on this as well. I was disappointed only to get one review for the last chapter, so please review this time.

After a while, the anti-depressants kicked in and levelled out the peaks and troughs of my moods and I no longer felt the extremes of emotion that I'd been swinging between. Slowly they allowed me more space, more independence, I was allowed to spend small amounts of time on my own, which gradually increased as time went by.

They were convinced that I was improving, and to be honest, I believed I was as well, and when they reduced my meds slightly, I could even, on occasion, feel something like happiness, and I could smile and laugh again. It took two months for me to get to the point where they thought I was well enough to move back into my apartment, it turned out to be the wrong decision but they weren't to know it at the time. It was a relief for me; as much as I loved Greg I didn't know how much longer I could live with him.

The first week in my apartment was okay, I'd been back at work for a few weeks by then and I was in control of things. Then one day I was called to the ER by one of the new interns to do a consult, the patient was a young guy, about my age, who'd been crushed by falling masonry, he'd been trapped underneath it and was losing blood rapidly. We tried to stop the bleeding, but couldn't and ended up amputating both his legs. He'd lost too much blood though, and died in recovery. I couldn't see him as an individual; all I could think of was Ray.

When I left that night there was a scalpel in my bag. That was the first night I cut myself. And for a few minutes it alleviated the pain I felt, it provided me with a brief respite. Suffice to say that wasn't the last time I cut myself, it became a nightly occurrence, a release I craved all day, something that was at the back of my mind until the next time I held the scalpel in my hand. I knew I had to be careful, that if anyone found out, well, it goes without saying. I knew I was slipping back down again, that I should be trying to claw my way back to normality, but my meds weren't capable of giving me the feeling that I got from cutting myself, for those few minutes I couldn't think of anything else, I forgot all about Michael, about Ray, and I couldn't give that up. I found myself forgetting to take my anti-depressants, what I was doing was better than any drug so why should I take them anymore?

That wasn't all, what little interest I had in food disappeared, if there was no one around I couldn't force myself to eat. I gradually ate less and less until I was hardly eating anything. The cupboards and refrigerator in my apartment were empty, there was no point buying food for it to go to waste. It surprised me that they didn't realise what I was doing; I guess they only saw what they wanted to see, what I wanted them to see.

I started to dream of seeing Michael again, of being able to ask for his forgiveness and him giving it, and keeping me safe forever. I knew that would never happen with Ray. As much as I could believe that I wasn't to blame for what happened to Michael, they'd finally convinced me of that, there was nothing anyone could say to convince me that Ray's accident wasn't my fault. Even though I knew I didn't love him enough, I knew I could be happy with Michael, that he could thaw my frozen heart. I knew those thoughts were insane, that Michael was dead, but I didn't want to be alive either, and I had to believe there was something better somewhere.

It was a busy day in the ER, Neela had been down there most of the morning doing numerous surgical consults. It was a blistering hot, muggy day and as usual the air conditioning had broken down. She was in Trauma 1 with Abby and Haleh examining a patient with severe abdominal pain when she started to come over light headed and she felt her concentration start to wander.

Abby became concerned as she watched Neela's eyes flit around the room, as if she wasn't sure where she was, and her body started to sway 'Neela?'

She opened her mouth to reply, but the room started to go hazy as the world faded away and she collapsed to the floor.

'Haleh, get help' Abby shouted as she knelt down at Neela's side, her heart pounding in her chest as she checked her vitals.

'What's going on Lockhart? What's happened?' Gates asked as he entered the trauma room. Since that first day when Pratt and Abby had brought Neela in, and he and Abby had talked, they'd developed a friendship, a friendship based around their feelings for Neela, but a solid friendship all the same. 'Mayday?' He knelt down beside her.

She looked at him in confusion ' I don't know, one minute she was examining the patient the next it was like her attention had gone and then she fell to the floor. I've got a pulse and she's breathing but I don't know what happened'

Tony slid one arm under Neela's legs and another under her shoulders and lifted her up onto the gurney that Haleh had brought in. He was appalled to realise that he could feel her bones protruding through the thin fabric of her scrubs. He shook his head in despair as he laid her down.

Abby noticed his expression and felt a hand tightening around her heart 'Tony, what's wrong?'

He closed his eyes briefly and sighed 'She's a lot lighter than I remember, shit, Sarah's heavier than she is; how could we have missed this?'

Abby quickly pulled Neela's top and sleeves up and she realised what he was talking about. There was hardly anything to her, she was no longer the slender girl that Abby had shared an apartment with, and Tony had dated. She was gaunt, her ribs were prominently on display like the bars on a xylophone, her stomach was concave and it was littered with raw, red scars in varying stages of healing. Abby paused in her examination as her hands started to shake and exchanged an anxious look with Tony. Every bone and muscle in her friend's body was visible, the scars were a sign of self-harming and as she unbuttoned, with those shaking hands, Neela's trousers and pushed them down, her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the fresh wounds on her thighs. Her gaze returned to Neela's face, looking at her now it was easy to see the dark, hollow circles surrounding her eyes had returned. Those same eyes slowly flickered open.

'Hey' Abby whispered, so many questions that she wanted to ask, but knew she couldn't.

'What... what happened?' Neela murmured.

'You fainted, sweetie, we're just going to run some tests to see if we can find out why, okay?' She was trying hard not to convey how worried she was feeling, but she knew she was failing miserably.

'It's hot in here its not surprising I fainted, its not serious, I should get back to the patient' she started to pull herself up into a sitting position and Abby saw her eyes start to cloud over again.

'No Neela, I don't think that's it, we'll just run some tests, make sure we're not missing anything, you just rest for the moment, don't worry about your patient, Crenshaw's on his way down' she was sure that she saw Neela roll her eyes when she heard his name, perhaps this wasn't as bad as they thought or perhaps that was wishful thinking. She had a feeling it was the latter.

'Mayday, when did you last eat?' Abby shot him a despairing look; trust him to wade right in, at least he wasn't asking about the scars, yet.

'Before I came on this morning' Neela answered vaguely, truth be known she couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten. She only ate when she couldn't get away with not eating, when one of them was watching her and she was getting better at avoiding that as well.

'Something? Like what?' he wasn't going to let her get away with that, it was clear to both Abby and him that she wasn't eating, that that was just the cusp of her problems, that they were back at the bottom of the slippery slope that they'd thought she'd climbed, but that she was obviously intent on throwing herself down.

'A bagel?' Neela didn't mean for it to come out as a question, but it did. She couldn't have told him what the last thing she ate was, if she couldn't remember when it was how on earth was she meant to remember what it was?

'A bagel? You don't even like bagels' he remembered buying them one day and she'd turned her nose up at them, asking if he didn't have some toast instead. He'd laughed at her then, how could she not like bagels, but she was adamant that she didn't and he'd spent the rest of the day teasing her about it.

Abby lay a hand on his arm 'Leave it Tony, can I have a word outside'

They pushed their way through the swing doors and stopped just outside the room so that they could still see her but she couldn't hear them.

'She's not going to admit that she's not eating Tony, don't force it. There are bigger issues to deal with than that, you saw those scars didn't you? I'm out of my depth here, and you are too. I think we need to get a psych consult down here, and we should contact Greg as well, he needs to know what's happened' she collapsed back against the wall blinking back the tears that had sprung up 'God Tony, how the hell did we not see this?'

'I saw him leaving a few minutes ago; I'll try his cell if you call psych. Abby...' he ran a hand across his face, exhaling slowly, trying to control the overwhelming flood of emotions that were threatening to take over. 'What's going to happen now, how can we get her through this? I thought we were getting there but it feels like we're right back where we started' his gaze never left Neela as he watched her through the glass. In the few minutes since they'd left the room her control had crumbled and she now looked completely broken, all the fight had left her body.

She could hear the fear in his voice, and she felt it churning in her stomach 'Honestly? I don't know, I thought the same, she's obviously getting better at hiding it from us, but I know we have to keep trying, we can't give up on her…' she closed her eyes tightly, battling to speak past the lump in her throat 'I'm not going to let her kill herself if I can help it, I will fight for her as long as there's breath in her body, I'm not going to give up on her' her tears started to fall.

His voice was hoarse when he spoke 'Neither am I, neither am I'