A/N: After a request to continue this past rehab, and as the end of Abby's stint nears (for those who've been counting, we're in the beginning of her fourth week), I did some thinking and came to the conclusion that I will, in fact, take this fic further (thanks to the people I've bounced that idea off of recently). I'm very much open to requests for what to cover, though I make no promises. And - hint, hint - more reviews would be lovely. Thanks to the first-timers, as well as the regulars, who reviewed this last chapter (keep 'em coming), but one of the things holding me back from continuing is the downright pathetic number of reviews as compared with some of the crackfics/crapfics posted in this genre. I mean, really. ;-)
Oh, and "Sweet Chariot" is not the "swing low, sweet chariot" one, though I do a mean gospel version of that thanks to a really misguided high-school choir director. If I do say so myself (and I do, though it takes quite a bit of tequila to get me to sing it).
"Sweet Chariot"
"Abby." The voice creeps its way into my dream, disrupting what was shaping up to be a much hotter version of Luka's visit the other day. "Abby," it persists.
I groan. "What."
"I…I need your help."
I squint at the clock and then at the figure in the doorway. "Thalia? It's three-thirty in the morning."
"I know, I'm sorry. I just…please?"
"Yeah." Something about her voice just isn't right, so I haul myself out of bed and follow her down the hallway, thankful the night nurse is fully tuned-in to the television. She heads into the bathroom, and I don't mean to gasp, but it's difficult not to when you see that much blood covering a tile floor. Even after working in an emergency room for ten years. "Jesus! What happened?"
"Umm…" She doesn't meet my eyes. "You're a doctor, right?"
"Yeah. Did you fall or something?" Even saying it, I know she didn't fall. I look at her arm, which she's currently clutching with her other hand, and see the blood seeping through her sleeve and down her fingers. "Oh god."
"I didn't mean…it won't stop bleeding." Her voice is soft and high, and I have to remind myself that she's just a kid. Nineteen, maybe twenty, I can't remember, but a kid. Her eyes are wide, terrified in fact. Christ.
"Your wrist?" She nods. "Okay, keep pressure on your arm, about two inches up, and let me take a look."
The sight isn't pretty. Her wrists are already pretty beat up, and it looks like she's sliced a good half centimeter deep, if not more. "It looks like you got a couple of veins. You're going to need stitches."
"I can't show them," she murmurs. "They'll send me to psych. My parents will freak, I can't –"
"You don't have a choice." I'm working half a roll of paper towels and a washcloth around her wrist as a makeshift bandage, still applying pressure as best I can. "I know you're scared, but you need to go to the hospital. You need stitches."
"Can't you do them?"
"Not without a suture kit and sterile gloves, not to mention a tetanus shot. What did you use?"
"That." She nods to the sink, where a light bulb is in about twelve pieces.
I try to recall what sort of distasteful chemicals lurk in light bulbs. Tungsten? Mercury? If nothing else, it's not the cleanest bulb I've ever seen by far. "I wish I had some alcohol." I catch the double entendre and smirk. "To clean it. Not to drink."
"Couldn't hurt," she sighs. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bother you, I just –"
"It's okay." I show her where to apply pressure on the makeshift bandage and give her a little smile before washing my hands. "We do have to tell the nurse on shift, though."
She looks down at the floor, and she looks more like nine than nineteen right now. The dark makeup she usually wears is gone, and she's already pale enough from all the blood she's lost without being suddenly free of eyeliner. She seems much less vulnerable in the waking hour.
I sit her on the toilet and direct her to hold her arm above her head while I mop the blood up with the remainder of the paper towels. "All right. Ready?"
"No." She stands up, arm bent and resting over her head, and shuffles after me with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
They don't let me go with her to the hospital, even when I remind a trainee EMT that taking her pulse on the arm she's losing blood from is probably not a great plan. The look on her face when they walk her out to the rig damn near breaks my heart. I've seen it before, in the ER and elsewhere, and it screams please don't leave me and there's nothing I can do but offer her a little smile and promise her it'll all be okay, which is a blatant lie. Things never end up being okay when you're oozing blood from an extremity and being carted off by a couple of paramedics who seem to have been assigned to the night shift as punishment for being morons. As much as I would rather not run into them, I'd be a hell of a lot more comfortable if Zadro and Bardelli were the ones taking her to the hospital.
But see, having an MD means jack in rehab, so I'm sent back to bed and I snuggle under the covers and squeeze my eyes shut and try to take up where I left off with Luka.
"I just…I don't get it."
"Get what?"
"What would make someone want to do that. I mean, it's not like she was trying to off herself."
"How do you know?"
"She wouldn't have come to me. She wouldn't have been as afraid. I've seen people who've tried to kill themselves. They don't…it's not the sort of behavior typical of a suicidal person."
"There are many people who attempt suicide by that method. You know that."
I shake my head. "I did my psych rotation. I deal with attempted suicides in the ER. Successful ones, too. She wasn't trying to kill herself."
Celia crosses and uncrosses her legs, and I can tell that it's weird for her, talking to another doctor without being able to actually treat me as a colleague. I also know she wants to agree with me but can't. "So what is it you don't get, then?"
"Why she wants to hurt herself just to hurt herself. It seems like…like there's no real end to the means."
"Of course there is. You know that. You do it when you drink. She does it when she hurts herself. It's a different mean to a common end."
"Pain?"
"Distraction. From the deeper issues." She sighs. "For a person who cuts themself, the aim is to manifest superficial pain to distract from an emotional one. For an alcoholic, the aim is to use alcohol to escape from reality, thereby avoiding the emotional pain."
"I guess. I just don't see the appeal of escaping it by causing more pain."
"Well, I suppose that's a good thing."
I almost roll my eyes, but catch myself as she's taken to calling me out for it. I feel like Pavlov's dog for a second.
"I want to ask you something that's going to be difficult to answer. I'd like you to try, though, given how little time we have left."
Well that's always a great introduction, up there with "we need to talk" and "can we step outside for a moment."
"The night you blacked out…" I wince. "…What was it you were feeling when you began drinking that night?"
"I was feeling…I don't know. Overwhelmed, I guess. Desperate."
"Overwhelmed by what?"
"By…being alone. Having to do it all, alone, without Luka. Raising Joe, finishing my residency…and not knowing how long I'd be doing that."
"You were afraid he wasn't coming back."
"Yes. No. Not as much afraid as…betrayed. I felt like he'd broken his promise."
"What promise?" She shifts in her chair, head cocked to one side. She's obviously interested. Therapeutic gold.
"That we'd do it together. That he would stay, that he would be with me. He said it, when we got married, that he…chose me as the one he wanted to be with. And a couple of days later, he was gone. And it's not as though I blamed him or thought he was deserting me. It's just – " I trail off, appalled at how selfish and needy I sound.
Celia seems to read the look on my face. "It's all right to need someone, Abby. Especially someone you love, and put your trust in. Luka was the first person you really let in."
"Yes. And I started thinking…I started thinking that maybe he wasn't coming back. That he'd been home and remembered who he used to be, before me, before Joe, before the war even. And that he preferred it."
"Did he ever give you any indication that he felt that way?"
I think about the conversation after Joe got hurt, after I took that first drink. Come home, I'd begged him to come home. It wasn't fair to ask, but I needed him and needed to know he would. And he'd said no. He'd said no a couple more times after that, and so I stopped asking because I didn't want to burden him more than he already was. "Not intentionally, I guess."
"But there was something?"
"He was gone for months. Months. And as much as he said he missed us, he never asked us to come there or tried to come home. And we had the money, too, for him to visit. When Joe started walking, I asked, and he said he couldn't just then, and he kept saying that. So yeah, I started to get the feeling that he didn't want to come home."
"And so…it culminated that night?"
"No. No, I just…it wasn't that night, it wasn't special, it was just that I hadn't gone out drunk before that. And I knew I shouldn't. I didn't plan to. But then I put Joe to bed and the house seemed so empty, and it was driving me crazy being there, alone."
"So you went out."
"So I went out, and…" I feel my stomach turn over. "He noticed me. He talked to me."
"You wanted to feel as though you were worthwhile."
"I wanted to feel as though I was worthwhile, and that I was wanted, and that I was…"
"Can you just hold onto me? I can't stand real well."
"Abby?"
"Let me get you home. You shouldn't be on your own right now."
"That you were what?"
"I shouldn't…I can't go home like this."
"Safe. That I was safe."
"From what?"
"Being alone. From being alone…I couldn't do it any more, I couldn't be alone in that apartment, it was too big and too quiet, and it just scared the shit out of me. It didn't feel like home anymore. It felt like..." I can feel my throat knotting up and the pressure of tears building. I can't help it. They just start coming, running down my face, hot and fast and messy. I take the box of tissues Celia hands me and try to soak them up before they fall, but it keeps coming.
It takes a good five minutes to stop, and when I manage to compose myself, Celia nods a little encouragement and I realize I actually have to finish the statement.
"It felt like something was eating a hole in me. Like the longer I stayed there, the more I would just fade into irrelevance. I don't know how to describe it, really, it was just as if…I don't know, the silence was killing me, literally."
"That sounds like depression, to me." She scribbles something on a pad of paper. "Like I've said before, though, I don't feel comfortable making a diagnosis like that at this stage."
"I don't think I'm depressed. Not clinically."
Celia looks at me, like she's trying to read between the lines or something. It's a little bit creepy – all the staff and therapists have this look they'll give you now and then, like they're using their x-ray vision to read you. "I think that when you drink, depression surfaces along with it. It's not at all uncommon."
"I know."
"I'd like you to continue therapy after you leave, Abby. What we've dealt with in your time here has been very substantial, but I believe that you need to continue to work on all of it. Especially what you just said about the silence killing you. You need to work through the things that make sitting with your thoughts so difficult."
"I think the thoughts are to blame." I raise an eyebrow at her.
"Working on your propensity towards deflecting with sarcasm wouldn't be a bad idea, either." She returns the look. "I'm going to put together a list of names for you. Some out-patient psychologists who I think you might work well with."
"I'm really not sure if that's something I want to do at this point."
"Abby, what do you think is going to happen if, despite all the work you've done, Luka decides he can't be with you?"
"I…" I stop, because I don't have an answer. Other than that I don't know, so I say so.
"I think that you need to consider that possibility. And the kind of support you'll need if that's the case. And I think it could benefit you if that's not the case, too. We've uncovered a lot here, but we've really just touched on things. I think delving deeper could strengthen you as an individual."
Or wreck me. Because, let's be honest, I can't see a whole lot of good coming from reopening old wounds. Sure, being here has been a huge thing for me, and I do think I'm coming out the other side of this stronger, but really, what point is there in digging up things that have nothing whatsoever to do with my present or my future? It took me long enough to move past some of those things. I don't feel all that enthusiastic about dragging them back into relevance just so I can get all my deep, dark secrets squared away.
Celia once again seems to have psychic abilities, because while I'm sitting there contemplating this, she interjects with, "I know some of the uglier things in your past might not seem pertinent to your recovery, but I think a lot of this process involves recognizing what it is that drove you to this point. And more importantly, forgiving yourself and the people who've hurt you in the past so that you're able to focus on the future."
"I am focused on the future." It comes out close to a whine, but I don't much care. "That's the reason I'm here, because I want a future. Why else would I be doing this?"
She looks me dead in the eye. "It's one thing to want a future. It's a different thing altogether to stop being afraid of it."
Dinner tonight is group-style. Most days we troupe over to the main building to the cafeteria, but Friday nights are pizza and Mondays we have a communal dinner that everyone helps to prepare. Like a big, fucked-up, mentally ill family. It actually reminds me a little of dinners in the doctors' lounge.
I'm always in charge of something totally pointless, like chopping vegetables or making a salad, given my nonexistent culinary skills. That, and the fact that I'm one of the few permitted to use a knife. Tonight I'm on potato-peeling duty, which is really completely tedious work, and I vocalize my objections. Marla snickers from where she's manning a frying pan. "I'm sorry, Emeril, did you want to flambé something?"
"You know, just because I can't cook doesn't mean I should be penalized."
"Any migrant worker would be thrilled to have your job, so I'd just be grateful you're not on dishwashing."
I fling a potato peel at her, which sticks to her hair and she lets out a little howl of protest. "Hah. That's for the underpaid migrant workers."
"Bitch, I've got hot oil, and –"
"Ladies," comes a warning voice. "Can we please not have another incident?"
"I was not involved in that," I remind Dianne.
"I was not involved in that," Marla mimics in a whiny voice.
I spin around to face her. "Real grown up. Remind me again who was the ringleader of that particular event?"
She rolls her eyes in response. "It was a good tension-relief exercise."
"A food fight is now a therapeutic device?"
She mutters something, but doesn't respond, and I hear Cynthia giggling from the counter next to me.
We manage to get the food on the table without Marla or anyone else causing a major problem – well, except for a little accident with the potato peeler that resulted in a contaminated potato and a band-aid, but at least nothing to rival this morning. I feel a little strange that Thalia's missing, but there's not a lot of dead air to contemplate it. A couple of the younger girls bust out a "Would You Rather" book and pretty soon the table has completely segregated by gender, save for the lone gay guy who stays on our side.
Some girl who looks suspiciously like she belongs in the eighties from the amount of neon and plastic jewelry she has on starts off with, "Would you rather marry for love or money?"
Hah, been there, done both of them. Okay, so I didn't date Carter for his money, but still, I've been with a millionaire and no amount of mansions would have convinced me to stay with him. Besides, I think we'd have burned through all that money pretty quickly with all the couples counseling we'd have needed.
Marla rolls her eyes and asks if anyone has anything to snort to make this more amusing, which earns her another reprimand from Dianne and a chorus of giggles from anyone else. Miss Day-Glo scowls and hands the book over to Marla, who rifles through before an evil grin forms. "Would you rather your nether region glow when you're turned on or start playing the theme song from Titanic whenever you orgasm?"
Cynthia spits out a mouthful of water laughing while Jenna turns bright red at the word "orgasm." Paul, our lone male, announces that Titanic is his favorite movie, so it would make the moment even more special. Marla gives him a look of utter disgust.
"I think I'd choose the glowing thing," I offer, letting Paul off the hook. "At least that way my husband would know when not to bother, and when he should put the baby to bed."
"Yeah, but what if, like, you get turned on by someone else?" Day-Glo's friend takes a sip of her Tab, the origin of which I honestly have no idea.
"Have you seen her husband?" Cynthia recovers from her fit to respond. "I'd have a hard time getting turned on by anyone else if I was married to that."
I blush and take a massive forkful of salad. It's pretty valid, though. I definitely haven't found myself getting hot and bothered for anyone else since Luka came into the picture. Well, back into the picture. I mean, I can still appreciate the male form, but as guys I'd fantasize about go, Luka is at the top of my list. By a longshot.
"I'm sticking with the Titanic one, in that case," Marla announces. "I don't think it would be too nice if every time that male nurse from C Building came by, I started glowing."
"Ooh, yeah, what's his name again? Carl? Ken?"
"Cole," murmurs Marla dreamily. "And I swear to god once I'm out of here, I'm going to tap that."
"You did not just say 'tap that'." Cynthia pries the book from Marla's hands. "Okay, here's one. Would you rather be haunted by all of your exes or by all of your spouse's exes?"
I can feel a sort of cold, nauseas feeling spread over me at that. You're married to a ghost. God, I don't think I've ever said anything so completely cruel. The moment it came out of my mouth, I wanted to kick myself. The thing is, it felt like that, but throwing it in his face…the thought of it still makes me cringe. It was sort of as though I was determined to hurt him as much as what he'd said hurt me, and instead of being a bitch and telling him something baseless and plain mean, I said the one thing that I'd felt the most being with him.
I apologized to him for it, about six months after we'd gotten back together, which was not something that came easy. He was supremely kind about it, and told me that I'd been right and that maybe he'd needed to hear it, which just made me feel worse. And of course he apologized for what he'd said that night, and told me it wasn't true, that I was beautiful and always had been and extraordinary – funny that his brother used the same word, though maybe he'd heard it from Luka – and I still have trouble believing it, some days, but I do believe that he thinks so. We never did talk much about the truth behind what I'd said, though. Part of me thought maybe we didn't need to, because it was obvious that he wasn't constantly plagued by it anymore, but at the same time I kept hoping he'd bring it up, and he never really did. I wanted to ask, but it's like – how do you bring up the subject of a person's dead wife and children? You don't. You tiptoe around it as best you can, because you're terrified of reminding them of it.
I think maybe if I had, he would have felt more like he had one family instead of me and Joe, and then his father and brother and niece and nephews over in Croatia. Felt as though he could have asked me to be there with him. Maybe I'll never quite know why he didn't, but to be perfectly honest, it hurt. I wanted him to ask for that, and for whatever reason, he didn't.
I'm beginning to understand that maybe the reason Luka came to see me that first time, said what he did, is because after being hurt so much, by the war and by other women who just didn't want to deal with the person inside that had so much pain and even me, who threw that at him and maybe even took him for granted the first time around, and everything, he needs to protect himself. Maybe the thought of being hurt again has him scared. And that's something I know a hell of a lot about.
I promise myself, for what has to be the hundredth time, that whatever it takes, whatever he needs, so long as it doesn't compromise my sobriety or my son, I'll do anything to keep from hurting him even more. Because the closer I come to having to face telling him the truth, the more I realize that there's nothing in the world I want more than for him and Joe to be happy.
And I want it a thousand times more than I've ever wanted a drink.
