Disclaimer: All characters involved are owned by someone who ain't me…

Disclaimer: All characters involved are owned by someone who ain't me…

Set sometime after "Witch Hunt"

Lovers Lost

Part II

Two hours earlier

It was a familiar situation.

Or so I thought.

She'd arrived at the hospital a few hours earlier, clutching the life-less body of her child, blue, frozen from a long night on the Chicago streets. Once the baby had been taken from her she had become violent, lashing out at the nurses who tried to comfort her, screaming for the child she knew in her heart she had lost. In one such attack on a nurse she'd fallen and cut her head severely on the side of her gurney, causing her to be restrained, tied to her bed so she couldn't lash out, couldn't run, couldn't move.

They had called for a psych. consult almost the moment she'd been brought in, I hadn't been able to she her straight away, the unaccountability of my job meaning I could be any place in the hospital when I was needed the most. I can't remember who I was seeing at the time, it could have the been the old lady who wandered into one of the wards and climbed into a free bed, or the man who thought he was a direct descendant of Jesus, we see so many, I don't remember.

When I arrived in the ER the girl was hysterical, screaming for her child, thrashing about on her bed in an effort to loosen the restraints, all of which we designed not to do so. Two guards were posted outside the door of her private room, her actions earlier causing them to be wary of her around other patients.

The guards parted as I walked toward them, recognising me as a doctor, knowing my face, one smiled flirtatiously and opened the door for me, not knowing. And why should he? I asked myself as I stepped through the door, closing it behind me, not everyone knew.

The scene before me was one I had experienced many times before, a male doctor I was unfamiliar with sat peacefully on the only spare bad in the room, paperwork spread out in front of him. He looked up as I entered and nodded his acknowledgment, going back to his work when he received one in return.

The other side pf the room was a different story, I'm not sure I understood how the doctor could carry on with his work amid all this noise, the hysterical cries for a dead child, the raw torment of a mother caught up in loss. I was surprised to see how young she was, only about 15, dark hair caught up in ringlets around a coco-coloured face, dark eyes large and wide, terrified. When see saw me she calmed slightly, ceasing her cries, knowing someone was eventually listening.

"Where is she?" Her voice has an African lilt to it, an accent picked up from living with African parents, or in an African neighbourhood. Everything else about her was American, the dark denim of her jacket over a bright pink halter-neck and the popular scuffed white trainers on the end of matching dark denim jeans. Everything about her screamed "teenager", nothing hinted at "mother".

Weighing my options I decided it best to ignore the question, not wanting to risk more distress. Slowly I moved across the room, taking a seat in the plastic chair next to her bed

"Do you know where you are?" I asked slowly, my voice as calming as I could get it

"Of course I know where I am you stupid bitch! I'm in hospital…against my will. They took away my daughter and strapped me up good." To punctuate her words she pulled at her restraints, rattling them against the metal of the beside "What have you done with her? Where is she? Chellise!" She began calling her daughters name over and over, the distress in her voice rising with every agonising call.

There was nothing I could do but let her carry on calling, calmly I sat back in my chair, hoping she would wear herself out, knowing she couldn't go on forever.

I was right. Two minutes later she lay her head back down on the pillow, exhausted. I tried again

"Can you tell me your name?"

"My name? What's that got to do with anything, I just want my daughter back"

"We'll talk about that later," I said gently, sidestepping the important question "First I need to know your name"

There was a long pause before she responded.

"Kasie, my name's Kasie" She said finally, contempt in her voice. Smiling gently I scrawled the name on the chart in front of me, not pushing for a second name, knowing I wouldn't get it.

"Hi Kasie, my names Kim" I said gently, soothingly, hoping to calm her, gain her trust "So how old are you Kasie?" I seemed to be getting somewhere; she was much calmer now, willing to cooperate

"'a'teen" she drawled, I raised an eyebrow, not buying it "'kay, I'm sixteen…" she mumbled something that I didn't catch; I didn't ask what she said, choosing to ignore it, it was better that way.

"And how old's Chellise?" I was careful in broaching the subject of her child, knowing it would cause more distress, hoping to lower her into the topic gently

"She's only tiny, not even six months old"

There was a long silence in which I knew she wanted to say more. After a long time she did

"When can I see her again?" her voice was much calmer now, she had obviously decided she was getting nowhere with me using violence. Again I sidestepped the question, not wanting to get too deep too soon, but I knew I wouldn't be able to avoid it for long

"Where do you live Kasie?"

She was quiet for a long time. I sat and watched her, the room silent but for our breathing and the occasional rustle of paper as the doctor in the corner turned his page.

"We ain't got no home," She paused "Its just me an' Chellise, and we do fine, we don't need no one else" There were tears in her eyes now, fat, painful tears welling up beneath hazel irises, wide and innocent with grief and sorrow. "Where is she?? Where's my little girl?" Her voice was almost a whisper, raspy with tears, she knew the answer to her question already, but she needed to ask it one more time.

I took a deep breath, knowing I could skirt the subject no longer, owing it to this girl, this child, to tell her what happened to her daughter.

"Kasie, when you brought Chellise in, she was very cold, it's not good for such a young baby to spend such a long time outdoors, especially in winter. Kasie, the doctors, they tried everything they could, but there was no chance of saving her…I'm sorry…she died not long ago" There was a long pause, in which I could barely breathe. In the years I'd been doing this job I still found it impossible to weigh a patients reaction to news such as this, news that would shatter a persons life forever.

To be told that the person they love most in the world has been taken from them, to know they will never see that person again, never hold them in their arms, never be close to them, is a feeling I could never come close to imagining, it's a feeling I never like to witness, and would hope never to feel myself.

I braced myself for a reaction, any reaction. A cry, a scream, anything. Nothing came; instead she kept her face turned to the wall, her body raked with hysterical sobs. For the moment there was nothing more I could do, I stood slowly, lying a hand against hers where it was secured to the bed, before padding gently across the room.

"Give her a few minutes then I think you can take off the restraints" I whispered to the doctor in the corner "she's calmed a lot now, I'll be back later on to see how she's doing"

He nodded in agreement and watched as I turned and left the room.

The next hour was a blur of faces -patients, doctors, nurses. Another case with a mixed up old lady, this time who'd wandered into the paediatric ward hoping to find her son, who'd died twenty years earlier, the resemblance between this case and my last spurred me all the more to go back to her, back to the ER, where I knew I wanted to be anyway.

I'd spent the last few weeks deliberately taking very opportunity to see the ER, to see Kerry again, spend a few precious moments with her between patients. It was a hard routine to get out of, one I didn't want to break. Over the last few days I'd come to realise that the way she had acted in front of Romano, although hard to forgive, could be easily forgotten. I hated to be apart from her, I had even decided to talk to her that day, make it right between us, make us "us" again.

I never managed to.

The restraints were gone when I next entered Kasie's room, she was stood beside her bed, roughly pulling on her shoes which, I suppose, at some point must have been removed for her to get onto the bed. She was still crying, sobbing gently from beneath a bowed head, the end of a stitched cut clearly visible beneath the hairline.

"Kasie?" A single word caused her to look up

"I'm going now, ain't no reason for me to stay" roughly she pushed past me, walking deliberately down the hallway toward the exit. I followed on behind obediently, knowing if she left now she would never come back, and I hadn't begun to talk her through her experience.

"Don't you think you should stay?" I called out to her, the people around me diffusing into the background, shadows of people, to get in my way, to step around

"Why?" she didn't turn round

"We have a lot to talk about"

Finally I was close enough to touch her, I reached out a hand and placed it gently on her shoulder, hoping to turn her towards me, but she just shrugged me off. I tried again, this time she stopped, confronting me, face close to mine, making me jump.

"So wot we got to talk about then? I lost my baby, that's all there is to it, the doctor said I could go, so I'm goin'"

"Who? Who said you could go?"

"Like I said a doctor, funny lookin' one, a woman, short, walked with a limp" She turned around again heading toward the exit. For a moment I didn't follow, digesting the information she had given me, before running to catch up with her, through the doors and into the parking bay.

"Why is you followin' me anyways? You don't care, no one in this shit-hole cares" I was astounded by the way she reverted back to the feelings she had reflected the first time I spoke to her, I thought we had come so far, I thought I had gained her trust, obviously I had been mistaken

"Kasie its me, Kim, of course I care, I care that you lost your child, the most precious thing in the world to you, and I care that your hurting now…" I trailed off; it was obvious she wasn't listening to me. We'd been conducting the conversation as she hurried away from me down the street, past stores and houses I'd never seen before, it was when I said this that she finally stopped and turned again, looking me straight in the face

"I don't believe you" She obviously had been listening "I'm nothin' to you, you don't care about me, or Chellise, I'm just another patient on your list, a little name to tick off when you're done, a full bed that needs to be emptied, I'm nothin'" The last few words she screamed in my face, I winced at her tone of voice, seeing the truth reflected in many of her words

"Kasie you aren't nothing," I called back as she began to walk away form me again, moving a slight distance away from me before stopping once again, "Kasie, you're just hurting, and I can imagine how that feels"

"Oh? Can you? Can you really? Do you know how it feels to be taken from the one person you ever really loved, the one thing that made you feel complete? Happy? I don't think you can really know that" She paused, her eyes were filled with pain, the agony of her words "You know how I see it?" She asked slowly, I dropped my head, unable to keep her icy glare any longer "How I see it is, I came in here this morning with my little girl in my arms, my little Chellise, and she was all mine ya'know? It was just her an' me, and we didn't need no one, not anyone or anything. An' look at me now, now she's gone, and I'll never see her again" She began to sob "And who do I have to thank for that?"

There was a long silence in which I held my breath. A peculiar feeling took hold of my chest, closing its long talons around my heart, holding it in its icy grasp.

Fear.

The cold, raw kind of fear that came with knowing something that was about to happen, something you had no power to stop, something that would change your world forever.

Slowly I raised my head to meet her gaze once again, catching her eyes, as in one fluid movement she pulled the revolver from her pocket and aimed it at my chest

"You"

A single bullet of a word, said with such misguided hatred, in conjunction with a single bullet.

The last word I ever heard.