Shadow of John Carter: Hear No Evil, Feel No Pain
By Lindy
**Note: it's not over yet... *g*
Lucy Knight walked down the long corridors of the ER halls. She had felt unusually alone these past few days, and sometimes it became a chore to focus on her work. Sometimes she would sit alone, in a dark exam room, and run through in her mind conversations she had had with Carter at the cemetery, word for word if she could remember it all, although most of the time she strained to remember almost all of them.
Lucy sighed roughly, sitting down again in an exam room. She was so tired, worn out by mental exhaustion, and the fact that if she had just diagnosed Paul Sobreki earlier, this entire chain of events would never have occurred, although she wasn't running by on a guilty conscience. Lucy knew all things here happened for a reason, but the point still bothered her to some extent. She knew it always would.
"Lucy?"
Lucy jumped, startled by the voice. "Dr. Weaver..." She caught her breath, smiling through the dark at her own childishness.
"Dr. Benton says you've been spending a lot of time at the cemetery lately." Lucy's smile immediately vanished. What a way to make an entrance... "We're worried about you, Lucy. He says you've been carrying on conversations between you and John when no one else is there." Kerry folded her arms through the shadows that had crept in by lingering light of the hallway.
Lucy swallowed softly, clearing her throat even more so. "He said that, huh?" she said meekly, looking at the tile floor rather than at Dr. Weaver.
"Yes. He also said that you drove your car to the top of the hill yesterday, from the passenger's seat." Kerry stopped, showing her concern through her voice. "And that you got very emotional when something in your conversations happened." Kerry studied Lucy's body language very closely. "Lucy, if something is wrong... if you're emotionally upset about Carter in anyway, we'll understand, please.. just tell us..."
"It's not about Carter," Lucy blurted out. Shoot! Immediately Lucy knew she shouldn't have said anything at all. "I'm not emotional. I don't know what Dr. Benton thought he saw, but whatever it was, I'm sure he didn't misunderstood it." It was true, Lucy hadn't lied. Dr. Benton couldn't have understood. Not at all, there was no way possible.
"Lucy... if you drove to the top of the cemetery from the passenger's seat..." Lucy's eyes snapped up to Dr. Weaver's. There was a tone of desperacy in Kerry's voice that hadn't existed before, and it struck something in Lucy's mind.
"I didn't drive to the top of the hill!" Lucy's voice got louder. There was a long moment of silence while Lucy watched Dr. Weaver evaluate the conversation. She could almost hear the deliberation going on inside Kerry Weaver's mind. Lucy's maintained the scowl on her face.
"If you need to talk..." Kerry said, her tone now indicating her withdrawal from the argument, and perhaps a retreat to the door.
"I'm not crazy, Dr. Weaver," Lucy said, interrupting Kerry's drawn tone. "And you can tell Dr. Benton I said so." She passed Kerry, in a cold breeze, sending a glare in her direction until she had managed to move herself past Weaver.
Lucy found herself in an exam room. The things Dr. Weaver said scared her: the more Lucy thought about them, the more she was afraid that they were true. No, that was impossible. She was a psychiatry major, and Lucy knew that the human mind was capable of many things, all built upon fear, frustration, agony, and physical pain. But none of these had influenced her mind enough to produce the past weeks. And she hadn't driven the car to the top of the hill! That was Carter, Lucy had seen him with her own eyes!...
And Lucy was beginning to doubt her own eyes. Carter seemed like a lifetime ago... maybe he hadn't ever been there...
The fall leaves fell like rain. Lucy had always loved them, she'd watched them aimlessly as a child. Fall was by far her favorite season: the colors, the wind rushing past her face, the cold-but-not-too-chilly weather. Sometimes she felt so content in the midst of her ease, she felt almost as if Carter was there with her, slowly pushing her along. Although Lucy still wasn't sure if she had seen Carter or not for those few weeks, she now had a deeper understanding than she had ever dreamt of before; not just an understanding on medicine, but one on life as well.
Lucy trudged slowly through the leaves as they rustled under her feet. She looked up the hill, almost able to see the plot where Carter was. Not too much farther...
Lucy took a deep breath; she was almost to his stone, and the little walk up the hill had been tiresome. She could feel her legs cramp as she got nearer and nearer to the stone. She breathed heavy for a moment as she reached his stone, letting her heart slowed down. She half expected Carter to come up behind her, then tease her about getting exercise.
She frowned, a little disappointed that Carter wasn't there. The headstone her eyes fell upon was a reminder that he wasn't coming back. It seemed like so long ago since he had come... and now it seemed like it had never happened at all, like it was just a dream...
The wind brushed over her face, and she sat down beside the stone. "I miss you, Carter," Lucy whispered, almost as if he were away on business, rather than away for all eternity. She was happy she wasn't depressed about it anymore, but it didn't compensate for the loss of a friend that she had gained for those visits up on the cemetery.
Lucy's face fell again as she realized that hadn't yet told her how he had managed to come back. The memory made her half-smile. "So... souls can just come back?" she had asked for the first few visits, still plagued by the wonderment. "Lucy, I can't tell you now. You'll find out soon enough. I'll tell you." Carter had said, and then grabbed her in a headlock and screwed up her hair. Lucy smiled, the fog chilling the water in her eyes, but she didn't drop a tear. Already so many tears she had laid, and now wasn't the time to cry. It was the time for reveries.
*He had to have been there...* Lucy thought to herself. *People don't just imagine those things I remember...* The thought bugged her as she dug out chart reviews from her shoulder bag. For the rest of the time that she spent up on the hill, Lucy sat ready and alert, half expecting Carter to come out of nowhere and start a conversation, or laugh at her for always having her mind in her work, or make another lame joke about himself being dead.
... But he didn't....
"Forty-five year-old male, went into cardiac arrest in the van. Complained of severe chest pain at the scene, and it elevated from there." The paramedic wheeled the gurney into a trauma room. "Shocked him twice, gave him one of atropine beforehand." Lucy nodded, riding right alongside it.
"Alright, we'll take it from here," Kerry watched the machine. "Get me an EKG, a-"
"Dr. Weaver, I've got it." Lucy nodded up at Kerry, a short glance of contempt as she jotted a few things down on a chart. Kerry gave her a condescending look, then stepped back from the gurney and slowly started to walk around the patient. "Let's get an EKG, Chem. 7, CBC, blood gas, chest film, and start him on ACLS," Lucy told the nurse. "He's stable now, but he could have an aneurysm..." Lucy looked at Dr. Weaver for a moment.
"Good job," Kerry said after a minute. "You're certainly proving yourself as an intern, Dr. Knight."
Lucy gave Kerry a thin smile before looking back down and signing off on the chart. "Thanks." She handed the chart to the nurse who had been scurrying about the trauma room. "But you don't have to be so worried about me." She looked at Kerry, who was staring back at her in some kind of confused emotion. "I'm fine. Really." Lucy forced a smile on her face, even though she still doubted her own sanity.
Kerry waited a moment before nodding and turning past Lucy toward the door. "Okay, Lucy..." was all she said, pushing the door open and stepping out lightly on her cane. Lucy watched her go, wondering whether Dr. Weaver believed her or not. Lucy hoped that, for her own personal sake, Dr. Weaver did.
"Dr. Knight?" Lucy turned to a nurse that had just entered. "We're almost out of epi, and there's a trauma coming in next door."
Lucy let her arms fall in unwinding belief. "Can Mercy get it here?" she asked with an attitude in her tone.
The nurse shook her head, running toward the next room. "No, but some man at the desk asked me to tell you to go get some from the clinic down the street," the nurse gave Lucy a definite look before pushing the door to trauma four open.
Lucy pulled off her stethoscope, her pace quickening as she ran out of the trauma room and into the admit area. She looked around for this 'man' that the nurse spoke of, but the only person there was Jerry. "Jerry? Did you tell some nurse that I'd go get epi from the women's clinic?"
Jerry looked up at Lucy, raising an eyebrow. "No... but we are out of it." Lucy looked him over one last time, just to decipher whether he was joking or not. She decided he wasn't, then nodded.
"Okay, I'm going to get it now. If Dr. Weaver asks, I'll be back in five!" And with a nod from Jerry, Lucy ran swiftly through chairs, out to the ambulance bay, and down the street into the midst of downtown Chicago.
Lucy shivered, looking around. "It's one of these buildings..." Lucy scolded herself for not bringing a coat, and for not knowing which building the clinic was in. All of the buildings on 15th street, across from the hospital, were old apartment buildings, and most of the offices and businesses were two or three floors up on them, without a crowd or sign to point themselves out.
She looked at her watch. If she wanted to get that epi in time, she'd have to guess which one building it was. Lucy ran to the front door of an old, black painted building that looked somewhat familiar. Throwing open the door, she stepped in and looked up at the twisting staircase. Just a few floors... not that bad.
Her feet clunked against the hollow, metal stairs as she quickly climbed them. One after the other, she was relieved to see a sign on the middle landing that directed all visitors to "The Chicago Women's Health District Clinic," then became disappointed when the sign indicated that it was closed today. "Maybe someone's in there anyway..." she said to herself, her pace quickening up the stairs. Her smile faded as she reached the top, faced with a fear that she hadn't felt in so long.
There, standing in front of her was a tall man with light blonde hair. In his hand was a small shot gun. Lucy's feet stopped suddenly, each foot on a different stair. She couldn't even look at the man's face; all she saw was the small, polished gun and his hand on the trigger. She wanted to scream out for help, or for someone to come rushing to her rescue, but there was none. Lucy took a deep, sob-filled breath as she watched the man's hand tighten on the gun, and the slow, inevitable movement his finger made as he pulled back on the trigger.
Lucy could feel herself falling, but she wasn't sure why. She had heard no gun shot, felt no pain. Backwards she fell, into a seemingly endless staircase of fear. Her body bounced slightly as it found the landing again, only this time with her stomach instead of her anxious feet. Something inside of her was falling asleep, and it sent tingles all throughout her spine. Lucy reached an arm up past her head, trying to stretch off the tiredness that was delivering itself through her entire body.
Unable to fight it anymore, her wide, blue eyes sank into a squinted pain, before she finally shut them. Lucy lay sprawled out on the floor, in a gradually forming pool of her own blood...
By Lindy
**Note: it's not over yet... *g*
Lucy Knight walked down the long corridors of the ER halls. She had felt unusually alone these past few days, and sometimes it became a chore to focus on her work. Sometimes she would sit alone, in a dark exam room, and run through in her mind conversations she had had with Carter at the cemetery, word for word if she could remember it all, although most of the time she strained to remember almost all of them.
Lucy sighed roughly, sitting down again in an exam room. She was so tired, worn out by mental exhaustion, and the fact that if she had just diagnosed Paul Sobreki earlier, this entire chain of events would never have occurred, although she wasn't running by on a guilty conscience. Lucy knew all things here happened for a reason, but the point still bothered her to some extent. She knew it always would.
"Lucy?"
Lucy jumped, startled by the voice. "Dr. Weaver..." She caught her breath, smiling through the dark at her own childishness.
"Dr. Benton says you've been spending a lot of time at the cemetery lately." Lucy's smile immediately vanished. What a way to make an entrance... "We're worried about you, Lucy. He says you've been carrying on conversations between you and John when no one else is there." Kerry folded her arms through the shadows that had crept in by lingering light of the hallway.
Lucy swallowed softly, clearing her throat even more so. "He said that, huh?" she said meekly, looking at the tile floor rather than at Dr. Weaver.
"Yes. He also said that you drove your car to the top of the hill yesterday, from the passenger's seat." Kerry stopped, showing her concern through her voice. "And that you got very emotional when something in your conversations happened." Kerry studied Lucy's body language very closely. "Lucy, if something is wrong... if you're emotionally upset about Carter in anyway, we'll understand, please.. just tell us..."
"It's not about Carter," Lucy blurted out. Shoot! Immediately Lucy knew she shouldn't have said anything at all. "I'm not emotional. I don't know what Dr. Benton thought he saw, but whatever it was, I'm sure he didn't misunderstood it." It was true, Lucy hadn't lied. Dr. Benton couldn't have understood. Not at all, there was no way possible.
"Lucy... if you drove to the top of the cemetery from the passenger's seat..." Lucy's eyes snapped up to Dr. Weaver's. There was a tone of desperacy in Kerry's voice that hadn't existed before, and it struck something in Lucy's mind.
"I didn't drive to the top of the hill!" Lucy's voice got louder. There was a long moment of silence while Lucy watched Dr. Weaver evaluate the conversation. She could almost hear the deliberation going on inside Kerry Weaver's mind. Lucy's maintained the scowl on her face.
"If you need to talk..." Kerry said, her tone now indicating her withdrawal from the argument, and perhaps a retreat to the door.
"I'm not crazy, Dr. Weaver," Lucy said, interrupting Kerry's drawn tone. "And you can tell Dr. Benton I said so." She passed Kerry, in a cold breeze, sending a glare in her direction until she had managed to move herself past Weaver.
Lucy found herself in an exam room. The things Dr. Weaver said scared her: the more Lucy thought about them, the more she was afraid that they were true. No, that was impossible. She was a psychiatry major, and Lucy knew that the human mind was capable of many things, all built upon fear, frustration, agony, and physical pain. But none of these had influenced her mind enough to produce the past weeks. And she hadn't driven the car to the top of the hill! That was Carter, Lucy had seen him with her own eyes!...
And Lucy was beginning to doubt her own eyes. Carter seemed like a lifetime ago... maybe he hadn't ever been there...
The fall leaves fell like rain. Lucy had always loved them, she'd watched them aimlessly as a child. Fall was by far her favorite season: the colors, the wind rushing past her face, the cold-but-not-too-chilly weather. Sometimes she felt so content in the midst of her ease, she felt almost as if Carter was there with her, slowly pushing her along. Although Lucy still wasn't sure if she had seen Carter or not for those few weeks, she now had a deeper understanding than she had ever dreamt of before; not just an understanding on medicine, but one on life as well.
Lucy trudged slowly through the leaves as they rustled under her feet. She looked up the hill, almost able to see the plot where Carter was. Not too much farther...
Lucy took a deep breath; she was almost to his stone, and the little walk up the hill had been tiresome. She could feel her legs cramp as she got nearer and nearer to the stone. She breathed heavy for a moment as she reached his stone, letting her heart slowed down. She half expected Carter to come up behind her, then tease her about getting exercise.
She frowned, a little disappointed that Carter wasn't there. The headstone her eyes fell upon was a reminder that he wasn't coming back. It seemed like so long ago since he had come... and now it seemed like it had never happened at all, like it was just a dream...
The wind brushed over her face, and she sat down beside the stone. "I miss you, Carter," Lucy whispered, almost as if he were away on business, rather than away for all eternity. She was happy she wasn't depressed about it anymore, but it didn't compensate for the loss of a friend that she had gained for those visits up on the cemetery.
Lucy's face fell again as she realized that hadn't yet told her how he had managed to come back. The memory made her half-smile. "So... souls can just come back?" she had asked for the first few visits, still plagued by the wonderment. "Lucy, I can't tell you now. You'll find out soon enough. I'll tell you." Carter had said, and then grabbed her in a headlock and screwed up her hair. Lucy smiled, the fog chilling the water in her eyes, but she didn't drop a tear. Already so many tears she had laid, and now wasn't the time to cry. It was the time for reveries.
*He had to have been there...* Lucy thought to herself. *People don't just imagine those things I remember...* The thought bugged her as she dug out chart reviews from her shoulder bag. For the rest of the time that she spent up on the hill, Lucy sat ready and alert, half expecting Carter to come out of nowhere and start a conversation, or laugh at her for always having her mind in her work, or make another lame joke about himself being dead.
... But he didn't....
"Forty-five year-old male, went into cardiac arrest in the van. Complained of severe chest pain at the scene, and it elevated from there." The paramedic wheeled the gurney into a trauma room. "Shocked him twice, gave him one of atropine beforehand." Lucy nodded, riding right alongside it.
"Alright, we'll take it from here," Kerry watched the machine. "Get me an EKG, a-"
"Dr. Weaver, I've got it." Lucy nodded up at Kerry, a short glance of contempt as she jotted a few things down on a chart. Kerry gave her a condescending look, then stepped back from the gurney and slowly started to walk around the patient. "Let's get an EKG, Chem. 7, CBC, blood gas, chest film, and start him on ACLS," Lucy told the nurse. "He's stable now, but he could have an aneurysm..." Lucy looked at Dr. Weaver for a moment.
"Good job," Kerry said after a minute. "You're certainly proving yourself as an intern, Dr. Knight."
Lucy gave Kerry a thin smile before looking back down and signing off on the chart. "Thanks." She handed the chart to the nurse who had been scurrying about the trauma room. "But you don't have to be so worried about me." She looked at Kerry, who was staring back at her in some kind of confused emotion. "I'm fine. Really." Lucy forced a smile on her face, even though she still doubted her own sanity.
Kerry waited a moment before nodding and turning past Lucy toward the door. "Okay, Lucy..." was all she said, pushing the door open and stepping out lightly on her cane. Lucy watched her go, wondering whether Dr. Weaver believed her or not. Lucy hoped that, for her own personal sake, Dr. Weaver did.
"Dr. Knight?" Lucy turned to a nurse that had just entered. "We're almost out of epi, and there's a trauma coming in next door."
Lucy let her arms fall in unwinding belief. "Can Mercy get it here?" she asked with an attitude in her tone.
The nurse shook her head, running toward the next room. "No, but some man at the desk asked me to tell you to go get some from the clinic down the street," the nurse gave Lucy a definite look before pushing the door to trauma four open.
Lucy pulled off her stethoscope, her pace quickening as she ran out of the trauma room and into the admit area. She looked around for this 'man' that the nurse spoke of, but the only person there was Jerry. "Jerry? Did you tell some nurse that I'd go get epi from the women's clinic?"
Jerry looked up at Lucy, raising an eyebrow. "No... but we are out of it." Lucy looked him over one last time, just to decipher whether he was joking or not. She decided he wasn't, then nodded.
"Okay, I'm going to get it now. If Dr. Weaver asks, I'll be back in five!" And with a nod from Jerry, Lucy ran swiftly through chairs, out to the ambulance bay, and down the street into the midst of downtown Chicago.
Lucy shivered, looking around. "It's one of these buildings..." Lucy scolded herself for not bringing a coat, and for not knowing which building the clinic was in. All of the buildings on 15th street, across from the hospital, were old apartment buildings, and most of the offices and businesses were two or three floors up on them, without a crowd or sign to point themselves out.
She looked at her watch. If she wanted to get that epi in time, she'd have to guess which one building it was. Lucy ran to the front door of an old, black painted building that looked somewhat familiar. Throwing open the door, she stepped in and looked up at the twisting staircase. Just a few floors... not that bad.
Her feet clunked against the hollow, metal stairs as she quickly climbed them. One after the other, she was relieved to see a sign on the middle landing that directed all visitors to "The Chicago Women's Health District Clinic," then became disappointed when the sign indicated that it was closed today. "Maybe someone's in there anyway..." she said to herself, her pace quickening up the stairs. Her smile faded as she reached the top, faced with a fear that she hadn't felt in so long.
There, standing in front of her was a tall man with light blonde hair. In his hand was a small shot gun. Lucy's feet stopped suddenly, each foot on a different stair. She couldn't even look at the man's face; all she saw was the small, polished gun and his hand on the trigger. She wanted to scream out for help, or for someone to come rushing to her rescue, but there was none. Lucy took a deep, sob-filled breath as she watched the man's hand tighten on the gun, and the slow, inevitable movement his finger made as he pulled back on the trigger.
Lucy could feel herself falling, but she wasn't sure why. She had heard no gun shot, felt no pain. Backwards she fell, into a seemingly endless staircase of fear. Her body bounced slightly as it found the landing again, only this time with her stomach instead of her anxious feet. Something inside of her was falling asleep, and it sent tingles all throughout her spine. Lucy reached an arm up past her head, trying to stretch off the tiredness that was delivering itself through her entire body.
Unable to fight it anymore, her wide, blue eyes sank into a squinted pain, before she finally shut them. Lucy lay sprawled out on the floor, in a gradually forming pool of her own blood...
