By Lindy
Part 7: The Good Day To Die
All she could feel right then was her heartbeat; the soft, monotonous rhythm that would echo, but only for a moment, and then start up again in the next. Lucy lay against the hard cement pavement of the staircase landing, one arm lay stretched above her head, and the other across her stomach. Although she could've move her hand, she could feel the blood flowing freely through her fingers.
*But it had only been one bullet...* the voice in her head seemed to say. *Just one bullet...*
Lucy felt both alive and dead right then, as she could feel herself losing the life that was left in her. It wasn't as bad as before with the stab wounds; then she had felt the blade slash through her stomach and her throat, she had felt the anguish as she lay broken and bleeding on the floor, hidden from all humanity.
Now was much different. Lucy felt almost as if her body had fallen asleep, and the only thing left awake were her brain and her eyes as they blinked both nervous and casual stares into the ceiling above. *I didn't even feel the bullet... I must not have been hit...* When she tried to move, her back went numb with a hard tang, and the uncomfortable chills that went down her spine supported the evidence of the blood emanating from her stomach. Yes... she had been hit. Hard.
"Car..." Lucy opened her mouth, but before she could finish, she was cut off by the nauseating feeling of warm blood in the back of her throat. *Carter...* she thought to herself. This time she wanted him to be here, only not bleeding to death beside her like the last fatal encounter. *Someone... anyone...* Lucy thought to herself. *Please, Carter, I don't want to die alone...*
"Jerry!" Kerry Weaver approached the admit desk, obviously as mad as a raging bull. "Have you seen Lucy anywhere?"
Jerry looked up at the red-haired tantrum. *Uh oh... she's gone from Dr. Knight back to Lucy again... this can't be good...* he thought to himself, trying hard not to smile. "Yeah, she left about an hour ago to go to the women's clinic for epi... something wrong?"
"Why did she go to the women's clinic?" Weaver asked, stomping her cane into the tile to show exactly how upset she was. "We've got an MVA down in trauma four who needs a dose of atropine and about seventeen amps of epi!"
Jerry shrugged, standing up and shuffling a stack of papers. "She said some guy was around or something. He told Lucy was supposed to go and get epi from the women's clinic."
"Some guy?" Kerry's attention was now completely at the hands of Jerry's information. "Who?" she demanded, leaning over Jerry's shoulder.
"I don't know, I didn't see anyone around though." Jerry sat back, placing charts on the counter. "And I was here the whole time. You know, Dr. Weaver, speaking of being here the whole time-" Jerry turned around, expecting to be facing Dr. Weaver, but instead was greeted by air. "Dr. Weaver?" He asked, seeing the redheaded doctor scurrying out into the ambulance bay. "Where are you going?"
"Page Dr. Benton!" Kerry yelled, slamming her body into the door, causing it to come ajar. "And tell him he was right about Lucy!"
"Wha?..." Jerry half-mumbled under his breath, then figured it was one of those things he wasn't going to understand. Complying with her orders, Jerry picked up the phone and dialed in Peter Benton's number.
* * * * * *
"It's not even open today... she could've tried to break in or something..." Kerry Weaver pushed herself on, walking as fast as she could. *I let her do this, this is all my fault, I let her go crazy. She's seeing people, Kerry, seeing imaginary people. She's seeing Carter. Carter's dead. He's been dead, she's been seeing him, and I let her think she was right.*
And now, Lucy was somewhere wandering the streets of Chicago, looking for this mysterious man and some story about epi. Could Kerry be wrong? Was Lucy just, perhaps, looking for a family member? Or an OB nurse like she had when she was a med. student? Sure, those days were gone, but Lucy's heart was good... at least, it had been...
"Dr. Weaver?" Kerry's thoughts were interrupted by the voice of Dr. Benton. "Jerry said something about Lucy leaving. What's wrong, what happened?"
Kerry shook her head, her eyes steadfast as the apartment building neared them. "She's either being a good Samaritan, or she's lost it."
Peter Benton eyed Kerry for a moment. "What happened?"
"Oh, I don't know! One minute, she assures me she's completely sane. The next, some imaginary guy shows up at the desk asking for epi. Then we run out of epi, and she breaks standard protocol and goes to the women's clinic. They're not even open today! She's pretending it's Carter, Peter, and we've let her do it." She burst through the creaky, iron alloy door, giving Peter a remorseful glare.
"Kerry, she's probably fine," Benton said, climbing the first flight of stairs. "She hasn't shown signs lately."
"She did today!" Kerry said, glancing down at him as he climbed behind her. "And she's been doing it for a while!"
Lucy's eyes strained against the neon light hanging above her in the apartment building. It hurt her eyes, but she feared if she shut them she wouldn't never wake up. The voices came from below her, and she could hear them as they got closer.
"She's not well in the head, Peter! We knew it!"
It was a familiar voice... but whose? Female, it was very emotional, almost upset. "Here..." Lucy said, but it came out only as a whisper. The blood fell on to her tongue, causing a strong, sour taste to fill her mouth.
"Dr. Weaver, you're getting yourself upset for nothing. She's- hey... where's this blood coming from?" A thick, red line trickled down the stairs, trailing up to the landing.
"Oh!" Was the only word a horrified Kerry Weaver could make out as her eyes fell upon the body of Lucy Knight, shot, and bleeding, on the floor of the landing, as it blinked back at her in solemn restriction. "Lucy..."
"Kerry, go get a gurney!" Benton rushed to Lucy's side, turning her over with the easiest of care, looking for an exit wound. "No exit wound, the bullet's not out." Kerry heard as she nearly tripped down the stairs, rushing toward the nearest payphone...
* * * * * *
"It's okay, Lucy, it's gonna be okay." The gurney slid through the doors of County. Lucy looked up at the train of people hovering over her. Faces she knew, faces she felt emotion and familiarity for, but there was only one that she was thinking of. Carter...
"Lucy!.... Lucy!..." The cry echoed through her mind. It was the cry of the last encounter, the scream of helplessness as Carter discovered Lucy's fate to be similar to his, as they both lay stabbed and bleeding on the cold, unforgiving floor. Now, she was alone.
"Hang on Lucy!" The voice came from behind her, and Lucy recognized it with an embraceful look.
"Carter," she managed out, spilling blood from her throat out the sides of her mouth. "Carter!..." Her eyes went wild, trying to locate where he was.
"Shhh, Lucy... try not to talk..." Cleo brushed back her blood drenched hair. "She's asking for him," she could hear her say. "Get me an intubation tray."
"No." Lucy made out. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. There were footsteps now, they were all around her; only they weren't those of her colleagues. Well... perhaps one of them...
* * * * * *
Lucy stared at the ceiling. There were whispers all about her, and she couldn't figure out which were her friends and which were foreign. It was a slew of both; and then there were more whispers:
"You fought the good fight today, Lucy. Tomorrow you'll fight another."
"No, Lucy. A vacation. Like the one your daddy's on."
"Carter... passed away... a few minutes ago..."
"I'm Lucy Knight, third year medical student. I start my ER rotation today."
"And then it was just like someone had dumped me out of my body. But I could move, you know? And I felt a lot lighter, and I was still me."
"Lucy, get your grandmother's violin from the shelf and play your song."
"No, I can't suture. I never could."
"Lucy? Lucy? Wake up, Lucy! Stay with us!" Lucy's eyes drifted toward the people surrounding her. Though things were blurry, she could make out the faces of Kerry Weaver, Cleo, Dr. Kovac, and Yosh. Their expressions begged her to stay, and Lucy felt almost pressured to stay alive. Through the color that seemed to swarm around her like a hurricane, Lucy managed to see something else.
It was less of an image. More of a figure: a darkened gray outline of a man, standing behind the medical team at the foot of her gurney. Lucy couldn't make out his face through the blur or the foggy gray that seemed to crowd around this dark character.
The pain was like pressure being kept in a bottle. When the pressure got high, Lucy's body stressed in an array of heat. When the pressure subsided, there was nothing but the shivering cold to let Lucy know she was still alive.
"She's in shock," Lucy heard Kerry say aloud as machines bleeped and people prodded her side and stomach with all sorts of utensils. As the heart monitor began to go chaotic, Lucy's vision snapped up to where the figure had been, but it was no longer there. A cold brush of wind turned Lucy's attention to the floor, where Lucy could see just a peak of foggy, gray outlining.
For some reason, although she didn't know why, Lucy was compelled to see this figure. What was it? Why was it here? Was she imagining things?... Or had she just been imagining them all along? Perhaps she was really crazy... She had to find out. Lucy grasped the side of the gurney, tilting her head to the side with all the force she could muster up that was still left inside of her. The outlined figure turned darker, but the outline went away so that the only gray left was from that of a shadow's reflection of gray on the floor, twisted in the realistic shape of a human body, lying on the ground.
For a brief moment, all the energy that had ever existed in her, all of the force and endurance that she had ever wanted came at this very moment of realization. "Does anyone see him? Can't anyone see the shadow of John Carter? It's right there! It's John! It's the shadow of John Carter!"
And just like that, the wave of energy was gone. The wind seemed to be back in her now, and the struggle to breathe was on once more. "Lucy, lie back!" Weaver commanded, holding back her shoulders and managing to push her down with the greatest of ease.
Lucy wanted to scream out, "Don't let him die! Please, please, he can't die again! He's not supposed to! It's my fault, I got stabbed first! I should die!" but there wasn't enough air inside of her. She heard someone say intubation, and yet another plead for an air mask, but the voices began to fade away, and this time there were no whispers to follow. It was as if she had had her breath knocked out of her, and it had taken part of her with it.
An epiphany came over her as Lucy lay there, dying, bleeding to death. Her eyes were full of solemn joy, though the tattered mess that was once her and the desperate hands of her friends reached all around her, as she realized what was to become of her. Her eyes looked up to the ceiling, and without taking a breath, and she whispered ever so softly while looking up to heaven above. "Lead me home... it's the good day to die."
