"Mr. Krane, you were riding your motercycle and crashed...Did you hurt your neck or head at all?"
"No, I was wearing my helmet. Just my leg, damn bike fell on it."
Carter picked up the helmet he had been wearing, which now had a large crack in it. It had been hit by the handlebars of the motercycle when Tony Krane fell. "Can you put this on for me?"
Giving Carter a strange look, Tony did as he was asked. "OK now?"
"That helmet's a little small, it barely covers your head. It looks like a little hat, not a safety helmet. You'd better get a real helmet, this one's not very safe."
"Listen, Dr. Carter, if I were worried about safety, I wouldn't own a motercycle."
"True, but you could be arrested for having a helmet that doesn't cover your head sufficiently." At least Carter thought so. He wasn't a motercycle kind of guy, so he wouldn't know for sure. "Well, your leg could be broken, we'll get some x-rays, but it doesn't look too bad. You were lucky, Mr. Krane."
~*~
"Carter, you heading out?"
"Yeah Dave, I've got some stuff to do. My shift ended about 10 minutes ago anyway."
"You think you could cover for me? I wouldn't ask, but..."
"You have a date? Or are you going to make up a good excuse this time?"
"I got a date, yeah, so? I forgot I was on graveyard today. Can you cover for me?"
"No way, Dave. I gotta do some stuff, and I'm not waiting til tomorrow. Besides, if I don't sleep...and I'm on again tomorrow. See ya. Good luck."
"Yeah, sure...see if I take you for a ride in my new Beemer."
"Oh, you chose...yeah, I wasn't holding my breath anyway, Malucci."
"Very funny, but I'm getting that car! You wait and see!"
~*~
*Dammit, I forgot my keys* Carter thought, turning back into the ambulance bay doors.
"Alright Laura, time for your first LP." Dr. Chen said to her new med student. Laura needed to do some ER work to make up for some deficiency in her schedule, so in order to move up to 4th year status, the hospital set her up for a few weeks extra in the ER. Ahhh, the first LP. Carter could still remember his "champagne tap". Mark Greene had ended up buying his champagne, though from the look on his face he had seemed pretty mad about it. And it was expensive to be just for him. Carter had never thought much of it, he'd figured it was tradition. Figured Greene was mad because he had to run out and buy champagne.
An idea occured to Carter, but he dismissed it quickly, laughing at himself for thinking of it. A ridiculous notion, foolish and insane at best. Only an idiot would...but it was a nice thought, something he might have done earlier. But it had been a year and a half. Sighing, he proceeded to the nearest liquor store, knowing the foolish idea would keep coming back to him until he actually did it.
~*~
It had been a while since he'd come up there. The sight of her name engraved on the stone was too much, too final for him to process. Lucy was under that ground, in a coffin. Mangled, he could only imagine how bad her injuries were, the lines of stitches that must have been running up and down her body. Kind of like they were on his. But worse. He knew he could have called psych down earlier, he could have listened to Lucy, he could have done a million things differently. And he didn't know if it would have helped. He didn't know if Paul would have killed another person, if Paul would have ever gotten the knife...but the thought that someone else might have died and Lucy might have lived had angered him for a while. That he might still have her, be able to talk to her and apologize for how damn stubborn he had been. But eventually he realized that anyone dying would have been horrible, and that it was selfish to want Lucy back. Because he had taken advantage of her and been rude and short tempered with her while she was alive, he didn't deserve another chance with her. Or so he told himself when he found himself wishing she would come back.
"Well Luce...I know I never come up here. I'm sorry about that. I miss you, really. Too much sometimes. Guess you know about all that's happened. It wasn't your fault, Luce. It was me, my guilt. But...I was thinking of you today. I think about you a lot. And...well...I never got a chance to give you this." He took the champagne bottle out of the paper bag. "It's a tradition, you know. Maybe no one ever told you, but...when the student does an LP, the resident's supposed to buy him or her some champagne. Greene got me mine, and I figured...I owed it to you. I know, it's corny, but...just something I had to do. Hope you don't expect me to leave alcohol in a dark cemetary. It'd be gone in a second. But..." He took off the foil, grabbing a swiss army knife out of the pocket of his pants. He opened the bottle and poured it into a cup he had been clutching. "To the best med student I ever had. I miss ya, Luce." He drank the small portion in the bottom of the cup, the re-corked it. He looked at the gravestone one more time. "You'll forgive me, I hope, if I don't come up here too much. I'd rather remember you alive...you were wonderful, Luce, and I'm sorry I made you think otherwise. But I'm in AA now, so I'd better stop drinking the champagne and go. I've got a meeting." He sighed, not wanting to go to AA, but knowing he had to. "Goodnight Luce. I won't forget you." He promised as he walked slowly down the hill to his Jeep, driving away into the still night.