DISCLAIMER
With the exception of Katherine Carter, none of these characters belong to me. They are the property of Warner Brothers, Constant C, Amblin Television, and Michael Crichton. I do not own the rights to any of the songs I have used in this fanfiction, nor do I have any contact with the recording artists or lyricists. I would like to thank Rhiannon Perkins and Victoria Houghton for their invaluable help, advice, and kicks up the ass, and Laura Fellowes-Prynne for patiently listening to me rant while I attempted to find a title.
A/N
This fic is set about two and a half years in the future, and starts in January 2004 with Carter as an ER attending. There are mild spoilers for all of season 7, up to Rampage. I know that Anthony Edward's contract ends in 2002, but I like Mark, and this is my fic so I can do whatever the hell I want. He's still here. For the record, in my version of events Chen took Michael back in the season finale and is back together with Frank, the ICU nurse, and Abby went back to medical school and is an OB intern.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Of Past Regrets And Future Fears
Elizabeth Routledge
John Carter entered the lounge for the start of the graveyard shift and almost ran straight into the County General emergency fellow, who was attempting to make fresh coffee. Dropping his bag, he grinned as he surveyed the mangled filter. Deb - he never had managed to remember her Chinese name, even after so many years - Chen was one of the most talented trauma physicians he knew, the definite winner of an Oscar for over-achievement, and had even beaten him to the chief residency over two and a half years ago, but like most of the good doctors in America, was rendered useless when it came to making coffee. He knew that he was the exception rather than the rule - years of too much work to do and a sad discovery, aged nineteen with a term paper to write, that Starbucks was not open at 3am had forced him to learn how to use his grandparents' fancy coffee machine.
'You look beat,' he remarked, taking the pot from her and doing the job himself.
'Yeah? Wait until you have a three-year old toddler and a screaming baby at home.'
'That's unlikely at this late stage.' He handed Jing-Mei her mug and added sugar to his own. 'Besides, from what I remember of my OB rotations, I believe it's strictly necessary to have a woman in order to make a baby. Seriously,' he added, spinning the dial on his locker, 'Who would I have a chance with? Besides my grandparents associates, who, by the way, I wouldn't be seen dead with, I know barely anyone outside of the hospital. You've got Frank, Abby's got Luka, Kerry's… gay…'
'Rena?' Jing-Mei suggested.
'Rena?' he repeated. 'Hell, I hadn't thought about her for ages.'
'There was someone though, right, John? Before I came back from New York? Anne, or something.'
'Anna.' She had been gone for over five years, but he had never forgotten her. 'I was in love with her, but she wasn't interested… there was someone else.'
'Oh, you'll have kids, Carter.' Dr Chen smiled as she headed back into the chaos of the ER. 'I mean, you've got time. You're not exactly what I would call an old man.'
No, he wasn't an old man, but Deb's words had resurfaced the past, and he spent the next few hours in kind of a mist. Anna Del Amico. He had never forgotten her, that much was true, but the first six months or so after she had left had been so painful that he had forced himself to push her to the back of his mind - Lucy had arrived not long after she had gone, he remembered, and he had been a right asshole to her for a while. He had also, if he recalled correctly, had a serious image revamp. The beard. Oh, dear God, the beard.
'Ouch!' He was jerked out of his thoughts by the young guy whose blood he was attempting to draw. 'You sure you've done this before?'
'Yes!' To Carter's relief, the syringe filed with blood. 'You're done.'
'That's it?'
'Go and sit out in chairs and I'll come and get you when your lab results come back.'
'Dr Carter?'
'Yes. Dr Lockhart.' Swivelling round, he was almost blinded by a flash from Abby's left hand. 'Luka finally popped the question, huh?'
'Last night.' She flushed. She had had this all night upstairs. 'Someone called for an OB resident?'
'Trauma two. She's fully effaced and dilated, contractions every one to two minutes. Get in there or you'll miss it. Hey, and Abby?' She turned round. 'Congratulations.'
'Thanks.' She looked pleased. She and Carter had a long history, mainly of friendship, although there had been a point when he had told her that he was in love with her. Unfortunately, Luka and Carter also had a long history, mainly of animosity. It was only recently that they had begun to be civil, and had actually become quite good friends.
Carter sighed and looked at his watch. Almost one. While part of him would always be undeniably attracted to her, he had given up the fight long ago, and grudgingly admitted that she had Luka were good together. Anna and Max, now, were a different story, and one that he had no great wish to pursue right now. He idly considered doing some charts, but decided to take advantage of the relative and unexpected quiet and crash in an exam room. As he closed his eyes, he tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come. The fleeting thought had unleashed a torrent of questions inside his brain, and he wondered exactly why Anna Del Amico and Max Rosher were still together.
He knew, of course, why he was with her. He enjoyed the power he had over her. Carter had seen that much in the two months that Max had been in Chicago. He also liked being with someone who, when he screwed up, would stick with him, take his crap, and get him into rehab. Carter knew that he couldn't exactly be judgemental on Max because of the drugs - his own rehab was a lifetime ago, but some people had never gotten over it, his parents included. But his one screw up since then had been the Vicodin, which he had thrown up immediately. That meant that he had been clean for three years. Abby may have quit being his sponsor not long after, but she was still his role model. Nine years of sobriety. As far as he could tell, Max had never really tried, but then, he may not have had the friends he had to save his ass. More than once.
~~~~~~
Jing-Mei Chen again checked the woman's vitals, meticulously entering her findings on the chart. There was something uncannily familiar about her daughter, and she had been trying to place it all night. As the words 'Person to be contacted in case of emergency' came into focus, so did the handwritten line beneath it. Katherine Carter (Daughter). Carter… this woman's name was Redgrave… and, as she looked more closely, the likeness clicked. Casually, she asked,
'Kat, are you by any chance any relation to John Carter?'
'He's my father.'
'Your… your dad?' Jing-Mei asked carefully.
'Yes.' The girl looked surprised. 'I never knew him. He was younger than my mom - they got drunk at a party from high school. She was a senior, he was a sophomore. She never told him she was pregnant.'
Her heart pounding, the doctor tried to get herself to think rationally. There had to be a hundred John Carters in the world. But in her heart, she knew her instincts were correct. Forcing herself not to sound like she was panicking, Jing-Mei asked if she knew what he looked like, and was shown a wallet picture. That was her Carter all right - about seventeen years younger and with a really bad perm, but Carter nonetheless.
'Mom says he was a good guy, that his brother died when he was just a kid, and he wanted to be a doctor so he could help people like Bobby… but she said that if he had known about me he would have thrown it all in. That's why she didn't tell him,' Kat Carter looked up at Dr Chen. 'She always said that if anything happened to her I should look for him. I guess that'll be Real Soon Now.'
Jing-Mei laid her hand on the girl's shoulder. She had no idea what to say, she only knew that she had to get the hell out of there and find the guy who was, in many ways, her closest friend. Finally she said, 'I wouldn't worry about it, Kat. These things tend to have a way of working themselves out. Call me if you need anything.'
As soon as she was out of the trauma room, she charged down the hall to the admit desk and asked Amira where Dr Carter was. She didn't wait around to thank the desk clerk, but stormed into exam two. Woken by her less than quiet entrance, Carter jerked upwards. He had been paged a couple of hours ago and had seen a few patients then, but had eventually crashed again about twenty minutes ago. Squinting at the clock, he saw that it was a little after four.
'Something rolling up?' he asked.
'We've been pretty quiet. It's starting to pick up a little now…' Seeing him, she couldn't be mad at him now. He had just been a kid, and - he hadn't known, for crying out loud! 'Carter, I have something I need to tell you.'
'What?' He wondered fleetingly if she might be pregnant again.
'Do you remember anyone named Julia Redgrave? You…'
'Slept with her in my high school sophomore year,' he interrupted. 'Deb, it was the night I lost my virginity. I'm hardly likely to forget. I mean, I may have been drunk, but I wasn't that drunk - how do you know, anyway?'
'What, uh, what happened next?'
'She finished with me and went to UCLA. What is this, twenty questions?'
'John, she was pregnant?'
'She what?'
'I'm sorry, but you were going to find out. Anyway, this girl is the image of you, and she has your last name. Someone round here would have clicked sooner or later. Julia has end stage liver cancer. She's in trauma two… Carter, the woman has hours to live, and when she dies your daughter is going to come looking for you.'
'My… my daughter?' He couldn't believe he was hearing this.
'Katherine. Kat. She's seventeen.'
'Look, Deb, this is going to sound weird, but are you sure that this is me?'
'You slept with her mother around about the time she must have gotten pregnant, she has your last name, she's the absolute double of you. Besides, she has a picture of you and she was talking about Bobby.'
'God!'
There was an uncomfortable silence of several minutes, which Jing-Mei broke. 'So, you had a perm?'
~~~~~~
Carter managed to get off his shift an hour early, and was walking into City Hall at ten past seven, ten minutes after it had opened. Managing to get quick directions from a clerk, he found himself talking to yet another clerk and asking for the birth certificate of Katherine Carter and the will of Julia Elizabeth Redgrave. Five minutes later he had them in his hands. After reading the birth certificate carefully, which verified beyond all reasonable doubt that he was her father, he turned to the last page of the will.
'I leave custody of my daughter, Katherine Carter, to her father, John Truman Carter the Third.'
There was more, going on about 'in the event of this person's death' and about what should be done if he couldn't be found, but Carter ignored it and blindly handed the documents back before walking outside. It was drizzling, but he needed to clear his head. He had, for the hundredth time, been trying to quit smoking, but started again on the spot. He had to tell Kat. Not wanting to find out that there had been a mistake and subsequently having to disappoint her, he hadn't said anything, and had avoided trauma two until he left at six-thirty. Pulling out his cell phone, he called Deb at the hospital. When she came on the line, he immediately said,
'She's mine, and uh, Julia's leaving me custody.'
Deb paused, then said quietly, 'I just called time of death. Carter… John? What are you going to do now?'
He shrugged. 'What I have to do. I guess, to a certain extent, what I want to do. You know, because I missed the first eighteen years of her life and I'm sure as hell not gonna stand by and miss the rest.'
'But?' she prompted.
'But I'm a dad, Deb. And… and not like to a baby, when you have nine months warning, and then it's little when it comes out and it develops gradually. She's a teenager! A college student, practically. And I didn't hear anyone giving me any warnings.' He hesitated. 'Deb - I'm scared.'
With the exception of Katherine Carter, none of these characters belong to me. They are the property of Warner Brothers, Constant C, Amblin Television, and Michael Crichton. I do not own the rights to any of the songs I have used in this fanfiction, nor do I have any contact with the recording artists or lyricists. I would like to thank Rhiannon Perkins and Victoria Houghton for their invaluable help, advice, and kicks up the ass, and Laura Fellowes-Prynne for patiently listening to me rant while I attempted to find a title.
A/N
This fic is set about two and a half years in the future, and starts in January 2004 with Carter as an ER attending. There are mild spoilers for all of season 7, up to Rampage. I know that Anthony Edward's contract ends in 2002, but I like Mark, and this is my fic so I can do whatever the hell I want. He's still here. For the record, in my version of events Chen took Michael back in the season finale and is back together with Frank, the ICU nurse, and Abby went back to medical school and is an OB intern.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Of Past Regrets And Future Fears
Elizabeth Routledge
John Carter entered the lounge for the start of the graveyard shift and almost ran straight into the County General emergency fellow, who was attempting to make fresh coffee. Dropping his bag, he grinned as he surveyed the mangled filter. Deb - he never had managed to remember her Chinese name, even after so many years - Chen was one of the most talented trauma physicians he knew, the definite winner of an Oscar for over-achievement, and had even beaten him to the chief residency over two and a half years ago, but like most of the good doctors in America, was rendered useless when it came to making coffee. He knew that he was the exception rather than the rule - years of too much work to do and a sad discovery, aged nineteen with a term paper to write, that Starbucks was not open at 3am had forced him to learn how to use his grandparents' fancy coffee machine.
'You look beat,' he remarked, taking the pot from her and doing the job himself.
'Yeah? Wait until you have a three-year old toddler and a screaming baby at home.'
'That's unlikely at this late stage.' He handed Jing-Mei her mug and added sugar to his own. 'Besides, from what I remember of my OB rotations, I believe it's strictly necessary to have a woman in order to make a baby. Seriously,' he added, spinning the dial on his locker, 'Who would I have a chance with? Besides my grandparents associates, who, by the way, I wouldn't be seen dead with, I know barely anyone outside of the hospital. You've got Frank, Abby's got Luka, Kerry's… gay…'
'Rena?' Jing-Mei suggested.
'Rena?' he repeated. 'Hell, I hadn't thought about her for ages.'
'There was someone though, right, John? Before I came back from New York? Anne, or something.'
'Anna.' She had been gone for over five years, but he had never forgotten her. 'I was in love with her, but she wasn't interested… there was someone else.'
'Oh, you'll have kids, Carter.' Dr Chen smiled as she headed back into the chaos of the ER. 'I mean, you've got time. You're not exactly what I would call an old man.'
No, he wasn't an old man, but Deb's words had resurfaced the past, and he spent the next few hours in kind of a mist. Anna Del Amico. He had never forgotten her, that much was true, but the first six months or so after she had left had been so painful that he had forced himself to push her to the back of his mind - Lucy had arrived not long after she had gone, he remembered, and he had been a right asshole to her for a while. He had also, if he recalled correctly, had a serious image revamp. The beard. Oh, dear God, the beard.
'Ouch!' He was jerked out of his thoughts by the young guy whose blood he was attempting to draw. 'You sure you've done this before?'
'Yes!' To Carter's relief, the syringe filed with blood. 'You're done.'
'That's it?'
'Go and sit out in chairs and I'll come and get you when your lab results come back.'
'Dr Carter?'
'Yes. Dr Lockhart.' Swivelling round, he was almost blinded by a flash from Abby's left hand. 'Luka finally popped the question, huh?'
'Last night.' She flushed. She had had this all night upstairs. 'Someone called for an OB resident?'
'Trauma two. She's fully effaced and dilated, contractions every one to two minutes. Get in there or you'll miss it. Hey, and Abby?' She turned round. 'Congratulations.'
'Thanks.' She looked pleased. She and Carter had a long history, mainly of friendship, although there had been a point when he had told her that he was in love with her. Unfortunately, Luka and Carter also had a long history, mainly of animosity. It was only recently that they had begun to be civil, and had actually become quite good friends.
Carter sighed and looked at his watch. Almost one. While part of him would always be undeniably attracted to her, he had given up the fight long ago, and grudgingly admitted that she had Luka were good together. Anna and Max, now, were a different story, and one that he had no great wish to pursue right now. He idly considered doing some charts, but decided to take advantage of the relative and unexpected quiet and crash in an exam room. As he closed his eyes, he tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come. The fleeting thought had unleashed a torrent of questions inside his brain, and he wondered exactly why Anna Del Amico and Max Rosher were still together.
He knew, of course, why he was with her. He enjoyed the power he had over her. Carter had seen that much in the two months that Max had been in Chicago. He also liked being with someone who, when he screwed up, would stick with him, take his crap, and get him into rehab. Carter knew that he couldn't exactly be judgemental on Max because of the drugs - his own rehab was a lifetime ago, but some people had never gotten over it, his parents included. But his one screw up since then had been the Vicodin, which he had thrown up immediately. That meant that he had been clean for three years. Abby may have quit being his sponsor not long after, but she was still his role model. Nine years of sobriety. As far as he could tell, Max had never really tried, but then, he may not have had the friends he had to save his ass. More than once.
~~~~~~
Jing-Mei Chen again checked the woman's vitals, meticulously entering her findings on the chart. There was something uncannily familiar about her daughter, and she had been trying to place it all night. As the words 'Person to be contacted in case of emergency' came into focus, so did the handwritten line beneath it. Katherine Carter (Daughter). Carter… this woman's name was Redgrave… and, as she looked more closely, the likeness clicked. Casually, she asked,
'Kat, are you by any chance any relation to John Carter?'
'He's my father.'
'Your… your dad?' Jing-Mei asked carefully.
'Yes.' The girl looked surprised. 'I never knew him. He was younger than my mom - they got drunk at a party from high school. She was a senior, he was a sophomore. She never told him she was pregnant.'
Her heart pounding, the doctor tried to get herself to think rationally. There had to be a hundred John Carters in the world. But in her heart, she knew her instincts were correct. Forcing herself not to sound like she was panicking, Jing-Mei asked if she knew what he looked like, and was shown a wallet picture. That was her Carter all right - about seventeen years younger and with a really bad perm, but Carter nonetheless.
'Mom says he was a good guy, that his brother died when he was just a kid, and he wanted to be a doctor so he could help people like Bobby… but she said that if he had known about me he would have thrown it all in. That's why she didn't tell him,' Kat Carter looked up at Dr Chen. 'She always said that if anything happened to her I should look for him. I guess that'll be Real Soon Now.'
Jing-Mei laid her hand on the girl's shoulder. She had no idea what to say, she only knew that she had to get the hell out of there and find the guy who was, in many ways, her closest friend. Finally she said, 'I wouldn't worry about it, Kat. These things tend to have a way of working themselves out. Call me if you need anything.'
As soon as she was out of the trauma room, she charged down the hall to the admit desk and asked Amira where Dr Carter was. She didn't wait around to thank the desk clerk, but stormed into exam two. Woken by her less than quiet entrance, Carter jerked upwards. He had been paged a couple of hours ago and had seen a few patients then, but had eventually crashed again about twenty minutes ago. Squinting at the clock, he saw that it was a little after four.
'Something rolling up?' he asked.
'We've been pretty quiet. It's starting to pick up a little now…' Seeing him, she couldn't be mad at him now. He had just been a kid, and - he hadn't known, for crying out loud! 'Carter, I have something I need to tell you.'
'What?' He wondered fleetingly if she might be pregnant again.
'Do you remember anyone named Julia Redgrave? You…'
'Slept with her in my high school sophomore year,' he interrupted. 'Deb, it was the night I lost my virginity. I'm hardly likely to forget. I mean, I may have been drunk, but I wasn't that drunk - how do you know, anyway?'
'What, uh, what happened next?'
'She finished with me and went to UCLA. What is this, twenty questions?'
'John, she was pregnant?'
'She what?'
'I'm sorry, but you were going to find out. Anyway, this girl is the image of you, and she has your last name. Someone round here would have clicked sooner or later. Julia has end stage liver cancer. She's in trauma two… Carter, the woman has hours to live, and when she dies your daughter is going to come looking for you.'
'My… my daughter?' He couldn't believe he was hearing this.
'Katherine. Kat. She's seventeen.'
'Look, Deb, this is going to sound weird, but are you sure that this is me?'
'You slept with her mother around about the time she must have gotten pregnant, she has your last name, she's the absolute double of you. Besides, she has a picture of you and she was talking about Bobby.'
'God!'
There was an uncomfortable silence of several minutes, which Jing-Mei broke. 'So, you had a perm?'
~~~~~~
Carter managed to get off his shift an hour early, and was walking into City Hall at ten past seven, ten minutes after it had opened. Managing to get quick directions from a clerk, he found himself talking to yet another clerk and asking for the birth certificate of Katherine Carter and the will of Julia Elizabeth Redgrave. Five minutes later he had them in his hands. After reading the birth certificate carefully, which verified beyond all reasonable doubt that he was her father, he turned to the last page of the will.
'I leave custody of my daughter, Katherine Carter, to her father, John Truman Carter the Third.'
There was more, going on about 'in the event of this person's death' and about what should be done if he couldn't be found, but Carter ignored it and blindly handed the documents back before walking outside. It was drizzling, but he needed to clear his head. He had, for the hundredth time, been trying to quit smoking, but started again on the spot. He had to tell Kat. Not wanting to find out that there had been a mistake and subsequently having to disappoint her, he hadn't said anything, and had avoided trauma two until he left at six-thirty. Pulling out his cell phone, he called Deb at the hospital. When she came on the line, he immediately said,
'She's mine, and uh, Julia's leaving me custody.'
Deb paused, then said quietly, 'I just called time of death. Carter… John? What are you going to do now?'
He shrugged. 'What I have to do. I guess, to a certain extent, what I want to do. You know, because I missed the first eighteen years of her life and I'm sure as hell not gonna stand by and miss the rest.'
'But?' she prompted.
'But I'm a dad, Deb. And… and not like to a baby, when you have nine months warning, and then it's little when it comes out and it develops gradually. She's a teenager! A college student, practically. And I didn't hear anyone giving me any warnings.' He hesitated. 'Deb - I'm scared.'