(Everything I Do) I Do It For You
It was August. Temperatures in Chicago had hit record levels, and it was swelteringly hot even at this hour of the morning. And John Carter was suffering from the effects of his wife being four-and-a-half months pregnant. He was returning from the 24-hour convenience store, where he had over the last few weeks become very good friends with the guy working the night shift, armed with a pint of Ben and Jerry's New York Fudge ice cream. He was dying for caffeine, but neither of them was drinking it for the duration of her pregnancy. Nine times out of ten he would get up in the morning to find his wife's head down the toilet. But most of all, he was hopping with excitement and wished that the next five months would hurry up and disappear. If he was suffering, it was nothing compared to what Anna was going through, for which reason he put up with her cravings without laughing too much at some of the stranger requests.
Sliding his key into the door, he tried to be quiet so that he wouldn't wake up Kat. Or any of his neighbours for that matter. They tended to be reasonably understanding, but at four-thirty in the morning he thought that it might be better not to push his luck. To his surprise, Kat was in the kitchen, and she looked as surprised as he felt.
'Dad? Where've you been?'
'Oh.' He looked down at the plastic shopping bag. 'The K-Mart. Anna got hungry for ice cream.'
'Well, she's asleep now.' His daughter flicked over a page in her book.
'She's asleep?' He dropped the bag on the table. 'Oh great. Anyway, what are you doing up?'
'Couldn't sleep. I'm on at six, not much point in going back to bed.' Kat was volunteering in the ER during her summer vacation. 'You?'
'Seven.' He yawned. 'I'll come in with you, I'll never get back to sleep now, not in this heat. Is it any cooler in Boston?'
'Hard to imagine it being hotter.' She got up. 'I'm gonna go take a shower, get dressed.'
'Okay.' Finding a pen, he wrote a note to Anna, telling her that he had gone into work early, the ice cream - if she still wanted it - was in the freezer, and she should ring him at the hospital if she had any more nausea. Since the wedding reception, he had turned into a mother hen almost overnight, and no matter how much Abby Kovac and Janet Coburn tried to tell him that morning sickness was part of the deal, he worried about Anna constantly, and the result was that she spent half her time fending him off.
When he got to the hospital, the place was so flooded with patients that he barely had time to spare his wife a thought before she came on at nine.
'Hey.' She tapped him on the shoulder and he half turned round from suturing a head lac.
'Hi. You get sick this morning?'
'No, mom! I did not get sick this morning. I did, however, eat the ice cream. Thank you.'
'What, all of it?'
'No. Most of it.' She laughed at his expression. 'Hey, I'm pregnant, it's allowed. Do we have any kids for me to see?'
'It's summer, ma'am, you have a waiting list.'
'Terrific,' she muttered sarcastically, and went off to see the first of her finger splinters and wrist fractures.
'She your wife?' asked the guy whose forehead gash he was sewing up.
'Yeah.' Carter still experienced a glow of pride whenever he said that. He still woke up in the morning and couldn't believe that she had agreed to spend the rest of her life with him. Pulling the drape off the man's head, his wedding ring glinted in the sun. 'Mr Sauber, you are done.'
'Thank you, doctor.'
'You have a good day, sir.'
'Carter?' Haleh stopped outside the exam room. 'You do know that Mrs Roberts in curtain three is still waiting on transport, right?'
'Still?' He pulled off his gloves. 'Transport must be backed up. Right, thanks Haleh, I got it.' Rather than spending another hour hanging around waiting for someone to show up, he waylaid his daughter. 'Kat, curtain three, got a little transport job for you. She's kinda old. She was supposed to be in Radiology an hour ago.'
'I'm on it.'
A good point about it being summer, other than the fact that the never ending snow had at last disappeared, was that there were more volunteers around in the daytime, which meant that at least labs got taken to the lab and patients actually occasionally got transported to where they were supposed to be.'
~~~~~~
'Hi, I'm looking for Dr Del Amico.'
'Dr Del Amico?' Frank's face creased into a frown. 'You mean Dr Carter?'
'Um, yes, of course.' Max Rosher's lips tightened. So, his girlfriend had not only gotten him put in jail and lost him his job and his license, she had married that Carter scum. Stuttering, he tried to cover his mistake. 'I thought she still practised under her maiden name.'
'Nope. Down the hall, the paediatric ER. Just look for the long line of kids.'
'Thanks.' He was halfway down the hall when Carter bumped into him. Absorbed in some lab results, he barely took in the guy's features and was back at admitting before realizing that he knew him vaguely but couldn't place him. Meanwhile, Max had gone into the paeds ER unheeded, where Anna, her endless flow of patients having trickled off somewhat, was catching up on a bit of paperwork. His eyes narrowed as he took in the flash of silver on her left hand, the swollen abdomen, and the sparkle in her eyes.
'You slut.'
'Max?' Anna drew in her breath sharply. 'What are you doing in Chicago?'
'Looking for you. So.' His voice was cool, angry, mocking her. 'You married him. You got yourself pregnant and you married him.'
'The other way round, actually.'
'Yeah, whatever.'
'What do you want here, Max?'
'You?'
'What about me? I've got a new life, I'm happy, and I'm having a baby. I owe you nothing.'
'You owe me everything.'
'You - raped - me!' she shrieked. He lunged for her and missed, and she kicked the door open, yelling down the hall. 'Security!'
Someone was there before security. Mark had been going through charts and had casually remarked, 'Did I just see Max Rosher back there?'
It had been enough for Carter's feet to hit the ground running, and as Max turned round, he hit him a well-aimed blow on the nose. It took Malik, Frank, Mark and Dave to pull him off, by which time he had given Max one hell of a battering and had acquired a gash underneath his eye. Struggling against the human restraints, he panted out,
'Stay the hell away from my wife.'
'Carter, shut up,' Mark snapped. 'And Dr Rosher…'
'Mr Rosher,' Anna corrected him.
'Get out of this hospital before I call the cops.' He released Carter and said, more gently, 'Are you okay?'
'I'm fine.'
'That's a pretty nasty gash. You want me to call plastics?'
'No. You can do it. Get Anna checked out.'
'Okay. Anna, who's your OB?'
'Coburn, but…'
'No buts.'
'Fine.' Anna relented. 'But if you insisted on my being poked and prodded and ultrasounded, I'd a million times rather have Abby.'
'Whatever you want. Chuny, would you call down Dr Kovac from OB? Carter, suture room. Go.'
~~~~~~
The baby was fine. Abby, who didn't lecture her as Janet Coburn would have done, simply advised that it might be an idea to lay off the slap fights for a while and told Kat and Carter to stop fussing. Just as the ER was beginning to return to some semblance of normalcy, a call came through on the radio.
'County base, this is Unit 57 incoming with an unconscious male in full arrest, probable OD. We found an empty vial of percocet on his person.'
Carter and Anna exchanged glances, and Carter ran for the radio. 'Unit 57, this is County base, what's your ETA?'
'Nine minutes.'
'Haleh, check and see if we're missing any percocet. Doris, can you give us a description?'
'Male, mid to late thirties. Driver's license and donor card ID him as Max Rosher from Philadelphia.'
'County base, signing off.' Carter clicked the radio off. 'Prep trauma two…'
'You two,' Mark indicated Carter and Anna, 'I want you to stay out of there. Especially you, Carter. You're in no fit state to be objective about this one. No arguments. I know, remember.'
Besides Elizabeth, Carter had been the only person that Mark had ever told about Derek Fossen. It was over four years ago now, and the man was alive and in jail the last they heard, but Mark never forgot how terrified he had been at what he had almost done and became. Respecting his point, Carter nodded.
Max certainly appeared to have done the job properly. He had taken enough of the drug to kill a healthy elephant. He was brought in still in full arrest, had two seizures, and eventually Mark gave the order to stop CPR.
'Asystole.'
'Time of death, 14:32. Send him down to the morgue, call the coroner.' He pulled his gloves off. 'I'll go find Carter and Anna, let them know.'
~~~~~~
A week later, the two of them stood in a Chicago cemetery. The gravestones around them bore sentiments and were decorated with flowers, but the one they were in front of was plain, inscribed simply,
'Max Rosher
1967 - 2005'
Her hair blowing in the summer breeze, Anna Carter let her hand brush the bump beneath her skirt and squeezed her husband's fingers.
'Let's go home.'
Look into my eyes, you will see
What you mean to me
Search your heart, search your soul
And when you find me there you'll search no more
Don't tell me it's not worth trying for
You can't tell me it's not worth dying for
You know it's true
Everything I do - I do it for you
Look into my heart, you will find
There's nothing there to hide
Take me as I am, take my life
I would give it all, I would sacrifice
Don't tell me it's not worth fighting for
I can't help it, there's nothing I want more
You know it's true
Everything I do - I do it for you
There's no love, like your love
And no other, could give more love
There's nowhere, unless you're there
All the time, all the way
Oh, you can't tell me it's not worth trying for
I can't help it, there's nothing I want more
I would fight for you, I'd lie for you
Walk the wire for you, yeah I'd die for you
You know it's true
Everything I do - I do it for you
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Hi, guys. Part 11 of 13 up, earlier than I thought it would be, and profuse apologies to any fans of Max Rosher. Bryan Adams does not belong to me, and neither does his song. Neither does Ben and Jerry's ice cream - or, as I already pointed out, Noah Wyle - but hey, I can dream, can't I. (See, I don't have pregnancy cravings, I just have plain cravings) To give you all some idea of time scale, I'm going to Greece on Thursday afternoon, and I plan to get this whole thing done and posted before I go, so look for Chapter 12 and the Epilogue/Chapter 13 to be up here by Wednesday night at the latest. Chapter 12 might be up by tomorrow.
It was August. Temperatures in Chicago had hit record levels, and it was swelteringly hot even at this hour of the morning. And John Carter was suffering from the effects of his wife being four-and-a-half months pregnant. He was returning from the 24-hour convenience store, where he had over the last few weeks become very good friends with the guy working the night shift, armed with a pint of Ben and Jerry's New York Fudge ice cream. He was dying for caffeine, but neither of them was drinking it for the duration of her pregnancy. Nine times out of ten he would get up in the morning to find his wife's head down the toilet. But most of all, he was hopping with excitement and wished that the next five months would hurry up and disappear. If he was suffering, it was nothing compared to what Anna was going through, for which reason he put up with her cravings without laughing too much at some of the stranger requests.
Sliding his key into the door, he tried to be quiet so that he wouldn't wake up Kat. Or any of his neighbours for that matter. They tended to be reasonably understanding, but at four-thirty in the morning he thought that it might be better not to push his luck. To his surprise, Kat was in the kitchen, and she looked as surprised as he felt.
'Dad? Where've you been?'
'Oh.' He looked down at the plastic shopping bag. 'The K-Mart. Anna got hungry for ice cream.'
'Well, she's asleep now.' His daughter flicked over a page in her book.
'She's asleep?' He dropped the bag on the table. 'Oh great. Anyway, what are you doing up?'
'Couldn't sleep. I'm on at six, not much point in going back to bed.' Kat was volunteering in the ER during her summer vacation. 'You?'
'Seven.' He yawned. 'I'll come in with you, I'll never get back to sleep now, not in this heat. Is it any cooler in Boston?'
'Hard to imagine it being hotter.' She got up. 'I'm gonna go take a shower, get dressed.'
'Okay.' Finding a pen, he wrote a note to Anna, telling her that he had gone into work early, the ice cream - if she still wanted it - was in the freezer, and she should ring him at the hospital if she had any more nausea. Since the wedding reception, he had turned into a mother hen almost overnight, and no matter how much Abby Kovac and Janet Coburn tried to tell him that morning sickness was part of the deal, he worried about Anna constantly, and the result was that she spent half her time fending him off.
When he got to the hospital, the place was so flooded with patients that he barely had time to spare his wife a thought before she came on at nine.
'Hey.' She tapped him on the shoulder and he half turned round from suturing a head lac.
'Hi. You get sick this morning?'
'No, mom! I did not get sick this morning. I did, however, eat the ice cream. Thank you.'
'What, all of it?'
'No. Most of it.' She laughed at his expression. 'Hey, I'm pregnant, it's allowed. Do we have any kids for me to see?'
'It's summer, ma'am, you have a waiting list.'
'Terrific,' she muttered sarcastically, and went off to see the first of her finger splinters and wrist fractures.
'She your wife?' asked the guy whose forehead gash he was sewing up.
'Yeah.' Carter still experienced a glow of pride whenever he said that. He still woke up in the morning and couldn't believe that she had agreed to spend the rest of her life with him. Pulling the drape off the man's head, his wedding ring glinted in the sun. 'Mr Sauber, you are done.'
'Thank you, doctor.'
'You have a good day, sir.'
'Carter?' Haleh stopped outside the exam room. 'You do know that Mrs Roberts in curtain three is still waiting on transport, right?'
'Still?' He pulled off his gloves. 'Transport must be backed up. Right, thanks Haleh, I got it.' Rather than spending another hour hanging around waiting for someone to show up, he waylaid his daughter. 'Kat, curtain three, got a little transport job for you. She's kinda old. She was supposed to be in Radiology an hour ago.'
'I'm on it.'
A good point about it being summer, other than the fact that the never ending snow had at last disappeared, was that there were more volunteers around in the daytime, which meant that at least labs got taken to the lab and patients actually occasionally got transported to where they were supposed to be.'
~~~~~~
'Hi, I'm looking for Dr Del Amico.'
'Dr Del Amico?' Frank's face creased into a frown. 'You mean Dr Carter?'
'Um, yes, of course.' Max Rosher's lips tightened. So, his girlfriend had not only gotten him put in jail and lost him his job and his license, she had married that Carter scum. Stuttering, he tried to cover his mistake. 'I thought she still practised under her maiden name.'
'Nope. Down the hall, the paediatric ER. Just look for the long line of kids.'
'Thanks.' He was halfway down the hall when Carter bumped into him. Absorbed in some lab results, he barely took in the guy's features and was back at admitting before realizing that he knew him vaguely but couldn't place him. Meanwhile, Max had gone into the paeds ER unheeded, where Anna, her endless flow of patients having trickled off somewhat, was catching up on a bit of paperwork. His eyes narrowed as he took in the flash of silver on her left hand, the swollen abdomen, and the sparkle in her eyes.
'You slut.'
'Max?' Anna drew in her breath sharply. 'What are you doing in Chicago?'
'Looking for you. So.' His voice was cool, angry, mocking her. 'You married him. You got yourself pregnant and you married him.'
'The other way round, actually.'
'Yeah, whatever.'
'What do you want here, Max?'
'You?'
'What about me? I've got a new life, I'm happy, and I'm having a baby. I owe you nothing.'
'You owe me everything.'
'You - raped - me!' she shrieked. He lunged for her and missed, and she kicked the door open, yelling down the hall. 'Security!'
Someone was there before security. Mark had been going through charts and had casually remarked, 'Did I just see Max Rosher back there?'
It had been enough for Carter's feet to hit the ground running, and as Max turned round, he hit him a well-aimed blow on the nose. It took Malik, Frank, Mark and Dave to pull him off, by which time he had given Max one hell of a battering and had acquired a gash underneath his eye. Struggling against the human restraints, he panted out,
'Stay the hell away from my wife.'
'Carter, shut up,' Mark snapped. 'And Dr Rosher…'
'Mr Rosher,' Anna corrected him.
'Get out of this hospital before I call the cops.' He released Carter and said, more gently, 'Are you okay?'
'I'm fine.'
'That's a pretty nasty gash. You want me to call plastics?'
'No. You can do it. Get Anna checked out.'
'Okay. Anna, who's your OB?'
'Coburn, but…'
'No buts.'
'Fine.' Anna relented. 'But if you insisted on my being poked and prodded and ultrasounded, I'd a million times rather have Abby.'
'Whatever you want. Chuny, would you call down Dr Kovac from OB? Carter, suture room. Go.'
~~~~~~
The baby was fine. Abby, who didn't lecture her as Janet Coburn would have done, simply advised that it might be an idea to lay off the slap fights for a while and told Kat and Carter to stop fussing. Just as the ER was beginning to return to some semblance of normalcy, a call came through on the radio.
'County base, this is Unit 57 incoming with an unconscious male in full arrest, probable OD. We found an empty vial of percocet on his person.'
Carter and Anna exchanged glances, and Carter ran for the radio. 'Unit 57, this is County base, what's your ETA?'
'Nine minutes.'
'Haleh, check and see if we're missing any percocet. Doris, can you give us a description?'
'Male, mid to late thirties. Driver's license and donor card ID him as Max Rosher from Philadelphia.'
'County base, signing off.' Carter clicked the radio off. 'Prep trauma two…'
'You two,' Mark indicated Carter and Anna, 'I want you to stay out of there. Especially you, Carter. You're in no fit state to be objective about this one. No arguments. I know, remember.'
Besides Elizabeth, Carter had been the only person that Mark had ever told about Derek Fossen. It was over four years ago now, and the man was alive and in jail the last they heard, but Mark never forgot how terrified he had been at what he had almost done and became. Respecting his point, Carter nodded.
Max certainly appeared to have done the job properly. He had taken enough of the drug to kill a healthy elephant. He was brought in still in full arrest, had two seizures, and eventually Mark gave the order to stop CPR.
'Asystole.'
'Time of death, 14:32. Send him down to the morgue, call the coroner.' He pulled his gloves off. 'I'll go find Carter and Anna, let them know.'
~~~~~~
A week later, the two of them stood in a Chicago cemetery. The gravestones around them bore sentiments and were decorated with flowers, but the one they were in front of was plain, inscribed simply,
'Max Rosher
1967 - 2005'
Her hair blowing in the summer breeze, Anna Carter let her hand brush the bump beneath her skirt and squeezed her husband's fingers.
'Let's go home.'
Look into my eyes, you will see
What you mean to me
Search your heart, search your soul
And when you find me there you'll search no more
Don't tell me it's not worth trying for
You can't tell me it's not worth dying for
You know it's true
Everything I do - I do it for you
Look into my heart, you will find
There's nothing there to hide
Take me as I am, take my life
I would give it all, I would sacrifice
Don't tell me it's not worth fighting for
I can't help it, there's nothing I want more
You know it's true
Everything I do - I do it for you
There's no love, like your love
And no other, could give more love
There's nowhere, unless you're there
All the time, all the way
Oh, you can't tell me it's not worth trying for
I can't help it, there's nothing I want more
I would fight for you, I'd lie for you
Walk the wire for you, yeah I'd die for you
You know it's true
Everything I do - I do it for you
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Hi, guys. Part 11 of 13 up, earlier than I thought it would be, and profuse apologies to any fans of Max Rosher. Bryan Adams does not belong to me, and neither does his song. Neither does Ben and Jerry's ice cream - or, as I already pointed out, Noah Wyle - but hey, I can dream, can't I. (See, I don't have pregnancy cravings, I just have plain cravings) To give you all some idea of time scale, I'm going to Greece on Thursday afternoon, and I plan to get this whole thing done and posted before I go, so look for Chapter 12 and the Epilogue/Chapter 13 to be up here by Wednesday night at the latest. Chapter 12 might be up by tomorrow.