The ER is as crazy as I remember it.
The noise hits me when I walk through the front doors – children screaming for
their mothers, a nurse I don't recognise chasing after a wayward patient, a drunk
singing tunelessly at the top of his voice, paramedics shouting details of the
latest admittance. And I feel apart from it, like I'm watching the scene unfold
on TV rather than actually living it.
"Hey, Abby, good to have you back,"
Mark Green pats me on the shoulder as he breezes past, not waiting to hear an
answer.
"How are you feeling?" Kerry Weaver
is next to approach me. I mumble something mundane in reply, then head in the
direction of the lounge. I can only deal with one thing at a time and right
now, all I'm concerned about is stowing my jacket and bag in my locker and
starting work. The sooner I get into the routine of treating patients, the
sooner I'll be able to forget the events of the past fortnight. My problems
will pale into insignificance as I occupy my mind with the problems of others –
denial: the best possible therapy.
Not looking where I'm going I run
straight into a patient. Our eyes meet and I see total incomprehension there,
the glassy eyed stare of a drug addict. The emptiness bothers me; it's what I
used to see in Mom's expression during her most depressed periods. All the
spirit would drain out of her, until she was just a shell of the live, vibrant
person she once was. Just a tired and broken body, with a vast empty void inside
it.
I don't apologise, but instead duck
my head down even lower, studying the floor, and hurry around past the junkie. I
used to look like that, I think. When I was drunk, I would be that person
with the blank eyes and the vacant stare. Did John? I wonder. When he
had just scored a hit did it make him less of the person he is? Did his eyes
film over and the connection to his personality snap? The only answer I can
come up with is 'no'. I only ever remember John's gaze being warm or filled
with humour. Sometimes I have seen him hurting and angry, but never lost in
despair like that junkie in the corridor. Like Mom.
"Hey, what's the matter with her?"
Malucci asks loudly as I brush past him without saying hello.
"Her mother just died – didn't you
hear?" Cleo Finch informs him in that low breathy voice of hers.
As I push open the lounge door I
just hear Malucci's insensitive reply. "What? The crazy one? That's a shame –
she was hot too…"
Tears sting my eyes as I shut out
the bustle of the ER, taking sanctuary in the doctor's lounge. I've been here
less than two minutes and already I'm crying. Maybe coming back today wasn't
all that good an idea, after all. I try to mentally pull myself together,
drawing on all the endless years of practice. I've spent most of my adult life
feeling like a wreck inside, but only a small fraction of it actually acting
like one. That's the thin thread that separates me from Mom, I suppose. I have
control over my behaviour, so that even if my feelings run away from me I can maintain
some kind of command over the mask I show to the world. Sometimes that mask
slips, though, like now when I look up straight at Carter.
My first instinct is to turn around
and escape his achingly tender, concerned gaze. But to do so would be to launch
myself back into that busy ER, a place with perhaps even more stressors. So,
instead I just stare at him, my cheeks stinging almost as if they have just
been slapped, my voice caught in my throat.
"Abby," John greets me in a serious
tone. "You all right?"
I struggle to pull the last
shattered threads of myself (or at least the person I'd like to be myself)
together. "Do I look all right?" I snap back at him, allowing anger out in
place of loneliness and despair.
"No," he answers quietly.
Something inside me seems to deflate
suddenly and I lose all enthusiasm for the argument I was mentally building up
to a second ago. Instead I just walk past Carter to my locker, opening the door
and shoving my bag inside.
I feel him sidle up beside me.
"How's Luka?" He asks softly.
I spin around on him, feeling his
eyes burn into me. "Are you trying to make this more difficult than it is
already?"
He backs away, stung. "I'm sorry. I
shouldn't have asked that. It's none of my business."
"You're right," I shrug out of my
jacket. "It is none of you business. And coming back to work with everyone
talking about be behind my back is hard enough already without you dragging up
my break-up within two minutes of me walking through the door." I slam the
locker shut, punctuating my outburst.
John just stares at me. "Break-up?"
"Yeah, you know, it's when two
people decide to end their relationship. Perhaps you've heard of it?" I put up
my protective walls of sarcasm once more.
"I'm sorry Abby," he says sounding
genuine. "I didn't realise."
"You didn't…?" I begin confused.
"Luka didn't say anything?"
John shakes his head. "You two
looked pretty together at the funeral."
"Well, we weren't – " I go to answer
when the door to the lounge opens and Lydia barrels in.
She takes one look at John and I and
raises her eyebrows. "Sorry, if I interrupted anything."
"You didn't," I tell her, slinging a
stethoscope around my neck and heading back out into the chaos of the ER, now
fully prepared for battle. "We'll talk later, okay?" I address John, only
leaving once I have seen his nod in reply.
~ ~ ~
The next few hours pass in a whirl.
Working has exactly the effect I thought it would do. I am immediately
submerged in other people's problems to the extent where mine just fly out of
my head. Kerry directs me towards all the easy cases at first – the triage and
the sore throats and the parade of poor individuals who have managed to somehow
embed foreign bodies in all parts of their anatomy. I have just finished
extracting a wooden bead from up a little girl's nose, when Mark taps me on the
shoulder.
"You should take a break now," he
instructs me. "You've been working hard enough all morning."
I shake my head, grabbing another
chart from the rack. "I'm fine. I don't mind carrying on."
He all but wrestles the chart out of
my hand, refusing to take no for an answer. "Go get some lunch in the
cafeteria. After all, just think how bad it would look to all the patients if
an ER nurse keeled over from low blood sugar levels."
I manage a weak smile. "Somehow I
don't think I'll be slipping into that diabetic coma anytime soon."
"Better safe than sorry," he
persists. "If I were you I'd make the most of this time now when you get the opportunity.
In six hours time you're going to be begging for a break."
"All right, all right!" I finally
cave in, my stomach siding against me with Mark. "I'll go."
"Good," he nods in satisfaction.
"Hey, Carter. You busy?"
John looks up from the other side of
the desk; just as I suddenly decide my fingernails are endlessly fascinating
and gaze down to study them.
"Not particularly," he calls back.
"I'm just waiting on some labs on a kid with a fever."
"Then make sure Abby gets to the
cafeteria will you," Mark orders John. "I don't want her suddenly deciding to
stop off in OB and get a little extra work done."
"Uh, sure," John replies with his
usual congeniality. "No problem."
I smile at him awkwardly as we head
off up the stairs to the staff lunchroom. "You don't have to do this, you
know."
"I know," he answers. "I want to.
Besides, I thought we were going to talk."
"We are," I nod vaguely.
"And is that going to be any time
this millennium?" John probes.
I shrug. "Maybe."
We continue in silence to the
cafeteria, not speaking a word as we buy our food – identical plastic packs of
cheese salad sandwiches with a ring doughnut to accompany John's. Polystyrene
cups of coffee from the machine are next then, all distractions finally completed,
we slide into opposite chairs at a small round table, our gazes drawn up to
meet one another.
"So," I begin.
"So," John echoes with a grin,
running his finger along the rim of his coffee cup.
I busy myself unwrapping my
sandwiches. "You know, if you want to talk then it generally involves actually
saying something."
He nods. "Okay. Why did you break up
with Luka?"
I look up sharply in response to the
question, thinking that I should be berating him for even asking it. My love
life is nothing to do with John, right? I tell myself that. And I tell myself
that we're just friends too, but I'm finding it harder and harder to believe.
"Because…" I start to answer the
question then trail off. "I don't know what to say."
John fixes me with a piercing look,
one I can sense sees straight through all the bullshit I try to project to the
world, straight past my defences and right at me. He sees the real Abby, and
why does that scare me so much?
"How about the truth?" He suggests.
I push away my sandwich, knowing I'm
not going to eat any of it. The bread is stale and dry and the lettuce warm and
wilted, anyway. I don't know what possessed me to buy it in the first place.
Appearances I suppose. I was doing just what's expected of me once more. Only
maybe I'm sick of that right now. Doing that never got me anywhere. It never
made me happy.
"Maybe you don't want to hear the
truth," I mumble evasively.
He leans forwards, touching my hand
lightly. "The truth is the only thing I want to hear."
I pull my hand away, holding it up
in the air in a 'stop' gesture and raising my voice to an anxious soprano. "Well,
maybe I don't want to hear the truth."
He tilts back in his seat once more,
shaking his head almost imperceptibly. "Then I can't help you."
"What makes you think I need your
help?"
He gets up, scraping the chair
loudly across the floor with a horrible screech that makes me shudder inside. Before
he goes he throws something down on the table – an envelope. I look the
question straight at him, my expression just as bewildered as my feelings.
"It's my letter of resignation," he
explains bluntly. "Give it to Kerry will you?" Then he turns and walks away
from the table.
For one awful second I am staring at
his back walking away from me. I am watching my best friend leave my life never
to return to it. If I let him go things will never be the same between us
again. We'll never have the easy rapport, the closeness, the tiny highlights in
the day when we make each other laugh. I don't…I don't want to lose those. I
don't want to lose him.
But if I call him back, things will
never be the same again either, because John doesn't want to be friends
anymore. He's put an end to that, because he can see so much more between us.
So, I either have to have nothing or everything. I have to take that risk, make
the bet, or lose the biggest stake of my life.
"John, wait!" I call after him. He
stops. "I didn't love him," I continue, my words causing practically everyone
else in the cafeteria to turn around and stare at me. I cringe, but refuse to
let myself be phased. "I never loved him," I repeat more softly.
John turns around. "Is that
everything?" He asks in a tight voice.
I shake my head, taking a deep
breath before my next course of action. Crazy-Abby rides again. I'm taking a
leaf out of Mom's book and cutting loose for once. I'm dropping the
hyper-control I once forced upon my emotions and am acting on impulse. Because
now I finally realise something.
I'm not my mother.
I look a little like her and I act
like her sometimes, but I don't have to be afraid of becoming her anymore.
Because she's not who I am. She ruled my life for the past thirty years, but
now I'm free from her. She's dead and suddenly I'm aware of this giant irony. I
spent my entire life fearing her. I didn't love her, I was afraid. Afraid of
what embarrassment she'd put me through next, or of what call I was suddenly
going to get at three a.m. informing me of the latest trouble she'd got herself
in. I was scared of ending up like her to the extent that I turned out to be
someone much worse. Someone who kept her emotions bound up so tightly that they
destroyed her inside. And I don't want to be that Abby, anymore. I want to be
honest and loving and high-spirited. I want to have hopes and dreams, not dreads
and fears. I want to me more like Maggie, more like my mother.
Because I know I can do that now. I can
take her best features without also adopting her worst. I can follow in her
footsteps without getting swallowed by her shadow. I can be my own person as well
as being her daughter.
I rip John's letter in two. "You're
not resigning," I announce. "I won't let you."
He raises his eyebrows in
astonishment. "And you're going to stop me, how?"
I further tear up the paper,
scattering the pieces in the air around me. "I'm not sure yet. But I'll find a
way."
He sits down again, hanging his
head. "Please don't do this, Abby. Don't mess with me anymore, because I've had
enough."
"I'm not…" I begin, struggling to
find the right phrasing. I never was good at expressing my emotions and however
much I change how I feel inside, there's no changing that. How can I put into
words my most private thoughts? Hopefully, anyone who I care enough about to
want to hear them, should know anyway, just because they know me, because they're
near me. With the people you love the most – you don't need words.
I lean over and kiss him softly on
the lips, pulling back almost immediately through sheer self-conscious
embarrassment. I cover my mouth with my hand and refuse to meet his eyes.
"Abby?" He questions hesitantly,
reaching out to touch my arm.
"Don't leave," I compel him and he
shakes his head.
"I won't. I promise."
To be
Continued??