Summary: Three months after Carter has left, Abby is all alone.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chapter 3 - Lost And Lonely

Strange how things can fall apart so quickly. She thought she had her life in control. She thought she had everything she wanted and needed in her life for perhaps the first time. Then all of a sudden in what seemed like seconds it was all taken away from her and she was back where she started a year ago. And she knew exactly where the downward slump began.

"I don't want to be your friend..."

She had lost her best friend. She had lost the only person she could really talk to. She had lost the one person she had come across who knew what it was like to be an addict. She had lost her way back into the world of the friendly.

And then things got worse...

.........

Kerry Weaver assembled the staff of County at the admin desk and just came out with it. Rattled it off as if it was part of the day's agenda. "I'm afraid to say that we've have lost a member of staff. Dr. Carter has decided that it would be better for him to move to another hospital and that is why he hasn't been in for the last couple of days." Noting the shocked faces she added, "he wanted to keep his leaving low-key. He didn't want to make a fuss about it. Just thought I should let you all know."

"Who woulda thought that huh?" Dave said aloud as he walked off to his patient.

For a while she just stood there trying to take it in. John had left her. She couldn't believe it. Carter was the perfect friend to Abby, he was always there to say the right thing or do the right thing to make her feel better or take the weight off her shoulders, right from when she was at the ER as a med.-student. He was her emotional rock, she would go to him when she had a problem or felt 'a little off' because she knew that he would be there to just listen to what she had to say, which would make her feel better having got it off her chest.

And now he was gone...

.........

She couldn't help but feel incomplete afterwards. She wandered around the ER looking lost, like she didn't know where she was or why she was there. People would call out her name but she wouldn't hear them. Setting up an IV or suturing without knowledge of anything around her.

She should have done the honest thing, she should have gone to the one person left at County who actually cared about her. Instead she closed herself up, she wouldn't say anything to anyone in the hope that her mood would brighten on its own without a little joke or compliment from John Carter.

And then Luka left her...

She was stunned when he did it. In fact, stunned wasn't the word to sum up how she felt when he sat her down that night...

.......

"Abby?" Luka said as he stood in the doorway.

She didn't turn to look at him, instead she kept her eyes glued to the infomercial that had been repeating for the last 2 hours. She knew exactly what it did, she still didn't want to buy it. She grunted a response, "mmm?"

"Can I talk to you for a second?"

Now he had her attention. She turned around suddenly and looked at him. The fear was obvious on her face, whenever anyone said something like that it was always bad. "Erm... sure." She got up and walked over to the table he was sitting at, looking down at his hands clasped tightly together. "I'm really sorry I didn't wait for you. It must've slipped my mind or someth..."

"No Abby this isn't about that," he said, deadly serious. She looked up at him, right into his eyes. For the first time in a long time she was scared. "I think we shouldn't see each other anymore." There it was, she knew he was going to say it. She had been waiting for the last two months for him to say it. She felt like she was powerless. Instead of trying to make things better, she only made them worse. "I think we've been going downhill for awhile," Abby nodded in agreement, "ever since Carter left you've been detached. I've tried to help you, I know he was a good friend to you and it must have been hard for you to see him go, but you seem so disconnected. We never talk at all anymore..."

"Luka stop," she said quietly.

"What?"

"I know... I know, you're right. It's all my fault. I should have tried to make it work but I... I... just..."

"It's ok Abby," he said as he held her close. He felt her sob faintly into his chest, "It's nobody's fault. Sometimes you just have to accept that things don't always work out the way you hoped they would." Abby nodded as she stood up.

"So I guess this is it huh?"

Luka smiled softly, "yeah I guess it is." He held out his arms and she hugged him before wiping away a few stray tears. "Goodnight Abby."

"Goodnight."

.........

He was so great about it. She couldn't blame him for breaking up with her. If she was him she would have broken up too. Everything he did was so perfect, the way he let her down gently, the way he told her what she knew was the absolute truth, and the way he was friendly to her at work the next day.

Luka wasn't the ideal boyfriend, heck he wasn't even close, but she had a nice stable relationship that was in sharp contrast to her marriage to Richard. With him every week was the end. They would fight because he flirted with another woman in front of her, or because she was drunk and just felt like picking a fight, and sometimes they just argued for no reason. That was one of the few things that worked in her marriage, they could argue over everything. So every few days or so she would phone her brother or, if she had been drinking, her mother to tell them that she and Richard had finished and that yes it was for real this time. She was surprised it lasted as long as it did. Maybe the same could apply to Luka. It had lasted almost a year, Luka had put up with her ignoring him, snapping at him and running off to Carter every five minutes for half that time. How it lasted a year was beyond her. But she knew that she was to blame.

So here she was, sitting alone in her apartment with a big bucket of chocolate ice cream watching re-runs of Days Of Our Lives. Just waiting for her next shift so she could try, and fail, to forget that the life she had come to love had simply crumbled around her.