Author: Casccara Casccara@yahoo.com
Title: Together Again
Classification: Carter/Lucy
friendship/angst
Spoilers: Power
Feedback: Yes, please!!
Archive: Not without permission from moi! J
Disclaimer
Time Frame: This fic is set during the episode Power. While watching this eppy rerun, I just
couldn't resist adding a little more Carter/Lucy fun. J
"Together again?" Lucy asked Carter
dryly, a secret smile playing on her lips as she walked away from the
desk.
Carter grimaced. That's what it looked like. Lucy had finished her psych rotation and was
about a begin a second ER rotation.
Carter had just given her a hard time about it, teasing her about her
"bravery" for taking on another ER rotation.
He hadn't admitted out loud, what he'd secretly been thinking: he was
rather glad to have Lucy around again.
That is, until he'd found out he would be her supervisor for the second
time.
"Wipe that goofy look off
your face, Carter, you have a patient," Haleh said mildly, thrusting a chart at
his chest.
"Lucy can handle it for
right now," he said, now preoccupied with the fact that he was Lucy's teacher
again. Why did it make him so mad? His mind flickered to a wild afternoon in
exam 6 earlier that year and he became preoccupied with the image the memory
aroused. The doctor and the med student. It was torrid and against the rules and he
should never have gotten carried away like that.
Then why was he getting
all hot and bothered abut it?
After about one whole
minute of him staring into space, Carter jumped when he realized that Jerry's
and Haleh's faces were watching his intently.
"You look like your still trying to picture Dr. Romano's mother," Haleh
said with a snort.
"What?" he asked, his eyes
narrowed.
"Something distracting
you, Carter?" Jerry asked in his knowing way.
"Huh?" He looked from
Jerry's bemused face to Haleh's cocked eyebrow and back again. "What could be distracting me? I have a patient."
"Mm-hmm," Haleh said
knowingly as Carter walked off. She and
Jerry exchanged meaningful looks.
Everyone in the ER knew that the tension between Carter and Lucy had
been pretty thick when Lucy had left the ER and gone into her surgery
rotation. It seemed that time hadn't
dulled the chemistry that fizzled in the air when Carter and Lucy were in close
proximity.
As it turned out,
chemistry was all over the ER that day.
Lucy, Chuni and Lydia were gathered around the patient, Ms. Far, who was
showing off chemistry in jars.
"Pheromones," the exuberant redhead told the nurses and student. "It's Bio-Chemical Awareness Therapy!"
"Hmm," Lucy muttered,
pressing her nose lightly to one of the bottles and smiling secretly to
herself. The idea that she was now
Carter's med student again was beginning to warm her. At first she'd been horrified, then amused, and now with the
perfume of the pheromones wafting her senses, Lucy admitted that she was rather
pleased to be in the close propinquity of John Truman Carter again.
Even though it had been
just that morning when Roxanne, Carter's girlfriend, had asked Lucy to join her
for coffee and the two women had sat at a table talking about the complex
personality of the man. Roxanne had
apparently been worried that Lucy and Carter were . . . involved. Lucy had been quick to assure her that there
was nothing going on between she and Carter, although at one time there had
almost been.
But now as she watched
Carter enter into the curtain area and take in the scene before him with an
amused smile on his face, Lucy sighed softly.
He was, she decided then, the dreamiest male on the face of the
earth. With his puppy dog eyes and cute
little dimples, messy brown hair and polite stance, the discussion on Carter's
messed up life flew out of Lucy's head.
She started to wonder if the pheromones were getting to her or if she
really was head over heals.
Carter was in an oblivious
state, of course, as he watched with confusion while Lucy shoved a pen at him,
practically hitting him in the face.
His eyes narrowed as Chuni whispered something to Lucy and ran out of
the room. Was it just him or was
something strange going on?
And what the hell was that
smell?
~*~*~ A Few Hours Later
~*~*~
It was over. Done.
Through. And all he had to say was "I
wanna break up." Carter stopped where
he was, in the middle of the hall, and narrowed his eyes. For weeks he'd been preoccupied with
figuring out just what he was doing with someone who he didn't respect, didn't
have true feelings for and was getting on his nerves daily. It had been easier than he thought. He really should have done it sooner, it
felt as though a huge weight had been lifted-
"CARTER, MOVE!" someone
shouted. Carter was shoved forward by an inhuman force which happened to be
Chuni. He crashed into a supplies cart,
sending bandages and bottles flying.
Trying to salvage as much as he could while Chuni pushed and shoved him
to search through the supplies cart, Carter suddenly realized that the ER was
in pandemonium.
"What's going on?" he
asked.
"A patient was attacked,"
Chuni informed him matter-of-factly.
"Where have you been?"
"Attacked?!"
"Yeah, beaten and sexually
assaulted. The entire staff is on
alert, including residents," she said with a meaningful look and ran off, her
arms full with a tubing kit.
"Jeez," he muttered,
thinking of the terrible act. Who could
do such a thing? Had it been a patient
or someone who'd just walked into the hospital? And the patient, had she been in intensive care or just some
healthy person-
"CARTER!"
Yet another female
collided with him in the middle of the hall, this time the person had been
running towards him. As he crashed against the wall, he found his own body in
direct contact with a soft feminine one and his senses were filled the sweetest
scent he'd ever smelled. His mind went
blank.
"Are you okay?" Lucy
demanded, pulling herself away and straitening her sweater.
"Yeah, I'm . . ." He
drifted off, staring at Lucy's face intently.
Her eyes were the bluest of blues, he realized suddenly.
"Carter? Are you sure
you're okay?" she asked dubiously.
He shook his head and
tried to clear the thought from his mind.
The scent from those perfumes or whatever they'd been were still wafting
around his senses. "Yeah, I'm
fine. Are you still . . .?"
"Waiting on the psych
consult for-"
"I'm telling you he
doesn't need a psych consult, he's just a grumpy old man," Carter steered Lucy
down the hallway, back into the ER.
"So you said. Look, I'm concerned about him, I really
think that he needs to be examined, considering his history and the fact that-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what are you doing right now?" he asked
as they reached the desk.
"I was going to check on
Ms. Far, have you decided to order her the head CT yet?"
"No, because she doesn't
need one and I think you'll do much better suturing this leg lac," he said,
taking Ms. Far's chart out of Lucy's hand and replacing it with another.
She shot him an
exasperating look. "One of the nurses
can do that-"
"Ah, ah, ah," Carter
wagged his finger as if he were speaking to a three year old. "There are no small patients, Lucy."
Annoyance clawed at
her. Had she been liking Carter
a few hours ago? "I never said anything
about small patients, Carter-"
Lydia interrupted
them. "Carter, your patient, Ms Far,
wants to see you."
"Thanks, Lydia." Lucy started to go in the direction of Ms
Far's room, but Carter stopped her by sliding an arm around her shoulders and
turning her towards the sutures room instead.
"No, no, no, Miss Knight.
Sutures. Now."
Lucy practically groaned
aloud as Carter nearly pushed her down the hallway. Of all the dirty, rotten nerve.
She'd bet her last dime that he was going to order the CT and all the
tests Lucy had wanted originally for Ms Far.
And he would get the credit for it, not her. Of all the pretentious,
pompous, arrogant, pigheaded- "Good
evening, Mr. Hartford, I'm Lucy Knight, a medical student and I'll be suturing
the laceration on your leg."
~*~*~ A Few More Hours Later ~*~*~
The ER is bathed in
darkness.
CRASH!
"Ow!"
"Jerry, hand me the flashlight
over there."
"Where?"
"There."
"Where?"
"OVER THERE!"
"I can't see anything,
who's hand is that?"
"Mark, is that you?"
"Yeah, it's me, is the
flashlight under the desk?"
"No, I think it was in the
middle drawer the last time I saw it."
"Someone better remove
their hand from my butt."
That last comment was from Randi,
whom nobody could see. The power had
completely gone out in the ER, that is, in the entire city of Chicago. Needless
to say, the Emergency Room was in total chaos.
Carter wasn't having a good time
either. He'd been trying to locate Lucy
for the past half hour and to no avail.
Now that it was dark in the hospital, it would be even more difficult. He'd looked in every exam room, every
curtain area, the sutures room, the X-Ray rooms, and even the cafeteria,
although he'd once heard Lucy say that she would not eat cafeteria food should
her life depend on it. The fact
remained that he needed to ask her a few questions about Ms Far. She'd taken a
complete history on her and even though Carter could read exactly what she had
written, he wanted her, as a student, to evaluate what she had predicted. And to tell her that she'd been right all
along, while his hesitancy had been off the mark.
It wasn't the first time it had
happened.
And it probably wouldn't be the
last. Carter would just have to deal
with the fact that she was more knowledgeable than he had been at her
level.
"Has anyone seen Lucy?" he snapped
at the desk.
Jerry, Haleh and Mark glanced
up.
"Problem with your student, Carter?"
Mark asked, and went back to his labs, trying to see the computer screen in the
darkness.
"What student? I have no student,"
Carter said sarcastically. Why, why,
WHY was Lucy better than he had been?
And why didn't he want her to succeed all of a sudden? He'd spent the better part of year trying to
get her to be her best so that he could show everyone he was a good
teacher. And now that she showed
promiss, he was more angry than he'd been in a long while. More angry that he'd been when he'd broken
up with Roxanne.
Whoa.
He stopped for a minute. Was it true? All the times Roxanne had accused and all the times Jerry and
Malik had teased, had they been right?
Did he really harbor feelings for Lucy?
Was this the resentment he felt towards her? Was this why the attraction to her was so strong, why he was so
upset that he would have to be her teacher again?
He was suddenly angry. He would not succumb to this stupid
attraction, these childish feelings. It
was wrong, end of story. Carter would
not break the rules for some little med student with big blue eyes. He couldn't believe he was even
contemplating, even thinking about her this way. He was weak for letting himself fall under her trap.
Damn Lucy.
"Our restroom is out of
order," Lily said as she slid up to the desk.
"I'll be right back, I'm going to use the one upstairs."
Mark spoke up, still
gazing at the computer screen. "Jerry, would you please accompany Lily upstairs
and back? Carter, I suggest you find
your med student. No female employees are supposed to be alone while that
rapist is on the loose." Mark's eyes flickered to Carter. He watched the understanding dawn in
Carter's eyes and the color drain slightly from his face.
The anger fled from his mind
and Carter felt something like fear grip his heart. He tried to ignore it as he swung from the desk and walked
swiftly down the hall. As he poked into
each and every curtain area and exam room, his heart beat wildly against his
chest. If she'd been hurt. . . she
wasn't hurt. She was probably just
reading some psychology book or talking to someone. Yeah, that was it. She
was probably gossiping with some nurse or tech. Once she started talking, she never shut up. He couldn't count the number of times he
told her to be quiet or to shut up . . .
He opened the door to sutures for the fifth time. No Lucy. He went upstairs to the psych ward, the OR,
even OB. No luck. Something was wrong,
he knew it. He felt it. His heart in his throat, he made a lunge to
the stairs that lead to the top of the roof.
He suddenly needed to breath fresh air.
He yanked open the door
and slammed right into her.
"Lucy!" Relief swam
through him.
"Carter! Sorry, I just
realized you paged me, someone must have turned the sound off on my pager-"
"What the hell are you
doing?" he demanded, his voice echoing off the roof.
She took a step back. "What?"
"You're not supposed to go
off on your own, Lucy! Jesus, there's a
murderer roaming the halls and your sitting on top of the roof alone-"
"I wasn't alone, Carol
just left-"
"Carol! Oh, you two are a
great pair for a raping murderer."
Lucy sent him a venomous
look with her eyes. "Is this your way
of saying you were worried about me? Because I can tell you one thing, Carter,
you're not doing a very good job!"
"Oh, I'm not?"
"No, you're not!"
"Well, I was! Worried, I
mean!" he shouted. "There, are you
happy?"
"No," she yelled. They stood on top of the roof and glared at
each other for a whole minute.
Finally Lucy looked away
and sighed, hugging herself when a breeze came through. "Sorry, I didn't think- I didn't realized I'd be missed." Her voice
held a hint of resentment and she was suddenly looking everywhere except at
him.
Carter peered at her
face. Something had shifted, he
realized. The relief that had turned
into anger at his being worried was now relief again. The fact that she wasn't an innocent party and that perhaps her
disappearance had been the smallest of tests she'd given him, hit him
hard. Since those feelings for her
weren't fake or wrong, he felt something tug at his heart. Guilt, perhaps?
And because he was her
teacher and he couldn't act on those feelings, he tried to make light of
it. "Well . . . when I didn't hear that
constant voice in my ear telling me what to do, I got worried. Things were actually . . . peaceful for a
minute without you. It was strange." He
opened the door and took her arm as they descended the narrow staircase.
He was always doing that,
Lucy realized . . . taking her arm, laying a hand on her back while they walked
together, putting a hand on her shoulder while he explained things about a
patient or procedure.
She let out a little laugh. "You're
not that used to me again, are you? I
mean after only one day together?"
They reached the base of the steps
and walked onto the elevator heading down to the ER.
"What can I say, Lucy?" Carter gazed
at the ceiling. "I guess I missed
having you around."
Lucy tried not smile as the elevator
doors slid closed. "Likewise, Dr. Carter."
Finished
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Between the Lines - A Fanfic
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