TITLE: A Mouthful of Air

AUTHOR: JD

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks to the following for their reviews and feedback: C. Midori, Mrs Eyre, The She Devil, and kitty.

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Abby hits the drink – hard. And a chivalrous Luka reappears among the bedlam of the ER.

Chapter 7: One More Failure to Connect

Once Abby had collected herself and wiped dry her eyes, she stoically returned to County. As she made her way through the ambulance bay doors, she nearly bumped into Chuny, whose shift had just ended.

"Hey, Abby, glad I found you." Chuny spoke without breaking stride. "Code brown in exam one, all yours."

"Shit."

"Yeah, pretty much." Chuny laughed and disappeared from view.

In a daze, Abby went through the motions for the next few hours. All the patients blended together, one blurry, bloody mess. At some point, she snapped at Pratt for doing something stupid – she didn't remember what.

"Looks like somebody had a heaping bowl of bitch flakes this morning," he murmured under his breath after she'd chewed him out.

Abby hadn't heard him, but she did realize that if she didn't have a cigarette soon, she was going to stick a scalpel in someone's eye. Sitting outside, calming her senses with each deep drag she took, she recreated the past couple days in her head, trying to figure out what exactly had happened. She couldn't figure out how Carter knew about Luka staying over. Luka left a good ten minutes before Carter knocked, and surely Luka hadn't said anything.

She was still furious that Carter thought she'd slept with Luka. It didn't say much for his opinion of her.

"Hey," said a kind voice in front of her. "This seat taken?"

Abby briefly looked up, shrugged, and took another drag. Susan took Abby's shrug for the closest thing she was going to get to an actual grant of permission, and she sat on the bench.

"You doing OK?" Susan continued.

"Peachy. Doesn't it show?" Abby smiled weakly.

From Abby's demeanor, Susan could guess the answer to her next question, but she asked it anyway: "Did Carter talk to you?"

Abby nodded, slightly confused. "Yeah. Why? Did he talk to you?"

"Mmmhmmm. A little. His shift started near the end of mine last night."

"Ah. Lucky you." Abby pitched her cigarette out onto the street, and sat on her nervous hands.

Susan waited for more of an explanation from Abby. Getting none, she went on. "I guess I thought that everything would be straightened out once you two talked."

"Well, things are pretty straight between us right now," Abby laughed ruefully.

They were quiet for a moment. Abby raised her head, squinting at the midday sun that was failing to warm her.

"You know," Susan whispered, ". . . he thinks you slept with Luka." Abby continued looking skyward, her expression undecipherable. "He told me he saw Luka leaving your place early yesterday morning."

More silence.

"You didn't sleep with him, right?"

Abby turned to stare, her raised eyebrows enough of an answer for Susan.

"Well did you tell Carter that?"

"No," Abby finally spoke, indignantly. "He obviously jumped to conclusion that I'm a big lush who'll sleep with just about anybody. And I don't feel the need to explain myself to someone with such a low opinion of me."

"So, essentially, this is going to be one of those arguments that would basically fizzle away if either you or Carter wasn't amazingly stubborn."

"I've got to get back," Abby stood and turned.

"You know, there really are better ways to change the topic," Susan followed her. "My personal favorite is asking about the weather, but bitching about Weaver makes for a good non sequitur, too."

Abby gave no reply, and the women parted ways.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Abby remained nearly mute for the rest of her shift, speaking only when her job required it. When it was finally time for her to leave, she departed without so much as a word to anyone. She rode the train back toward her apartment, her mind on auto-pilot. When she exited the station, her body was humming, but she didn't know why. Her mind had evaporated, and she couldn't think straight. Her legs, acting accordingly, went where they wanted. Honestly, she knew exactly where they were taking her, but she felt powerless to change course.

Five minutes later, she was heading back toward her apartment, seventeen dollars lighter and a bottle of vodka stashed in the brown paper bag in her hand.

He thinks I'm a drunk? I'll show him a drunk. Abby felt oddly empowered as she entered her kitchen, and took down a glass from the shelf.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Lying on the couch, Abby remembered her Byron: "Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; The best of life is but intoxication." She laughed to herself in the still of her living room. See? I should've stayed with English lit. No one even blinks twice when a writer takes a drink.

She reached for the bottle and poured herself another drink. Rolling the full glass between her two hands, she peered lazily at the liquor. She took a quick sip, then grabbed her phone. She wanted to call Carter, wanted to explain the whole misunderstanding. Wanted to tell him about Brian. She stared at the number keys on the handset for an eternity.

She threw the phone down on the couch – she couldn't call Carter. First, she was drunk, and didn't want to give him the satisfaction of thinking he was right about her being an alcoholic. Second, he should be calling her to apologize for overreacting.

Bored, she turned on the television. After flipping passively through the channels and having nothing pique her interest, she turned off the set. She walked over to her bookshelf, taking in her eclectic collection. On the bottom shelf, one nondescript book caught her eye. She hadn't noticed it for a long time, hadn't opened it for even longer. She reached down and pulled it out.

She shuffled through the pages, finding some of the sentences she'd underlined a lifetime ago – they were just empty words now, holding no hope of redemption for her. She read outloud to herself, her tone mockingly ceremonial: "There is the type who always believes that after being entirely free from alcohol for a period of time he can take a drink without danger."

She skimmed ahead to another underlined passage: "Then there are types entirely normal in every respect except in the effect alcohol has upon them. They are often able, intelligent, friendly people."

Well, that's not me – no one ever accused me of being friendly.

She flipped ahead to the chapter that before had always comforted her, put her at ease.

"And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation – some fact of my life – unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God's world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes."

What needs to be changed in me. Those words made her think of Carter, who – to her – had seemed so eager to change her.

Abby sighed, shut the book and placed it back on the shelf. She didn't feel much like making a searching and fearless moral inventory of herself. She just wanted to sleep. She toddled into her bedroom, discarding clothing along the way.

God grant me the serenity to sleep, she thought as she smiled and pulled the comforter over her head.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Abby slunk into the lounge the next morning, her head pounding, and poured herself a glass of water from the sink.

"Will someone please tell me why there are a dozen muddy women standing around outside singing?" she asked as she reached into her bag and availed herself of the aspirin within.

Chen, the lounge's only other occupant, answered, "It's the U of C women's rugby team. One of their players had a broken arm that I set. I think they're just waiting on a concussion – Kovac has her."

"They have way too much energy for this time of day."

"You should've been here earlier. Weaver went apoplectic when they started singing in chairs. Something about 'I used to work in Chicago. . .' I'm not one hundred percent sure, but the lyrics were gross, I can tell you that. Anyway, I thought Weaver was going to start swinging the Cane of Justice." Chen laughed heartily, recalling the image in her mind.

Haleh stuck her head in the door. "We need a doctor out here!" she said urgently, and withdrew just as quickly as she had appeared.

Wordlessly, Abby and Chen sped out of the lounge to help.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Abby stretched her legs, staring at the blood on her sneakers. At least they weren't new, she thought morbidly. She'd helped Chen and Gallant try to save a gunshot victim – some road rage incident that years ago would've resulted in mere traded insults but in today's barbaric chaos caused a man's death.

She flicked the ashes from her cigarette and leaned back against the bench, taking advantage of the downtime while the ER was suspiciously slow. Unbidden, her mind returned to the hurtful words she and Carter had hurled yesterday, unleashing mutual damage upon each other.

She didn't know how she felt about him anymore, and was completely baffled as to his feelings for her now – but she knew she hated feeling this way: hollow and irredeemable. The divine architecture that had seemed to support their friendship through so much wasn't able to withstand the pressure yesterday, and the foundation had faltered, leaving both Carter and Abby vulnerable to the elements.

A surreptitious breeze caught Abby's hair, which briefly flew in her eyes. As she curled the fugitive strands behind her ear, a shadow appeared on the ground by her feet. She squinted up at his smiling figure.

"I have something for you," Luka said. Abby shaded her eyes with her hand, watching as he reached into his pocket. He withdrew a closed fist and sat next to her on the bench.

In his hand, he held out a key.

She looked from the glinting metal object in his large palm to his face, perplexed.

"It's yours," he explained. "From the other night. I put it in my pocket but I forgot to give it back to you. Didn't notice until laundry day."

It seemed to Abby she had squandered lifespans since that night Luka had opened up to her, comforted her. It had been just three nights ago.

"Thanks," Abby took the key from him, playing with it in her right hand, while taking a puff off the almost-finished cigarette in her left.

"Well, I thought about keeping it," he continued, a childlike smile on his face. "Never know when I might need to get back into your apartment to replace an aquarium or something." He leaned into her with a playful shoulder, hoping to get her to smile.

"Hey," she said with a trace of light in her dark eyes, "if the fire escape was good enough for me, it's good enough for you, too."

"That's not fair," he protested facetiously. "You had an accomplice."

At Luka's reference to Carter, Abby's face fell. Her withdrawal did not go unnoticed, but Luka misread that cause of her disquietude.

"Sorry to bring that up," he backpedaled. "I know we weren't on the best terms back then." He looked in askance at her. Her expression unreadable, he continued, quieter, "I thought we could joke about it now. You've seemed . . . happier at work these past weeks."

Abby suddenly wanted to plaster her hands over his mouth, preventing his words from straying down the obvious path they were approaching, but she sat immobile, forced to hear his perceptions.

"I just want you to be happy, Abby," he went on, gazing down at the top of her bowed head. "And if it's Carter that makes you happy, then I'm happy for you."

Abby tossed her head, flashing a painfully wan smile at him. "Your sense of timing is impeccable," she stated.

"What do you mean?" A confused smile appeared on his face.

"Carter and I broke up . . . I think."

Luka, stunned, said the first words that popped in his head. "But, you seemed so . . ."

"Happy! Luka, I get it." She caught the irritation in her voice and tried to downplay it. "But if you say 'happy' one more time, I'm going to throw myself in front of your Viper."

Luka had no clue what to do. He considered blindly taking her side, offering a pithy "It's his loss," or some other weak consolation. But he realized that she could just wave such empty kindness away, like the buzz of an impertinent fly. Instead, he decided to try a radical approach – he decided he'd try to get Abby to talk to him.

He nearly asked "Do you want to talk about it?" before the ridiculousness of posing that question to Abby struck him.

Rather, he simply asked, "What happened?"

Luka's question surprised Abby. She quickly scrolled through her mental inventory of all their conversations. She couldn't recall him ever asking a personal question . . . not anticipating a truthful answer, anyway.

She didn't even consider telling him that Carter thought they'd slept together. Not only did she find that admission embarrassing, but she figured that Carter's unfounded fear was merely a distraction from what was really bothering him. They had deeper problems than Luka's stay at Abby's – even deeper problems than her drinking. It wouldn't be fair to pour guilt over Luka, when all he'd done was try to help her.

Instead, Abby gave short shrift to the blowup she and Carter had had: "I guess I'm not what he thought he wanted. Just not good enough." She tried to smile, pretending it didn't hurt.

Luka was too familiar with that particular grimace, however.

"Are you sure about that?" Luka asked, a flashlight intruding on the darker corners of his mind, searching for something, anything, that might bring back Abby's vivacity.

"Oh, he was pretty explicit," she replied, Carter's accusations rattling around in her brain.

"I only ask because . . . ." Again, he had difficulty approaching this subject with Abby. He wanted to talk to her, but he was afraid of scaring her with any perceived slights. He proceeded carefully. "Sometimes I worry that you're more aware of your shortcomings – real or imagined – than anyone else. And I think you tend to put those insecurities on other people."

Her brooding silence troubled him, and he peered at her warily as if she were about to erupt like Vesuvius, scalding him with her fiery sarcasm. When her stillness continued, he took it upon himself to further explain. "It's like with Susan at that seminar, when you talked about where you went to school, or that poem. I don't think she – or anyone else there – thought that you were somehow less intelligent. But you were so defensive about it."

He grew quieter, watching her mood. She sat wordless as he went on: "And with us, you and me . . . . The things you charged me with thinking, they weren't true."

Granted, all either of them could think about at that moment were the words Luka had spoken the night of their huge fight so long ago. He wished in vain that he could extract what he'd said from her mind. He desperately wanted to cry out that she was that pretty, that she was that special. To avoid re-airing the ugliest insults that were batted around that night, however, he merely acknowledged the words her defenses had flung at him that chilled evening: "You've never been a burden to anyone, Abby. You'd never allow that to happen."

Not knowing what else to say, he steered his dialogue back toward Carter, where it rightfully belonged. "Anyway, you are good enough for Carter. He's lucky to have you." He paused and stood without looking at her. "Anyone would be."

He forced a regretful smile to his face and slowly walked back into the ER, leaving a thunderstruck Abby sitting all alone.

END NOTES/DISCLAIMER: Chapter title comes from "This Is How It Goes" by Aimee Mann, which includes the lyrics: "This is how it goes:/One more failure to connect./With so many, how could I object?/And you – what on earth did you expect?/Well, I can't tell you, baby,/when this is how it goes." The passages Abby reads are out of the AA Big Book. It's not being reproduced for profit here, and the book itself is sometimes given out free at meetings, so I can't see why someone would have a problem with a few sentences being quoted here, but just in case: Please do not reproduce those passages for profit. Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition, copyright 2001.