Summary: Luka thinks about blood, love and suicide. A post-ep of sorts to "A Thousand Cranes," first part in a series.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: "The Crossing" and season 9… especially "A Thousand Cranes."
Disclaimer: I was ecstatic when I won fifteen bucks in the lottery. Does it look like I own ER?
Author's note: This is going to be my personal little musing on mental illness, which will have more parts when I get around to it. I'm going through some sucky times now, and thus it's not going to be a very happy fic (like you can expect a happy fic from me, Queen of Luka Angst...) Anyways, hang around until all the fun starts in a couple of parts. I'm pretty busy with college right now, but I actually have inspiration to write something for a change, so I'll update eventually.
I hate blood. It is not a very good thing to dislike if one is a physician, but I hate it nonetheless, hate looking at it, hate having it on my clothes, and always feel like I can't wash it off when it gets on my hands. And today, I got blood all over my lab coat and after I took a quick shower and put on clean scrubs I wanted to keep taking showers, but couldn't do it, since I was at work, and my co-workers would definitely think that I am insane if I took a shower every couple of minutes. Denied the showers, I just washed my hands as often as I could, trying to understand why I was not disturbed by the dead bodies on the floor in Doc Magoo's, but was almost paralyzed by the thought of blood soaking through my clothes, clinging to my skin, becoming a permanent part of me, mixing with my own blood and poisoning my mind. Lately, it seems to get on me more often then usual and when it does it won't wash off, it sticks to my skin like cement, and evokes a strange feeling of fear that I can't explain.
Sure, most human beings are a bit squeamish when they see blood - even doctors ran to their mothers in tears over skinned knees and bloody noses when they were children, but then they grew up, and got used to the sight of blood, just like I did once. But months of being covered in other people's blood, wearing blood-soaked clothes for days, and having had my daughter's blood on my lips from doing rescue breathing on her for hours has given me a phobia of blood, and yet I go to work every day and pretend I'm not afraid of it. I've been great at pretending so far. No one suspects that I every time I see blood I would like nothing more then to run out of the room and throw up, but somehow, I keep myself in place, paste the needed expression on my face and do the needed thing, trying to look away from the blood staining my hands, and I can almost feel it seeping through the latex gloves and tainting my skin…
I've tried to think back to when I started being afraid of blood again, and after some deliberation I have decided that it was on Valentine's Day 2000, when I had to wear scrubs covered with Carter's and Lucy's blood for several hours, and when I finally got home that day I spent hours washing blood out of them, knowing it was useless and a waste of time, but needing the cheap green cloth to be clean, for the sake of my sanity. I got drunk later that night and made myself forget that I hated seeing blood and somehow managed to get through the next two years without remembering about my peculiar dislike for it despite the mugging, and everything would have gone well if not for the night of lockdown, the beginning of my end. That night something in me snapped, something in my head finally stopped working, and I've been tumbling downward ever since.
All the confusion and panic were nothing new to me, so I remained outwardly calm, but when I ran into Dr. Romano on the roof with his patient I finally let myself be frustrated, ready to fight over something. He was ready to fight too. As I was trying to keep my language polite he dropped a chart and stalked away to get it, and moments later there was a horrible sound, a sound of something heavy being torn apart and I looked up and saw him fall, and then I saw Marko's bloody hand sticking out from under the rubble, reaching out for me, and I ran towards it only to see Dr. Romano on the ground, his hand torn off, and blood, blood everywhere. Something in my mind turned off and I mechanically went through the motions, remembering all I learned about torn off limbs through the landmine injuries I treated as an intern.
I mechanically did all the needed steps, got the hand on ice, stopped the blood flow, and somehow went through the entire night mechanically, not really remembering what I said or did, Danijela's voice repeating in my head, "Luka, gdje je Marko?" I answered her silently, I told her the truth, but she would not stop, she continued to plague me, continued to ask in her soft, plaintive voice and I was seriously tempted to try to break out, to provoke one of the cops to shoot me, to do anything to shut her up. When the uncontaminated people were released I somehow got home, got into the shower with my clothes on and just stood there until the water turned cold, wanting to be clean of the blood, muttering Marko's name, remembering the fear and anger in my voice when I snapped at Danijela – "Marko je mrtav" – words that I thought I would never have to say.
For two years, I did not have nightmares, but after that night they returned with a vengeance. Every night, there was blood, screams, explosions, death, and every night I got to relive the most terrible times in my life. I needed to run away fromthem, and so I decided that it was time for me to see what I have missed by marrying young, so I went out, drank, chased women, behaved like a teenage boy, got in trouble for it, but did not let it stop me. But then the affairs become too personal and I met Mary, and my Friday nights became hers. And then came that disastrous Christmas when I nearly managed to kill Erin and myself, and as I was lying on a gurney in the suture room the next morning and staring blankly at a wall while Susan patiently fixed yet another cut on my face, I realized just how hollow and empty my life was, and that no one would miss me much if I died.
I fumbled through the next two months trying to deal with that thought, and in February, I got so depressed and disillusioned that I just couldn't go on. Kerry refused to let me go, so I just walked out, and went straight to bed, where I spent almost a week, just lying under the blankets with my eyes closed, silently crying into the pillow until I couldn't cry anymore. And during that time, no one called but Kerry, who threatened to fire me, and this just reinforced my theory about how much everyone at work cared about me. Well, I did deserve it to some point. I'm not the most friendly of people. I used to be, many years ago. I knew everyone in the village Baka Judit and Djed Hrvoje lived in when I was only three, I loved talking to people – I loved people in general as a child. But then I grew up and I learned how people really are – how cruel, heartless and sadistic an average man can get given the power and the situation, and I can't get myself to trust people again.
How can I explain all this to the cheery Dr. Myers, whose most dangerous experience in life was probably getting yelled at by a psychotic patient? How can I explain my fears to a man who never felt what I have felt, who has never been outside his own country, who never had to operate for hours, shuddering when blood dried on his skin, who does not know how a mortar shell sounds like, who does not know what real hatred is? I can't, but I want to tell it to someone – but I don't know who will listen, who won't just feel pity but will tell me how to start getting myself back together. However, no one is willing to listen for free, so I talk to Mary. She says that she doesn't care what we do as long as I pay, so we meet in the hotel and I just talk about my stupid, silly fears and my intensifying numbness, and she listens, looking at me silently from her chair. She's gotten used to playing my unofficial therapist. She jokes and says that she should switch jobs, that she'd get more money listening to people complain about how life has fucked them over that she gets fucking them. She's got a good sense of humor, that woman. If she were in a different line of work, I'd consider having a relationship with her. But we're both whores in our own way, so we just remain in a strange relationship, which is neither that of friends nor that of lovers, Mary as my Mary Magdalene, my confessor and keeper of my secrets...
Well, that's enough thinking for now, I've got things to do. I sigh, get out of bed where I've been ever since I came from work and go off to the bathroom, where in the darkness I plug the drain and open a faucet to let the cold water fill the bathtub. Then, I flip the light switch and cringe as the too-bright fluorescent light turns on, and I am confronted with my reflection in the mirror. I look like shit. I can't open my eyes fully courtesy of the terrific migraine I am having, and this makes me look like I've been drinking all day, and because I have not shaved since the day before yesterday, my face is liberally covered by gray and black stubble of somewhat disreputable length that only adds to that image. Right now, I don't look much like the nice clean-shaven Dr. Kovac who wears tidy suits to work.
Work – Work has kept me together for the last twelve years, but even it seems dreary and annoying nowadays. Going to work means seeing Abby, and seeing Abby means feeling even more worthless then I usually do. I am happy that she has found someone – everyone deserves someone to love them, especially she. I've given up hopes of ever getting her back – I'll remain her friend, if she will ever need my help – but after realistically looking at myself, I've realized that there are plenty of reasons no one in their right mind would like me for free. Women like to look at me, or have a brief, passionate encounter with me, but they don't want me for more then a night – I can't maintain my false front longer then that. Who wants damaged goods, after all? Who wants to love a man who can't love himself, who is sick of his own sickness, who is sick of complaining about his life yet can't stop doing it?
Sometimes I can't look at myself in the mirror without disgust. My lovers have told me that I am handsome, but when I look at my reflection all I see is a face that is too young and too carefree, a body that is ugly, covered with bruises from a long time ago which have faded away from my skin but stayed in my memory, and a man who should have died a long time ago but just continued living – a living corpse that walks around, goes to work and pretends to love others, but is a corpse nonetheless. Who wants to love a dead man other than a ghost? The ghost is more then happy to have him – she puts her arms around him at night when he lies there, wide awake, scared of the dark and wanting to cry, and in the rare times when he does cry she wipes his tears away. She whispers into his ear that he should stop being miserable and join her, be forever young and never feel empty again, but he resists, because something in him still wants to live…
I snap out of my pity party when I see that the tub is almost overflowing, and close the faucet, then take the stained clothes out of plastic bag and drop in into the cold water. As I do that, my eyes stop at vial with the tranquilizers I got prescribed several years ago, taking up its place on the shelf in the bathroom cabinet, along with every single prescription bottle I've gotten since I came to America. All of them, row upon row of clear yellow bottles with white tops, with pills that have been expired for years and ones that can still cure or kill, always with me because I can't bear to throw them away, a testimony to my many small obsessions.
Like many other times, I think that if I just took a couple of pills, all the misery in my life will go away. No one will miss me until I don't show up for work, and by then it will be too late. It's a tempting thought – I've thought it many times before. Should I carry on living? I've tried to kill myself before, so I'm no novice, and I'm a doctor, so I know exactly which dosage of what can kill me painlessly. The last time I tried to end my life all I had was a plastic knife, but now I have so many ways to commit suicide – death by overdose, jumping down just when an L train arrives at the station, jumping off the hospital roof, so many ways to stop existing, to be free of my depressing thoughts, free of my tired body, free of my sadness.
But I won't kill myself - at least not today. I'll go to work for the next day, month or year, and let my hands heal while my mind is on the other side of the earth, continue to deceive everyone, and remain alive largely only for my father, because I know he wouldn't be able to withstand another death, to lose his youngest child after losing a wife, three grandchildren and daughter-in-law. I've killed enough people – and I can't have another death on my conscience, especially the death of my father. So I'll wait until my father's death will come naturally, and then I will stop existing somehow, and there will be no one particularly harmed by my death. If I still will be at County, there will be one or two tears shed, but in a couple of months everyone will forget that I ever worked there...
Yep, my pity party's great. I'm having a ball. Anyway, I'd better get to work. I take a bar of industrial strength soap and kneel next to the tub, ready to spend another evening washing blood out of my clothes. Maybe if I wash them long enough, I'll get blood out of them, and maybe I even will stop seeing blood on my hands…
Danijela asks repeatedly: "Luka, gdje je Marko?" / "Luka, where is Marko?" Luka answers: "Marko je mrtav." / "Marko is dead.")