Author's note: Happy Walpurghis everyone! Not that it feels much like spring since it's snowing where I live... :-) I'm not all that happy about this chapter, I promise the next one will be better, and include some more characters. But please read and review!
Disclaimer: You know the drill...
~*~
~*~
~*~
"Don't worry about it, Lizzie" Mrs. Romano said and twirled some pasta around her fork. "It's not the first time he's stood me up, and it won't be the last."
They were having lunch at a small restaurant, Elizabeth and Mrs. Romano. Robert was supposed to have been there too, but had gotten caught up at work and after a while called to say he wouldn't come to lunch at all. He would pick his mother up in an hour to take her to the airport.
"Well he really couldn't get out" Elizabeth tried to defend him. "One of his patients, a boy who's just had a kidney transplant, threw a clot."
"You don't sound too bothered."
"We see it all the time, you can't let it get to you. Especially not when it's someone else's patient."
Elizabeth wished someone would have paged her down for an emergency as well, she would gladly have gotten out of this lunch. She felt awkward around Mrs. Romano, and now she didn't have Robert there to support her. She spiked some fish on her fork and wished an hour would go by faster.
"Well, I guess this at least gives us a chance to get to know each other better" she said, just to say something.
"Right, not that there's much use with it."
"Sorry?"
"You're a nice person Lizzie, but most likely you won't be involved with Robert the next time I come to Chicago."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Elizabeth asked, wondering if Robert's mother hated her, or had some form of reversed Oedipus complex.
"Robert doesn't believe in love and lasting relationships" Elizabeth was informed. "He never sticks with women for long."
"What makes you so sure that's not something that can change?" Elizabeth asked. "Perhaps not with me, but somewhere along the road..." she added lamely, not wanting to sound too sure of herself.
"Robert hates having to depend on people" Mrs. Romano said. "Depending on people is inconvenient for him."
"It can't be just that" Elizabeth said and wondered if now would be a good time to choke on a bone and get out of this conversation.
"When he was a teenager, he lost someone..." Mrs. Romano said and trailed off for a second. When she continued she seemed to be miles away. "Someone he depended on. After that he pretty much made up his mind never to depend on anyone again."
"Well he's not a teenager anymore" Elizabeth said. "It's been twenty years, I'm sure he's gotten over that by now."
"We'll just see."
Elizabeth rolled her eyes and wondered if the real problem here was that his mother didn't like that he didn't depend on her anymore. She decided to steer the conversation into other subjects, preferably avoiding anything else that had to do with relationships. It was obvious that Mrs. Romano didn't have the best view of togetherness. Elizabeth wondered if bitterness ran in the Romano family, or if she'd just been unlucky enough to encounter the bitter side of the clan.
"It's kind of like that Elton John song, you know..."
"What?" Elizabeth said, not having followed the latest developments in the discussion.
"Robert. He's like that Elton John song. If it's the kind of love that ties you down, he doesn't want it."
"Lovely..." Elizabeth muttered, this time wishing that it was Robert she was impaling with her fork. "Just lovely..."
"But it was nice getting to know you!" Mrs. Romano added, making Elizabeth feel like she was on her way to her execution. She had lost her appetite and didn't think she'd be able to get down another bite. This whole conversation was making her queasy. "You're done eating?" Mrs. Romano asked with a raised eyebrow. "You're not one of those women who starve themselves just to look like toothpicks?"
"Of course not!" Elizabeth said grumpily and finished her fish out of pure defiance. She would be glad to see this woman off at the airport, that much was for sure.
~*~
An hour later they arrived at the airport, and Mrs. Romano went ahead to check in her luggage while Robert and Elizabeth looked for a parking spot. They didn't say much until they had parked and were walking to the entrance.
"Thank you for being there at lunch" Elizabeth sarcastically said.
"Anything for you, Liz."
"You could have at least told me in advance..."
"If I'd known the patient would throw a clot and crash in surgery, I probably wouldn't have set a date for lunch anyway."
"So how is he doing now?"
"He's stabile... but he came very close to being reunited with his sis."
"The sister's dead?"
"Yeah. The organ donator, remember?"
"I don't think your mother is very impressed by me," Elizabeth said as they walked through the doors, "I didn't express much concern about the case."
"My mother isn't easy to impress, unless you're of royal blood, but for a first encounter you've gotten off okay."
"It was our second encounter today, you know."
"Ah, whatever."
Elizabeth felt very out of place as they caught up with Mrs. Romano and followed her to her gate. She embarked on a long monologue in a foreign language, probably telling her son what a stupid idea it had been to get involved with Elizabeth in the first place. Robert mostly just smiled and nodded, not paying much attention to his mother's babble, except for when he told her in English to take her own suitcase, she was the one with two good arms after all. Once they got to the gate he declared that they had to get back to the hospital, setting off a new line of 'your own mother's from Mrs. Romano. Finally she decided that it wasn't worth the argument and gave up the fight.
"I will see you soon again" she said. "I'm going to stop by here again before I go back to Europe."
"Well if not else, we'll meet in Nangiala" Robert said and gave her a kiss goodbye on the cheek.
"Don't talk to me like that" his mother grumpily responded, and Elizabeth wasn't sure she wanted to know what or where Nangiala was. "Good luck" Mrs. Romano said to Elizabeth, nodding in Robert's direction.
"Okay, we'll be leaving now" Robert said and grabbed Elizabeth by the arm. "Come on Lizzie, let's go. Bye mother."
He wandered off down the hall, and Elizabeth was happy to follow. She couldn't help but remember how smoothly things had gone when she'd met Mark's father for the first time, and wondered if this was a bad sign.
"Are your parents divorced?" she asked Robert as they headed back to the car.
"No. My father died ten years ago" he answered. "Why?"
"Well I didn't mean to pry, but your mother doesn't seem to have a very positive image of relationships..."
"Not when it comes to me, no. Heather's a different story."
"She implied that you don't believe in relationships."
"That's not true" Robert said. "I believe in them, I'm just not too crazy about being in one myself."
"Oh?" Elizabeth snapped at him.
"I don't believe in life long partnership" he told her. "It's naïve to think that one person can fulfil your every need for the rest of your life... That can only happen in fairy tales and Meg Ryan movies."
"I don't think that's what long term relationships are about" Elizabeth said, getting into the car. "I think it's about having one person to lean on, and to share things with in a whole different way than with everybody else. Someone you've been together with for a long time, someone who knows you inside out. Someone you love."
"And you think one person can be everything that you need for the rest of your life?" Robert asked and started backing out the car.
"Well I hope so, if not then what's the point of any relationship?"
"Love always manages to stab you in the back, one way or another" he replied. "Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind spending the rest of my life loving just one person and being together with her for as long as I live. I just don't think that's possible, somewhere along the line you'll end up hurt."
"It's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all" Elizabeth said and crossed her arms.
"Ouch, that cliché hurt."
"Robert..."
"Look, I don't believe that love can be good for you unless it's the kind that won't make you depend on someone else."
"Then how is it love?" Elizabeth asked.
"Since when is there a definition of what is and is not love? If you love somebody but don't depend on that person, then I don't see a problem with it, but when you can't live without each other you need to run screaming for the hills."
"Like that Elton John song, I suppose" Elizabeth mumbled.
"What song?"
"I don't know, the one about how love shouldn't mean a thing."
"Never heard it. But it sounds like my kind of song..."
"I still don't believe that it can be love if it's meaningless. A person who would say that has never been in love."
"I beg to differ" Robert mumbled.
Elizabeth glanced at him and wondered what he was thinking now. His past was like a puzzle for her and she kept searching for pieces. Was this another one? Had someone he loved hurt him and made him swear off real love?
She knew she would have to ask him sooner or later if he had any intention of ever getting into a serious relationship with her, but it felt like it was too soon to ask it now. She would have to wait until she knew more about his feelings, but she hated having to wait. Even more than that she hated how he'd talked about loving someone for the rest of his life as if she definitely wasn't a candidate for the job. Did he not see her at all as a possible love interest? Was she just a friend whom he slept with? She really wished she knew what was going on in that mystery of a brain of his, but she realised that they were more likely to give the Nobel Peace Prize to George W Bush than she was to understand the way he thought.
~*~
"Does chicken sound okay with you?" Elizabeth asked later that day. They were standing by the admin's desk on the OR floor, discussing dinner plans during a ten minute break. Or more correctly, Elizabeth was discussing and Robert was nodding along, in his mind preoccupied with something else. "Well?" she asked. "How about chicken?"
"Whatever, that's fine" Robert answered and sipped his coffee. "Just as long as there's lots of it, I'm starving, I didn't get any lunch at all."
Elizabeth nodded and reminded herself that she had to stop by the grocery store on the way home. She was just about to ask if she should get anything else than lots of chicken, when somebody addressed him in a foreign language. Both of them looked up.
"Kommer du inte ihåg mig?" a woman said in a foreign language, with what seemed like a nervous smile on her face. Elizabeth jumped slightly when Robert's cup hit the floor, but he didn't seem to notice.
"Kristina!" he addressed the woman, and walked over to give her a hug. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Elizabeth observed with mixed feelings as the woman said something else in the same foreign language, and he responded. Whoever this woman was, it was obviously someone he had been friends with sometime in the past. She couldn't really picture Robert having that many friends that would still be glad to see him years later, but this seemed to be proof that there were one or two.
"I'm a surgeon now" the woman told him, laughing slightly. "You never thought that would happen, did you?"
"No, but there's a lot of things I never thought would happen" he said and glanced down at his injured left arm. "Kristina as a surgeon, now there's a day I never thought I'd see..."
Elizabeth decided immediately that she didn't like this Kristina person. She seemed too cheerful, and way too keen on her appearances. Not that she was dressed up in any way, or wore any make-up, but her lab coat didn't have a single wrinkle on it and her shoulder-length auburn hair didn't have a single hair out of place. She probably had shiny white teeth as well, Elizabeth thought to herself, grudging her own.
"So what are you doing in Chicago?" Robert said and finally released the hug.
"I'm meeting some people for an exchange program at Mercy" the woman answer. "We were done for the day, and I thought I'd stop by here to say hi!"
"I'm glad you did!" Robert said, and looked annoyingly much like he meant it. "How did you know I was working here?"
"I flew over with your mother" Kristina told him with a light laugh. "And you know how she is, she can't stop babbling... Before we had even passed by Iceland I knew as much about your job as she does."
Oh great, so she was friends with Mrs. Romano. This just kept getting better and better... Elizabeth growled to herself, wondering when this hopefully brief reunion would end and hoped for Robert's sake that he wouldn't invite his friend over for dinner. In that case he'd be eating dinner alone with this Kristina person, Elizabeth had had enough of friends and relatives of his for a long time ahead.
"So you're the surprise she talked about, huh?" Robert said to the foreign woman. "Damn, I knew she was up to something..."
Kristina laughed and Elizabeth decided this would be the perfect time to interfere. She walked up to the happy duo, taking a detour around the coffee that had spilt on the floor when Robert dropped the cup.
"Are you planning on cleaning that up yourself, or should I call housekeeping?" she asked coldly and nodded toward the puddle on the floor.
"Housekeeping" he answered. "Hey Lizzie, meet an old friend of mine."
"Pleasure to meet you" Elizabeth said and walked off toward the elevators. Robert gave her a puzzled look as she went and wondered if the meeting with his mother had made her snap in some way. It wouldn't be the first time his mother had had that effect on people...
He turned his attention back to Kristina and decided to give her a tour of the place. He was happy to see her, she had been his OR nurse before he left to work at County for good, and they had always gotten along well. She had often talked about how she wished she was a surgeon and now, six years later, she was one, and he was happy for her. He could deal with Elizabeth and her grumpy mood later, he hadn't seen Kristina for nearly seven years and they had a lot to talk about in very little time.
"Come on Stina, let me take you on a VIP tour around this little hospital of mine..." he said and lead her down the hallway.
~*~
"Asystoly..." Elizabeth said and took another glance at the heart monitor. This patient was gone. "Bloody hell... Time of death, 17:46!"
She yanked her gloves off and threw them in a waste bin on her way out of the trauma room. This seemed to be her bad luck week, she hadn't managed to save a single patient today during her entire shift. Good thing for the incoming patients that she was off in less than fifteen minutes. She got the rest of her trauma gear off and headed off to speak to the family. She felt like she had had this conversation one too many times in one day, the conversation where you told somebody that a person they loved and depended on had suffered too great injuries and they were unable to save him or her. Sometimes she really hated this job.
"Killed another one?" Frank, the desk clerk, asked when he saw her foul mood when she came back to admin five minutes later.
"I haven't killed anybody yet, but keep it up and you'll be my first victim" she growled back at him and threw herself down in a chair that someone had conveniently vacated, rubbing her temples. "Bloody hell..."
"Having a bad day?" Lewis asked sympathetically, stopping by admin to grab a chart.
"More like a bad week" Elizabeth responded.
"Yeah, at least you're not the one who has to examine a 76 year-old for testicular cancer" Lewis said. "It's just not fun when they're too old..."
Elizabeth marvelled at Lewis' view of the world and definition of a bad day, and decided to get going ten minutes early. She didn't want to hang around and wait for another trauma to come in, which would force her to stay much longer than she had to, and given her track record for the day probably would force her to have another conversation with another person who had just lost someone they loved and depended on. All she wanted was to go home, eat her chicken and rue the day.
She ran into Robert up in the OR, and he asked her to wait for him while he went and changed. She wondered why he always insisted on wearing scrubs to work when he didn't have to outside the OR, but couldn't be bothered asking the question, knowing it would only delay them further. She sat down on a chair and rested her aching head in her hands for a few seconds. She decided to squeeze in some Tylenol somewhere in her busy evening schedule of eating and going to bed, and wished Robert would hurry up already. She wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.
"Come on Lizzie let's get the hell out of here" he said when he returned, somehow managing to make it sound as if she had kept him waiting for ages. She got up and followed him to the elevators. "So did we have a productive shift?" he asked.
"No, I had to pronounce seven patients today" Elizabeth sighed. "I think that's a personal record."
"Seven? Did you spend more than fifteen minutes with any of them?"
"Well, to be fair, three of them were hamsters, belonging to a boy whose family had been in an automobile accident... He wanted me to pronounce them, it felt really morbid."
"Dr. Lizzie Dolittie..."
"What about you, did you have a productive shift?" she asked, doubting that he had. Last she had seen him he'd been guiding his little friend around the hospital. What a waste of time.
"Extremely" he told her. "I saved that kidney boy's life, didn't I?"
"Good for you" Elizabeth mumbled and got on the empty elevator. "I can't wait to get the hell out of here..."
"You're insulting my hospital."
Elizabeth rolled her eyes as the elevator doors closed. What she wouldn't give to be in his bed right now, only having to close her eyes and go to sleep. But unfortunately, that was not going to happen. She had had a hard enough time getting out of bed this morning, she knew she'd be better of sleeping at her own place tonight, in a bed which wasn't as comfortable.
Robert put his arms around her waist and pulled her closer.
"Please don't tell me you have a headache tonight..." he said, half serious, half teasing. "When you start feeding me lines like that, I'll know we're in trouble."
"What if I actually do have a headache?" she asked.
"Then thank the lord above there is Ibuprofen."
"Perhaps you should be the one thanking him..." she replied.
~*~
Elizabeth groaned when Gretel jumped up on the bed. She really did hate that mutt, why did she always have to jump up on the bed at the worst of times? Or even at all? She was just about to drift off to sleep when the slobbery dog had landed next to them.
"Robert..." she whined.
"Gretel jump down" he mumbled from under her. The dog ignored him.
"She'll not listen if you don't say it like you mean it."
"You're in a better position to shove her down than I am" he replied. "Gretel, jump down!" he then added in a firmer tone. The dog obediently jumped down. Elizabeth sighed.
"And now I'm awake again. Great..."
"Mmhmmm..." he mumbled in agreement and seemed to fall asleep.
"Traitor" she mumbled. This was so typical, that he went right to sleep. She didn't reflect on the fact that when they slept at his place she usually went to sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Right now she was quite awake and wanted him to keep her company.
That was another thing which was different about their relationship when she compared it to any other relationship she'd been in. Normally at the start of a relationship you couldn't keep your hands of each other, and when you actually managed to, you would sit and talk for hours. She always loved that bit, staying awake for hours just talking and talking, getting to know each other really well. With Robert it was hard to keep a conversation going for five minutes after they'd gone to bed, let alone for hours. And she didn't know him even half as well as she would like, his past kept being a mystery to her.
"You awake?" she asked.
He groaned slightly.
"Yes. I won't be able to sleep unless you shut up."
She lifted herself up on her arms and looked at him.
"So how do you know that woman from today?"
"Kristina?" he asked, without opening his eyes. "She was my Shirley."
"Your Shirley?"
"Yeah, you know, Shirley the nurse?"
"I know who Shirley is" Elizabeth said, knowing very well that he knew that too, wanting him to get to the point.
"She had Shirley's job."
"And now she's a surgeon?"
"Wow, nothing gets past you" he quipped, finally opening his eyes to look at her.
"Well good for her" Elizabeth said, not really meaning it.
"Like you mean that..."
"I do!" Elizabeth said, sounding very offended.
"Yeah, sure you do... You don't like the competition of another female surgeon."
"What the hell do you know about it?"
"Either that or you're jealous of her hairdo" Robert said. "I saw the look you gave her. If you'd had a scalpel in your hand I'd told her to run for her life."
"Oh give me a break..." Elizabeth sighed and let her head fall down on his chest again. There was a pause. "So you worked with her?"
"Yeah, at Karolinska, about half a decade ago... Look, can we talk about something more interesting, if we have to talk at all? You're no more interested in my past co-workers than you are in adopting Gretel."
"Who knows, I might surprise you" Elizabeth smiled, happy that he wanted to change the subject. The less interested he was in talking about his old friend, the better. "So what do you want to talk about?"
"What I would most like to do is have a conversation with the Sand Man" he said and closed his eyes again. "I've got an early shift tomorrow, Liz."
"So it's back to the lions in the shower, then?" she sighed.
"No, they're in the jungle."
"Whatever... Do you want me to roll off you?"
"That'd be nice. I've gotta go to the bathroom."
"You see?" she said as she rolled off him and he got up. "It was good that I kept you awake. For both our sakes."
"Thank you for having that kind of faith in me, Lizzie..." he mumbled and headed for the bathroom.
Elizabeth rolled over on her side and decided that even though this day had mostly been a worthy part of this horrible week, at least it had ended well. But as usual she couldn't keep her mind from wondering. It didn't take her more than a minute or two to start to wonder if there was a not so positive reason why he didn't want to talk about that woman.
"You're out of your mind" she mumbled to herself. "He said they were co-workers... nothing more." But then again, she was herself his co-worker, and that hadn't stopped him from sleeping with her. She groaned and hated herself for never being able to let anything go.
Robert returned and climbed back into bed, yawning big. He knew he had to get up in about five hours, and he needed to sleep. Typical Lizzie to keep him up with irrelevant conversations. He would have to pay her back with some extra loud singing in the morning.
"Robert..." he heard her say.
"What?" he asked in a tone that was anything but friendly.
"Are you sure you don't want to talk about it? That friend of yours, I mean?"
"Damn it, Lizzie" he moaned and rolled away from her.
Elizabeth kept in a sigh and tried to make herself comfortable. She didn't want to be around to see what would happen if he was kept awake by her twisting and turning. She had a feeling he wouldn't be very pleasant company in that situation. He seemed annoyed enough with her as it was. Once again she had been proven wrong, this day had ended just as bad as any other day this week. She wondered if she could trade lives with a bear and just hibernate through the rest of the week. Although bears probably didn't hibernate in October, so she would be forced to stick around in the world of the awake anyway.
She closed her eyes and hoped for sleep to come, to at least end this day.
~*~
"How come the last hour always seems like the longest?" Elizabeth asked no one in general. She had been working for seven hours and was ready to go home. So far this day had been rather good but she kept expecting something bad to happen, probably at work. The sooner she got out of there the better.
"I think quite the opposite," Lewis said, "I think it's the first hour that seems like the longest. That's the hour when you can't figure out why you were stupid enough to come here in the first place."
"But the last hour is the one where you're constantly worrying that some new trauma will come in and stick you in surgery for three or four hours."
"Never felt that way" Lewis smirked and grabbed a chart. "Here I go, I've got a carbuncle in curtain one."
"Have fun..."
"Corday!" Elizabeth heard a voice barking. She turned her head to see Stone coming up to her. "We've got a GSW coming in five minutes from now, get ready!"
"Lovely..." she muttered, hoping it would be a single wound and not a very bad one. She really didn't want to get stuck in surgery for ages.
"And find Dr. Kovac, just because he's leaving tomorrow doesn't mean he can take it easy! Go, go, go!"
"Lydia, find Luka" Elizabeth said, having better things to do than to go search for Luka Kovac. She had to get ready for the incoming trauma.
"Looks like you won't have a dull last hour!" she heard Lewis shout from the other end of the room, as if Elizabeth had complained about something like that. She had wished for a dull last hour.
~*~
"We have to get this man up to surgery, call the OR" Elizabeth concluded a little while later. The GSW had turned out to be multiple, and it looked as if they would have to remove the man's spleen. She would be there for another couple of hours at least. She couldn't ask them to find another surgeon since her shift wasn't over yet, which was just her typical luck.
"Is he gonna make it?" a nervous relative who had somehow gotten into the trauma room asked.
"If I have anything to say about it, then yes" Elizabeth said and turned to Abby. "Call Dr. Romano, tell him to meet me on the way!"
"But he's--"
"Call him!"
Abby gave in and grabbed the phone just as an alarm went off.
"Sats are dropping" Yosh said.
"Damn it... Abby tell him to meet me here, and to get a move on!"
Abby angrily made the call, knowing there was much better use of her right now than to call a doctor who wouldn't be of any help anyway. When Romano started yelling at her on the other end of the phone she decided that was enough.
"Just get down here, Corday needs you!" she said and hung up on him.
"Abby we need you!" Kovac yelled, and she was more than happy to get back to assisting the patient.
They worked on the patient for ten minutes and were starting to feel like they had things under control when Romano arrived, angry over having to come down there and angry that Abby had hung up on him.
"My shift ends in five, I am not assisting you on this one" he declared.
"Robert, I need you to go back to my place and watch over Ella so that Chris can go home" Elizabeth said. "Looks like I'm going to be here for hours."
"Fine" he said. "From surgeon to baby-sitter, what an excellent career move."
"He's stabile!" Elizabeth declared, looking up from the patient for the first time in fifteen minutes. "Let's get him up to the OR now!"
"Enjoy you're evening" Robert said and left the trauma room.
~*~
Elizabeth came home nearly five hours later, exhausted from the hours in surgery. Her patient had ended up dying on her, and once again she'd be forced to have that conversation with someone. What a waste, the man had been no more than twenty-five.
It was eight o'clock in the evening, and she was starving. Ella was hopefully asleep, and Gretel was hopefully in the back yard. She quickly realised though that the dog was inside, she could hear Robert talking and playing with her.
She walked into the living room where Robert was indeed engaged in what seemed like some form of wrestling with the dog, while Ella was leaned over her colouring book by the coffee table. Elizabeth sighed.
"This your idea of baby-sitting?" she asked. Robert looked up.
"Hey Lizzie."
"Normally you keep an eye on the child, not just the dog..."
"Ella's fine" Robert said. "Relax."
"Ella should be in bed" Elizabeth said and lifted her daughter up. Ella protested.
"I don't want to go to bed!"
"It's way past your bedtime!"
"I don't care!"
Elizabeth suppressed a growl and carried the unwilling child toward the stairs.
"Next time, please make sure she's in bed at six!" she snarled at Robert as she went up the stairs with Ella in her arms.
Ella was incredibly unwilling to go to bed, and fought Elizabeth in everything from toothbrushing to getting the pyjamas on to lying down in the bed. Elizabeth was ready to scream by the time Ella finally settled in her bed and grumpily hugged her eagle plushie.
"Ella you know you can't stay up this late" Elizabeth said with a sigh, knowing that it was really no use to try and have a discussion with a child.
"Robert let me."
"Well he shouldn't have, Ella. I'll make sure Chris stays long enough to put you to bed next time."
"No."
"Yes, Ella."
"No. I like Robert."
"Yeah, I know..." Elizabeth said. "But he can't baby-sit you if he doesn't get you into bed in time."
"I wasn't tired. We had fun."
"You did, did you?"
"Yes." Ella paused for a minute. "Can't he be here in the days instead of Chris?"
"Robert has to work, just like mummy" Elizabeth told her. "And you see, Chris, she's working when she's here with you, that's her job. Robert works at the hospital, like me. And like your daddy."
"My daddy?" Ella said.
Elizabeth frowned slightly. Ella had forgotten Mark almost completely. It made Elizabeth very sad, since she knew how much Mark had loved his daughter. Ella had lost a wonderful father, and she wouldn't even know it when she was older. She barely knew it now.
She had tried not to think about it before, but now she couldn't help it. Whoever she dated from now on would have a great effect in Ella's life. She had seen so many children at work whose mothers went through several boyfriends a year, some of them treating the children very badly, and she was determined never to put Ella through that. She had to start making sure that Robert would make a good father for Ella, because if he didn't have any potential to be then she shouldn't waste her time with him or risk getting into a long term relationship with him. Ella came first, and even if she would hate breaking up with Robert she would do it, if he wouldn't make a good possible step father.
"Ella what do you really think of Robert?" she asked, wondering what Ella thought about it. "Do you like him? Is he nice to you?"
"Yes" Ella said. "He's funny. And he makes great soup."
"Soup?"
Elizabeth couldn't help but be shocked. Ella had always hated soup, and refused to eat any kind of it. Elizabeth had started giving up hope, thinking that the child would never learn to like, or even eat, soup.
"He made you soup?"
"Yes. With potatoes. It was good."
"I thought you hated soup."
"It was good."
"Okay..." Elizabeth gave her a kiss on the forehead. "Goodnight, darling."
"Goodnight."
Elizabeth turned the night light on, and on her way out turned off the other lights. Gretel passed by her in the door and laid down by Ella's bed, keeping guard. Elizabeth hoped Ella wouldn't turn into a dog lover, she could live with cats, but dogs were too slobbery and dependent for her liking.
She slowly made her way down the stairs, and about halfway down she felt the wonderful scent of something cooking on the stove. She couldn't help a big smile from spreading across her face. She wasn't angry anymore.
She stepped into the kitchen where Robert was just pouring her some soup, and sat down to eat.
"Thank you" she said. "I was starving."
"I figured as much. Is the munchkin in bed?"
"Yes, she's in bed, finally. Look, I'm sorry for being mad with you earlier."
"Don't be" he said and gave her a sandwich to go with the soup. "It doesn't matter."
"It does matter" she objected. "I was grumpy, and hungry, and..." She shrugged her shoulders. "I wasn't really mad at you."
"Don't worry about it, Lizzie."
Elizabeth tasted the soup and knew why Ella had liked it. It was delicious. Her smile got wider.
"You got her to eat soup..."
"She's not allowed to?" he asked with a raised eyebrow and sat down opposite her.
"Nobody's ever gotten her to eat soup before..." Elizabeth smiled.
He smiled back at her and reached for her sandwich, taking a bite before he handed it back. She was feeling much better than she had at anytime that week. She suddenly felt secure that if things got serious with her and Robert, there wouldn't be a problem with him and Ella.
~*~
~*~
~*~
Please leave a review! I would love some suggestions and comments! :-)!
Disclaimer: You know the drill...
~*~
~*~
~*~
"Don't worry about it, Lizzie" Mrs. Romano said and twirled some pasta around her fork. "It's not the first time he's stood me up, and it won't be the last."
They were having lunch at a small restaurant, Elizabeth and Mrs. Romano. Robert was supposed to have been there too, but had gotten caught up at work and after a while called to say he wouldn't come to lunch at all. He would pick his mother up in an hour to take her to the airport.
"Well he really couldn't get out" Elizabeth tried to defend him. "One of his patients, a boy who's just had a kidney transplant, threw a clot."
"You don't sound too bothered."
"We see it all the time, you can't let it get to you. Especially not when it's someone else's patient."
Elizabeth wished someone would have paged her down for an emergency as well, she would gladly have gotten out of this lunch. She felt awkward around Mrs. Romano, and now she didn't have Robert there to support her. She spiked some fish on her fork and wished an hour would go by faster.
"Well, I guess this at least gives us a chance to get to know each other better" she said, just to say something.
"Right, not that there's much use with it."
"Sorry?"
"You're a nice person Lizzie, but most likely you won't be involved with Robert the next time I come to Chicago."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Elizabeth asked, wondering if Robert's mother hated her, or had some form of reversed Oedipus complex.
"Robert doesn't believe in love and lasting relationships" Elizabeth was informed. "He never sticks with women for long."
"What makes you so sure that's not something that can change?" Elizabeth asked. "Perhaps not with me, but somewhere along the road..." she added lamely, not wanting to sound too sure of herself.
"Robert hates having to depend on people" Mrs. Romano said. "Depending on people is inconvenient for him."
"It can't be just that" Elizabeth said and wondered if now would be a good time to choke on a bone and get out of this conversation.
"When he was a teenager, he lost someone..." Mrs. Romano said and trailed off for a second. When she continued she seemed to be miles away. "Someone he depended on. After that he pretty much made up his mind never to depend on anyone again."
"Well he's not a teenager anymore" Elizabeth said. "It's been twenty years, I'm sure he's gotten over that by now."
"We'll just see."
Elizabeth rolled her eyes and wondered if the real problem here was that his mother didn't like that he didn't depend on her anymore. She decided to steer the conversation into other subjects, preferably avoiding anything else that had to do with relationships. It was obvious that Mrs. Romano didn't have the best view of togetherness. Elizabeth wondered if bitterness ran in the Romano family, or if she'd just been unlucky enough to encounter the bitter side of the clan.
"It's kind of like that Elton John song, you know..."
"What?" Elizabeth said, not having followed the latest developments in the discussion.
"Robert. He's like that Elton John song. If it's the kind of love that ties you down, he doesn't want it."
"Lovely..." Elizabeth muttered, this time wishing that it was Robert she was impaling with her fork. "Just lovely..."
"But it was nice getting to know you!" Mrs. Romano added, making Elizabeth feel like she was on her way to her execution. She had lost her appetite and didn't think she'd be able to get down another bite. This whole conversation was making her queasy. "You're done eating?" Mrs. Romano asked with a raised eyebrow. "You're not one of those women who starve themselves just to look like toothpicks?"
"Of course not!" Elizabeth said grumpily and finished her fish out of pure defiance. She would be glad to see this woman off at the airport, that much was for sure.
~*~
An hour later they arrived at the airport, and Mrs. Romano went ahead to check in her luggage while Robert and Elizabeth looked for a parking spot. They didn't say much until they had parked and were walking to the entrance.
"Thank you for being there at lunch" Elizabeth sarcastically said.
"Anything for you, Liz."
"You could have at least told me in advance..."
"If I'd known the patient would throw a clot and crash in surgery, I probably wouldn't have set a date for lunch anyway."
"So how is he doing now?"
"He's stabile... but he came very close to being reunited with his sis."
"The sister's dead?"
"Yeah. The organ donator, remember?"
"I don't think your mother is very impressed by me," Elizabeth said as they walked through the doors, "I didn't express much concern about the case."
"My mother isn't easy to impress, unless you're of royal blood, but for a first encounter you've gotten off okay."
"It was our second encounter today, you know."
"Ah, whatever."
Elizabeth felt very out of place as they caught up with Mrs. Romano and followed her to her gate. She embarked on a long monologue in a foreign language, probably telling her son what a stupid idea it had been to get involved with Elizabeth in the first place. Robert mostly just smiled and nodded, not paying much attention to his mother's babble, except for when he told her in English to take her own suitcase, she was the one with two good arms after all. Once they got to the gate he declared that they had to get back to the hospital, setting off a new line of 'your own mother's from Mrs. Romano. Finally she decided that it wasn't worth the argument and gave up the fight.
"I will see you soon again" she said. "I'm going to stop by here again before I go back to Europe."
"Well if not else, we'll meet in Nangiala" Robert said and gave her a kiss goodbye on the cheek.
"Don't talk to me like that" his mother grumpily responded, and Elizabeth wasn't sure she wanted to know what or where Nangiala was. "Good luck" Mrs. Romano said to Elizabeth, nodding in Robert's direction.
"Okay, we'll be leaving now" Robert said and grabbed Elizabeth by the arm. "Come on Lizzie, let's go. Bye mother."
He wandered off down the hall, and Elizabeth was happy to follow. She couldn't help but remember how smoothly things had gone when she'd met Mark's father for the first time, and wondered if this was a bad sign.
"Are your parents divorced?" she asked Robert as they headed back to the car.
"No. My father died ten years ago" he answered. "Why?"
"Well I didn't mean to pry, but your mother doesn't seem to have a very positive image of relationships..."
"Not when it comes to me, no. Heather's a different story."
"She implied that you don't believe in relationships."
"That's not true" Robert said. "I believe in them, I'm just not too crazy about being in one myself."
"Oh?" Elizabeth snapped at him.
"I don't believe in life long partnership" he told her. "It's naïve to think that one person can fulfil your every need for the rest of your life... That can only happen in fairy tales and Meg Ryan movies."
"I don't think that's what long term relationships are about" Elizabeth said, getting into the car. "I think it's about having one person to lean on, and to share things with in a whole different way than with everybody else. Someone you've been together with for a long time, someone who knows you inside out. Someone you love."
"And you think one person can be everything that you need for the rest of your life?" Robert asked and started backing out the car.
"Well I hope so, if not then what's the point of any relationship?"
"Love always manages to stab you in the back, one way or another" he replied. "Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind spending the rest of my life loving just one person and being together with her for as long as I live. I just don't think that's possible, somewhere along the line you'll end up hurt."
"It's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all" Elizabeth said and crossed her arms.
"Ouch, that cliché hurt."
"Robert..."
"Look, I don't believe that love can be good for you unless it's the kind that won't make you depend on someone else."
"Then how is it love?" Elizabeth asked.
"Since when is there a definition of what is and is not love? If you love somebody but don't depend on that person, then I don't see a problem with it, but when you can't live without each other you need to run screaming for the hills."
"Like that Elton John song, I suppose" Elizabeth mumbled.
"What song?"
"I don't know, the one about how love shouldn't mean a thing."
"Never heard it. But it sounds like my kind of song..."
"I still don't believe that it can be love if it's meaningless. A person who would say that has never been in love."
"I beg to differ" Robert mumbled.
Elizabeth glanced at him and wondered what he was thinking now. His past was like a puzzle for her and she kept searching for pieces. Was this another one? Had someone he loved hurt him and made him swear off real love?
She knew she would have to ask him sooner or later if he had any intention of ever getting into a serious relationship with her, but it felt like it was too soon to ask it now. She would have to wait until she knew more about his feelings, but she hated having to wait. Even more than that she hated how he'd talked about loving someone for the rest of his life as if she definitely wasn't a candidate for the job. Did he not see her at all as a possible love interest? Was she just a friend whom he slept with? She really wished she knew what was going on in that mystery of a brain of his, but she realised that they were more likely to give the Nobel Peace Prize to George W Bush than she was to understand the way he thought.
~*~
"Does chicken sound okay with you?" Elizabeth asked later that day. They were standing by the admin's desk on the OR floor, discussing dinner plans during a ten minute break. Or more correctly, Elizabeth was discussing and Robert was nodding along, in his mind preoccupied with something else. "Well?" she asked. "How about chicken?"
"Whatever, that's fine" Robert answered and sipped his coffee. "Just as long as there's lots of it, I'm starving, I didn't get any lunch at all."
Elizabeth nodded and reminded herself that she had to stop by the grocery store on the way home. She was just about to ask if she should get anything else than lots of chicken, when somebody addressed him in a foreign language. Both of them looked up.
"Kommer du inte ihåg mig?" a woman said in a foreign language, with what seemed like a nervous smile on her face. Elizabeth jumped slightly when Robert's cup hit the floor, but he didn't seem to notice.
"Kristina!" he addressed the woman, and walked over to give her a hug. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Elizabeth observed with mixed feelings as the woman said something else in the same foreign language, and he responded. Whoever this woman was, it was obviously someone he had been friends with sometime in the past. She couldn't really picture Robert having that many friends that would still be glad to see him years later, but this seemed to be proof that there were one or two.
"I'm a surgeon now" the woman told him, laughing slightly. "You never thought that would happen, did you?"
"No, but there's a lot of things I never thought would happen" he said and glanced down at his injured left arm. "Kristina as a surgeon, now there's a day I never thought I'd see..."
Elizabeth decided immediately that she didn't like this Kristina person. She seemed too cheerful, and way too keen on her appearances. Not that she was dressed up in any way, or wore any make-up, but her lab coat didn't have a single wrinkle on it and her shoulder-length auburn hair didn't have a single hair out of place. She probably had shiny white teeth as well, Elizabeth thought to herself, grudging her own.
"So what are you doing in Chicago?" Robert said and finally released the hug.
"I'm meeting some people for an exchange program at Mercy" the woman answer. "We were done for the day, and I thought I'd stop by here to say hi!"
"I'm glad you did!" Robert said, and looked annoyingly much like he meant it. "How did you know I was working here?"
"I flew over with your mother" Kristina told him with a light laugh. "And you know how she is, she can't stop babbling... Before we had even passed by Iceland I knew as much about your job as she does."
Oh great, so she was friends with Mrs. Romano. This just kept getting better and better... Elizabeth growled to herself, wondering when this hopefully brief reunion would end and hoped for Robert's sake that he wouldn't invite his friend over for dinner. In that case he'd be eating dinner alone with this Kristina person, Elizabeth had had enough of friends and relatives of his for a long time ahead.
"So you're the surprise she talked about, huh?" Robert said to the foreign woman. "Damn, I knew she was up to something..."
Kristina laughed and Elizabeth decided this would be the perfect time to interfere. She walked up to the happy duo, taking a detour around the coffee that had spilt on the floor when Robert dropped the cup.
"Are you planning on cleaning that up yourself, or should I call housekeeping?" she asked coldly and nodded toward the puddle on the floor.
"Housekeeping" he answered. "Hey Lizzie, meet an old friend of mine."
"Pleasure to meet you" Elizabeth said and walked off toward the elevators. Robert gave her a puzzled look as she went and wondered if the meeting with his mother had made her snap in some way. It wouldn't be the first time his mother had had that effect on people...
He turned his attention back to Kristina and decided to give her a tour of the place. He was happy to see her, she had been his OR nurse before he left to work at County for good, and they had always gotten along well. She had often talked about how she wished she was a surgeon and now, six years later, she was one, and he was happy for her. He could deal with Elizabeth and her grumpy mood later, he hadn't seen Kristina for nearly seven years and they had a lot to talk about in very little time.
"Come on Stina, let me take you on a VIP tour around this little hospital of mine..." he said and lead her down the hallway.
~*~
"Asystoly..." Elizabeth said and took another glance at the heart monitor. This patient was gone. "Bloody hell... Time of death, 17:46!"
She yanked her gloves off and threw them in a waste bin on her way out of the trauma room. This seemed to be her bad luck week, she hadn't managed to save a single patient today during her entire shift. Good thing for the incoming patients that she was off in less than fifteen minutes. She got the rest of her trauma gear off and headed off to speak to the family. She felt like she had had this conversation one too many times in one day, the conversation where you told somebody that a person they loved and depended on had suffered too great injuries and they were unable to save him or her. Sometimes she really hated this job.
"Killed another one?" Frank, the desk clerk, asked when he saw her foul mood when she came back to admin five minutes later.
"I haven't killed anybody yet, but keep it up and you'll be my first victim" she growled back at him and threw herself down in a chair that someone had conveniently vacated, rubbing her temples. "Bloody hell..."
"Having a bad day?" Lewis asked sympathetically, stopping by admin to grab a chart.
"More like a bad week" Elizabeth responded.
"Yeah, at least you're not the one who has to examine a 76 year-old for testicular cancer" Lewis said. "It's just not fun when they're too old..."
Elizabeth marvelled at Lewis' view of the world and definition of a bad day, and decided to get going ten minutes early. She didn't want to hang around and wait for another trauma to come in, which would force her to stay much longer than she had to, and given her track record for the day probably would force her to have another conversation with another person who had just lost someone they loved and depended on. All she wanted was to go home, eat her chicken and rue the day.
She ran into Robert up in the OR, and he asked her to wait for him while he went and changed. She wondered why he always insisted on wearing scrubs to work when he didn't have to outside the OR, but couldn't be bothered asking the question, knowing it would only delay them further. She sat down on a chair and rested her aching head in her hands for a few seconds. She decided to squeeze in some Tylenol somewhere in her busy evening schedule of eating and going to bed, and wished Robert would hurry up already. She wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.
"Come on Lizzie let's get the hell out of here" he said when he returned, somehow managing to make it sound as if she had kept him waiting for ages. She got up and followed him to the elevators. "So did we have a productive shift?" he asked.
"No, I had to pronounce seven patients today" Elizabeth sighed. "I think that's a personal record."
"Seven? Did you spend more than fifteen minutes with any of them?"
"Well, to be fair, three of them were hamsters, belonging to a boy whose family had been in an automobile accident... He wanted me to pronounce them, it felt really morbid."
"Dr. Lizzie Dolittie..."
"What about you, did you have a productive shift?" she asked, doubting that he had. Last she had seen him he'd been guiding his little friend around the hospital. What a waste of time.
"Extremely" he told her. "I saved that kidney boy's life, didn't I?"
"Good for you" Elizabeth mumbled and got on the empty elevator. "I can't wait to get the hell out of here..."
"You're insulting my hospital."
Elizabeth rolled her eyes as the elevator doors closed. What she wouldn't give to be in his bed right now, only having to close her eyes and go to sleep. But unfortunately, that was not going to happen. She had had a hard enough time getting out of bed this morning, she knew she'd be better of sleeping at her own place tonight, in a bed which wasn't as comfortable.
Robert put his arms around her waist and pulled her closer.
"Please don't tell me you have a headache tonight..." he said, half serious, half teasing. "When you start feeding me lines like that, I'll know we're in trouble."
"What if I actually do have a headache?" she asked.
"Then thank the lord above there is Ibuprofen."
"Perhaps you should be the one thanking him..." she replied.
~*~
Elizabeth groaned when Gretel jumped up on the bed. She really did hate that mutt, why did she always have to jump up on the bed at the worst of times? Or even at all? She was just about to drift off to sleep when the slobbery dog had landed next to them.
"Robert..." she whined.
"Gretel jump down" he mumbled from under her. The dog ignored him.
"She'll not listen if you don't say it like you mean it."
"You're in a better position to shove her down than I am" he replied. "Gretel, jump down!" he then added in a firmer tone. The dog obediently jumped down. Elizabeth sighed.
"And now I'm awake again. Great..."
"Mmhmmm..." he mumbled in agreement and seemed to fall asleep.
"Traitor" she mumbled. This was so typical, that he went right to sleep. She didn't reflect on the fact that when they slept at his place she usually went to sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Right now she was quite awake and wanted him to keep her company.
That was another thing which was different about their relationship when she compared it to any other relationship she'd been in. Normally at the start of a relationship you couldn't keep your hands of each other, and when you actually managed to, you would sit and talk for hours. She always loved that bit, staying awake for hours just talking and talking, getting to know each other really well. With Robert it was hard to keep a conversation going for five minutes after they'd gone to bed, let alone for hours. And she didn't know him even half as well as she would like, his past kept being a mystery to her.
"You awake?" she asked.
He groaned slightly.
"Yes. I won't be able to sleep unless you shut up."
She lifted herself up on her arms and looked at him.
"So how do you know that woman from today?"
"Kristina?" he asked, without opening his eyes. "She was my Shirley."
"Your Shirley?"
"Yeah, you know, Shirley the nurse?"
"I know who Shirley is" Elizabeth said, knowing very well that he knew that too, wanting him to get to the point.
"She had Shirley's job."
"And now she's a surgeon?"
"Wow, nothing gets past you" he quipped, finally opening his eyes to look at her.
"Well good for her" Elizabeth said, not really meaning it.
"Like you mean that..."
"I do!" Elizabeth said, sounding very offended.
"Yeah, sure you do... You don't like the competition of another female surgeon."
"What the hell do you know about it?"
"Either that or you're jealous of her hairdo" Robert said. "I saw the look you gave her. If you'd had a scalpel in your hand I'd told her to run for her life."
"Oh give me a break..." Elizabeth sighed and let her head fall down on his chest again. There was a pause. "So you worked with her?"
"Yeah, at Karolinska, about half a decade ago... Look, can we talk about something more interesting, if we have to talk at all? You're no more interested in my past co-workers than you are in adopting Gretel."
"Who knows, I might surprise you" Elizabeth smiled, happy that he wanted to change the subject. The less interested he was in talking about his old friend, the better. "So what do you want to talk about?"
"What I would most like to do is have a conversation with the Sand Man" he said and closed his eyes again. "I've got an early shift tomorrow, Liz."
"So it's back to the lions in the shower, then?" she sighed.
"No, they're in the jungle."
"Whatever... Do you want me to roll off you?"
"That'd be nice. I've gotta go to the bathroom."
"You see?" she said as she rolled off him and he got up. "It was good that I kept you awake. For both our sakes."
"Thank you for having that kind of faith in me, Lizzie..." he mumbled and headed for the bathroom.
Elizabeth rolled over on her side and decided that even though this day had mostly been a worthy part of this horrible week, at least it had ended well. But as usual she couldn't keep her mind from wondering. It didn't take her more than a minute or two to start to wonder if there was a not so positive reason why he didn't want to talk about that woman.
"You're out of your mind" she mumbled to herself. "He said they were co-workers... nothing more." But then again, she was herself his co-worker, and that hadn't stopped him from sleeping with her. She groaned and hated herself for never being able to let anything go.
Robert returned and climbed back into bed, yawning big. He knew he had to get up in about five hours, and he needed to sleep. Typical Lizzie to keep him up with irrelevant conversations. He would have to pay her back with some extra loud singing in the morning.
"Robert..." he heard her say.
"What?" he asked in a tone that was anything but friendly.
"Are you sure you don't want to talk about it? That friend of yours, I mean?"
"Damn it, Lizzie" he moaned and rolled away from her.
Elizabeth kept in a sigh and tried to make herself comfortable. She didn't want to be around to see what would happen if he was kept awake by her twisting and turning. She had a feeling he wouldn't be very pleasant company in that situation. He seemed annoyed enough with her as it was. Once again she had been proven wrong, this day had ended just as bad as any other day this week. She wondered if she could trade lives with a bear and just hibernate through the rest of the week. Although bears probably didn't hibernate in October, so she would be forced to stick around in the world of the awake anyway.
She closed her eyes and hoped for sleep to come, to at least end this day.
~*~
"How come the last hour always seems like the longest?" Elizabeth asked no one in general. She had been working for seven hours and was ready to go home. So far this day had been rather good but she kept expecting something bad to happen, probably at work. The sooner she got out of there the better.
"I think quite the opposite," Lewis said, "I think it's the first hour that seems like the longest. That's the hour when you can't figure out why you were stupid enough to come here in the first place."
"But the last hour is the one where you're constantly worrying that some new trauma will come in and stick you in surgery for three or four hours."
"Never felt that way" Lewis smirked and grabbed a chart. "Here I go, I've got a carbuncle in curtain one."
"Have fun..."
"Corday!" Elizabeth heard a voice barking. She turned her head to see Stone coming up to her. "We've got a GSW coming in five minutes from now, get ready!"
"Lovely..." she muttered, hoping it would be a single wound and not a very bad one. She really didn't want to get stuck in surgery for ages.
"And find Dr. Kovac, just because he's leaving tomorrow doesn't mean he can take it easy! Go, go, go!"
"Lydia, find Luka" Elizabeth said, having better things to do than to go search for Luka Kovac. She had to get ready for the incoming trauma.
"Looks like you won't have a dull last hour!" she heard Lewis shout from the other end of the room, as if Elizabeth had complained about something like that. She had wished for a dull last hour.
~*~
"We have to get this man up to surgery, call the OR" Elizabeth concluded a little while later. The GSW had turned out to be multiple, and it looked as if they would have to remove the man's spleen. She would be there for another couple of hours at least. She couldn't ask them to find another surgeon since her shift wasn't over yet, which was just her typical luck.
"Is he gonna make it?" a nervous relative who had somehow gotten into the trauma room asked.
"If I have anything to say about it, then yes" Elizabeth said and turned to Abby. "Call Dr. Romano, tell him to meet me on the way!"
"But he's--"
"Call him!"
Abby gave in and grabbed the phone just as an alarm went off.
"Sats are dropping" Yosh said.
"Damn it... Abby tell him to meet me here, and to get a move on!"
Abby angrily made the call, knowing there was much better use of her right now than to call a doctor who wouldn't be of any help anyway. When Romano started yelling at her on the other end of the phone she decided that was enough.
"Just get down here, Corday needs you!" she said and hung up on him.
"Abby we need you!" Kovac yelled, and she was more than happy to get back to assisting the patient.
They worked on the patient for ten minutes and were starting to feel like they had things under control when Romano arrived, angry over having to come down there and angry that Abby had hung up on him.
"My shift ends in five, I am not assisting you on this one" he declared.
"Robert, I need you to go back to my place and watch over Ella so that Chris can go home" Elizabeth said. "Looks like I'm going to be here for hours."
"Fine" he said. "From surgeon to baby-sitter, what an excellent career move."
"He's stabile!" Elizabeth declared, looking up from the patient for the first time in fifteen minutes. "Let's get him up to the OR now!"
"Enjoy you're evening" Robert said and left the trauma room.
~*~
Elizabeth came home nearly five hours later, exhausted from the hours in surgery. Her patient had ended up dying on her, and once again she'd be forced to have that conversation with someone. What a waste, the man had been no more than twenty-five.
It was eight o'clock in the evening, and she was starving. Ella was hopefully asleep, and Gretel was hopefully in the back yard. She quickly realised though that the dog was inside, she could hear Robert talking and playing with her.
She walked into the living room where Robert was indeed engaged in what seemed like some form of wrestling with the dog, while Ella was leaned over her colouring book by the coffee table. Elizabeth sighed.
"This your idea of baby-sitting?" she asked. Robert looked up.
"Hey Lizzie."
"Normally you keep an eye on the child, not just the dog..."
"Ella's fine" Robert said. "Relax."
"Ella should be in bed" Elizabeth said and lifted her daughter up. Ella protested.
"I don't want to go to bed!"
"It's way past your bedtime!"
"I don't care!"
Elizabeth suppressed a growl and carried the unwilling child toward the stairs.
"Next time, please make sure she's in bed at six!" she snarled at Robert as she went up the stairs with Ella in her arms.
Ella was incredibly unwilling to go to bed, and fought Elizabeth in everything from toothbrushing to getting the pyjamas on to lying down in the bed. Elizabeth was ready to scream by the time Ella finally settled in her bed and grumpily hugged her eagle plushie.
"Ella you know you can't stay up this late" Elizabeth said with a sigh, knowing that it was really no use to try and have a discussion with a child.
"Robert let me."
"Well he shouldn't have, Ella. I'll make sure Chris stays long enough to put you to bed next time."
"No."
"Yes, Ella."
"No. I like Robert."
"Yeah, I know..." Elizabeth said. "But he can't baby-sit you if he doesn't get you into bed in time."
"I wasn't tired. We had fun."
"You did, did you?"
"Yes." Ella paused for a minute. "Can't he be here in the days instead of Chris?"
"Robert has to work, just like mummy" Elizabeth told her. "And you see, Chris, she's working when she's here with you, that's her job. Robert works at the hospital, like me. And like your daddy."
"My daddy?" Ella said.
Elizabeth frowned slightly. Ella had forgotten Mark almost completely. It made Elizabeth very sad, since she knew how much Mark had loved his daughter. Ella had lost a wonderful father, and she wouldn't even know it when she was older. She barely knew it now.
She had tried not to think about it before, but now she couldn't help it. Whoever she dated from now on would have a great effect in Ella's life. She had seen so many children at work whose mothers went through several boyfriends a year, some of them treating the children very badly, and she was determined never to put Ella through that. She had to start making sure that Robert would make a good father for Ella, because if he didn't have any potential to be then she shouldn't waste her time with him or risk getting into a long term relationship with him. Ella came first, and even if she would hate breaking up with Robert she would do it, if he wouldn't make a good possible step father.
"Ella what do you really think of Robert?" she asked, wondering what Ella thought about it. "Do you like him? Is he nice to you?"
"Yes" Ella said. "He's funny. And he makes great soup."
"Soup?"
Elizabeth couldn't help but be shocked. Ella had always hated soup, and refused to eat any kind of it. Elizabeth had started giving up hope, thinking that the child would never learn to like, or even eat, soup.
"He made you soup?"
"Yes. With potatoes. It was good."
"I thought you hated soup."
"It was good."
"Okay..." Elizabeth gave her a kiss on the forehead. "Goodnight, darling."
"Goodnight."
Elizabeth turned the night light on, and on her way out turned off the other lights. Gretel passed by her in the door and laid down by Ella's bed, keeping guard. Elizabeth hoped Ella wouldn't turn into a dog lover, she could live with cats, but dogs were too slobbery and dependent for her liking.
She slowly made her way down the stairs, and about halfway down she felt the wonderful scent of something cooking on the stove. She couldn't help a big smile from spreading across her face. She wasn't angry anymore.
She stepped into the kitchen where Robert was just pouring her some soup, and sat down to eat.
"Thank you" she said. "I was starving."
"I figured as much. Is the munchkin in bed?"
"Yes, she's in bed, finally. Look, I'm sorry for being mad with you earlier."
"Don't be" he said and gave her a sandwich to go with the soup. "It doesn't matter."
"It does matter" she objected. "I was grumpy, and hungry, and..." She shrugged her shoulders. "I wasn't really mad at you."
"Don't worry about it, Lizzie."
Elizabeth tasted the soup and knew why Ella had liked it. It was delicious. Her smile got wider.
"You got her to eat soup..."
"She's not allowed to?" he asked with a raised eyebrow and sat down opposite her.
"Nobody's ever gotten her to eat soup before..." Elizabeth smiled.
He smiled back at her and reached for her sandwich, taking a bite before he handed it back. She was feeling much better than she had at anytime that week. She suddenly felt secure that if things got serious with her and Robert, there wouldn't be a problem with him and Ella.
~*~
~*~
~*~
Please leave a review! I would love some suggestions and comments! :-)!