Spoilers: For "Mars Attacks".

Summary: Well, where to start?
It's Carter's first day back, some people are happy to see him, some overexcited nurses hug him, but some (mainly Finch, also Romano) aren't so pleased. He gets stopped by the guard because his ID is outdated and learns they'd emptied his locker, finds out Chen is pregnant, Mark and Elizabeth's double set of good news, and Dave has dyed his hair. Ahem.
He gets the minor patients, because they won't let him work trauma or use *any* instruments, he bitches about this, but gets nowhere, has a very smelly patient, and then the cutest child in the world (Dennis), who has a UTI. He bonds with said child, and because they are hit with a big trauma, helps with the nurses' jobs, ie: cleaning up pee. Then they go throw paper planes off the roof.
Finally, his shift is over, and Mark asks for a urine sample. He looks stung, can't pee, and then does. Finito.

Disclaimer: Hands up who thinks I own 'em? Lady in the first row, gentleman near the back…Umm, I mean, "Not Mine".

Author's Note: See end. Song stolen is by Gary Jules. I don't think the song is entirely used in the context it was written here, but I like it. And umm, mucho thanks to the usual people, who I could name, but have done so already in previous bits. Everyone who reviewed. Love to IAS, LS and Jen (who may or may not be alive) for reading through this oh-so-long-ago, and Kitty, who I didn't let read this oh-so-long-ago, but will thank all the same ;o).
Mucho love to Charli. Mwah.

Finding My Feet

~ * ~ * ~
All around me are familiar faces,
Worn out places, worn out faces,
Bright and early for the daily races,
Going nowhere, going nowhere.

Hide my head I wanna drown my sorrow,
No tomorrow, no tomorrow.

Gary Jules ~ Mad World
~ * ~ * ~

It's dark here, biting and pitch black, the streets largely empty but for a few stray people; some drunk, some finishing equally long shifts, and others with nowhere else to go. All but the last category knows what they're doing, where they're going; they walk past, quickly and purposefully, like I wasn't there. Look right through me.

Because the last category is me.

I know I'm nothing to them, that I wouldn't matter to them were I a modern day saint, they'd still bypass me in the same manner, but it still hurts, because I'm not sure if I'm ever going to lose the nagging feeling that this is who I am now, that bowed heads and blank faces is the best I will ever get.

My footsteps are small droplets on a street which I'm sure has seen many of the same, all day, everyday, nothing remarkable about them, or the slightly sharp sound they make each time they connect with the pavement. Just footsteps, each one lonely. The charcoal shadow I cast against the wall, slightly obscured and elongated is neither unusual nor remarkable; it's just…there.

And I wonder if there's a point, and if so, when do I get to find out what it is?

Today was successful, I guess.  I completed my shift, I did everything they asked, mostly with a false smile plastered across my face like a bad painting, but at the end of it, I felt empty. I thought I'd feel something else, anything else but apathetic.

It could be that I'm tired. That in the morning, I'll wake up; go to another meeting, and feel somehow different, better. I'm standing still, against the cold hard wall of some type of shop, one I must have walked past so many times, but never taken an interest in. I examine it. It's a small grocery store, the little white lights inviting, dancing happily and illuminating a largely empty interior, spare a few sleepless customers and a stoical assistant, dreaming of better places.

There's a bar opposite too, but that I had noticed. It's inviting in a different way to the store, dim inside, brimming with the sort of misery you always find in late night bars; little hope, lots of uncertainty, yet it is so tempting, to walk in, to order shot after shot of foreign unpronounceable spirits amongst total strangers until someone needs to call me a cab home and I collapse in a heap on a well worn carpet, or a cold merciless floor.

But if I'm honest, it's not alcohol I want to save me. It's something even more forbidden, and it still calls to me. Only at nights, but it calls for me, a happy dancing face that whispers into my ear and asks that I use it. Just a little fix, one to take the pain away. Never at work, never in the hospital, but at home, at home where it doesn't affect my judgement or make me weak. Where it would be okay to give in. At home where it soothes me to sleep. I've ignored it thus far.

But it's getting louder.

I try to pretend, I've tried to pretend all day, all last week that I'm happy, I'm doing everything right, I'm getting on with life and all the harsh boundaries that suddenly surround me like a particularly vicious form of barbed wire, but I'm not. I don't even know whether the belief I have that I'll do this is enough. I was so sure it was, I spent the last week convincing myself that if I just got back to work, everything would be magically better, and I'd be cured of this impenetrable disease I've been infected with, but in truth, I don't know what's me and what isn't anymore, where I end and where everything else starts.

I know that what was me wouldn't be like this. And I know, that somewhere deep down I imagined County being boring in my absence, imagined the place standing quite still for three months, without changing or caring to, just waiting for me. And I think that part of me wishes it had stood still, and had missed me, though I'm beginning to realise most of it may not have given me a second thought, which is sad.

Because in those months, even in my haunted, drug craving spells, it was all I thought about.

Now, Mark and Elizabeth are engaged and living together. Deb is pregnant, and blooming. Dave looks…well, his hair looks nasty, but he's changed too. Not substantially, but he's changed, and moved forward, and here stands me; still, unmoving and lost.

The door is opening, and some people topple out, alone, single, without so much as another person to prop them up. I think that is maybe where I belong. I'm marked now, and today proved that some labels you don't just shake off. The nurses greeted me happily, and I felt that it was going to be all fine, all right, but then reality hit me, and the fears that have been roaming through my head recently weren't as misplaced as I'd previously convinced myself. Cleo, Romano, they looked at me like some small bug. Romano doesn't surprise me, he looks at everyone like a small bug, and that's if you're one of the fortunate. Cleo Finch; that stung, it stung like I've never felt before.

Then there's Weaver and Mark, who wouldn't so much as let me use tweezers to pick splinters from a patient's ass. Whose faith I know I tested, but I wish they'd look past all this and see me. I'm still here, still fighting to be something again. Jumping up and down and waving madly, but to no avail, because no one sees me, and no one cares to. Welcome to the new world John. You'll find your seat two rows from the back, where the rest of the scum are relegated.

With a deep and powerful breath, cool air stinging my unaccustomed lungs, I walk straight past the bar, refusing to glance inside, refusing to smell the liquor on the lips of the building's inhabitants. Because I have to.

Because the alternative is scarier than I can begin to imagine.

Because I'll prove myself to them yet, and I'll show that I'm not some stereotypical addict with a constant threat of relapse.

The rest of the way home I try to concentrate on the positive aspects of my day. There are none. I sigh at my own pessimism, which used to be deeply hidden under layer upon layer of 'the world could be a worse place!' mantras, and pushed to the bottom of my mind. Now darkness seeps through those layers, wilting and killing as it travels, until the hope is so far hidden I can barely remember its taste, no matter how desperately I want to.

I try to think harder. The warm welcome I got. The people who were happy to see me, even Dave with his awful yellow hair. Abby joining with me in my whining misery. I missed her the past few days, she's been busy, I guess, but she promised to join me tomorrow morning, bright and early with the other victims for a rousing round of 'Woe is me, I faced the darkness, but I saw the light'. I resent the implication that it's that easy.

I push the last thought back out. Positivism. That was the hoop I was aiming for. Dennis. He was an inspiration. So young, totally paralysed from the waist down, yet facing everything, even the most embarrassing of moments, with a grace and an upbeatness that I can't even begin to describe. Without so much as a 'why me?' or a tirade of expletives at God.

He was stoical about all of it, and he remembered to take joy in the simple things, something that we all lose as we grow up, some quicker than others.

That makes me smile. A small smile, which creeps wider as I remember throwing paper planes from the roof and watching them sail down to the road below. Simple. And for that moment, I was happy, happy just watching them, watching how happy he was.

Watching the light in his eyes when the first plane just kept flying and flying, with no signs of giving in to gravity. It was soothing, and it helped me forget. I'm going to have to coerce all my future child patients to make planes and throw them with me.

And before I realise it, I'm home. The door greets me with it's usual indifferent creaking, the room the same as I left it, unchanging and comforting. I consider making a coffee, but every muscle in my body implores me not to, and I turn my attention to my bed. Only I don't quite make it. Instead I feel the uninviting springs in my couch as my legs give way underneath me, the cushions the only thing in the way of me sprawling undignified on the floor. The last thing I feel is a gentle thud as my cheek connects with the fabric.

~ * ~ * ~

Abby's unusually happy at the moment. Her face is radiating a little, no, a lot. I noticed that this morning when she met me outside the meeting without complaining about the masochistic time of the morning or the awful coffee they serve.

Now we're hiding outside the ER on our break, huddled near each other in a weird human wind break formation, which is actually of little use, but I don't think either of us wants to admit defeat. And she's still glowing, although she hasn't mentioned any reason for it. In the little time I've known her, I've noticed that there aren't many things that elicit this sort of reaction, and I wonder. I guess she could have met somebody. She hasn't said anything, but there's no reason why she would say anything to me about that, our conversations are many and varied, but, other than her recovery, we talk more about me, not her.

Never mentioned family, except one mention of her mother followed by a berating silence, and she swiftly moved the conversation on. But, then again, if her mother's anything like mine, I understand why she doesn't want to bring her up. Occasionally she mentions Richard, but only to support arguments that marriage is a curse, or when she's particularly void of caffeine and needs something to take her anger out on…

I don't know why I'm even wondering about this. It doesn't affect me, it's just nosiness.

But I think it must be a man.

"2 GSW's coming in, ETA 5 minutes," Luka's Croatian lilt interrupts the comfortable silence between us, and I groan inwardly. This call is for Abby, not me. I'm longing for the day when I can treat a trauma again. I politely excuse myself before it's made painfully obvious that I'm not needed, but I notice that little glimmer in her eyes again as I head for the doors.

Luka? Abby and Luka? I have to laugh, I don't think the monotony of my life has led me to seeing things just yet. Glancing back they're standing awaiting the ambulance, but a distance apart from each other, and certainly not stealing glances or caught in a compromising tryst. He doesn't see me, but Abby does, and offers a small conciliatory smile, before the lights and ever nearing noise shake her into movement, and all thoughts become that of how to help the patient. I know the drill.

At least I hope I remember that much.

~ * ~ * ~

Her figure stands out against the deep mahogany recesses of the room, and the lines upon

lines of spiral bound book and papers, all immaculately ordered and neatly placed, without even a hint of untidiness. This room brings back memories, memories of when I used to come here and hide, lounging on the softly padded red velvet chair in the corner with a medical journal, or some article from one of my father's magazines, safe from the world, the world safe from me.

It was always her favourite room as well as mine, we had an understanding of silence in here, not out of unkindness, but necessity, we each agreed that reading was best done in total silence, and it was a rule to be abided by everyone, including my mother; who frequently disobeyed it, much to our joint annoyance.

"We haven't seen you for a while," she notes as I step inside, a bland statement, but behind it lies a hint of warmth, and her lips curl into a slight yet elegant smile. I mimic it. She's sitting in her library, leather bound book on her lap, yet it doesn't seem like she's particularly engrossed in it, almost welcoming my arrival as an excuse not to read it.

She begins to stand to greet me, but I motion for her to stay seated, and walk over instead, taking the footstool next to her. "How've you been John?" she asks, and for the first time I see the wrinkled lines of her face, framed with coiffed white hair, paint a picture of concern. And I don't like her being worried about me, but at the same time it's comforting, because the only maternal love I've ever received has been from her. 

I should feel mad that the position is forced on her due to my own lousy parents, but as time goes on, the bitterness towards my own mother softens, because if I'm honest I'd rather pretend this woman was my mother, not a generation older.

"I'm good," I swallow. I'm not entirely sure why I'm here; I just couldn't handle another long night alone, with nothing but the silence, occasionally punctured by the colourful sounds of the couple in the apartment next to mine fighting out their differences, and never resolving them. "I'm good. I'm going to the meetings daily," I add, for lack of things to say, and also because I think it might make her proud of me, as I so badly want her to be. Just like she used to be.

"That's wonderful," she states, another glimmer of a smile flashing over her features, eyes quietly sparkling an icy blue, something which always scared Bobby a little when we were younger, but which I always found entrancing, a sort of elegant and stern beauty about them, set back from people, but with none of the coldness that others saw. They always amazed me. "And have you met any," she pauses, seemingly unsure of the wording to use, "friends?"

I laugh, and she frowns slightly, but I recover quickly. "I met a woman." The frown turns into more of a scowl, and again I'm forced to correct myself, babbling slightly. "Not a…A friend, well, I knew her before, she works at the hospital, but she's from the meetings too…she agreed to be my sponsor. You know, someone who-"

"I'm not so decrepit as not to know what a sponsor is John," she reminds me politely but firmly. "And I'm glad." She seems genuinely interested, something so small, but it makes me feel wanted, loved, and I feel less alone all of a sudden.

"What's her name?"

I smile, an image of her mid eye roll on a cigarette break creeping into my head. "Abby. Abby Lockhart. She was a med student, but she failed tuition payments, and now she's a nurse in the ER-" I stop on catching the slight but noticeable change in her demeanour as I exposit this information, and backtrack a little. "Her ex-husband was supposed to pay, she's a great person," I add pointlessly, and her face returns to normal, although I'm not sure if this is purely indulgence, nodding at me to continue.

I shrug. "That's about it. We go to the meetings, I've been going every morning before my shift, and we talk, it's…good to have somebody who knows what you're talking about."

She nods in agreement, then winces at a sudden clattering from downstairs. "That'll be your grandfather," she offers, half amused, half annoyed. "He has developed a certain penchant for supper at this time of night. And he invariably breaks something," she adds, rising resignedly and resting her book back on the small table beside her. I assume it'll stay there and gather dust for some time to come.

I follow her down to the kitchen, where my grandfather stands, bent over and scrambling to pick up a few metal pans he appears to have knocked from the rack above him, and can't conceal my chuckle, at both him, and the looks Gamma is shooting him.

"Ah, John!" he begins warmly, shaking my hand, an old, formal tradition which has never died with him. "I was sorry to miss you last time you visited."

I nod. "It's good to see you."

"How are things going?" he asks. I marvel at his ability to put a serious drug abuse problem down under 'things', but his pleasant demeanour makes it obvious he means no offence, I think he's just a little unsure how else to broach it. The frequent feeling that I've let them down returns briefly, but I shake it back to the recesses of my mind, determined not to let it ruin another night.

"Very well," I answer, with a reassuring nod and a smile. "I started back at the hospital yesterday…" to my left, Gamma bristles slightly, and an unreadable look crosses his face, but he alters it quickly.

"I know; I was surprised it was so soon. Didn't you want to take some time off?"

I shake my head. "Just wanted to get back to normal. They're starting me off slowly, only minor patients, a few at a time, but everyone's been…great," I finish, cringing internally at my slight lie, but wanting to paint them a better picture than treating rash victims and mild cuts.

He nods again, and Gamma opens her mouth to say something, presumably something to dissuade me from ever going back to the hospital, but she shuts it again, undoubtedly storing the comment for another time.

"And are you coping on your own?" he asks.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Neither look convinced, and I fear this may turn into a repeat of our two conversations last week.

"Would you like anything John, something to drink?" I accept a coffee from her warily, and she busies herself making it, making small talk along the way about Mr Westley's granddaughter, who's around my age, and for someone who didn't want me seeing any women a few moments ago, she waxes poetic about this girl, a vision in blonde curls, blue eyes and the well brought up manners of the Chicago upper class. I try my best to remain neutral and interested, but end the conversation unimpressed.

She shifts slightly into a discussion of the latest exploits of a less well brought up upper-classer, which interests me more, and I'm still sitting there two hours and three coffees later, a message to the broken and sad people everywhere, with my grandparents at 1 in the morning, actually feeling better than I have in a long time.

"It's late," she finally notes, with what I think is some satisfaction. I see where this is going. Maybe I saw a long time ago, but wished it away, and I haven't got the energy to fight it anymore. "It must get lonely in your apartment, just by yourself," she continues passive aggressively.

It does.

"And there's a meeting near here I think." She glances over to me, tentatively, but firmly. She's been doing her research.

"I'm happy where I am," I begin, somewhat unconvincingly, and her lips set in an almost perfectly straight line. Grandpa looks as though he's going to say something, but she cuts him off with a wave of her hand.

"Your apartment's not even in that good an area," she continues with the assault, the same speech I get each time I come here. "Here's nearer the hospital, and I don't understand why you pay money to rent somewhere like that."

"When I could stay here?"

She looks a little hurt. "When you could stay here, John. It might even help your recovery if you're not on…your own," she finishes slightly guiltily, but still firm. I feel like I've been hit with a sledgehammer.

"On my own," I repeat dully, well aware of the connotations of those words, and painfully aware of the fact that she thinks I might 'slip up' again. My own grandmother.

"I, we, are just concerned John. You could stay here a little while, until you find your feet."

I want to argue, my mouth opens and closes several times in a silent and useless protest, but I'm too tired, and she knows this, the barely there smile tracing the lines of her face, and the gentle hand that cups mine, so tightly gripping onto my mug, then gradually releasing under her own.

"Your room's here. At least stay the night," she implores, magnanimous in her success, and without any further hint of victory. I nod, eyes blinking, raw and tired, and they both smile. I stand and turn to wash out my cup. "I'll do that," she offers, taking it from me.

I kiss her on the cheek, and nod to Grandpa, before setting off up the stairs, each step a heavier one than the last, but at least with a destination in mind, which is more than I can say for the last few weeks. I get the distinct feeling that I'll be staying here longer than one night.

And I don't know whether to be pleased about that or miserable.

A/N: Apologies for this being so late, but exams and other life matters have (annoyingly) called. We promise to be more prompt with the next one.
If you haven't already, go read Charli's accompanying piece, "New Phases, Old Faces. It's a mini masterpiece ;)
Reviews are loved, as I crave improvement. Plus I'm not especially sure about this offering, due to Gamma, who is difficult for me to write. Ah, Gamma…