Disclaimer: Once again, I don't own ER or any of the characters. They are the property of Michael Crighton and NBC.

Author's note: Hopefully this next chapter will help to explain the cliffhanger from last chapter. Also, I'd like to note that although I know Weaver is no longer technically Chief of Emergency Medicine, I'm just going to pretend that somehow she is again for this fanfic, because it fits better to have her be it than Romano, at least for my purposes.

As soon as I got off the phone, Carter and I ran as quickly as we could back to the cabin. All of our stuff was already packed up, since we were going to leave that evening anyway.

"Hey, sorry we didn't get to have that picnic," I said as we were running out the door.

"Don't worry about it. We'll have it some other time," he said. He sounded kind of disappointed though- I think it meant a lot more to him than he was going to let on. He had a right to be too- it would have been a really nice picnic. Of course, now I will always have the memories of being called off to the ER right after I got engaged. Wow- I was engaged. I paused for a moment.

"Abby?" Carter asked. "Are you okay?"

"What? Oh yeah, I'm fine."

"Well, we better get going then," he said, throwing the last of our bags into the back of the Jeep.

"Yeah, wouldn't want to keep Weaver waiting," I replied sarcastically. With that, we both got into the car and began speeding down the highway, wondering why on earth our vacation was being cut short. I couldn't remember the last time people were called to the ER for no apparent reason. Wait- yes I could. It was over three years ago, and it was only because Carter and Lucy had both been attacked by a patient and seriously injured. That was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, though, wasn't it?

As I was wringing my hands together, I suddenly noticed something. There was no ring on my left ring finger. I know Carter has a ring, because I saw it after the…well, we won't go there right now. Oh well, I thought, shrugging my shoulders. I know that I'm Carter's fiancée, and that's all that matters.

* * *

I sped down the highway as fast as I could, but my mind was somewhere else entirely. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why Weaver had paged both Abby and I. We'd both told her that we were going to be gone over the weekend, and I think Abby had even told her that we were going away together- though she probably could have figured that out on her own. The only time I could think of when we would have needed all of our doctors was right after County had been closed for two weeks, and we had that insane amount of patients, but I couldn't believe that had happened again.

"Abby," I said, trying to get my mind off all of this.

"Yeah?" she asked.

"If Weaver, or anyone else at County, pages or calls us on our wedding day, we're not going, okay?"

"Absolutely not. Trust me, no sane girl would let anything like that ruin her wedding."

"Oh really? And what would you let ruin your wedding?

"We wouldn't let anything intentionally ruin it, stupid, but if the groom doesn't show up, we're kind of screwed."

I turned my head and looked at her seriously. "Right, like I'd not show up for our wedding," I said as we pulled into the city. While I stopped at a red light, I reached into my pocket to find my County parking ticket- and my hand brushed up against the ring box. In the hurry to get out of there, I hadn't had a chance to give Abby the ring. Great, I thought, now she's really gonna think I'm stupid. I glanced over at her, but I couldn't tell whether she had noticed yet or not. Just then, the light turned green and we rounded the corner to Cook County General.

* * *

"Hey, you guys!" I heard Susan's voice shout over the rain that had just started to fall. "How was your weekend away?"

"Well, it could have been better, seeing as how it was kind of cut short," I replied.

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I tried to hold Weaver off from calling you guys as long as I could- I didn't want to interrupt anything."

"Thanks."

"For what?"

"If she had called a few minutes earlier, I would still be unofficially 'not taken'." Susan looked at me strangely for a moment, then got a huge grin on her face.

"Oh my gosh, you're engaged!" she screamed, throwing her arms around me in a big hug. "I'm so excited!" After she broke away, I stared at her for a second.

"You knew, didn't you?" I asked.

"Maybe," she replied mysteriously.

"I'm gonna kill you!" I shrieked. "I can't believe you didn't tell me!"

"C'mon, let's go inside," Susan said, ignoring my outburst, "and you can get all the details from Weaver, so you can't kill the messenger."

* * *

         I began to follow Susan and Abby inside, but stopped short the second I got inside the doors. The ER was completely overwhelmed with patients- it looked like a tornado had just hit.

         "Yeah, it's been fairly chaotic around here for the past couple hours. We've pretty much been able to handle it, but…" Susan trailed off.

         "But what?" I asked.

         "Oh, look, there's Dr. Weaver, and I have a patient waiting in Curtain 3. I believe this is my cue to go," she said.

         "For the love of God, would someone please tell us why we're here?" Abby asked, sounding very exasperated.

         "There was a plane crash on the runway at O'Hare Airport. The plane wasn't very high off the ground when it crashed, so there are a lot of survivors, but most of them are critical. The other hospitals around here are just as overloaded as we are, so we're going to need all the help we can get. Plus," she paused, letting that sink in.

         "Plus what?" I asked nervously.

         "We're fairly sure Dr. Kovac was on that plane."

         "Oh my gosh," I heard Abby say from behind me. When I turned around, she looked as pale as a ghost.