Chapter Three - Fire and Wind

They went to the roof. The rain had stopped, but the skies remained dark. Wind whipped around them. Abby shivered, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. She turned away from the wind and brushed the hair from her eyes. She looked up at Carter. He held his lab coat around him. He looked darker, she realized. More tan than when he'd left.

"Have you been in the sun a lot?" she asked.

"Yeah. There was an outdoor vaccination clinic we ran. There was a tent to stand under, but it wasn't perfect."

"It must have been hot out there all day."

"It was."

This inane conversation was killing her already. She tried to remember the last time they'd had a real conversation, but couldn't. "When did you get back?"

"Last night." He looked at her, his eyes intense, focused. "I stopped by your apartment. You weren't there."

"I went for a walk." Just a walk, that's all, she thought. No way in hell was she going to tell him where she'd really been. She still couldn't believe it herself, but she could imagine Carter's anger if he found out.

"At 3:30 in the morning?"

"I couldn't sleep. I'd been in bed for hours, just laying there, staring at the ceiling."

"So you decided to walk around Chicago by yourself." His disapproval was palpable. He stared at her like he couldn't quite believe she'd done something so stupid.

"Yes. And I'm fine. Nothing happened."

Carter closed his eyes and fought back his frustration. In his opinion, Abby took too many risks without stopping to consider the consequences. And she always thought she had things under control. She'd stepped into her neighbor's messy relationship and gotten herself assaulted in the process. She'd started drinking again, claiming it was under control and she only had a beer or a cocktail every now and then. She'd taken her bipolar brother to his grandmother's funeral, for God's sake, thinking he would just sit quietly in the car. And now she was walking around at night, by herself.

He thought Africa had changed him. The living conditions, the poverty, the lack of proper equipment and drugs were all so vastly different than what he'd always known. And the gun to his head had certainly made him think things over. You couldn't help but reevaluate things when your life was being threatened by rebel gunmen.

He'd had an overwhelming urge to return home, to find something good in his life and hold onto it. He'd thought first of Gamma, but she was dead. Then he'd thought of Abby. They'd been on the outs lately, and he admitted he wasn't quite ready to forgive her for what had happened at the funeral, but he'd found himself at her apartment anyway. Only she hadn't been there.

He wondered if he'd idealized her while he was gone. Had he forgotten everything that had gone wrong between them? Had he forgotten how stubborn she was, how resistant to him when he only wanted to help her?

"So where did you go?"

"I sat by the lake for a while. Watched the stars."

"You went all the way to the lake?" he asked in disbelief.

"You want to get mad about this?" She paced back and forth, trying to burn off an excess of nervous energy. "Okay, then how about I get mad about the fact I had to find out from Luka that you were going to Africa?"

"That was different."

"Yeah, it was. You knew I was only a few yards away when you decided to leave, but you didn't say a word. I had no way of knowing you were here when I decided to take a walk. And that doesn't take into account the week you didn't speak to me before you left."

"I was angry."

Abby sighed. "I know that, Carter. And you had a right to be. But I tried every way I could think of to apologize and nothing was good enough."

Suddenly he remembered it all again, Eric's rambling, his stumbling, and the quiet murmurs and stares from all of his family and Gamma's society friends and colleagues. "I was humiliated!" he burst out in frustration. "You brought your drunk, bipolar brother to Gamma's funeral. He fell into the grave, for God's sake!"

"And you know I never meant for any of that to happen."

"You couldn't have just left him at home." It wasn't a question.

"I was scared, Jon. He showed up at my apartment, manic, off his meds after picking a fight and leaving his program. I was afraid if I left him alone he'd leave, never to be seen again. He's my little brother. I'm trying to save his life."

Carter ran a hand through his hair. "I know that. But you could have taken him to the hospital. You could have called the police. You didn't need to take him there with you."

"Calling the police wouldn't have helped him."

"You can't help everybody."

"We're not talking about just anybody. We're talking about my brother, who I practically raised myself because Maggie was too messed up to take care of us. I'm not just going to toss him to the cops and walk away."

"He's always going to be there, isn't he? Between us? I'm always going to have to wonder when the next time you're going to run after him is going to be."

"He's going to stay in the program now. He's going to stay on his meds."

"You really think so? You really think he'll stay? Because you know as well as I do that programs only work if you want them to. And the last time I saw him it didn't look to me like he wanted to be in a program."

"Well, what do you want me to do?" she cried out.

"I don't know. But I do know I don't want to be part of a three-person relationship."

Abby frowned in confusion. "Are you giving me an ultimatum? Are you asking me to choose? You or my brother?"

She waited for his denial, but it didn't come. She'd half-expected him to break things off officially once he got back, but it hurt more than she'd imagined. Mostly, she thought, because he'd known about her family going into the relationship, and now he was holding it against her. He'd been there for her when Maggie had disappeared. He'd gone to Oklahoma with her to retrieve Maggie from that motel room, and he'd driven them all the way back to Chicago. They hadn't been dating then, his own relationship had in fact fallen apart because of it, but he'd been there for her. And now he was ready to throw their relationship away because of the very family he'd helped her with before?

"I don't have time for this right now," she said with a shake of her head. "I've got patients."

She left him standing on the roof, wind swirling around him, and hurried back inside. She took the stairs back down to the ER, needing to burn off some energy. She couldn't believe this was happening. How could he expect her to just toss her brother aside? Eric had been the one thing she had to hold onto during her crazy childhood. Carter knew that. She'd thought he understood. She worked through the rest of her shift mechanically, avoiding Carter's intense gaze as much as she could. There were a few times she looked up and caught him watching her, but each time she quickly looked away. There was something unnerving in his eyes; vaguely accusatory, vaguely disbelieving. Like he couldn't believe she hadn't thrown herself into his arms up on the roof. But she couldn't, because as crazy as her family drove her sometimes, as much as a part of her would like to, she couldn't just throw them to the wolves. They were her family.

It started raining again when she left the hospital, and she was soaked by the time she made it to the El station. She boarded in a daze, and almost missed her stop because her mind was a million miles away. As she walked up the street toward her apartment, she wondered where Luka was. Was he still in Africa? When was he coming home? Was he coming home at all? Her heart tripped at the thought that he wouldn't. She needed him, she realized. She needed his understanding. She needed the warmth of his arms. She needed his smile, his deep, soothing voice. And she wanted his laugh, all the more precious for its rarity. But most of all, she just wanted to know she still mattered to him.

When she got to her apartment, she took a long shower, then planted herself on the couch. She ate a TV dinner and watched sitcom reruns for hours, her mind running on a loop, repeating the same phrase every few minutes. Come home Luka.