Hi!! These are the last two chapters of this story, hope you enjoy them. I wanted to upload them earlier, but things got into my way. This is going to be my last story for the upcoming 5 months. I'm going on an exchange to the USA...I might return with some new ideas. I hope you all had a great x-mas and will have a happy New Year!!! I will miss you stories and your reviews very much!!
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Steve woke up with blurred view at his surroundings and headaches that surely would have knocked out Robo Cop and anybody else with more metal than brain mass in his head. He moaned as he tried to turn his head, wondering if they had chosen one of the rooms he already knew from one of his several visits to this house or if he would have a new ugly copy of some bad landscape painting to stare at as long as he would need rest and Steve was sure that his dad and everybody else agreed that he did need some rest.
Right now Steve had to admitt he didn't fancy the idea of getting up himself, neither he wanted to look at landscape paintings. To the contrary he rather wanted to shut his eyes again and find his recollection of the past few hours of which he was quite certain they were the reason he was here. His memory was burried among his dizziness.
"Good morning, son!", Mark greeted happily, seeing his son stirring and moving and blinking.
"Morning, dad...", Steve grumbled, his mouth felt as though he had eaten soap.
"How are you feeling?"
"Like I rid the 'crazy teacups' non-stop for the past three days...", Steve answered, but he was somehow really certain that this wasn't really his reason of being here. His last visit to Disneysland had been three months ago, when Amanda had forced him and Jesse...
The circle closed and Steve felt his heart bumping wildly in his chest. All of sudden his memory was back, every single bit of it until the last sight he had gotten at Jesse, blood covered and blue skinnend on a strechter. "What's with Jesse?!...ouch!!!" He tried to push himself up, but then was roughly reminded of his meeting with Harris' boot.
Mark padded Steve's arm carefully. "He came through surgery more or less okay and is in ICU now. He is still not out of the woods, but..."
"He will make it!", Steve finished the sentiment determinedly, then added remorsefully, "that was our deal...he wouldn't give up and I wouldn't let him down..."
The way his son looked at him almost ripped Mark's heart out. If that kind of deal didn't show what real friendship was, there was nothing else that did. "You didn't let him down, Steve..."
"But I did..." , Mark never said those words, however, Steve could sense them vibrating through his father's voice. "You didn't either, dad...", he said reassuringly.
Mark sunk his head and looked at the landscape painting or any other spot at the wall, totally lost in thoughts. Then finally he looked back, Steve directly into the eyes. "I don't know what I'd do, if I ever lost one of you. And yesterday I was close enough to lose the two of you, gosh, I was so scared. I love you, Steve."
"I love you, too, dad."
Mark smiled again and it almost looked like a real smile this time before he got up. "You rest now, I'll show by later again..."
"Yeah, I'll just rest and look at that wonderful piece of manufactured art...", Steve replied sarcastically, but already feeling hazy again.
"I'm sorry, we don't take orders regarding the room equipment...", Mark grinned, opening the door.
"Alright, guess I'll have to see the manager about it!", Steve shot back, but then the door was already closed.
Steve sighed. This was going to be a long day. So he could as well do what his father had said –as pathetic as it maybe was- and get some rest.
About two weeks later...
Mark stood whisteling at the reception desk, filling in his charts. He'd more or less caught up with his depth of sleep that he'd been suffering during the first days Jesse had been hospitalisized. The young man had quickly been out of the woods and was now well on the road to recovery. Seeing how fast Jesse had got his former talk-active, enthusiastic self back had made it easier for Mark to deal with his own regrets of what had happened, by now the only thing that kept him from letting himself off the hook was an excuse which still needed to come along with a detailed explanation. It occured strange to Mark that by now Steve and Amanda had both already heard this story while the person who deserved to hear it the most was still completely left in the dark.
Despite of the good mood which had generally settled between the four friends again, Mark knew it was something he urgently owed to Jesse. But until now the older man hadn't been sure if his surgorrate son would be in the condition of taking his words as the were meant. Not as an act of affectionate pity or as a justification, but the honest attempt of making him understand. It was to Mark as though he and Jesse had come to a silent agreement about this, since Jesse, if he still thought of it –and Mark was sure he did- never mentioned anything going into the direction of their near past.
As much as his relationship to his protégé felt awkward to Mark right now, he was happy to see how well Steve and Jesse were getting along. Not they hadn't befriended each other before, but it seemed as though the rough time they'd gone through together had cuffed them together in a somewhat brotherly way. Steve showed up each day at CGH with a package from BBQ Bob's which he used to declare as his lunch while Mark, Amanda and probably everybody else in the hospital by now only pretended to believe.
In fact they all knew that the ribs constantly vanished in Jesse's stomach while Steve sat next to the hospital bed, his long legs laciviciously thrown onto another chair or the edge of the bed and happily munched on the indefinable food that cafeteria served to the patients. The same generousity that displayed in Steve's attitude towards his evaluation of the word "edible" was also recognizable in Mark's way to look over the rules.
So when Mrs Higgins, head nurse and paid patient-scare of the station, had come to Dr Sloan and grumpily called his attention to the fact that his own son was "continuesly poisoning the patients", the as an eccentric known medic had only smiled and genuinely replied:"So it be." Though the head nurse had been everything else but happy with this decision, Mark was sure of not violating his oath with it. After all, if you referred to BBQ Bob's food as a "poison", one would have to think about calling the hospital food "highly concentrated hydrochloric acid".
Mark smiled to himself as he closed his last chart for today. He would say quick "Hello" to Jesse and Steve now and then go down to the pathology lap and see if Amanda needed some help with a fiddly autopsy. Some time things had to get back to normal.
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In Jesse's hospital room, the bath-gown-dressed young doctor sat with wrinkled forehead over the chess board, desparately looking for some sign of aporia on Steve's pokerface. He decided to move his knight after a long time of self-discussion.
Steve thoughtfully covered his mouth with his hand, trying not to show how he was grinning under it. Beating Jesse at chess was easier than to snatch away a sweet from a two-year-old. Yet, it was incredible that, even after about a million of lost games, he still didn't give up. Before Steve could set the whole drama a quick and painless end, he heard a reluctant voice from the other end of the table.
"Can you do me favor?", Jesse had leaned back in his chair and ignored his lost battle of strategy game for now, though Steve still made fun of it.
"No, I won't let you win...", the lieutenant said playfully, however, he knew that this wasn't about putting kings off a checkered board.
Jesse wasn't sure to win Steve for this little mission and he was certainly not eager to fool out any of his friends. But he needed this small freedom to set some things right which had been wrong far too long now.
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Walking along the corridors, Steve Sloan knew he would kick himself sooner or later for agreeing to this. 'If I promise you that it is neither illegal nor self-destructive, will you help me, even without knowing?', Jesse's words echoed through his mind causing him a slightly uncomfortable feeling. It wasn't that he didn't trust Jesse, but with such a wicked mind as his friends' one could never be sure that the mentioned legal and not self-destructive stuff wouldn't turn out to be the opposite.
Nevertheless, Steve had finally said "yes" to his stubborn vis a vis and left for his task, though not without gleefully checkmating his friend before.
When he saw his dad, he put on his most effecient I'm-the-nicest-son-in-the-world-grin and greeted his father, thereby blocking whose way that was directed furtherly down the hall. "Hey Dad!"
"Hey son!", replied Mark and frowned when Steve remained where he was, directly in front of him, planted into the ground like a giant mammut tree. "Something wrong?"
"No...well, yes...well...errr...both somehow", Steve stammered. He was such a horrible actor.
"So it's something like 'nes'", Mark raised his eyebrows suspiciously. One of the things that had made Steve such a lovely, easy child was that he was probably the worst liar on earth.
Steve had regained some certainess about his intention in the meantime. "Thing is...I need you to come to the station with me. I have something...uh...important to sort out there and I need your help."
"Oh...can't this wait, I was actually on my way to Jess..."
'That's why we're both standing here right now in the first place', Steve thought wryly before he cut in on his dad. "No...you're not. I mean, it's not very convenient. He was sleeping when I left."
"It's two o'clock p.m. Is he feeling sick or something?", Mark inquired, acting earnest. He had to admit that he liked this somehow.
'Bad move', Steve thought, hopelessly struggling for a change in the pace. "No...I think he is just depressed 'cause I beat him at chess." 'He's never going to buy that...'
"You always beat him at chess!", Mark argued, suppressing the urge to giggle.
'I should become a fortuneteller...' "Look, dad, it's really nothing, he's just tired. So will you please come help me with my work?"
"You're voluntarily asking me for hel...", Mark was musing loud and gleefully, when Steve had enough of their little cat and mouse game and simply used his physical superiority to drag his father with him.
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Jesse cautiously opened the door to the lockers room and found it empty to his relief. He had made it here without being noticed which was a little miracle, though he had raised his chances of succeeding by talking Steve into keeping his father out of line. During this operation Mark was Jesse's most frequent fear, especially since he had taken over Jesse's patients which kind of made him to a doubled danger.
The young doctor opened his locker where he found some OP clothing that two weeks ago he had carelessly thrown into it before heading home. The clothes somehow looked this act of neglectence by being a bit creased and crumbled, but at least they were still clean.
Over the years Jesse had got used to dressing quickly, especially since Murphy's law obviously enforced emergencies to come in when he was just showering. The interesting side-effekt of it was that Jesse had developed a real skill for hearing the smallest beeping or ringing sounds even with an amount of water in his ears.
Jesse was about to leave the room again, when the door was opened. The young man jumped back in defense, not knowing wether he'd have to come up with a more or less good excuse within the next few minutes or nothing would happen at all.
Something did happen. Something Jesse had counted less with than with anything else and which threw him completely out of the line for at least a few seconds. For a moment he simply stared into the intruders face, not knowing how to look at his vis a vis. He could look reproachfully, he could look frightenedly, he could look dismissvely, but none of those options didn't quite match the way he felt. To his own surprise he didn't feel anything apart from surprise.
Michael didn't seem to know how to look either. He smiled a forced "Hello" and excusingly pointed over his shoulder at the door. "I am...only here to get my stuff. A guard's waiting outside. I'll only empty my locker and then never bother you again..." He sounded stiff, almost proud, although Jesse got it quickly that what seemed like a lack of emotion was actually too much of it.
Jesse was frozen in his motions, all he could do was eye his former intern with a bewildered expression on his features. Up until this moment it had never occured to him that probably no one would have denied the fact that everything he had been through was basically Mike's fault. Only that he himself had never really considered it. Jesse had always felt that he himself was the problem. What would he have done if Michael hadn't done it? He had all the time blamed himself for thinking of it, but he had never blamed Michael for doing it. And he had no intention to start with it now. So, out of a weird impulse that later he couldn't define anymore, he held out his hand to his former intern.
Michael looked at the offered hand with hesitation.This seemed a bit like an absolution to him of which he wasn't sure if he deserved it. But the insisting gesture of forgiveness was too tempting to ignore it. Dr Travis had been the only one in this whole Micheal had really felt guilty about. The mercy in this simple shaking of their hands impressed him and made him feel he should say something. "I...I'm sorry..."
Jesse didn't know what to answer. He could see Michael's point for being sorry, but he couldn't feel any anger. Not anymore. From Jesse's point of view there was only one thing left that he could say to Micheal, the only thing that he really meant and of which he knew Mike needed it:"Good luck."
The intern smiled, sheepishly scrutinizing his former supervisor who looked perfectly normal except the fact that he wasn't wearing shoes. Micheal had hardly been a doctor long enough and probably wouldn't be a doctor for long enough to experience it himself, but he could see what people meant when they clamied doctors to be the worst patients. "Good luck", Mike mumbled and stepped aside to allow Jesse free access to the door.
As the young doctor exited the lockers room, the guard outside friendly wiched him a good day and then didn't pay any attention to Jesse anymore. How was he to pay attention to someone who basically looked like hundreds of others in this hospital? Jesse probably was the best-camouflaged patient you could be in a hospital. He was masked as a doctor. Sliding into the usual hospital traffic, Jesse first needed some time to acquaint himself to the fact that no one seemed to have any complaint about him being here. He was common sight in this house, he practically belonged to the fittings.
And, of course, no one else was able to feel the unsteadiness of his legs which still sought instinctively for some sort of support in case it would be necessary to keep the body from hitting the floor. No one except for himself could feel the soft ripping coming from the scar a few inches under his sternum. His skin had become whiter in two weeks of hardly seeing the sun from outside the hospital, but then again he was always teased for being "pally-nosed" which even was the truth when one wanted to compare him to all those sun-roasted beach boys who'd spent their entire life surfing in Malibu while he'd been freezing at the Great Lakes. Therefore the lack of brown skin maybe wasn't so outstanding to others as it was to him.
All in all, Dr Travis had full rights to be where he was, stroding through the halls of the CGH and visiting his patients. Though Jesse only headed to visit one patient. He had to sort out something.
Standing in front of the door to Phillip Morton's room, Jesse hesitated. He had actually no idea what he should do or say, but he felt his past had been following him far too long without ever catching up. Now it was his turn to stop and wait.