Chapter 5
Carter thought he had all these new relationships and families worked out. So he was a bit surprised to see Susan walking into the ER with what he thought was Kerry's son, and another little boy.
"Hi Chuny, hi Haleh, hi Frank, hi Macy, hi Sam, hi John!" Kyle said, beaming with pride that he had greeted everyone in sight.
"Hi Chuny," said the boy at Kyle's side, not quite up to the task.
"Hey, guys! What are you doing here, Susan? I know you're not on today," Chuny said.
Susan responded with a laugh. "Do you think I would've brought them with me if I was on? I'm just here to pick up my paycheck."
"John, remember me? I remembered you," Kyle reminded him.
"Of course I remember you, Kyle," Carter said promptly. "And who's this?" he asked, gesturing to the other little boy.
"This is Cameron." Kyle thought for a moment, then added, "He's my brother. Cam, this is John. You know, the one I told you about."
"Hi John, hi Chuny!" Cameron said cheerfully.
"Hey, Cam," Chuny said again.
"Hi Cameron, nice to meet you," Carter said. Cameron just smiled back at him. "Are you two twins?" Carter asked Kyle. The boys appeared to be about the same age.
"Of course not!" Kyle looked at Carter indignantly. "Cam's a baby."
"I'm not a baby," Cameron said, still smiling.
"I'm more than three months older than Cameron, and that's a long time," Kyle said, holding up three fingers to emphasize his point.
Meanwhile, Cameron's attention had drifted, and he was about to chew through the ink cartridge of a pen when Kyle snatched it front his hand. "Cameron, pay attention! He's the one from Africa, remember? He has all kind of exciting stories." Kyle paused, waiting for Carter to begin another tale.
"Well, you'll have to wait until later to hear them, cause we need to go," Susan said, paycheck in hand.
"But John was about to tell us stories!" Kyle whined.
"You can talk to him some other time. He's not going anywhere," Susan said, looking over at Carter as if to confirm her statement.
"See you later, guys."
"Bye Chuny, bye Haleh, bye Macy, bye Frank, bye Sam, bye John!" Kyle said as they walked towards the exit.
"Bye Chuny!" Cameron echoed.
"Is the weekend over yet?"
Susan checked her watch. "Not yet."
"What time will it be over?"
"Six."
"What time is it now?"
"4:40."
Kyle paced in front of her for a few more seconds. "How many more minutes?"
"Eighty."
Kyle looked disappointed. "That's a long time," he said. After a bit more pacing, he asked, "Want to play a game?"
"I'm kind of busy right now."
"But I don't have anybody else to play with," he said, lower lip sticking out pitifully.
"Cam'll be home soon," she reassured him.
"Not soon enough! Is the weekend over yet?"
"Not yet."
"What time is it?"
"4:42."
Kyle sighed in frustration. "This is taking too long," he said. "Can't we just go and pick him up now?"
"Don't you think his dad wants to spend time with him too?" Susan asked.
"No," Kyle said stubbornly.
"Well, he does. We get him for the rest of the week, so it's only fair that we share him on the weekends, right?"
Kyle shrugged. He was silent for a few more moments, then he said, "Susan?"
"Yeah?" Susan said, delaying any hope of getting her work done.
"Do you think next time I could go with him?"
Susan laid down her pen. "I don't think so. The weekend is Cam's special time with his daddy."
"But that's not fair," Kyle said sadly. "I don't get any special time with my daddy. I don't even have a daddy."
"Well, you know, sometimes even if you don't have a daddy, you can have someone who's like a daddy, and it's just as much fun."
Kyle got an excited gleam in his eye. "You mean I could pick a daddy?"
"Well, I didn't say tha-"
"I think I'll pick Luka! He's like a daddy, cause's he's really big!"
"I didn't mean you could make someone-"
"Can I go to his house on weekends? And can he take me fun places and stuff?"
"Hey, wait a second! I didn't say you could pick a daddy, just that you could have someone be LIKE a daddy," she said, emphasizing the word.
"Oh." A look of disappointment returned to his face. "Guess I'll just wait for a real one."
Susan wasn't sure what to say to that.
"So?"
"So what?"
Susan sighed impatiently. "What did he say?"
"He didn't say anything." Susan's look was more than surprised. "I didn't tell him."
"What? How could you not tell him? That was the best chance you're gonna get!"
Now it was Abby's turn to sigh. "Susan, there was a shooting in front of the hospital about two minutes after you left. I was about to tell him when we heard the gunfire."
"Oh, God. Did anyone die?"
Abby rubbed her face wearily. "Two kids and a woman. They don't even know what's it was about."
Susan shook her head. "People just get crazier every day, don't they?" She stood up from the couch. "Well, I made Kyle's favorite for dinner, spaghetti O's. You hungry?"
Abby shook her head. "Maybe I should call him."
"And tell him over the phone?" Susan yelled over the noise of the pots and pans she was clanging in the kitchen.
"Hmph. Maybe I'll write him a letter," she said mockingly.
Susan emerged from the kitchen. "Abby," she said warningly, "Act like a big girl or you're getting a time out."
Abby smiled. "Well, he deserves it," she said in her defense. "But I guess I'll tell him in person," she said dramatically.
"Tomorrow," Susan commanded.
"Tomorrow," Abby promised.
"Got a minute?"
Carter looked up from the stack of charts in front of him. "Sure, what's up?"
Abby sat down on the couch and clasped her hands. "Need to talk to you. Remember yesterday, when I told you about the letters I sent while you were in the Congo?"
"Yeah, I remember." Now she had his full attention.
"Well, in the letters, I-"
"-weak this season, cause they lost Johnson."
"What they need is to get rid of Bradley and focus on beefing up their defense! The offense can work as hard as they want, it doesn't matter, cause their defense isn't stopping anything." Malik turned, and noticed that he and Gallant weren't alone in the lounge. "Oh, hi Abby, Carter." He turned back to Gallant. "Now, they spent five million on Bradley last year. If they freed that up..." The two men left the lounge, and it was eerily silent again.
"So...what were you saying?" Carter said, turning back to Abby.
Abby had prepared a speech in advance, but Malik and Gallant interrupting her had made her forget her lines. "Oh, um...the letters, yeah, I sent you." Abby glanced around the room. "I...wanted to tell you in person, but you were already gone."
Carter's mind raced. Every time he had seen Abby in the last few days, she looked confident, sure of herself. Now, she looked anything but, eyes darting nervously around the room, hands in her lap tearing a napkin to shreds. What did she have to tell him that was important?
"You wanted to tell me what?" he prodded.
"-I wouldn't worry, she won't be here long."
"I know! She gets all flustered whenever there's a trauma. You better start looking for a replacement soon, or next thing you know, we'll be..." Haleh's words trailed off as she closed the lounge door, not seeing whoever she was looking for.
"Maybe we should go someplace quieter to talk about this," Abby said nervously.
"No; go ahead and tell me," Carter said. He walked over to the door and locked it. "There. No more interruptions. Now what were you trying to tell me?"
Abby couldn't count on herself to form intelligible sentences, so she pulled the certificate from her pocket and thrust it in his hands. "I didn't find out until after you were gone..."
Carter took one look at the paper, and immediately recognized it. It was a birth certificate. His heart skipped a beat. Why was Abby giving him a birth certificate? Was this some kind of cruel joke?
Kyle Everett Lockhart, it said at the top. Abby's son. Abby's son! There had to be a reason she had given it to him; could it be…? Carter's eyes raced down the page, searching, searching for what he knew couldn't possibly be there, yet he somehow hoped-
Father- John Truman Carter III.
He stared, his eyes unseeing. He gripped the paper like a life raft. Abby was still talking, talking about something, but her words floated into his ear and promptly exited the other. This couldn't be...was it what he thought it was?
"What...what is this?" he stammered, holding the paper towards her like an offering.
"It's our son's birth certificate," Abby said, staring at him. What would he think? Was he angry, excited, confused? Abby couldn't tell; he looked more shocked, really.
"Our son? Ours? Mine and yours?" His hands were shaking now. But there would be no confusion this time; he wanted to make sure this wasn't some sort of misunderstanding.
Abby looked at him. "Yes. He was two months old when you came back with your girlfriend. I knew I should tell you, that you had a right to know, but..." Abby shook her head. "I didn't want to mess up your life. You seemed so happy with you new family."
Carter was still stunned. The news was finally sinking in. He had a son. "My...my son?" he said, his voice hoarse. "I have a son?" Tears came to his eyes. "How old is he?"
"40 months."
Carter sank onto the couch. All these years, he had been looking for his son, and it turned out he had just been looking in the wrong place. More than three years of his son's life, he had already missed.
Suddenly, he jumped up. He had a son! A son, the son he had wanted for so long! "I want to meet him," he said, almost desperately, standing in front of Abby, hands clasped. "Can I- can I meet him?"
Abby was staring at him strangely. "You already met him," she said slowly. "Kyle, remember?"
Carter flashed back to the child he had met just yesterday. He remembered Kyle, the cute little boy who had asked him for his full name and listened to his stories about the Congo with rapt attention. But how could he be his son?
"I thought he was Susan's son," Carter said weakly, as if Abby might be mistaken.
"No. He's my son." She paused, then added, "He's your son."
He's your son. How long had he been waiting to hear those words? There where so many questions he wanted to ask, but right now, there was only one that mattered.
"Can I see him?" he repeated.
Abby nodded. "Sure. He's at home." She got up and headed for the door, and Carter was right behind her.
"When did you know?"
"When you first came back from Africa, I didn't know." She shook her head. "I'm a doctor, and I was three months pregnant, but I didn't know. But we had a nasty flu virus going around then, so I thought that was what it was. I didn't figure out what the real problem was until you were already gone."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Carter asked.
"I was going to. I had a letter written and everything. But then…I got your letter."
It was hard for him to comprehend. While he had been writing her a break-up letter, she had been about to tell him that she was pregnant. If his letter had just arrived a little later…
"If my letter had come, say, a week later, would you have already mailed yours?" he asked urgently.
"I really don't know. I had it all ready to send for a week, and every day I would look at it and promise to mail it tomorrow. I guess I figured that maybe if I waited long enough, you would just come home and I could tell you in person. After I got your letter, I thought it would be easier that way. I never expected you to be gone for so long."
Carter was relentless. "So why didn't you tell me when I got back?"
"Well, after Kyle was born I wrote another letter. That one I did mail. And I just kept waiting and waiting to hear back from you."
"I never got it," Carter said, shaking his head in amazement. "I know the mail system isn't as reliable there, but I can't understand how they lost ten letters."
Abby shrugged. "When you came back, I thought it was because of the letter. I kept waiting for a chance to talk to you, and when I finally got one, I saw her there, standing next to you. At first I didn't get it, it didn't sink in. But when you handed me the sonogram-" Abby voice broke off. "You looked so happy. And I thought of Kyle's sonogram. I brought it with me; I was going to give it to you. But you beat me to the punch."
Carter shook his head. So once again, if he had just waited a little bit longer, he would have known about Kyle three years ago. He kicked himself for his stupidity. But how could he have known?
"You looked so happy, standing there with her. I didn't want to mess everything up with you two, come barging in there with my extra baby to mess up your happy family. I knew I had to tell you eventually, and I was going to," now Abby was convincing herself, "but the next thing I knew, you were gone, and I still hadn't told you. I thought maybe it would be easier in a letter, so I wrote and told you again. I figured you were just ignoring me."
"Why would I do that?"
"Well, you were doing a lot of crazy things back then. I wasn't really sure what was going on, I just knew that I had told you twice that you had a son, and you still hadn't so much as responded."
Carter was silent for a moment. "So what were the other eight letters?"
Abby smiled. "I send you pictures, told you how he was doing. I figured that even if you wanted to pretend he didn't exist, I wasn't going to let you."
"You know me better than that. How could you think that, that I would be so irresponsible?"
"Well, what was I supposed to think? All I knew was, I wrote and you didn't respond. That was all I had to go on."
Carter was slightly mad now, mad that Abby would accuse him of pretending his son didn't exist. "Even if I were mad at you, I would put our differences aside for the good of our son; you know that! I would never just ride off into the sunset and abandon my own child!"
"Well, what other explanation would there be for you never, over three years, responding to any of the letters I sent?"
"Abby, this was important. This was some petty little squabble between the two of us; this is about our son, a little boy that needs both of his parents. I don't care if you had to send a personal messenger over to Africa to make sure I knew, you should have made sure!"
"Well I'm sorry, but some of us don't have a family fortune to dip into whenever we need a little extra cash for a personal messenger." It was a low blow, and Abby knew it, but Carter's words had hit close to home. Why hadn't she done more to assure that Carter had received her letters?
"This has nothing to do with money, Abby. It has everything to do with responsibility. You had a responsibility to make sure I knew I had a son, and you didn't."
"I did everything I could! I sent the first two letters registered mail; someone got them!"
Carter faltered. "You send them registered?" he asked in a low voice.
Abby calmed down considerably. "Yes, I did, and I got a return receipt."
"Who signed it?" he asked quickly.
"I don't know, it was a name I didn't recognize."
Carter shook his head. "I never got any letters," he repeated. "But somebody did. Why didn't they give them to me?"
"I don't know," Abby said. "Look, I did everything I could to tell you about Kyle, but I guess things just didn't work out that way."
Carter didn't agree with that statement, but he didn't want to start another fight. "Let's not fight," he said.
"Fine," Abby agreed quickly, feeling like she had lost the fight. They drove the rest of the way in silence.
"And Daddy made me paper planes. He showed me how to make paper planes. Wanna know how to make a paper plane?"
Kyle shook his head. "Paper planes are for babies," he said. "And Abby already showed me how to make one."
But he didn't dampen Cam's mood. "Daddy said he's gonna take me to a play show. You know what that is? It's when-"
"I know what a playshow is," Kyle snapped, thought in reality he had no idea. "Who cares where your dumb daddy's taking you."
Cam's perpetual smile slowly faded from his face, and he began to cry. "Mommy!" he said, running into the living room. "Kyle said Daddy was dumb."
Susan picked Cam up and rubbed his back. "Don't cry, sweetie. Kyle's just feeling a little bad; he didn't mean to hurt your feelings."
"Kyle's not being nice," Cam said, crying pitifully on his mother's shoulder.
"I'll go and talk to him, okay?" Cam nodded peacefully, and allowed himself to be deposited on the couch.
She headed into the boys' room, where Kyle was repeatedly ramming a toy car into the wall. "Hey, Kyle," she said, placing a hand over the car. "What's the matter?"
Kyle snatched the car out of her hands. "Nothing," he said, ramming the car into the wall once again.
"Cam said you were mean to him."
"Cam's a baby." For the first time, he looked up at Susan. "Could we make Cam leave? I like you and Abby, but I'm tired of him. All he ever does is talk about his dumb daddy."
"Well, this is Cam's house too, and don't you think I'd miss him if he was gone?"
"No," Kyle said. "I'm better than him anyway. You and Abby can share me." He stopped ramming the car into the wall. "Susan, how come I don't have a daddy?"
"You do have a daddy; everyone does-"
"I DO?" Kyle yelled excitedly, jumping up from the floor. "Where is he?"
Susan froze. "Well...maybe you should ask your mom about that," she said.
"Is it Michael? Is it Luka? Is it Daniel? Is it Simon? Is it-" he was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell.
"Oh, there she is now," Susan said with relief. Kyle raced to the door and flung it open.
"Abby! Susan said I have a-"
"KYLE! C'mere! I've got a secret to tell you!" Susan suddenly yelled. And Kyle, who loved secrets, rushed over to Susan.
Abby stared at Susan strangely, wondering what was going on. Meanwhile, Susan breathed a sigh of relief that she had delayed Kyle's question. Because there, standing in the doorway next to Abby, was Carter, and Susan knew this would be about the worst possible time for Kyle to ask that particular question.
"Um...don't ask Abby right now. Wait til Carter's gone, okay?"
Kyle frowned. "That's not a secret!" he protested. "And who's Carter?"
"I'll tell you the secret later. Just don't ask Abby about your daddy right now, okay?"
"Why not?"
Abby cleared her throat, and both Susan and Kyle turned towards her. "Hey Kyle, look who's here to see you!" she said, gesturing towards Carter.
Kyle beamed widely. "Hi, John! You came to tell me more stories?" He stated this as a fact, knowing there could be no other possible reason for Carter being in his house.
Carter smiled back. "Of course."
Kyle grabbed Carter's hand. "C'mon, I'll show you my room," he said, dragging Carter down the hall.
"You told him, didn't you?" Abby nodded. "How did he take it?"
"He was really...surprised. I think he took it pretty well, all things considered. He said he thought Kyle was your son."
Susan laughed. "Doesn't surprise me. You know Kyle, he probably told Carter he was."
Abby shook her head. "After the two mommies incident, I've learned to expect anything from Kyle."
They both frowned, remembering how Kyle had gotten himself and Cam kicked out of a Christian daycare center when he told one of his teachers he had two mommies. No matter how many times Abby had told the woman he was joking, they were just roommates, she wouldn't let Kyle re-enroll.
"So what did he say?" Susan asked eagerly.
"He asked why I hadn't told him sooner. You know what's the crazy thing? He said he never got any of my letters."
"What about the certified ones?"
Abby shrugged. "I don't know. He said he didn't get them. I hope somewhere in Africa there's not some pervert hoarding pictures of my son." Abby shuddered at the thought.
"So...what about his other son?"
"I don't know. I haven't had the courage to ask him about him yet. He told me that he didn't bring them with him, but...I don't know, maybe they're coming later." Abby sighed. "That will be...interesting."
Awkward is more like it, Susan thought. But to Abby, she said, "Well, I guess you can deal with that when it comes, right? For now, you just have to worry about Kyle."
"Yeah, and figure out how to tell him that he's had a daddy all along."
