A/N: Title stolen from one of those poems they made us all read in sixth grade. (I know, like people don't quote that one often enough already.)
Thanks for all the feedback so far! It's nice to know you all are still tolerating me jerking these poor characters around on their strings… and reviews are much better inspiration than the show itself these days :/
Chapter 14. Rage, Rage
"Say it again, Ella. Come on, say it again."
Mark was cooing at Ella, unabashed, as he and Susan sat on a blanket in Avalon Park, their breakfasts spread festively before them and the sun rising slowly above them.
Ella shrieked with laughter at his fingers tickling her chin. "Da-da," she murmured finally, once Mark stopped.
Ruffling Ella's hair, Susan said, "She's beautiful."
"And really smart," Mark said, ridiculous in his paternal pride.
She laughed at him, and kissed him sweetly. "And really smart."
He'd woken up this morning in an uncommonly warm morning to her soft kiss on his cheek, her fingers trailing lightly up his chest; she'd held up an actual picnic basket and dressed Ella up in a sundress for a walk in the park, trying, he knew, to cajole him into forgetting that this was his first day since quitting work.
It had worked.
He chomped on an apple, leaning back against a wide tree and out of the sun, as Susan bent over Ella to slice up a banana on her plate. Watching their two blonde heads so close together, he found himself smiling sleepily.
"She eats by herself now, right?"
"Just give her the fork and she's good to go." Feeling sick just from a few bites of the apple, he surreptitiously tossed the apple several yards away, into the grass.
"How old is she, again?" Susan said.
"It's her first birthday in three weeks or so – on the 26th. Seems like we've had her forever, though."
Susan gave Ella the fork and cooed at her, just like Mark had a minute ago. "We couldn't live without you baby, now could we?"
After lightly kissing Ella's chubby little shoulder, she looked up and saw Mark's helpless smile. "What?"
He reached out to touch her face, and murmured, "God – you're beautiful."
Her eyes darkened for an instant, and he wondered, because she had never spoken of it, what had hurt her back in Arizona to make her face so sad. But she crooked a smile and kissed his hand, then left Ella's side to settle in between his legs, her back resting against his chest and her head gently fitting into the curve of his neck and shoulder.
It hurt to be touched, and to touch, but he could imagine nothing more healing than this.
He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her hair, then the tip of her ear. "Thanks for this, Susan. How'd you get today off?"
"I traded with Weaver. She understood." After a pause, she said lightly, "After all, how can you have a morning like this and not go on a picnic? It's rank heresy."
"I'm glad our boss supports the rights of compulsive picnickers like you."
"Well, she's a very supportive person." Susan snuggled closer, and he held her tighter. "You know – she wished you had talked to her longer before leaving yesterday."
"I couldn't handle talking to her after what happened with Romano. But we've never been friends anyway."
"And Carter?" she said. "What about him?"
He didn't want to think about that. "Ah, we both have a sparkling history with Carter, don't we?"
"Please," she groaned. She broke off to say to Ella, "You like that banana, babe?"
Ella waved her fork in the air. "Da-da."
"She's got quite the vocabulary," Susan giggled. "How about this? Who's your favorite old guy in the whole world?"
"Just watch her say it's Mr. Rogers," Mark said. "It'd be my luck."
"Da-da," Ella repeated, then stuck the last slice of banana into her mouth.
"Nope, she knows who brings home the bacon," Susan said. "I'm training her in the fine art of gold-digging."
"I'm glad to see you're such a good influence on her."
Ella, oblivious to them, had lost interest in her banana and started watching in fascination as a caterpillar crawled onto her plate. "Da-da," she said to it.
They shared a laugh, and Mark finally broached the topic that had kept him awake last night while she slept next to him. "I've been thinking," he said.
"Yeah?" She twisted her head, looking up at him. "About what?"
"Giving up."
Susan pursed her mouth. "What do you mean?"
"The medicine. It makes me feel sick, it hurts – it's hard to enjoy life sometimes, with the Gamma treatment."
She breathed deeply, her ribcage rising and falling against his arms. "I know."
"I thought about giving up, about going out peacefully."
He paused, and Susan said, her voice thick, "You want to stop treatment?"
"I was going to. I thought I should…" He tried to move his neck to meet her eyes, and she, sensing his movement, slowly disentangled herself and twisted her body to kneel in front of him. "But I can't do that, I can't just go out peacefully anymore, because we've lost so much time already."
The look in her eyes reminded him he couldn't fix everything; that nothing would change the end result. He smoothed her hair back and took her face in his hands, trying to explain himself more clearly. "I can have ten months, if I fight for them. And I want all the time with you that I can have."
She kissed him lingeringly. "You can have forever."
~
"I'll close," Elizabeth said, when she and Robert had finished patching up a GSW.
They had gone hours in near-complete silence; they'd worked together long enough and often enough to need few words, and conversation was impossible. Elizabeth had thought about him all last night, and rumination only made everything murkier and the answers further from her grasp.
Robert answered her offer with a slight emphasis, "I'll help."
He had been uncommonly polite today, Elizabeth reflected. And when he did speak, his expression was searching, almost beseeching. He was unapologetic and yet subtly kind.
It hadn't been twenty-four hours since she sent him away from the moonlit rooftop. She wasn't ready to be kind back.
They closed together, their work as easy and compatible as always, but their silence fraught. Then Elizabeth escaped to lunch.
Lunch, because she hadn't the time or energy to venture outside, ended up being a cheese sandwich from a vending machine, eaten in the lounge over a new issue of the BMJ.
When Robert came in, he looked quite pleased with himself. She almost smiled at his expression, instinctively; and then caught herself and continued reading, finishing off the last bite of her sandwich.
"Don't tell me that's your lunch?"
She gave him a look. What else would it be?
"Not a very cheerful way to spend such a pretty day, sitting inside here."
"I never knew you had such a deep appreciation for the beauty of nature," she said. "It's refreshing to see you like something."
"I adore you," he answered with silky mockery. "How's that for refreshing?"
When she didn't answer, he sighed and turned to the coffee pot on the counter, and started rambling in his usual way without paying attention to her mood. "Well, it'll rain soon anyway, so you'd've been caught in the weather." He paused suddenly, having had a taste of the coffee. "This crap gets worse every time I drink it. You'd think those interns'd have a learning curve when it comes to coffee, but at this point I'd rather drink caffeinated dishwater, and it's time to admit that none of these people will ever make good coffee, or make good doctors for that matter. Do you want any coffee by the way?"
A bemused Elizabeth shook her head.
"How about tea?"
"Tea?"
"I think I noticed some lying around." He opened the cabinet and, reaching confidently in to the second shelf, produced an unopened package of tea.
Elizabeth allowed a slow, skeptical smile to spread on her face. "How convenient."
He sighed, caught. "I was grocery shopping this morning. It was an impulse."
"Buying your way into my good graces now, are you?"
He grew gruff, embarrassed, all of a sudden. She found it endearing and then wondered when she'd gone so soft. "Just shut up and have some tea, will you?"
She was still smiling when he handed her a cup full of hot water and a tea bag. "Thank you."
His face rippled from crotchety to pleased to rueful. He sat across from her, sober-faced, easing his coffee mug down onto the table in front of him. "I know this won't seem to you like much of, well, anything, or uh, or an apology, but that's because I don't think I was wrong yesterday."
She dragged the tea bag in circles, watching a warm honeyed color seep into the water.
"That said – I want you to believe I didn't mean any of it to ruin your birthday, or – or – uh – or to hurt you." He added the last phrase in a low voice, hurriedly.
Elizabeth looked up from her tea. "I know." If there was a constant in everything that had happened between them the last few months, it was that. But that wasn't the problem.
He seemed dissatisfied with this imperfect reconciliation but knew it was the best they could do, and broke eye contact as if to signal the conversation was over. "Well! I had a lovely little meeting today with a certain selection committee. –We talked about you."
Elizabeth had been about to take a sip of her tea. She put it down.
"Got your attention now," he noted wickedly.
"Well?" she said. She'd had an interview with the committee just a few days ago, but had almost forgotten about it.
"We-ell…" He drew out the syllable, enjoying her suspense. "Weaver's nailed Chief of Staff."
"She's not!" Elizabeth grumbled.
"Sorry. She kisses a good ass when she wants to."
"And?"
"And you'll be the new head of surgery," he finally told her. "Surprise, surprise, I still have some pull around here. Not that I needed it."
Elizabeth smiled widely, and noticed that her pride was reflected in the depths of his eyes as he gave her a brief, subtle nod. "Thank you anyway, I suppose."
She took a sip of the tea. It tasted like cinnamon and peppermint, warm and sharp in her throat.
His voice dropped an octave. "Maybe when you have to run a department you'll understand what I told Mark yesterday."
"I understand it fine," she fired back, her smile gone. "My understanding isn't exactly what's at issue, it's yours."
Robert stood from the table, his face hardening. "Yes, you've established very well how you feel about me. And, now that I've brought you your good news, I think I'll have lunch somewhere else."
With a savage flick of his wrist he tossed the remainder of his coffee into the sink, and left the cup for someone else to clean.
"Robert," she said.
He ignored her, striding to the door.
She stood. "Robert!"
When he turned halfway around, she could see his profile, and watch his jaw tighten. "What is it, Lizzie?" he said.
Elizabeth didn't know why she'd called him back, except that he was terribly mistaken about some things and she wasn't even sure what those were. Knowing that she was taking the cowardly way out, she said only, "Do I get your old office?"
He blinked slowly, looking half amused and half unhappy, his eyes still focused on the ground ahead of him. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, whatever you want."
"How about the gold stethoscope?" she teased.
"Oh, I'll be keeping that one to impress the ladies at Northwestern."
"Good luck with that."
As Robert's expression gave way to amusement he turned hastily to push the door open. A step outside the door, and he turned over his shoulder for what she expected to be a parting shot.
"Congratulations," he merely said, then added with a twinkle in his eye, "Chief."
