Alone.

The nurse had been in earlier for his morning care. The aid had brought him his breakfast, which he forced down, one bite at a time, until his throat had literally closed in protest. None of his doctors had been by yet today. He was doing well, they saw no need to stop by so often anymore.

He didn't have a room-mate. They had put him in a private room from the start, believing that his emotional state made that the best choice for him. (Wouldn't want to be upsetting innocent sick people with nightmares at 2 a.m., now would we ...)

At 10:30 he would have half an hour of PT, and at noon someone would bring him lunch, which he would eat alone. PT again at 3:30, and at 4, counseling with DeRaad. Dinner at 6, Susan might stop by for a few minutes around 7, and then his evening care and meds.

The rest of the time he would be alone. Today and every day. Gillian had gone home.

It shouldn't matter. He shouldn't care. He didn't care. He didn't want her here. Having her here had been unbearable. He needed to move on, and he couldn't do that with a lot of people hanging around ... especially, people who knew. And he was used to being alone. He'd been alone for most of his adult life ... at least since Danijela had died. Being alone wasn't really a problem for him anymore. It wasn't.

Luka took a magazine from the table, began to flip through it, but he couldn't concentrate. It was an issue of the Annals, one of several that Susan had brought for him. He'd asked her to bring them, he needed to catch up; keep up. "A little light reading?" she'd teased. "Better than watching soap operas all day," he had told her.

But today, it was too much for him. He didn't want to read. Closing the magazine, he let it slide from his lap to the floor, didn't bother to try and pick it up. He didn't want to read, not even something lighter. He didn't want to watch tv. He wanted to get up and walk out of here, go home, back to his apartment. He wanted to go to work. But he couldn't do any of those things. He wanted to cry, but he wouldn't do that.

It was only 9:30. An hour until physical therapy, until he could do something constructive towards going home again, going back to work. An hour of emptiness - one of many.

God ... why was he even bothering? Why was he trying at all? How long would it before he could walk? Before he could go home. Allenson was vague on both those questions. "At least a few weeks yet," was all he would say to the 'going home' question, and as for walking; the cast would be on for two months - after that, who could say? It would depend on how hard he worked and how well he healed. And the counseling. He hadn't even tried to ask Carl how long that would have to last. He was afraid to hear what the answer might be.

No. He was not going to cry.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The day had dragged by with intolerable slowness. Two sessions of PT; he had walked a few more steps than he had yesterday. Lunch. This would be, Luka knew, the pattern for his days for a long time to come.

He didn't hear the knock. Suddenly DeRaad was there.

"How are you doing today, Luka?" he asked. Luka didn't answer. Carl really didn't want to hear his answer. Luka didn't want to hear himself say it.

Carl sat down and waited. After a few minutes of silence, he said, "What's on your mind today?"

"I don't want to talk today. I don't feel well."

"We don't have to talk about Africa. What would you prefer to talk about?"

"Nothing." Luka picked up his magazine again, pretended to look at it.

"You're paying for my time," Carl reminded him with a trace of a smile. "You may as well make good use of it."

"I have good insurance." Luka turned the page. A few more minutes went by. Carl waited patiently. He would sit there for an hour, Luka knew. God ... what did he want? To wallow in his pain, or to try and get better? He had to keep trying. It was all he could do. A deep breath. After 6 weeks, it no longer sent pain stabbing through his chest to do that. The ribs were nearly healed. "Gillian ... went home last night. It's good that she did. I'm glad. She needs to go back to her life, forget about me. She ... wanted things from me that I could never give her. We didn't talk about it very much, but I know she did."

"What kind of things?"

"A future. I don't have that."

"You don't have a future with Gillian, or one at all?"

A shrug. "I don't know." Another long silence as Luka struggled to gather his thoughts. He was so tired. So tired of everything. He'd tackle the easier one first. "I liked Gillian, but it was never supposed to be anything permanent. We both knew that when we finished our volunteer service I'd come home to Chicago and she'd go home to Montreal, and we'd go back to our lives. But then, once ... everything happened ... it was like she suddenly expected more. Maybe she fell in love with me? Or thought that I owed her something because she'd helped save my life. Or she felt sorry for me ... I don't know. We never talked about it."

"Why not?"

"There was nothing to talk about. It wouldn't have made a difference. There could never be anything for us. No matter what she wanted."

And again, "Why not?"

"Because there couldn't be. I don't love her."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Luka was exhausted. As always, the session with Carl had left him feeling drained and sick. Carl had pushed, gently, patiently, firmly, for a little bit more than Luka was willing or able to give. (Rather, he thought, in the same way that his physical therapist did. The only difference was that, when he achieved more than he thought he could in PT, he felt a sense of accomplishment, knew that he was one step closer to his goal. In psych counseling, the extra effort just brought him more pain. He still couldn't see the light at the end of this tunnel.)

His dinner was sitting on the tray, untouched. When he'd filled out his menu card yesterday, he had selected items more or less at random. Nothing looked or sounded good to him any more; he'd known he probably wouldn't be able to choke them down anyway.

A knock on his door. It was Susan, bearing a smile and a large bag with something in it that almost smelled good. She looked at his dinner tray. "I didn't think you'd be eating that," she said. "Two weeks of hospital food should be just about anybody's limit. So I brought you something different." She moved the dinner tray aside and put her bag down."

"What is it?" Luka stirred himself to ask. He didn't really care, but thought he should be polite. Susan was going to so much trouble to be nice to him, make him believe that somebody cared about him. Not that he really believed it, of course.

"Chinese." Susan opened the bag. "I wasn't sure what you liked, so I had to guess. We have crab-sweet corn soup, and dumplings, and orange beef and Szechwan shrimp. And, of course, fortune cookies."

"That's a lot of food for one person," Luka had to smile a little at Susan's infectious good cheer. It wasn't something she was putting on to make him feel better, or to distract him from his problems. She really did seem happy.

"I need to eat too. I hate eating alone, and I assumed that you felt the same."

"It doesn't matter," Luka said softly.

Susan just smiled again and began serving out the food. "Fork or chopsticks?"

Luka hesitated. "Fork. I ..." In the past he had handled chopsticks with ease, but his hands were still a bit stiff and clumsy. There was still concern about nerve damage from the many days he'd spent with his hands tied. He felt he should explain but Susan didn't seem to want or need an explanation.

"Fork is fine. The food tastes just as good. Is Sprite ok to drink?"

"Yeah." Susan put his food in front of him and picked up her own. Luka still wasn't hungry, not even a little bit. But he wasn't nauseous. Maybe he could eat a little. "You seem in a good mood today," he said, before taking a bite of a dumpling.

"Didn't have to work, don't have a shift until tomorrow. I slept until noon, then went to the beach. You'll note my tan ..."

Susan continued to chatter away cheerfully, occasionally asking Luka a question. The things she said, the things she talked about weren't so dramatically different from the things Gillian had talked about, or Abby. It was mostly just inconsequential small talk. Nor was her manner really so different. So why was Luka finding himself, for the first time in longer than he could remember, relaxing ... smiling? Why did he suddenly look down at his plate and realize that he'd finished everything on it? Eaten a meal without having to force himself for the first time in days. It wasn't just that it was outside food and not hospital food. He wasn't alone, he told himself. He'd gotten himself all depressed about being alone, and now he had some pleasant company. That was all.