Author's comments: Not so much to say about this one actually... and I always come up with such good comments ;)
Well, this is... chapter EIGHT, nothing else (damn ff.net that counts prolouge as ch. 1...) - I like it and hop eyou guys do to! Thanks big time to all the people at f4f, the reivewers and Trisse! (The spelling/grammar was BAD in this chapter... poor her ;)

Please keep reading & reviewing and I'll update as soon as possible!!

CHAPTER EIGHT : THINKING OF YOU, MISSING YOU, LOVING YOU…?
The storm was furious and the streets of Chicago were as empty as if they had been vacuumed of all the people usually filling them. Not even the homeless were there; they had all found shelter in empty buildings or staircases.
Only one shadow moved along the street. A shadow that looked like a grey cloud was rushing up and down the streets, as if it was looking for something very important but had forgotten what it was and now desperately was trying to remember.
But Susan hadn't forgotten. She wished nothing else than to forget everything, but she couldn't.

She had been wandering around ever since she ended her shift at seven, and now it had already struck midnight. It was probably stupid, almost crazy, to walk around alone, as a woman, at this time of the night, but somehow it didn't trouble her the least. She was totally numb, not feeling anything. Not the cold, not the wind, not the tears streaming down her cheeks. The tears froze to ice on her skin when she didn't bother to wipe them away.

A new gust of wind came and cut right through her, but she didn't care any more about that than about the rest of Mother Nature's attempts to make her go home. Instead she looked around her, surprised to realize that she was standing right in front of the river. She hadn't paid any attention to where she was going – she might as well have wandered right in front of the El without realizing it.
But she was rather pleased with standing here. The river had always been one of her favourite spots in Chicago, the view was beautiful and somehow all the water floating around without any schedule whatsoever gave her a feeling of freedom that working for Weaver and Romano certainly didn't provide.
She stared down at the now black water. Usually the soft waves looked happy and free, but now they seemed to be just as furious as the storm above her. The wind was freezing, water and wind meeting and melting together into a big rain cloud, fast moving towards her. The rain started to drip – gently at first but then furiously, as if it wanted to drown her. In only a few seconds she was soaking wet and now the cold December night got her attention.
It wasn't supposed to rain now, two weeks before Christmas.

Suddenly exhausted by all the walking and crying she sat own on one of the empty benches along the river. She sat there, alone, still crying and dripping water.
Her heart cried too. It was crying out for somebody, anybody, to come and comfort her. Comfort her; talk to her, hold her.
Anyone, anyone in the whole world. Even Dix of all people could show up here this instant and she'd throw her arms around him, begging him never to leave. It was so unlike her, this feeling. She had never been the needy kind of woman, but now she was surely acting like one.
Crying even harder she remembered what Luka had said.
"You were braver than me, Susan…you were braver than me."
Was she? Was she braver than one of the bravest men she knew?
"If he once had thought so, then maybe she was"?
But why wasn't she feeling like it? Why was she feeling totally alone in the world when she knew she wasn't? She had friends. Sure she did. It was just that no one of them was able to show up here and bail her out of her misery right now. Abby and Carter were on a double date with Jing-Mei and Pratt; Elizabeth had gone to see Rachel with Ella. It wasn't like they had abandoned her or anything – she'd see them first thing in the morning. Some already at the El – if Carter still was having problems with his car then he and Abby would jump on the train two stops before her. It wasn't like she was going to be alone forever.
But it still felt like it. God, did it still feel like it.
As she thought of this something hit her. All the people she thought of as her friends nowadays were from County. Doctors and nurses.
Didn't she have a life anymore? What was happening to her? Why was this coming now, a few weeks before Christmas when the hospital needed her the most? She knew she was needed, wanted and that her work meant a lot, meant life for many people. Hundreds and thousands. Just today she had received a thank-you-for-saving-my-daughter's-life-card from a young mother.
And still she felt like this, as if nothing was worth anything.

It wasn't a new feeling, she recognized it from before. Being lonely at 30+ made these depressions come as scheduled a few times a year. It was nothing new, she just couldn't understand why it hit her right now – she had been doing just fine.

Knowing it was really no use, she opened her handbag, searching for a tissue to wipe away the tears with, even though she wouldn't be able to separate the tears from the rain. Her eyes felt heavy and thick of all the crying, she could barely keep them open, even less see anything in the dark night. Her hands went fast through her bag, touching everything to find the tissues. Her make-up bag, a chart, a pen… finally a paper. She pulled it out of the bag, but as soon as she held it up in front of her she saw that it wasn't a tissue. It was a letter.
"To the one who has the bad luck of finding me"
Luka's suicide letter.

The envelope was still as neat and white as it had been when Ellie found it.
Susan stroke a finger over the letter.
She hadn't read it, hadn't and wouldn't. She didn't want to.

As she stared at the obnoxious letter the tears started to well up again. Why hadn't they noticed something? Why hadn't anybody cared, why on earth hadn't he said something…? She had asked herself the same question at least a million times since she found him on the floor.
Dubravko had had a point when he angrily had asked her why they, who were supposed to be doctors, hadn't done anything.
She touched the letter again, letting her fingers caress it as if it was her most precious possession. A possession so valuable to her that she feared it might burst into flames if she let the words within it reach her eyes.
Simply, she was scared to death of what she might find out if she read it. After having heard what Luka had written to Abby… She couldn't take it, couldn't read what he had thought would be his very last words to the world. Something dreadful inside her kept her from doing it.
It was paradoxical, ironic. She had read several suicide letters over the years – you found them in suicidal patient's pockets or in more weird places like their shoes or hats. Sometimes you would be the only one to read them, mostly the family got hold of them. Sometimes the recovering patient destroyed them before anyone got the time to ask if they had written anything.
Suddenly she remembered the last close suicide attempt she had seen, not counting Chloe's countless overdoses.
Carol's.

She remembered how the ER had been deadly quiet those minutes before the ambulance pulled up outside the doors, how Mark had been trying to act as if his was only one more anonymous case they had in front of them. How everybody had been gathering around the gurney, how people had been whispering and gossiping for weeks. How Morgenstern and the other big guys had been worried about the bad publicity County might get.
It had all been exactly the same. People had come running from everywhere, screaming, shouting, whispering. Kerry and Carter had been throwing people out of the trauma room, damning and swearing to stop the gossiping. Romano and the other big guys trying to sweep everything under the rug.

When the first chaos was over there had only been the two of them left. Only the two of them. They had been all alone most of the time; at first in the ICU, then in the psych room. At first she had only had her shadow to talk to, then he had woken up. He had needed her so badly, needed her like she somehow had needed him.
Needed her like she shouldn't have needed him.

It made no sense, no sense at all. They had never said anything else to each other than "let's crack this guy's chest" or "have you seen mr X's x-rays, Jerry has lost them again". Never. How on earth had they managed to end up like they had, interact like they had, those days in that God forgotten room? His gentle hands caressing her cheeks, hers stroking his hair, him letting her cry in his arms, her doing the same thing for him. Her arms around his neck, his hot breath on her skin. The soft accent whispering her name when she cried…
"God, I sound like I'm in love with him or something," she sobbed loudly, desperate and angry with herself for behaving like this.
"In love with whom?" she suddenly heard a voice behind her in the dark.

She turned around on the bench and screamed for all she was worth.
"Who the hell are you?!" she then managed to get out, herself surprised with how steady her voice suddenly was. Survival instinct.
"Susan?!" the man behind her asked when he heard and recognized her voice, sounding almost as startled as she was.
The man came up to her. When he was only a few steps from the bench whoever was in charge of the night lights of Chicago suddenly got them working and the light from the lamp behind him lit up his face for her.
"Ritchie?!" she screamed, really freaked out this time. Sure she had asked for someone, anyone – but "anyone" did surely not include Ritchie Smith.

"What in God's name are you doing here?" he asked, sitting down next to her.
Out of pure instinct she pulled away from him, grabbing the edge of the bench with her hands.
"Leave me alone," she snapped.
"Sure. I'll leave you alone here, in the middle of nowhere…-"
"In the middle of Chicago!"
"…- in the middle of the night," he added ironically, ignoring her input.
"Get the hell away from me…"
"When I have taken you home…-"
She gasped.
"How the hell dare you…-"
"Home to you, that is. I'll leave you there, trust me. Wouldn't wanna go through the same humiliation again, would I," he added, trying to joke.
She gasped even more.
"YOU wouldn't want to go through the same humiliation?! YOU! Were you the one that had to defend yourself for months? Were you the one that had to stand up against the whole freaking hospital? Were you the one that…-"
He held up his hands in front of him in surrender.
"OK, OK. Got it! Bad joke. Sorry."
"Go to hell," she said coldly. "Just go to hell."
"Not before you have let me take you home. You can't hang around here."
"I can be wherever I please," she snapped at him, knowing she sounded idiotic. But manners weren't her top priority right now. Not only had that disgusting man managed to almost give her a heart attack by showing up in the ER as Luka's replacement, now he was intruding in her very own depression too. Did he have to be everywhere? When he left Arizona about a year after the closet incident she had been so relieved. Just a few weeks later she had been promoted to an attending, Chloe had checked herself into a rehab, Suzy had learned to walk and talk – everything had been fine, nice and perfect. It was as if Ritchie had taken everything bad and ugly with him to wherever he had gone. She hadn't known and hadn't been very interested in it either – she had just felt sorry for the poor people that were supposed to work with him.

Ritchie sighed and dragged his hand through his hair. God, was she impossible or what. But sure, what had he expected. Ever since he realized they'd once again would be working at the same hospital he had feared her reaction. He hadn't known how much she still hated him and what he had tried to do – but, judging of her reaction to seeing him standing there in front of her earlier, she hated him more than ever.
Apparently she had won the whole staff over to her side, just as he had done back then in Arizona. He had certainly not felt very welcomed at Cook County General. Seeing her and having that Chinese woman reading his rights and storm off before he even got her name – it almost made him wonder why bother to change, to question if regret and a growing need to make things up to her were worth the effort. But he still knew he had to, of course – unless he didn't want to end up in jail. The thought of a County jail even made County General seem like heaven. Susan could still cause severe trouble for him – he was surprised that she never had, but done was done and she could pick it up and throw it in his face anytime she wanted to. Before he hadn't really cared, never thought of it as a big deal, but… Things were different now. They had been different ever since last spring.

Of course the not so warm welcome could not only have to do with whatever Susan had told them about him, but also the fact that he only was a temporary replacement for another attending – he had no idea of why the other guy had left, but maybe the staff just felt uncomfortable with Ritchie being there now instead of the one they were used to. He'd just have to prove himself to them, prove that he could be just as good as whomever he was substituting for. The only thing he knew about the guy was his last name that was still on the locker.
That name had been bugging him all day. There was something familiar with it, but he couldn't place it.
Well – whatever there was with the name Kovac that bugged him, he'd have to deal with Susan first.
He sighed again before opening his mouth. He had to do this. Not only for his own and Susan's sake, but also for Rose's.
"I know I have been an idiot," he began.
"Really?" she asked ironically.
"Really," he nodded. "I know that what I did to you was… wrong, but…-"
"What are you trying here?" she asked, turning to him with a look of disbelief on her face.
"To apologize, I guess…"
"Then forget it."
She turned away from him again, staring at the black water.

Suddenly she felt how he took a grip of her arm, and before she had the time to protest the least he had pulled her up from the bench.
"Let go off me!" she yelled, suddenly more frightened than snappy. She knew very well what he was like, and even if he might have given the impression of having grown up, she knew better.
"Don't scream like that, for God's sake!" he said, looking around them as if he expected the Chicago PD to come running and arrest him for a bunch of things, starting with "felony against level of speech in Chicago night".
"I'm not going to hurt you, trust me! I'm just going to…-"
"I don't care! Let go off me and never speak to me again!"
She managed to get out of his grip. He sighed, shook his head and took a step towards her.
"You leave me no choice," he said, and, faster than what her reflexes could manage, picked her up.
He carried her to his car, opened the passenger door and basically threw her inside. She fought against him all along, loudly damning both him and his mother.

She stopped cursing when he started the engine and got the car moving. Despite how much she despised the man driving it, the warmth of the car was still nice.
"Your address?" he asked.
She snorted, as if they were on some weird kind of date and she had no intention of giving him any continuation of the night. He got her point.
"I'm not trying to bug you, I'm trying to drive you home."
Knowing he was right and not wanting to admit it, she turned her attention towards the night outside the window, muttering her address to him.
When he heard it he laughed.
"What's so funny?" she asked, annoyed.
"You're not going to believe this…"
"What?"
"I live next door."
As if he just had told her that Chicago actually was in California and that the winter weather only was there to keep the Chicagoans inside a freezing lie called Illinois, she turned her face back to him.
"No!" she said. This had to be one of his bad jokes.
"Oh yes," he chuckled, barely keeping his eyes on the road.
Furiously she turned back towards the window.
"Was there no other freaking place in the whole city you could move to?!"
"It was central. Nice building."
"I know," she muttered, still not believing this.
He just laughed and, to her disgust, patted her on her knee.
"Well, well, Susie… That was one thing I certainly never thought, that we'd be neighbours…-"
"Get your hands off me!" she snapped, pulling further towards the door, hoping he wouldn't open it up with some weird car-door-being-mysteriously-controlled-from-driver's-seat- system and thereby make her fall out on the pavement in revenge.
"Susie, please," he groaned. "I'm not…-"
"And it's Susan to you, damned!" she added.
He chuckled once again, giving her the impression that he actually enjoyed seeing her angry. This only infuriated her more.
"People don't call you that anymore?" he asked.
His question hit her right in the heart.

"Hey… no crying here, Susie…-" he said with a weak smile.
She smiled widely when she heard him call her that old nickname. It was such a long time ago since somebody had called her that.
"What was that?" she asked, still smiling.
"May I call you that?" he asked.
"Sure," she said, and got an idea seconds later.
"…- on one condition," she added with a mysterious smile.
"That you'll come back. You can call me Susie if you promise to come back."
He smiled.
"I promise."
"Good."

"Huh?" he asked, demanding an answer to his question.
She bit her lip, not knowing what to say. How could she, without sounding like either an emotional wreck or simply a psycho, tell him about the new conditions lying within being allowed to call her Susie…?
She didn't even have the time to make up half of the explanation in her head before she saw a wide smile spreading on his face.
"What?" she snapped, having a feeling she wasn't going to like what he meant.
"He calls you that, doesn't he?"
If he had been close to giving her heart attacks before, they were nothing compared to this. She just gasped, staring at him. What the hell did he know…?
"That guy you're in love with," Ritchie added with a grin on his face.
Hearing that Susan finally got her words back.
"What?!"
Well, maybe not entirely.
Ritchie laughed at her shocked reaction.
"I heard you, for God's sake. Actually," he added teasingly, "a deaf person could have heard it."
"You don't know what the hell you're talking about!"
"Sure I do."
"Sure you don't."
"Sure I do."
"No you don't!" she yelled, not wanting to play this stupid game which would eventually end up in him changing his statement to "Sure I don't", to make her say "Sure you do" and walk right into his trap.
She felt her heart beat fast even though she tried to calm down. The storm outside was nothing against all the emotions that were raging through her body.
You didn't fall in love with someone after spending a few days together. You just didn't. She just didn't.
She needed candlelight dinners and jazz to fall in love, not a hard chair in a psych room and cafeteria food. This was insane - wasn't, couldn't and wouldn't be true.
It was just what you could expect from Ritchie, really. So typical of him to make something like this up and then get her to freak out over it. So childish. She really shouldn't care – it was bad enough that she had given him the pleasure of having her defending herself against his accusations.
She turned back towards the window, trying to concentrate on counting the raindrops on it.
But she couldn't help how her heart still beat fast at the thought of what he had said and how well it fitted with her own thoughts. Her heartbeat was too fast, her throat dry and her breathing was trying to beat the heartbeat in speed. Trying to stop the panic from coming she, unaware of it, squeezed the letter between her fingers, closed her eyes and leaned back against the seat.
She wasn't, wasn't, was not. She just couldn't be. She was depressed because she was lonely, not because she…

Silence, except for the sounds of the engine, filled the car the following minutes. She stared out of the window and concentrated on her breathing. His attention was turned to the slippery roads.
When they were ten blocks from the building they both lived in, he broke the silence.
"So, what were you doing out there?" he asked, trying to lighten up the atmosphere.
She just stared out of the window. She had no intention of answering. He sighed.
"Susan, could we please just behave as adults around each other? You don't have to like me…"
"I don't."
"I know. And I accept that, but we're not going to be able to work together if you keep this up. It'll endanger the patients, for God's sake!"
Despite how little she wanted to admit it, he did have a point. No matter how much she hated him personally, they'd still be responsible for the patient's welfare. And she did have a certain feeling that unless she was able to get this to work she'd be next on Romano's people-I'd-like-to-fire-if-I-could list.
"Fine," she muttered, not looking at him.
"Thank you," he said, sounding more delighted than she wanted him to.
"But it's only in the patient's best interest! I'm still not talking to you," she added to avoid any confusion on his part.
"I know," he said serenely.
His calm voice was almost annoying her. It became harder to hate him when he didn't give her anything to feed the hatred with.
"Please tell me what you were doing out there, Susan."
"Nothing…" she muttered, realizing that she sounded almost like Chloe when you asked her what she was on this time.
He sighed deeply and stopped the car. She frowned.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm not driving another inch before you tell me what you were doing out there in the middle of the night in one of the worst storms this city has seen."
"Fine," she snapped and began to open her seat belt.
"Then I'll walk."
"No, you won't!"
His voice was determined and he seized her wrist. The hand she held the letter in.
"What the hell are you doing?" she asked angrily, trying to get away from him.
"You're not going anywhere until you have told me exactly what the hell you were doing out by the river one a.m. in the morning," he bellowed at her.
"Since when do you tell me what to do?!"
Out of pure fury she managed to get out of his grip. As he realized he didn't have control of her movements anymore he grabbed her again, making her drop the letter on the floor.
She saw the letter falling and tried to take it before he saw it, but she was too slow. He picked up the letter.
"What is…-"
He gasped as he saw what stood on the envelope. He slowly turned around, staring at her as if he had seen a ghost.
"Susan…!"
"Give me that!" she snapped, reaching out for the letter he held in his hand.
"Susan, what the hell is this…?" he asked, almost holding his breath.
"Give it to me!"
"Exactly what were you thinking of doing there by the river?!"
Suddenly she realized what he was thinking.
"It's not mine, for God's sake! Just give it to me!"
She was surprised at how relieved he was to hear her declare that she still was mentally stable. He leaned back against the seat and she grabbed the letter from him.
"God, you really scared me," he said, dragging his hand through his hair.
"Sorry," she murmured, holding the letter tight against her chest.

Ritchie took a few deep breaths before looking at Susan again.
"Jeez…" he said, shaking his head as if he just had woken up from a nightmare.
"You really scared me, you know…" he said again.
"You've already said that. And I'm sorry."
"Yeah… but what are you doing with it if it's not yours?"
He looked straight at her, seeing how she pressed the letter against her chest as if she never wanted anyone else to touch it.
"Oh…" he said, looking down at his feet.
"Oh what?"
"It's not yours – it's his, right?"
She felt as if he had punched her. What was he, a mind reader? A bloody annoying one, but certainly still a mind reader.
"Who?" she asked, trying to keep her voice steady and sound clueless at the same time.
"You know whom I mean. He who calls you 'Susie'. The guy you're in love with...-"
"…-or," he corrected himself before she had the time to do it -
"…- the guy you said you might be in love with, that is."
Susan bit her lower lip. Water drops from her knitted baby-blue cap were dripping down on her hands, but for all she knew they could have been tears.
"Yes…" she finally said quietly.
"It's his…"
She kept staring at her hands as if they'd disappear if she let them out of her sight, and Ritchie sighed deeply.
"My God, Susan… I'm sorry. I'm really sorry…"

He looked at her again, this time seeing something else, someone else. She was sitting there as close to the door as she possibly could, holding on the letter as if she tought he'd steal it. She looked so small in the soaking wet winter coat, her face almost grey from all the crying.
Boy, did he regret yelling at her as he had.
Suppose he now knew why she had been at the river.

Suddenly, as if she had heard his condolences only then, she looked up.
"Don't be," she said.
He frowned.
"Susan, just because you don't like me it doesn't mean that I can't be sorry for you when somebody you obviously care a whole lot about…-" he interrupting himself, trying to come up with a better way to say what he had to say.
"…- takes his own life," he concluded, instantly knowing that "kills himself" would have been better.
She smiled a little.
"He didn't."
"No?"
"No… Carter almost called it, but Luka is a fighter," she said, her smile now wider, introverted.

Ritchie smiled too, just about to say something when his face turned grey.
"Sweet Jesus…" he said, once again dragging his hand through his hair.
Susan stopped smiling and started staring.
"What?"
"Oh my God …-"
"You're not that religious, you might as well spit it out!"
She felt her heart beat harder again; having a bad feeling about what Ritchie was going to say.
"I knew it!"
"Knew what?!"
"Kovac!"

She would have been less surprised by anything he possibly could have said. And what surprised her the most what how he pronounced Kovac – not "Kouvatj" or "Kouvak" as they used to, but exactly as it should be.
"How did you…-"
She wasn't sure if she was going to ask him how he managed to pronounce the name rightly, how had he been able to freak her out and almost giving her a one-way ticket to cardiology once again, or how the hell had he been able to read her mind once again.
"It's Luka Kovac we're talking about, right?"
She couldn't do anything but nod. Ritchie just shook his head, apparently just as shocked by how things were turning out as they were.
"I thought so…" he sighed.
Finally managing to decide which question to ask first, she opened her mouth again.
"But how on earth did you know?!" she asked, staring at him from under the cap that seemed to be drying up.
"I know him," Ritchie said simply.
"Do you know Luka?" she asked, getting more perplex every second. Wasn't it enough that Ritchie was involved with her past – what did he have to do with Luka?
"Or…-" Ritchie added with a sigh,
"…- that's not completely true. I think I know him – tall, dark, speaks as much as statues do?"
Susan just shook her head, not even listening.
"How?!"
Ritchie held up a finger as to show her to be either quiet or still. Since she wasn't sure what he meant she stayed both quiet as a mouse and moved as much as Mona Lisa used to while he began to search for something in one of the many bags he had in the backseat.
A few moments later he turned back to her, this time with a small photo album in his hand.
"Nice that I'm good at packing, huh," he said, almost sounding as his arrogant self again.
She just made a face.
"What's that?"
"This," he said while turning page after page in hunt for whatever he was about to show her,
"… is what I am looking for."
Before she had the time to give his cryptic answer the reply it deserved, he held up the album in front of her.
"Is this him?" he simply asked.
She took a look at the picture he pointed at. It was a rather bad picture, a picture of a field and in a weather close to the one currently outside the car. In the middle of the field there were four men and two women, all wearing the "Doctors without borders" coat and behind them something that to her looked suspiciously like the Bosnian flag. Luka was standing between Ritchie and one of the women in the picture.
"Oh dear…" she said, staring at the photo.
"It is him, I suppose."
"Yes…" she said breathlessly.
"I thought so," Ritchie nodded and put the album back in the bag.
"Was that the Bosnian flag? On the picture, " she added, wanting to spare herself from one of his jokes. She didn't want to hear "no, that was my bag, I never noticed the similarities," right now.
He nodded.
"That is why you speak Croatian!" she blurted.
He shook his head.
"For you information Susan, they speak Serbo-Croatian in Bosnia. And I don't," he said in a teacher-like voice.
She rolled her eyes at his lecture.
"Fine. How do you know Luka?"
"He was my translator. We worked together."
"In Bosnia?"
"Yes."
"But I thought you came from New York…?"
"I do. I like travelling. Arizona, Boston, Bosnia, New York, Chicago, what's the difference…"
"Was Luka your translator?"
He sighed.
"Do you have to repeat every single thing I say?"

"Ritchie!"
"OK, OK… Yes he was. I only know three phrases of the language – 'let's eat', 'where does it hurt' and of course 'I love you' so I really needed him…"
"I get the two first phrases, but I have no idea on whom you'd be using the third," she muttered.
He laughed.
"Just because of that I'll teach it to you…-"
"I know it," she said quickly, making him grin.
"So…? I thought you said you might be in love with him…"
"Not with Luka! I just… read it somewhere."
"You feel like you wanna hit me?"
"Don't be childish."
"Sure…Well, yes. He was my translator there and I really needed him… he was a quick translator but damn was he quiet otherwise… You had to drag every single word out of him. He was completely hopeless to have a normal conversation with… We used to say that he was a suicide waiting to happen…"
He heard his own words too late.
"You're right – I do want to hit you," she said coldly.
"I'm sorry… Susan, I really am," he said again.
She looked away, not wanting him to see how she had to open and close her eyes to stop the tears from welling up once again. She hadn't thought she had any left.
"Susan…" he said again, in a gentle voice this time.
"Stop!" she practically yelled as she wiped away two of the tears she had been unable to control.
"Stop talking, just drive me home. Please…" she sobbed.
He turned to her and patted her shoulder.
"You're going to be OK, Susan. You are one of the strongest women I know."
She let out a dry laugh between the tears.
"Strong, brave… Why don't I feel like it?! You guys keep telling me this stuff, and I feel nothing of it…!"
"You will. You will. You just have to collect yourself together…-"
"But I miss him! I barely know the man and I still miss him so freaking much that I walked around the whole damn city without even noticing it!"
She had said it. Or, yelled it, more likely. Yelled it out to everybody that wished to hear her cries.
"There's nothing wrong with that," he said gently.
"But I hardly know him! I just… I don't know – one minute I'm comforting him like a friend, the next I'm lying in his arms, not wanting him to do anything else than to kiss me! It's all just so…-"
"I'm…-"
"I asked him if he didn't find it weird that I loved an addict," she continued, not listening to what he had been trying to say.
"I meant Chloe, but now I don't know! Why do I always…- What's it with addicts and me?!"
Ritchie frowned.
"I'm not sure I'm following now…? I remember your sister, but…"
"How could you not, considering…"
He didn't let her tell the story about all the times Chloe had showed up at the hospital in Arizona, either high or hysterical.
"That's not important."
She sighed.
"Luka and Valium… they have been getting along a bit too well lately…"
Ritchie sighed with a sad nod.
"Was that how he…?"
She shook her head.
"He was about to hang himself but mixed up between Rohypnol and Valium. Thank God… He passed out just when he was about to put the loop around his neck… If he had been sober enough to read the labels on the bottles then he wouldn't be here anymore…"
"But he's still not here, is he?" she blurted out while wiping away the tears with a tissue.
"And I want him to…" she sobbed desperately, leaning back with closed eyes, totally exhausted.
"I…-"
"Where is he?"
"His brother came here. Took him home to his family."
"To Croatia?"
She just nodded.
"And I'm just so afraid that he won't come back… He promised to, but who knows – he hasn't been home since the war and what if he prefers it to this once he gets better…?"
"If he promised you I don't think he'll be gone forever. He never struck me as someone who broke his promises."
"I know, but… with the abstinence and everything… he's not thinking clearly… My God, why did I let this happen?!" she cried out and covered her face with her hands.
He took her hands off her face and forced her to look at him.
"From what I'm seeing and hearing you did not let this happen, Susan! You were the one to stop it from happening!"
"But I could have done more… earlier…"
"Could have, would have, should have. That's crap and you know it. You can still help him."
"Didn't you hear the part about the Atlantic ocean being in the way?" she asked dryly.
"Then call him, write to him – anything. He has his own private hell right now – he needs you. And you seem to need him pretty desperately".
"But what am I going to say…? 'I'll kill myself by not watching where I put my feet without you'? 'I miss you like hell?' 'I…-' "
"…- love you…?" he added carefully.
She stared at him.
"Are you insane?!"
He held up his hands in front of him in surrender.
"Only a suggestion, you decide. But do call him."
She said nothing.
"Susan. Do call him. Or something. Let him know you're… thinking about him."
She shook her head heavily.
"Susan…!"
"Just take me home now… I'll decide later… I'll call him… I just have to decide what to say…"
He patted her lightly on her hand before nodding and starting the engine. She was almost lying there in the seat, still sobbing and shivering. Shivering from the cold and wet clothes and all the emotions that welled up inside her. She was totally exhausted; her eyes so heavy that it felt as if climbing Mount Everest was easier than to keep them open.
The last she heard before she fell asleep to the night radio music as they drove off was Ritchie saying what she already knew deep inside.
"By the way Susan – you are in love with him."