Title: Hotter Than July
Disclaimer: The ER characters do not belong to me, neither do any products, song lyrics or literary quotations mentioned.
Summary: Warm weather, flirtation and a few lessons to be learned. Luby. Sort of AU, sort of not.
Author's Note: Again, sorry for the wait. The penultimate chapter!
Reviews: Please and thanks!
Dedication: Thanks to No.13 Baby for confirming my research :)
The clock had definitely stopped. Its second hand was moving backwards and forwards in the same spot, pulsing like a butterfly's wings, flickering like an eyelash. A dark eye shifted sceptically to it, then to a watch and back again.
"Damn you." It almost came out as a growl.
"Oh God, not you as well. I already have two patients talking to themselves."
Susan joined Abby and followed her line of sight up to the clock.
"Put 'em both in the same room and you've got yourself a conversation." "Anyway, I was talking to the clock," she continued defensively.
"Inanimate objects? That's worse." Susan paused, scanning around briefly, then adding, "It's official, this place will drive us all to an early grave."
"I'm thinking it's a cruel trick, just to keep reminding me that I'm stuck here for another..." She eyeballed her watch again. "Forty-five minutes." Abby was due to leave at seven, and the clock had conveniently stopped at dead-on seven, three times she had managed to convince herself that it was time to leave and three times she had been disappointed. "And nobody from Maintenance will come and fix it." Salt into the wounds.
Susan expelled an objective, thoughtful sigh. "Well, like everything mechanical here, it probably needs a slap." Many a pulse-ox monitor had been repaired with a sharp right-handed blow.
"I'll give you a boost if it bothers you that much." Her tone was frighteningly serious.
Abby rolled her eyes incredulously. "I come here to treat patients, not to become one." She could so clearly imagine them landing in an uncomfortable heap on the floor, with the broken clock still up there, triumphant in its uselessness.
"C'mon, it'll be fun." Susan was being strangely persistent in this strange matter.
"Not my kind of fun," she replied briskly, a smile almost seeming to catch up with her thoughts.
"So now I know why you're so desperate to get away," Susan speculated, in jest.
"Go outside and get your mind outta the gutter."
"Oh, go home and get laid."
They both laughed. "You've got yourself a deal."
The clock then became the least of Abby's worries as she soon found herself attending to an array of serious, critical and comical patients. So many that she was not ready to leave until quarter to eight. The sun seemed to scowl at her with a wicked, searing expression as she prepared to leave. Outside, she straightened her hair, balancing a cigarette guilefully between her fingertips, just about to light when her attention was distracted by a familiar figure. Mostly because this was the first time she had seen Mo ever looking remotely downcast. He was sitting there, elbows dug into his thighs, hands scorching against his cheeks, eyes fixed forward, pensive.
"Hey. I didn't expect to see you hanging around outside the house of death." She didn't know why she put her hand on his shoulder momentarily, before joining him.
"There was me thinkin' it was the house of fun," he said, with a resounding chime, flashing her a smile.
"Only if you're a sadist."
"Nah, my dumb-ass friend managed to dislocate his shoulder playin' basketball so I went to visit. And now I'm just sittin' here. Strangely contemplatin' life." His tone was reflective, with just a hint of mockery.
"A damn sight better than contemplating death," Abby replied, casting a speculative glance in his direction.
"Ah, no time for that," he said, a knowing grin positively radiating enigma.
She put her cigarette cautiously in her mouth, then for some unknown reason, reconsidered. "You mind?"
Mo regarded her curiously, lighter aching to be struck by her thumb, eyes set with concentration.
"Ah..yeah. Smokin' used to be my favourite thing. For a while in my life. Along with amphetamines."
Abby blinked, the sun and Mo's admission coating her in a slow discomfort, which soon began to fade. She was continually surprised by his frankness, his ability to open a conversation so very, very wide.
"C'mon, don't go shy on me now. Everybody wants the second slice of the pie, the "How did you get infected?"
Why is he telling me this? She wondered, looking at the white stick gripped in her fingertips, part of her wishing she had lit up and not given him a choice. On the other hand, maybe his openness was an example. Communication was paramount, wasn't it? She had spent years learning, almost making a mantra of collecting feelings inside without ever turning them into words. Reversing this secrecy was difficult, maybe she was envious of his candour. Mo looked at her, seeing her eyes open, silent with their search for understanding.
"It's stupid really. My Dad died, I felt like shit, I couldn't do anythin', I just felt numb, I felt nothin'. So I got high. It's crazy..." He paused, to regain control over the emotion in his voice. "You can smoke it, sniff it, God knows what. I was impatient. I injected it." Regret and remembrance seemed to fluctuate in his voice, the tone of his experiences seeming to shape into the ultimate learning curve.
"How did your father die?" Abby remembered his sudden admission of his loss on that very first time she had met him, feeling astonished that he should wish to tell a stranger. But strangers were sometimes the easiest people to talk to, unfamiliar, unaware of the complexities of the person that often became a hindrance. Unaware of the past.
"He was shot. Just kids with a gun, bored, nothin' else to do but pull the trigger and see what happens." "All a game to them." "Just a game." If it was possible to touch despair, then it would have been palpable in his words.
He pressed all of his fingertips together, compressing the hurt and anger in bursts of pressure. His eyes wandered to the sky, watching a few dreamy clouds float carelessly, dancing around the vapour trails of jet planes in some kind of celestial tangle.
"Crazily, I almost don't regret it."
"Being an addict?" The three words tripped off her tongue with an empathetic ease.
"Yeah. Sometimes it was euphoric. Like when you're a kid and you're on a trampoline. For a few moments you're above all the problems, you're just floatin' in this space." Mo's dark gaze became that of a dreamer as he assessed this state of mind.
"I understand, believe me. Ignorance is bliss." Abby conceded to herself that there was no way that drinking had ever produced any euphoria, in fact, it was numbing, deadening and cold. But it had the same effect: a mask from the world. An analgesia which was in fact a trick, as it dragged you deeper into the depths of addiction.
"Sure as hell it is."
"But you can't live your life like that." God knows where that philosophical gem came from, she thought.
"Oh, don't you worry, I got the trampoline pulled out from under me and I landed on the concrete on my sorry ass." "Hard."
She laughed at his addition. "I'm sorry, it's just the way you said it."
He shrugged, then chuckled, leaning back. "It's a scary image. But I have a great butt."
"Oh, I couldn't possibly comment." Abby pushed her hands abruptly into her pockets. "How long.."
"Since all the shit went down? Five years. Spent three of them in Germany getting a philosophy degree."
"And you haven't relapsed?" It was easy, it was tempting and she knew it.
"Nah, I'm an all or nothin' kinda guy. Plus, lucky me gets to have needles stuck in me every three months. Every time I have those tests it's a reminder, that sticking needles in me was how it all started. So I'm not tempted."
"What made you want to study?"
"The old sayin', great work comes from great pain. But it comes from great joy too, and that's what I try and do with my music, to find a balance between joy and pain. Really, when I went, I just wanted to get away. I just felt that everywhere I went, there was somebody there to remind me of everything that happened. It was..suffocating."
Grief was often an insular, personal process with little room for anyone else and even the closest allies with the best intentions could make it feel worse. Abby let her mind drift slightly, wondering if this knowledge of loss and escape had forged some kind of sacred bond between Luka and Mo, was it the very essence of their strange friendship? She felt a sharp sting of what could have been jealousy, she could only attempt to understand, she could never actually feel that incomplete circle of despair and repair on the same level.
As quickly as it had risen to bother her, she pushed the doubt away again. What did it matter? Surely he would not have wished anybody to understand such agony?
"So I'm guessing your family don't live in Chicago?" It was not a speculation purely based on his admission of moving away, but something in his voice that seemed to indicate this was not his home city.
Mo grinned, almost pleased at being quizzed. "Right on. Sacramento, California. My Mom and my sister Annie, who's fifteen."
"That's quite an age gap," Abby theorised, surprised.
Mo smiled. "I think she was the result of a cold night and too much brandy. But we love her. I miss her."
"Luka tells me you're going on a tour."
His grin became wider. "Yeah, end of the month. Spinnin' disks in the UK, France, Spain and Italy. And there's my Mom sayin' "You can't make a livin' outta playin' records my son!" He mocked in a high-pitched, Caribbean tone.
She could almost sense an air of derision in his tone, but knew how complex and painful relationships with one's mother could be, and decided not to press any further.
Slowly, Abby leant back and pressed her fingers together inside her left pocket and grasped an object, a memory suddenly flashing through her, as rapid as the cruel sunlight, not willing to calm its relentless heat.
"I forgot to give you this," she said quietly, producing the dry, hard, decaying cherry stone from her pocket.
The expression that formed on Mo's face swayed between being bemused and being amused. "You didn't plant it?"
She shook her head lightly.
"Just as well, I guess, my cousin thinks that a spade is somethin' you eat dinner with."
"I'll bet lunch with him is something else." She placed it in his palm, watching his face with caution, observing as he rolled it around with the tip of his thumb.
"There must be some better gardeners in Chicago, though," he said, thoughtfulness rising in his throat. Mo eyed the building conspiratorially and stood up. "Any way you can sneak me in to an upstairs window?"
Intrigue shot through Abby's veins as she contemplated the mystery, watching him juggle the tiny stone in his hand, throwing and catching it again without even watching.
"Oh, I can do better than that."
It was so hot on the rooftop that it felt as if brick, mortar and tar were melting away, subsiding from creation into useless, oozing matter. To the left, red clouds had been underscored with slick gushes of lilac, to the right orange and yellow battled slowly, ahead, the city was just angular, hard, dark shapes, the tops of buildings glowing like candles on a cake. The air had been tortured and battered, but was still and thick with meaning, humidity as heavy as lead.
They both stood, arms folded, staring at the sun for a moment, not frightened that they may be blinded by the uncompromising ball of pasts and of futures. They exchanged a quick glance, before Mo wound his clenched fist backwards and finally flung the tiny stone into the oblivion of the city. For a fleeting moment it appeared as a minimal dot scarred on the cityscape, before it disappeared forever, to give renewal and hope wherever it landed and rooted itself in the receptive earth. He rubbed his hands together satisfactorily, then slid them inside his pockets energetically, before silently turning on his heels, loving to disappear without notice, without a word. As hesitant as she was to turn away from the mystifying scene, Abby did so, and found some words.
"I'll see you around." It felt lame, but at the same time, poignant.
He stopped and turned back to face her. "You betcha," he replied, with a wink as quick as a flash. With that, he was fading slowly away, consumed by the world as easily as the stone had been, but destined just as the stone was: to reappear again as something just as powerful, hopeful and striking.
Disclaimer: The ER characters do not belong to me, neither do any products, song lyrics or literary quotations mentioned.
Summary: Warm weather, flirtation and a few lessons to be learned. Luby. Sort of AU, sort of not.
Author's Note: Again, sorry for the wait. The penultimate chapter!
Reviews: Please and thanks!
Dedication: Thanks to No.13 Baby for confirming my research :)
The clock had definitely stopped. Its second hand was moving backwards and forwards in the same spot, pulsing like a butterfly's wings, flickering like an eyelash. A dark eye shifted sceptically to it, then to a watch and back again.
"Damn you." It almost came out as a growl.
"Oh God, not you as well. I already have two patients talking to themselves."
Susan joined Abby and followed her line of sight up to the clock.
"Put 'em both in the same room and you've got yourself a conversation." "Anyway, I was talking to the clock," she continued defensively.
"Inanimate objects? That's worse." Susan paused, scanning around briefly, then adding, "It's official, this place will drive us all to an early grave."
"I'm thinking it's a cruel trick, just to keep reminding me that I'm stuck here for another..." She eyeballed her watch again. "Forty-five minutes." Abby was due to leave at seven, and the clock had conveniently stopped at dead-on seven, three times she had managed to convince herself that it was time to leave and three times she had been disappointed. "And nobody from Maintenance will come and fix it." Salt into the wounds.
Susan expelled an objective, thoughtful sigh. "Well, like everything mechanical here, it probably needs a slap." Many a pulse-ox monitor had been repaired with a sharp right-handed blow.
"I'll give you a boost if it bothers you that much." Her tone was frighteningly serious.
Abby rolled her eyes incredulously. "I come here to treat patients, not to become one." She could so clearly imagine them landing in an uncomfortable heap on the floor, with the broken clock still up there, triumphant in its uselessness.
"C'mon, it'll be fun." Susan was being strangely persistent in this strange matter.
"Not my kind of fun," she replied briskly, a smile almost seeming to catch up with her thoughts.
"So now I know why you're so desperate to get away," Susan speculated, in jest.
"Go outside and get your mind outta the gutter."
"Oh, go home and get laid."
They both laughed. "You've got yourself a deal."
The clock then became the least of Abby's worries as she soon found herself attending to an array of serious, critical and comical patients. So many that she was not ready to leave until quarter to eight. The sun seemed to scowl at her with a wicked, searing expression as she prepared to leave. Outside, she straightened her hair, balancing a cigarette guilefully between her fingertips, just about to light when her attention was distracted by a familiar figure. Mostly because this was the first time she had seen Mo ever looking remotely downcast. He was sitting there, elbows dug into his thighs, hands scorching against his cheeks, eyes fixed forward, pensive.
"Hey. I didn't expect to see you hanging around outside the house of death." She didn't know why she put her hand on his shoulder momentarily, before joining him.
"There was me thinkin' it was the house of fun," he said, with a resounding chime, flashing her a smile.
"Only if you're a sadist."
"Nah, my dumb-ass friend managed to dislocate his shoulder playin' basketball so I went to visit. And now I'm just sittin' here. Strangely contemplatin' life." His tone was reflective, with just a hint of mockery.
"A damn sight better than contemplating death," Abby replied, casting a speculative glance in his direction.
"Ah, no time for that," he said, a knowing grin positively radiating enigma.
She put her cigarette cautiously in her mouth, then for some unknown reason, reconsidered. "You mind?"
Mo regarded her curiously, lighter aching to be struck by her thumb, eyes set with concentration.
"Ah..yeah. Smokin' used to be my favourite thing. For a while in my life. Along with amphetamines."
Abby blinked, the sun and Mo's admission coating her in a slow discomfort, which soon began to fade. She was continually surprised by his frankness, his ability to open a conversation so very, very wide.
"C'mon, don't go shy on me now. Everybody wants the second slice of the pie, the "How did you get infected?"
Why is he telling me this? She wondered, looking at the white stick gripped in her fingertips, part of her wishing she had lit up and not given him a choice. On the other hand, maybe his openness was an example. Communication was paramount, wasn't it? She had spent years learning, almost making a mantra of collecting feelings inside without ever turning them into words. Reversing this secrecy was difficult, maybe she was envious of his candour. Mo looked at her, seeing her eyes open, silent with their search for understanding.
"It's stupid really. My Dad died, I felt like shit, I couldn't do anythin', I just felt numb, I felt nothin'. So I got high. It's crazy..." He paused, to regain control over the emotion in his voice. "You can smoke it, sniff it, God knows what. I was impatient. I injected it." Regret and remembrance seemed to fluctuate in his voice, the tone of his experiences seeming to shape into the ultimate learning curve.
"How did your father die?" Abby remembered his sudden admission of his loss on that very first time she had met him, feeling astonished that he should wish to tell a stranger. But strangers were sometimes the easiest people to talk to, unfamiliar, unaware of the complexities of the person that often became a hindrance. Unaware of the past.
"He was shot. Just kids with a gun, bored, nothin' else to do but pull the trigger and see what happens." "All a game to them." "Just a game." If it was possible to touch despair, then it would have been palpable in his words.
He pressed all of his fingertips together, compressing the hurt and anger in bursts of pressure. His eyes wandered to the sky, watching a few dreamy clouds float carelessly, dancing around the vapour trails of jet planes in some kind of celestial tangle.
"Crazily, I almost don't regret it."
"Being an addict?" The three words tripped off her tongue with an empathetic ease.
"Yeah. Sometimes it was euphoric. Like when you're a kid and you're on a trampoline. For a few moments you're above all the problems, you're just floatin' in this space." Mo's dark gaze became that of a dreamer as he assessed this state of mind.
"I understand, believe me. Ignorance is bliss." Abby conceded to herself that there was no way that drinking had ever produced any euphoria, in fact, it was numbing, deadening and cold. But it had the same effect: a mask from the world. An analgesia which was in fact a trick, as it dragged you deeper into the depths of addiction.
"Sure as hell it is."
"But you can't live your life like that." God knows where that philosophical gem came from, she thought.
"Oh, don't you worry, I got the trampoline pulled out from under me and I landed on the concrete on my sorry ass." "Hard."
She laughed at his addition. "I'm sorry, it's just the way you said it."
He shrugged, then chuckled, leaning back. "It's a scary image. But I have a great butt."
"Oh, I couldn't possibly comment." Abby pushed her hands abruptly into her pockets. "How long.."
"Since all the shit went down? Five years. Spent three of them in Germany getting a philosophy degree."
"And you haven't relapsed?" It was easy, it was tempting and she knew it.
"Nah, I'm an all or nothin' kinda guy. Plus, lucky me gets to have needles stuck in me every three months. Every time I have those tests it's a reminder, that sticking needles in me was how it all started. So I'm not tempted."
"What made you want to study?"
"The old sayin', great work comes from great pain. But it comes from great joy too, and that's what I try and do with my music, to find a balance between joy and pain. Really, when I went, I just wanted to get away. I just felt that everywhere I went, there was somebody there to remind me of everything that happened. It was..suffocating."
Grief was often an insular, personal process with little room for anyone else and even the closest allies with the best intentions could make it feel worse. Abby let her mind drift slightly, wondering if this knowledge of loss and escape had forged some kind of sacred bond between Luka and Mo, was it the very essence of their strange friendship? She felt a sharp sting of what could have been jealousy, she could only attempt to understand, she could never actually feel that incomplete circle of despair and repair on the same level.
As quickly as it had risen to bother her, she pushed the doubt away again. What did it matter? Surely he would not have wished anybody to understand such agony?
"So I'm guessing your family don't live in Chicago?" It was not a speculation purely based on his admission of moving away, but something in his voice that seemed to indicate this was not his home city.
Mo grinned, almost pleased at being quizzed. "Right on. Sacramento, California. My Mom and my sister Annie, who's fifteen."
"That's quite an age gap," Abby theorised, surprised.
Mo smiled. "I think she was the result of a cold night and too much brandy. But we love her. I miss her."
"Luka tells me you're going on a tour."
His grin became wider. "Yeah, end of the month. Spinnin' disks in the UK, France, Spain and Italy. And there's my Mom sayin' "You can't make a livin' outta playin' records my son!" He mocked in a high-pitched, Caribbean tone.
She could almost sense an air of derision in his tone, but knew how complex and painful relationships with one's mother could be, and decided not to press any further.
Slowly, Abby leant back and pressed her fingers together inside her left pocket and grasped an object, a memory suddenly flashing through her, as rapid as the cruel sunlight, not willing to calm its relentless heat.
"I forgot to give you this," she said quietly, producing the dry, hard, decaying cherry stone from her pocket.
The expression that formed on Mo's face swayed between being bemused and being amused. "You didn't plant it?"
She shook her head lightly.
"Just as well, I guess, my cousin thinks that a spade is somethin' you eat dinner with."
"I'll bet lunch with him is something else." She placed it in his palm, watching his face with caution, observing as he rolled it around with the tip of his thumb.
"There must be some better gardeners in Chicago, though," he said, thoughtfulness rising in his throat. Mo eyed the building conspiratorially and stood up. "Any way you can sneak me in to an upstairs window?"
Intrigue shot through Abby's veins as she contemplated the mystery, watching him juggle the tiny stone in his hand, throwing and catching it again without even watching.
"Oh, I can do better than that."
It was so hot on the rooftop that it felt as if brick, mortar and tar were melting away, subsiding from creation into useless, oozing matter. To the left, red clouds had been underscored with slick gushes of lilac, to the right orange and yellow battled slowly, ahead, the city was just angular, hard, dark shapes, the tops of buildings glowing like candles on a cake. The air had been tortured and battered, but was still and thick with meaning, humidity as heavy as lead.
They both stood, arms folded, staring at the sun for a moment, not frightened that they may be blinded by the uncompromising ball of pasts and of futures. They exchanged a quick glance, before Mo wound his clenched fist backwards and finally flung the tiny stone into the oblivion of the city. For a fleeting moment it appeared as a minimal dot scarred on the cityscape, before it disappeared forever, to give renewal and hope wherever it landed and rooted itself in the receptive earth. He rubbed his hands together satisfactorily, then slid them inside his pockets energetically, before silently turning on his heels, loving to disappear without notice, without a word. As hesitant as she was to turn away from the mystifying scene, Abby did so, and found some words.
"I'll see you around." It felt lame, but at the same time, poignant.
He stopped and turned back to face her. "You betcha," he replied, with a wink as quick as a flash. With that, he was fading slowly away, consumed by the world as easily as the stone had been, but destined just as the stone was: to reappear again as something just as powerful, hopeful and striking.