CHAPTER EIGHT

Trying..trying...thanks to all people who have reviewed and written other mark/susan fics, for both encouragement and inspiration - hope I'm not letting you down

> > >

He'd done some crazy, stupid, strange, dumb, low things in his life. But this was a new "high" low.

Mark was sprinting down the street, past the bridge where seconds earlier he'd chucked the gun into the river. What could he have possibly been thinking? What was that gun going to accomplish? It only had the potential for more pain and anguish, not the security he craved.

He kept running, panting, furiously moving in the night in attempt to outdistance his fears. Since that day in the men's room, where he'd been innocently washing his face and suddenly had his whole life rammed into a wall, it was as if a terrible menace was constantly behind him, daring him to try and escape, and Mark was petrified as a result.

Finally, out of exhaustion, he slowed to a walk, and finally to a standstill next to a bench about four blocks from his apartment. His clothes were dripping from the sweat he'd built up, his heart was pounding like a sledgehammer, and it took all the functioning power he had just to sit down.

He sat and tried to reassume control. Of all the things which had transpired because of the attack, this was what scared and angered him the most. He had no control – over anything. The authority, the motivation, the confidence he used to have on a situation, was shattered beyond repair. His mind began to wonder how long he had actually been without control over things – and as he put the pieces together, he was reminded: Jennifer. Rachel. Sam Gasner. Jodi O'Brien. Raul. Susan. Louise. Kenny Law. Even today, a perfectly healthy man suffers a heart attack, and he'd had nothing but good fortune to be there when it happened. He had no control. And now in the most frightening moment of them all, he'd pulled a gun on another person and lost control of himself.

He had a good long thought, recalling an old saying where we ask for serenity to accept the things we cannot change, and picked himself up off the bench. After a night like tonight, all he wanted to do was go home.

He took the stairs up to his apartment, a habit he'd developed to avoid unfamiliar people in close quarters. But with the cast hampering him, opening the door had proved troublesome. Mark fiddled to get the handle down and as a result dropped his pack, spilling books and charts in the stairwell.

He lost it again, all the frustration against the seemingly random destruction targeted at him coming out: "This goddamn cast!!!" He kicked the wall but finally used the free hand to enter his floor's hallway, deciding he could come back for the charts.

He rounded a corner and his heart stopped. My door is open. He had given nobody else a key, a locksmith was coming in two days to change the locks. Is the bastard back for another round?!? He screamed out: "What the hell?!?" and ran towards his apartment, kicking open the door with brute force.

Appearing in the doorway, he was absolutely floored by what he saw.

> > >

Susan's first, but completely unnatural instinct was to recoil in horror. She cupped her hand to her mouth to mute a coming scream. Mark? It couldn't be. His face was bruised, his lips swollen, his arm in a sling. She kept her hand over her mouth, not a single word close to her lips.

Mark stood stunned on an even greater level. Susan? It couldn't be Susan. He was having another dream, like the one he'd had after going to the movies with Doug, and countless other times. He searched for something to say.

"Wh...Susan?"

She slowly let her hands come back down, and spoke softly.

"Mark, is it --- it's me."

He took a couple steps forward, again fearing he would blink and she'd be gone. They were now on opposite sides of the couch he'd placed in the middle of the room, locked on each other.

"It can't be. What are you doing here? H---How did you get in?"

Susan slowly reached down into her pocket and pulled out the key, trying to say what words could never express. She muttered, "You never changed the locks."

Finally, it seemed to Mark like his heart was pumping again. He tried to think rationally what the next step should be.

"You came...you came back." It was as if he was having an out-of-body experience, the beat-up carcass doing the talking while he, the real Mark Greene, was in another corner of the room admiring her, how she was still beautiful and still there, somehow.

Susan began to sense her pulse coming back to her and glanced in Mark's direction. "I wanted to see you...to talk to you." For the first time, she was conscious of the fact that her eyes were darting from the cast to his bruises and back. And Mark could tell.

Mark looked down at the cast and then back to her. "I guess there's a lot to talk about."

> > >

Susan sat on the couch biting her lips, trying to let a sense of normalcy come back to her. So many questions were flooding her brain at the time: "Why did he look like he'd just come home from a war?" being chief among them. Mark had gone to throw on a clean shirt and offered her some tea, the pots clanging in the background telling her how he was fighting around the cast.

After what seemed like eternity, he emerged in the main room and saw her from behind. Her hair was still perfect, she looked fantastic, he thought. But what's she doing back? That worry trumped all others.

"Hey", he said meekly.

She turned and for the first time managed a light smile. "Hi" grappling for the next talking point, "...so, how do you like the place?

Mark fumbled to the couch, shoving off a stack of medical journals in the seat next to her.

"I'm afraid I'm not the housekeeper you are." He was so earnest, and Susan could only laugh. That brought a smile to Mark's face, but it didn't last among all the uneasiness. Silence lingered, and then Susan worked up the courage again.

"So what happened to you – unless, I mean, if you don't want to talk-"

Mark perked up immediately. "No, no, of course not...Well, I mean, it's a bit of a shock to be seeing you...this – this thing, it's nothing. It'll be off in a couple of weeks."

"But why do you look like this? Is that why you're taking Percodan?"

And then they both stopped. Susan had unwittingly admitted to being a space invader. Mark looked at her, but he knew instantly it hadn't been something of malicious intent. "I have trouble sleeping, some nights. Look...three weeks ago, I got beat up in the restroom."

"Where – here?"

"No, at the hospital." Susan tried to mute a gasp once again. It didn't seem possible, that somebody like him would be made to endure this. It at best sounded horrifying.

"Who did it?" The questions began to come freely. Mark looked at his thumbs as he twiddled them, still afraid to let her see him like this. He had rehearsed what would happen if he ever got another chance to talk to her, but him in this condition, in this mental frame of mind, was a nightmare. "They don't know – I thought it might have been this kid who thought I let his brother die because he was black, but the police say there's no way. Best they can tell, I just happened to be in the bathroom when a thug who hates doctors was."

Susan, with no small trace of fear, reached out to touch his shoulder, to try and comfort him. He twitched ever so slightly, like he was being touched by a ghost, and Susan rubbed her hand on his shoulder to console him. "I...I'm so sorry Mark. If I had known," and Mark waved her off with his good hand.

"There's nothing you could have done" and he began to lose track of his emotions again, his eyes beginning to moisten, "nothing" and now it was as if Susan wasn't even there. "Nothing anybody could have done...God, why did this happen? It doesn't make any sense." A few tear drops began to fall, and he buried his head in his good hand.

> > >

Susan was about to cry too. She had thought of what seemed like 500 ways in which this conversation could go, but all her dry runs had been destroyed when she saw him. It was a chilling reminder of how different things were, how much had changed. Seeing him like this was too much.

"Mark--do you want me to leave?" It seemed like it took her an awful long time to ask him.

Mark tried to compose himself and faced her again. "Well...I mean, I don't want you to get sucked into this. I...I haven't really talked about it to anyone. I -- I guess I need to. Do you want to leave?"

Susan shook her head. "I'm still your friend right?" It seemed like such an easy question, but the instant Susan said it she regretted it. Now she was really opening up old wounds while Mark was trying to cope with fresh ones. But Mark looked at her and smiled: "Of course you are." He thought of something to say next, something, anything that might break the ice. And then the solution was pretty clear, so he cleared his throat and wiped his eyes.

"Wanna order a pizza?" She flashed him a smile and nodded. For that one moment, he looked at her and saw all things he'd missed for so long, the comfort and the beauty and the special bond that comes from two friends who had gone through as much as they had.

> > >

Mark had hung up on Pizzeria Uno and Susan was again walking around the apartment, mentally noting how it seemed familiar but also seeing how it was changed.

"So where'd the dog come from?" She went for safer ground.

Mark tried to hide the redness in his face. "Oh...a patient, he made me promise to take care of him. I was gonna let Rachel have him, but Craig had already bought her puppies." The mention of Craig and the "perfect" life he was giving Jen & Rachel manifested in his voice, and Susan wasn't facing him so Mark didn't see her clench her teeth at the idea of Jennifer hurting him like that.

"How is Rachel?"

"The two of us were getting along a little better...until this happened."

Now Susan faced him and moved to the kitchen table. "I still can't believe it – just some guy, out of the blue, no reason at all?"

"Well, if it's true God never gives you more than you can handle, I'm gonna live to be very, very old." He smirked as he sat down next to her. She laughed with him.

He looks at me like that, she thought, and it's like a day hasn't gone by. The train station never happened. I don't deserve this. Any other guy would've kicked me out – he couldn't wait to welcome me back. In the middle of it all, she couldn't realize that she was now looking dreamily at him.

"What?" he asked, again oblivious like both of them to what had always been there.

Susan was about to speak when there was a knock at the door. Mark furrowed his brow and clenched his teeth. It couldn't be the pizza already. He and Susan were on the verge of sorting things out, and now he had to go shoo away some annoyed neighbor. Only when he looked through the peephole, he saw Doug.

He turned to look at Susan and said awkwardly, "I'll be right back.

> > >

Doug turned and saw the doorknob turn, but Mark opened it only wide enough so he could slip into the hall and close it again. Is there a dead body in there? Doug thought. After Mark's Hulk Hogan routine in the lounge that afternoon, Doug put nothing past his mild-mannered buddy.

"Can I help you?" Mark asked, trying to say This is not a good time in other words.

Doug was confused, but pressed on ahead with why he was there. "I just had the most amazing experience of my life."

Mark leveled to try and say to Doug – Are you serious?

Doug kept going, "I...I went over to Carol's, and she comes out from the car in this -- God, I can't describe it, what a stunner, and I don't know what got into me, but it just seemed so right and then—" He could tell Mark was pre-occupied with what was inside the apartment rather than him.

"What?"

Mark tried to get rid of his best friend without giving away why. "Can we have this discussion tomorrow?"

Slowly, Doug added up all the pieces, and a mischievous grin crossed his face. "You've got a woman in there, don't you --- she's not a hooker, is she?"

Mark was shocked. "NO!!"

Doug nodded. "Good. I wouldn't want you to be going down that road - you and Chuni aren't having a reunion?"

Mark tried desperately not to raise his voice, "NO!" in a forced whisper.

Doug was trying to hold his laugh in and was having no luck. "Just saying, you don't think that cast will raise some performance issues?" Mark was too dumbfounded to be outraged, so Doug finished his laugh.

"OK, so who is it? C'mon, just tell me. I told you about me and Carol."

Now Mark just went blank. "You...there's a you and Carol again?"

Doug smiled and shrugged, as if to say Yeah, kinda sorta. Mark smiled and tried to force pleasure in his voice, "That's great. So off you go to rekindle the one true love's flame, and I'll see you tomorrow." He began to escort Doug back down the hall, and Doug started to go along, but immediately ducked out and back towards the apartment door.

"Doug!" Mark shouted, but with his mild handicap he couldn't stop Doug Ross, P.I. from reaching the door and throwing it open with a huge smile on his face.

Then he stood in the doorway as stunned as Mark had been, and Susan turned to see Doug's jaw dropped to the floor. Mark appeared in the doorway next to him, and Doug slowly turned his head.

"Yeah, I didn't see that one coming."

> > >

To be continued...