DISCLAIMER: I can only dream of owning these characters, as they belong to
NBC and the WB and whoever else. The point is, that I don't own them,
except for Grace. Anyone else that you don't recognize was created by me.
Okay, so here's chapter 12. This isn't how I planned to write this chapter, it just happened. The next chapter should be the climax of the whole thing, but we'll see how it goes. When you have a pen and paper, you never know what ideas will pop into your brain.
Read and enjoy!
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SAVING GRACE-- CHAPTER 12
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Carter spent a total of three days as a patient in Cook County General. He was transferred out of the ICU and observation areas and into recovery by the end of the first day. He was glad that he didn't have to spend more time than that as a critical patient.
The time that went by during those days in the hospital, though it went by slowly, was not totally dull and monotonous. Several people came to visit him, all of them people from the hospital. Since he knew pretty much everyone who worked there, quite a few people came by his room from hour to hour to offer their get-well greetings.
Later in the first day, Susan came in to her shift an hour early so that she could keep him company. The two of them talked about absolutely nothing, laughing over stupid things, little nothings. Carter knew that she sensed that this was the best sort of thing to chat about after an ordeal such as the one that he had been through.
After Susan started her shift then, Gallant came in and went over old patient follow-ups with him. Carter helped him to review the charts and go over possible diagnoses and courses of treatment. During the whole course of his visit, Carter got the feeling that Gallant was uncomfortable with seeing one of his superiors, a fellow doctor, lying almost defenseless in a hospital bed, needing care himself. He couldn't blame him. He had felt the same way when Dr. Benton had come down with appendicitis while he was on his surgical rotation years ago.
Dr. Anspaugh had come down to offer his greetings, as had Neela. Several of the nurses had pitched in to get him some flowers from the gift shop, and they came on a break to deliver them personally. Of course, because the breaks were all at the same time, Kerry hadn't been too happy. Only 10 minutes without nurses, Carter knew, could lead to chaos.
Abby came and talked with him, mostly sitting, for a change, in silence. It was strange, but since Abby had seen Carter in a hospital recovery room once before, she seemed to know that it could be comforting just to have her presence there. It was. It was nice just to have an understanding visitor, to chat with if desired, to sit in silence other times. She came to visit each day that he was there, and was a comfort each time.
Kerry Weaver came in to tell him that he could take a leave after he was discharged from the hospital. He didn't have to come back to work right away; he did have enough personal days accrued to take some time off. Carter objected. He needed to keep his mind off of things; he needed to come to work. He told her that he would take those personal days off later, if the time came to use them.
Kerry also told him that she had scheduled a meeting for him with Dr. Meyers, from the Psychiatric ward of the hospital. It was a formality, she said, just to make sure that the mugging wouldn't affect him in a major way. Great, Carter thought, another person who would think that he was a nut.
Shortly after the first time that he woke up, a couple of cops came by to question him, poking and prodding, and grilling him, so that every bit of information that he could recall out of him. He knew that they wanted to find and catch the guys, but Carter hadn't really been feeling up to the questions, so he knew that he hadn't answered them well. He simply hadn't cared.
On the third day, Grace came to visit him.
It was early afternoon, around 2:00, after Carter had been moved into the medical recovery area of the hospital. He was feeling better, though the pain in his head wasn't a whole lot better. Grace's regular day nurse, Lorraine, knocked at his door.
"Dr. Carter," she called uncertainly, "are you up for a visitor?"
Truthfully, he hadn't been. He had wanted to go back to sleep, the Tylenol and aspirin were not working for the dully throbbing pains in his temporal lobe. Somehow, though, he had given the nurse a weak smile and wave of the hand.
"Sure," he had said. The nurse had walked behind the door, propping it open. She wheeled a wheelchair into the room, and sure enough, Grace had been sitting inside of it.
Carter had been shocked, to say the least, mostly at the fact that she had been allowed to leave her bed in her room. But there she was, sitting in the doorway of his own hospital room, still in her pink hospital gown, hair falling just past her shoulders, beaming at him.
"Hi Doctor Carter," she greeted him. The nurse wheeled her to the side of his bed, and left to go talk to her friend Cynthia, another nurse on that floor of the hospital.
"Hello, Miss Knight. How are you today?"
"I am doing well, thank you. How are you?" Carter gave her a small smile, telling her a small lie.
"I'm okay" he had said. "What brings you down to this floor of the hospital?"
"Well," she began, dropping her chin for a moment, looking at her hands in her lap. "I heard that you had been hurt, and you came to visit me all that time that I was sick, so I thought I'd come to keep you company."
"That is very thoughtful of you," Carter said. He couldn't believe the little girl's concern, was surprised by it. Grace reached into the side pocket on the wheelchair and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.
"I made you a Get Well card," she said, sounding pleased with herself. She handed the card to Carter, who smiled and opened it. The front was decorated with a five-year-old's rendition of a rainbow, with flowers traced onto the scribbled green grass. The inside of the card contained the message Get Well Soon carefully printed in purple crayon. Carter smiled at the child. She returned the gesture.
"Thank you, Grace," he said as he set the card on his bedside table. He turned back to her to find that her blue eyes were focused on the bandage that covered his head injury. A look of quiet horror filled her eyes. She saw that he was watching her for her reaction, and she turned her head quickly, only to look back a second later. "It's not as bad as it looks," Carter told her, in the most comforting voice he could manage. She nodded mechanically, as if she hadn't really heard his words.
"Does it hurt much?" she asked in a very small voice. Carter pressed his lips together slightly, shaking his head slowly.
"No," he told her, trying to be convincing. "The other doctors are giving me medicine so that it won't hurt." Grace nodded, believing him. She sat quietly for a moment, hands folded in her lap. She looked up at him.
"It's weird to see a doctor sick in the hospital," she said, more to herself than anything. Carter gave a small smile.
"That's what I used to think, too."
"Have you ever been in the hospital before?" Carter took in a slow breath through his nose, not wanting to answer the child's innocent question.
His mind did a terrible flashback, to the night of the stabbing, Valentine's Day. He was falling, calling for help, the music was blaring. He knew he would never forget the song that was playing as he fell to the ground, felt the cold floor against his cheek, watched Lucy struggle to breathe, covered in her own blood. Then he lay awake, disoriented, on the table in the trauma room, turning his head to see Benton using the Melker kit to trach Lucy. It had all seemed so unreal, yet he could not erase the reality. He nodded slowly.
"Yeah," he said. "I have been in the hospital before." Grace's eyes grew slightly wider.
"Why?" she asked. Carter massaged his forehead with his hand, closing his eyes for a brief moment.
"I had a problem with my back, I needed surgery." It wasn't a total lie, Carter had thought, he just hadn't specified how the back problem had gotten there in the first place, and the little girl hadn't asked. She had simply nodded.
He needed to change the subject.
"So," he began, in a lighter tone of voice. "How are things back up in room 512?" Grace shrugged.
"It's okay. It is sort of boring a lot of times," she answered.
"How's Amanda?"
"She left yesterday. Her mom took her home, she was well enough to go," she spoke these words with a tinge of regret; she obviously hadn't wanted her newfound friend to leave. Carter nodded. "The nurse said that she could finish recuperating at home. What does recuperate mean?" she asked him.
"It means to get better."
"Oh," she said, registering the meaning in her mind.
"Are you still getting other visitors in the hospital?" Grace smiled and nodded.
"Yeah, Abby comes to play games with me when she is on her break. She says that it is a nice change from the ER. She smuggles in games from the playroom. She's the one who told me that you were hurt."
"She told you that?"
"Yep," Grace said, shifting in her seat. "She came up yesterday to play checkers, and she told me that you were hit in the head and in the hospital." Carter opened his mouth to say something more, but Grace cut him off. "I asked why you didn't come to see me, and she told me, don't be mad at her."
"I couldn't be mad at her anyway," he said, looking out the window.
"Good, she's really nice, I like her a lot, almost as much as I like you," she said with the honesty of a child. Carter found a small smile had formed on his lips.
"That's very nice of you, Grace," Carter said, still smiling at her. She smiled back at him.
"You're welcome," she said. The gaze of her eyes drifted once again to the dressing on his head. She leaned down and retrieved, from the pocket of the wheelchair, a deck of cards. Carter let out a laugh.
"Where did you get those?" he asked her. She grinned mischievously.
"The playroom," she said simply. "I'll give them back later," she reassured him.
"Okay," Carter said, eyeing her in a playfully suspicious way. She giggled, her eyes dancing. Carter caught his breath. She sounded so much like Lucy.
"Do you want to play?" she asked. Carter smiled.
"I would love to," he answered, unfolding the lap table from his bed. Grace took the rubber band off of the card deck, and gave them to Carter to shuffle.
"You can do it, I'm not very good," she said. Carter took the cards and shuffled them, letting them slide between his fingers. He had to thank the child one day for her kindness.
"What do you want to play?" he asked her. She shook her head.
"You pick."
"Okay," Carter said, smiling. "Corkscrew it is."
After a few games of cards, the nurse came back to retrieve Grace, wheeling her back up to the Pedes ward to her room. Carter had been left twiddling his thumbs, bored once again. He had a few more visitors, Abby had stopped by, and Gallant and Pratt. What had surprised him, though, was when Elizabeth Corday came to visit late that afternoon, before Carter was discharged from the hospital.
Carter had been watching a terrible soap opera on television, and she had knocked on the door, pushing it open. Carter turned in surprise.
"Hello Dr. Corday," he greeted her.
"John," she said much less formally. "How are you feeling?" Carter gave a soft laugh.
"I'm fine, just fine. I think I'm ready to go home now, actually," he answered. She came into the room, pulling up a chair at his bedside, and noticing that the television was turned on.
"What on earth is this garbage that you are watching?" she asked, a look of disgust on her face.
"It's a soap opera, it's called General Hospital," Carter said, a playful smile on his lips. He watched, amused, as Elizabeth stared at the screen, seeming revolted by what she saw.
"That is so fake," she said. She watched for a moment, making the occasional commentaries of 'Nobody wears scrubs that tight,' and 'The ER is never that quiet all the time,' and 'you can't give potassium to a patient in that condition, it would throw off the electrolyte balance!' Carter was left smiling at her comments, with which he agreed wholeheartedly. Finally, she got sick of the whole thing and simply turned off the television.
"Hey," Carter said, feigning disappointment. "Why'd you do that?" Elizabeth shot him a look.
"How can anybody watch that garbage? It must just be this country..." she trailed off.
"Hey, you can't talk. All of you Brits are obsessed with that show Big Brother." Carter gave her a playful stare of accusation. Elizabeth snorted with light laughter.
"Alright, alright, I admit it. I used to watch Big Brother," she confessed, causing Carter to laugh. She laughed along with him, but the laughter soon subsided. She fixed him with a look, her eyes boring into his, trying to see something in them.
"What?" Carter asked, a bit apprehensively. Elizabeth intensified the gaze, searching his eyes as if she were searching the depths of his soul.
"Are you okay? I mean, really okay? Because you don't seem that well to me." Carter rolled his eyes at her, trying to convince her that he was truly okay. This wouldn't have been so difficult, except for the fact that he wasn't so sure about his own well-being. He decided in an instant that he didn't need to be pitied or anything else from anybody else.
"I will be just fine, don't worry about me," he said, resolutely, to Elizabeth. She fell silent for a moment, taking in what he had told her, and trying to decide for herself whether Carter really meant what he had said. She accepted it. The two of them sat in silence, and Elizabeth's gaze wandered around the room, falling on the Get Well card that Grace had drawn for Carter. A faint smile crossed her lips. Seeing what she was looking at, Carter followed the gaze. He plucked the card from the bedside table and held it gently in his hand, as if it were made of delicate glass.
"Who made that for you?" Elizabeth asked him, taking the card from him and reading it.
"One of my patients, the young Miss Knight." Elizabeth nodded, handing the paper back to Carter.
"She is a sweet girl, isn't she?"
"Yes, she is," he said. "She told me that you came to visit her." Elizabeth smiled.
"Yes, I went by after one of my appys in the morning to visit, to see how she was doing. We talked a little, I told her who I was, I braided her hair for her," she said. "I told her that I had a daughter named Ella, and she asked about her." Elizabeth broke off, sighing.
"What?" Carter asked. Elizabeth shook her head, closing her eyes for a moment.
"She is so much like Lucy, John, it's startling." Carter nodded.
"I know, it's--" he took a breath, "--it's unbelievable."
"I know." Elizabeth sat there a little while longer, when the current nurse, Sherri Nix, opened the door. She had his charts in her hands, and was smiling.
"Hey, Sherri, what's up?" Carter asked. He turned his head in her direction, as Elizabeth stood from her chair and met the nurse near the door.
"May I?" she asked the nurse, motioning at Carter's charts. Sherri nodded, and Elizabeth took over the clipboard.
"Dr. Carter, you can be discharged now, if you like. You need to see a nurse about taking out that IV, and we will give you some strong aspirin and Tylenol for the pain and some clean dressings for the wound first, of course, but after that, you'd be free to go," the nurse told him kindly, smiling at him. Elizabeth smiled too, looking up from the chart.
"Everything looks great," she said reassuringly. Carter nodded.
"Dr. Bose will want to see you in a week, and again in a month, but making an appointment with him shouldn't be a problem at all," Sherri said, taking the chart back from Elizabeth and jotting something down.
"Could I go now?"
"Of course, whenever you're ready. I am going to run and grab you the bandages and the medication, and I'll be back to take out your IV and get a doctor to sign off on your dispo." With that, she was out the door again. Elizabeth came forward.
"All right, then," she said. "I guess you'll want to get out of here soon, then? Like, now?" Carter laughed and nodded.
"Yes, as soon as I can. I have a shift tomorrow; I want to get a decent amount of sleep." Elizabeth looked at him incredulously.
"You can't possibly want to go back to work? You need to rest. Besides, that nurse had on your chart that you were to get a decent amount of bed rest, three days, in fact," she told him matter-of-factly. Carter's mouth dropped open in shock.
"Three days? I can't stay out for three days, I've already been out for that long," he argued, but Elizabeth was giving him a look, and he recognized defeat. He sighed, fought down. "Fine, okay, I'll go home like a good boy, and take my medicine, and get plenty of rest, and if I have any more problems, I will come back immediately," he said, in a mocking tone. The nurse came back into the room then, clutching a small package which contained, Carter suspected, his medication and bandages. He learned later that he was correct.
"Okay, Dr. Carter," she said, sitting down near his bed and giving him the supplies. "When I take this IV out and you are released, I want you to go straight home-- no driving, though-- and get some rest. Come back--"
"--Immediately if I feel any pain, call right away, take my meds, change the bandage, get some rest, yes, yes, I know the routine," Carter finished, looking at the nurse. She gave him a scrutinizing look, as if deciding whether he was ready to be released after all. She scooted her chair forward and snapped on a clean pair of latex gloves.
"Alright, Doctor," she said. "I expect you know how this goes?" Carter nodded.
"Let's go, the sooner, the better." Carter breathed in as the nurse slid the bore needle of the IV from the vein in his forearm. Throwing out the needle, she unwrapped a band-aid and stuck it on the site where the needle had previously been. Carter exhaled. He was free. He smiled.
"Okay," he said, looking from Elizabeth to Sherri. "Could I have some space to change my clothes, please?"
"Of course," Elizabeth said, moving toward the door. "Good luck, Carter."
"See you around, Dr. Carter," Sherri smiled as she made her way out of the room, Elizabeth following at her heels. She threw one last glance over her shoulder, smiling reassuringly at Carter. He returned the smile, rising from the bed that he had used for the last couple of days and grabbing his patient belongings bag from near the bed. He changed his clothes, dressing, and gathered his bag. Slinging it over his shoulder, he stuffed the small package of medicine into it, and pushed the door open, leaving the hospital.
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There you are! The next chapter in the Saving Grace series. I want to apologize for any confusion with the characters, and I will try to be as consistent as I can in the people that I put into the storyline.
Keep those reviews coming!
Ta-ta for now,
Snapdragon
Okay, so here's chapter 12. This isn't how I planned to write this chapter, it just happened. The next chapter should be the climax of the whole thing, but we'll see how it goes. When you have a pen and paper, you never know what ideas will pop into your brain.
Read and enjoy!
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SAVING GRACE-- CHAPTER 12
**********************************************
Carter spent a total of three days as a patient in Cook County General. He was transferred out of the ICU and observation areas and into recovery by the end of the first day. He was glad that he didn't have to spend more time than that as a critical patient.
The time that went by during those days in the hospital, though it went by slowly, was not totally dull and monotonous. Several people came to visit him, all of them people from the hospital. Since he knew pretty much everyone who worked there, quite a few people came by his room from hour to hour to offer their get-well greetings.
Later in the first day, Susan came in to her shift an hour early so that she could keep him company. The two of them talked about absolutely nothing, laughing over stupid things, little nothings. Carter knew that she sensed that this was the best sort of thing to chat about after an ordeal such as the one that he had been through.
After Susan started her shift then, Gallant came in and went over old patient follow-ups with him. Carter helped him to review the charts and go over possible diagnoses and courses of treatment. During the whole course of his visit, Carter got the feeling that Gallant was uncomfortable with seeing one of his superiors, a fellow doctor, lying almost defenseless in a hospital bed, needing care himself. He couldn't blame him. He had felt the same way when Dr. Benton had come down with appendicitis while he was on his surgical rotation years ago.
Dr. Anspaugh had come down to offer his greetings, as had Neela. Several of the nurses had pitched in to get him some flowers from the gift shop, and they came on a break to deliver them personally. Of course, because the breaks were all at the same time, Kerry hadn't been too happy. Only 10 minutes without nurses, Carter knew, could lead to chaos.
Abby came and talked with him, mostly sitting, for a change, in silence. It was strange, but since Abby had seen Carter in a hospital recovery room once before, she seemed to know that it could be comforting just to have her presence there. It was. It was nice just to have an understanding visitor, to chat with if desired, to sit in silence other times. She came to visit each day that he was there, and was a comfort each time.
Kerry Weaver came in to tell him that he could take a leave after he was discharged from the hospital. He didn't have to come back to work right away; he did have enough personal days accrued to take some time off. Carter objected. He needed to keep his mind off of things; he needed to come to work. He told her that he would take those personal days off later, if the time came to use them.
Kerry also told him that she had scheduled a meeting for him with Dr. Meyers, from the Psychiatric ward of the hospital. It was a formality, she said, just to make sure that the mugging wouldn't affect him in a major way. Great, Carter thought, another person who would think that he was a nut.
Shortly after the first time that he woke up, a couple of cops came by to question him, poking and prodding, and grilling him, so that every bit of information that he could recall out of him. He knew that they wanted to find and catch the guys, but Carter hadn't really been feeling up to the questions, so he knew that he hadn't answered them well. He simply hadn't cared.
On the third day, Grace came to visit him.
It was early afternoon, around 2:00, after Carter had been moved into the medical recovery area of the hospital. He was feeling better, though the pain in his head wasn't a whole lot better. Grace's regular day nurse, Lorraine, knocked at his door.
"Dr. Carter," she called uncertainly, "are you up for a visitor?"
Truthfully, he hadn't been. He had wanted to go back to sleep, the Tylenol and aspirin were not working for the dully throbbing pains in his temporal lobe. Somehow, though, he had given the nurse a weak smile and wave of the hand.
"Sure," he had said. The nurse had walked behind the door, propping it open. She wheeled a wheelchair into the room, and sure enough, Grace had been sitting inside of it.
Carter had been shocked, to say the least, mostly at the fact that she had been allowed to leave her bed in her room. But there she was, sitting in the doorway of his own hospital room, still in her pink hospital gown, hair falling just past her shoulders, beaming at him.
"Hi Doctor Carter," she greeted him. The nurse wheeled her to the side of his bed, and left to go talk to her friend Cynthia, another nurse on that floor of the hospital.
"Hello, Miss Knight. How are you today?"
"I am doing well, thank you. How are you?" Carter gave her a small smile, telling her a small lie.
"I'm okay" he had said. "What brings you down to this floor of the hospital?"
"Well," she began, dropping her chin for a moment, looking at her hands in her lap. "I heard that you had been hurt, and you came to visit me all that time that I was sick, so I thought I'd come to keep you company."
"That is very thoughtful of you," Carter said. He couldn't believe the little girl's concern, was surprised by it. Grace reached into the side pocket on the wheelchair and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.
"I made you a Get Well card," she said, sounding pleased with herself. She handed the card to Carter, who smiled and opened it. The front was decorated with a five-year-old's rendition of a rainbow, with flowers traced onto the scribbled green grass. The inside of the card contained the message Get Well Soon carefully printed in purple crayon. Carter smiled at the child. She returned the gesture.
"Thank you, Grace," he said as he set the card on his bedside table. He turned back to her to find that her blue eyes were focused on the bandage that covered his head injury. A look of quiet horror filled her eyes. She saw that he was watching her for her reaction, and she turned her head quickly, only to look back a second later. "It's not as bad as it looks," Carter told her, in the most comforting voice he could manage. She nodded mechanically, as if she hadn't really heard his words.
"Does it hurt much?" she asked in a very small voice. Carter pressed his lips together slightly, shaking his head slowly.
"No," he told her, trying to be convincing. "The other doctors are giving me medicine so that it won't hurt." Grace nodded, believing him. She sat quietly for a moment, hands folded in her lap. She looked up at him.
"It's weird to see a doctor sick in the hospital," she said, more to herself than anything. Carter gave a small smile.
"That's what I used to think, too."
"Have you ever been in the hospital before?" Carter took in a slow breath through his nose, not wanting to answer the child's innocent question.
His mind did a terrible flashback, to the night of the stabbing, Valentine's Day. He was falling, calling for help, the music was blaring. He knew he would never forget the song that was playing as he fell to the ground, felt the cold floor against his cheek, watched Lucy struggle to breathe, covered in her own blood. Then he lay awake, disoriented, on the table in the trauma room, turning his head to see Benton using the Melker kit to trach Lucy. It had all seemed so unreal, yet he could not erase the reality. He nodded slowly.
"Yeah," he said. "I have been in the hospital before." Grace's eyes grew slightly wider.
"Why?" she asked. Carter massaged his forehead with his hand, closing his eyes for a brief moment.
"I had a problem with my back, I needed surgery." It wasn't a total lie, Carter had thought, he just hadn't specified how the back problem had gotten there in the first place, and the little girl hadn't asked. She had simply nodded.
He needed to change the subject.
"So," he began, in a lighter tone of voice. "How are things back up in room 512?" Grace shrugged.
"It's okay. It is sort of boring a lot of times," she answered.
"How's Amanda?"
"She left yesterday. Her mom took her home, she was well enough to go," she spoke these words with a tinge of regret; she obviously hadn't wanted her newfound friend to leave. Carter nodded. "The nurse said that she could finish recuperating at home. What does recuperate mean?" she asked him.
"It means to get better."
"Oh," she said, registering the meaning in her mind.
"Are you still getting other visitors in the hospital?" Grace smiled and nodded.
"Yeah, Abby comes to play games with me when she is on her break. She says that it is a nice change from the ER. She smuggles in games from the playroom. She's the one who told me that you were hurt."
"She told you that?"
"Yep," Grace said, shifting in her seat. "She came up yesterday to play checkers, and she told me that you were hit in the head and in the hospital." Carter opened his mouth to say something more, but Grace cut him off. "I asked why you didn't come to see me, and she told me, don't be mad at her."
"I couldn't be mad at her anyway," he said, looking out the window.
"Good, she's really nice, I like her a lot, almost as much as I like you," she said with the honesty of a child. Carter found a small smile had formed on his lips.
"That's very nice of you, Grace," Carter said, still smiling at her. She smiled back at him.
"You're welcome," she said. The gaze of her eyes drifted once again to the dressing on his head. She leaned down and retrieved, from the pocket of the wheelchair, a deck of cards. Carter let out a laugh.
"Where did you get those?" he asked her. She grinned mischievously.
"The playroom," she said simply. "I'll give them back later," she reassured him.
"Okay," Carter said, eyeing her in a playfully suspicious way. She giggled, her eyes dancing. Carter caught his breath. She sounded so much like Lucy.
"Do you want to play?" she asked. Carter smiled.
"I would love to," he answered, unfolding the lap table from his bed. Grace took the rubber band off of the card deck, and gave them to Carter to shuffle.
"You can do it, I'm not very good," she said. Carter took the cards and shuffled them, letting them slide between his fingers. He had to thank the child one day for her kindness.
"What do you want to play?" he asked her. She shook her head.
"You pick."
"Okay," Carter said, smiling. "Corkscrew it is."
After a few games of cards, the nurse came back to retrieve Grace, wheeling her back up to the Pedes ward to her room. Carter had been left twiddling his thumbs, bored once again. He had a few more visitors, Abby had stopped by, and Gallant and Pratt. What had surprised him, though, was when Elizabeth Corday came to visit late that afternoon, before Carter was discharged from the hospital.
Carter had been watching a terrible soap opera on television, and she had knocked on the door, pushing it open. Carter turned in surprise.
"Hello Dr. Corday," he greeted her.
"John," she said much less formally. "How are you feeling?" Carter gave a soft laugh.
"I'm fine, just fine. I think I'm ready to go home now, actually," he answered. She came into the room, pulling up a chair at his bedside, and noticing that the television was turned on.
"What on earth is this garbage that you are watching?" she asked, a look of disgust on her face.
"It's a soap opera, it's called General Hospital," Carter said, a playful smile on his lips. He watched, amused, as Elizabeth stared at the screen, seeming revolted by what she saw.
"That is so fake," she said. She watched for a moment, making the occasional commentaries of 'Nobody wears scrubs that tight,' and 'The ER is never that quiet all the time,' and 'you can't give potassium to a patient in that condition, it would throw off the electrolyte balance!' Carter was left smiling at her comments, with which he agreed wholeheartedly. Finally, she got sick of the whole thing and simply turned off the television.
"Hey," Carter said, feigning disappointment. "Why'd you do that?" Elizabeth shot him a look.
"How can anybody watch that garbage? It must just be this country..." she trailed off.
"Hey, you can't talk. All of you Brits are obsessed with that show Big Brother." Carter gave her a playful stare of accusation. Elizabeth snorted with light laughter.
"Alright, alright, I admit it. I used to watch Big Brother," she confessed, causing Carter to laugh. She laughed along with him, but the laughter soon subsided. She fixed him with a look, her eyes boring into his, trying to see something in them.
"What?" Carter asked, a bit apprehensively. Elizabeth intensified the gaze, searching his eyes as if she were searching the depths of his soul.
"Are you okay? I mean, really okay? Because you don't seem that well to me." Carter rolled his eyes at her, trying to convince her that he was truly okay. This wouldn't have been so difficult, except for the fact that he wasn't so sure about his own well-being. He decided in an instant that he didn't need to be pitied or anything else from anybody else.
"I will be just fine, don't worry about me," he said, resolutely, to Elizabeth. She fell silent for a moment, taking in what he had told her, and trying to decide for herself whether Carter really meant what he had said. She accepted it. The two of them sat in silence, and Elizabeth's gaze wandered around the room, falling on the Get Well card that Grace had drawn for Carter. A faint smile crossed her lips. Seeing what she was looking at, Carter followed the gaze. He plucked the card from the bedside table and held it gently in his hand, as if it were made of delicate glass.
"Who made that for you?" Elizabeth asked him, taking the card from him and reading it.
"One of my patients, the young Miss Knight." Elizabeth nodded, handing the paper back to Carter.
"She is a sweet girl, isn't she?"
"Yes, she is," he said. "She told me that you came to visit her." Elizabeth smiled.
"Yes, I went by after one of my appys in the morning to visit, to see how she was doing. We talked a little, I told her who I was, I braided her hair for her," she said. "I told her that I had a daughter named Ella, and she asked about her." Elizabeth broke off, sighing.
"What?" Carter asked. Elizabeth shook her head, closing her eyes for a moment.
"She is so much like Lucy, John, it's startling." Carter nodded.
"I know, it's--" he took a breath, "--it's unbelievable."
"I know." Elizabeth sat there a little while longer, when the current nurse, Sherri Nix, opened the door. She had his charts in her hands, and was smiling.
"Hey, Sherri, what's up?" Carter asked. He turned his head in her direction, as Elizabeth stood from her chair and met the nurse near the door.
"May I?" she asked the nurse, motioning at Carter's charts. Sherri nodded, and Elizabeth took over the clipboard.
"Dr. Carter, you can be discharged now, if you like. You need to see a nurse about taking out that IV, and we will give you some strong aspirin and Tylenol for the pain and some clean dressings for the wound first, of course, but after that, you'd be free to go," the nurse told him kindly, smiling at him. Elizabeth smiled too, looking up from the chart.
"Everything looks great," she said reassuringly. Carter nodded.
"Dr. Bose will want to see you in a week, and again in a month, but making an appointment with him shouldn't be a problem at all," Sherri said, taking the chart back from Elizabeth and jotting something down.
"Could I go now?"
"Of course, whenever you're ready. I am going to run and grab you the bandages and the medication, and I'll be back to take out your IV and get a doctor to sign off on your dispo." With that, she was out the door again. Elizabeth came forward.
"All right, then," she said. "I guess you'll want to get out of here soon, then? Like, now?" Carter laughed and nodded.
"Yes, as soon as I can. I have a shift tomorrow; I want to get a decent amount of sleep." Elizabeth looked at him incredulously.
"You can't possibly want to go back to work? You need to rest. Besides, that nurse had on your chart that you were to get a decent amount of bed rest, three days, in fact," she told him matter-of-factly. Carter's mouth dropped open in shock.
"Three days? I can't stay out for three days, I've already been out for that long," he argued, but Elizabeth was giving him a look, and he recognized defeat. He sighed, fought down. "Fine, okay, I'll go home like a good boy, and take my medicine, and get plenty of rest, and if I have any more problems, I will come back immediately," he said, in a mocking tone. The nurse came back into the room then, clutching a small package which contained, Carter suspected, his medication and bandages. He learned later that he was correct.
"Okay, Dr. Carter," she said, sitting down near his bed and giving him the supplies. "When I take this IV out and you are released, I want you to go straight home-- no driving, though-- and get some rest. Come back--"
"--Immediately if I feel any pain, call right away, take my meds, change the bandage, get some rest, yes, yes, I know the routine," Carter finished, looking at the nurse. She gave him a scrutinizing look, as if deciding whether he was ready to be released after all. She scooted her chair forward and snapped on a clean pair of latex gloves.
"Alright, Doctor," she said. "I expect you know how this goes?" Carter nodded.
"Let's go, the sooner, the better." Carter breathed in as the nurse slid the bore needle of the IV from the vein in his forearm. Throwing out the needle, she unwrapped a band-aid and stuck it on the site where the needle had previously been. Carter exhaled. He was free. He smiled.
"Okay," he said, looking from Elizabeth to Sherri. "Could I have some space to change my clothes, please?"
"Of course," Elizabeth said, moving toward the door. "Good luck, Carter."
"See you around, Dr. Carter," Sherri smiled as she made her way out of the room, Elizabeth following at her heels. She threw one last glance over her shoulder, smiling reassuringly at Carter. He returned the smile, rising from the bed that he had used for the last couple of days and grabbing his patient belongings bag from near the bed. He changed his clothes, dressing, and gathered his bag. Slinging it over his shoulder, he stuffed the small package of medicine into it, and pushed the door open, leaving the hospital.
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There you are! The next chapter in the Saving Grace series. I want to apologize for any confusion with the characters, and I will try to be as consistent as I can in the people that I put into the storyline.
Keep those reviews coming!
Ta-ta for now,
Snapdragon