Title: Pause!
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Only in my dreams
Spoilers: All of season 10.
Summary: A post-ep of sorts to 10-22. County General lives on. Eventually Carby.
Author's Note: Inspired by my delusional daydreaming, this is the story of how I'd like to see our favorite characters in a few months. Highly unlikely, especially now that I've written it down. I see this turning into a few chapters, hope you enjoy.
Chapter One
Tuesday morning he awoke in the same old bed to the same old alarm clock blaring the same sounds of the talk show he'd heard on hundreds of other mornings. Old beige sheets rustled off him and his elbow made a fierce dent in a worn pillow as he propped himself upright. Searching blindly for the light switch, his arm waved stupidly in the dark. Why wasn't the switch someplace logical, like beside the bed? In his old house…At once the unfamiliar room was illuminated, and he blinked his eyes, stumbling out of bed.
In the shower he yelped at scalding water, then yelped twice more as he froze. Leaping in and out of the stream of water, testing the temperature as he adjusted the controller, he performed a sort of dance. Like the hippos in Fantasia, he thought, chuckling.
Breakfast took even longer. He had to dig through seven drawers to locate every piece of the coffee maker, and it took four cupboard searches to find a bowl and spoon. Even the milk was hidden, or lost, and so he poured orange juice on his cereal instead. Considering he had no newspaper to distract him and the constant itching from the soap residue the shower had been unable to rinse, it was the longest breakfast of his life.
At last he was struggling to pry his key from the deadbolt. Not refreshed, but proud of his tolerance, he scraped ice from his windshield and drove to work.
"Not bad, Carter," Susan greeted him. "Only an hour late on your first day post-moving."
He opened his familiar (thank goodness) locker and smiled. "You mean this happens every time someone moves?"
"I could have advised you to leave extra time for getting ready," Susan grinned, taking a sip of coffee. "But it's so funny to see you this—"
Abby burst into the lounge, her own coffee in hand. "Disheveled!" she finished, and both women looked at him and laughed.
"At least I managed to make coffee at home," he managed, but the comment fell, ignored.
"It's not like you've never moved before," Abby pointed out.
He smiled and closed his locker. "I had a housekeeper before." donning his stethoscope, he exited the lounge.
At the Admit desk, Luka handed him a stack of eight, no, nine charts.
"Rough night?" Carter asked.
"No, it was fairly calm," Luka answered, not looking up from the papers through which he rummaged. "Too calm. You're in for a busy day, I'd guess."
As the other doctor prepared to leave, Carter read through the charts. Sutures, muscle pain, a fever—this wasn't his definition of a tough shift. A relieved sigh had half-escaped his lips when Randi glanced at him from where she stood talking on the phone.
"Two majors from an MVA are on their way, ETA six minutes," she told him.
She spoke into the receiver, "Pardon, what was that?" then to Carter again. "Seven minors too. Sounds like a big accident."
Hours later, the thrill of major traumas had ebbed to exhaustion. In a dramatic motion, he threw his exam gloves to the cluttered floor. Abby, the only other person in the finally empty room, looked up from the chart on which she'd been writing.
She laughed, "What? They all survived."
He sighed, then laughed at his melodrama too. "By some miracle."
"Called 'Modern Medicine'? Come on, they weren't hurt that badly."
Smiling as they swung open the doors of the trauma room to leave, he smirked, "Says the one who wanted to go pull out the defibrillator."
"Just in case, ," she called, ducking into her next patient's exam room.
"Yeah, Doctor Safe-Side. Just in case."
Still chuckling, he entered Curtain Area Three, a brand new chart tucked in the crook of his arm.
"Hi, Jason," he said, glancing at the chart. "I'm Doctor Carter." The boy shook his outstretched hand and winced. Carter made a mental note of it.
"It says here you're experiencing stomach pain?"
"Severe stomach pain," the boy responded. "It's appendicitis, I know it is."
Carter gave a tight smile. "I'm just going to take a look."
"I'm positive. I did that thumb and pinky thing where you press on your belly. I was in agony."
"You might be right," he told Jason, and preceded to order several tests. "I'll be by later to let you know."
Later turned out to be very much later. His shift was almost over by the time he returned to Curtain Area Three to find Jason asleep against his mother's shoulder.
"How is he?" Carter asked the mother.
"In pain," she coughed in an angry whisper. "Luckily he's slept through a lot of it. What took so long?"
Carter shrugged apologetically. "This is a very busy hospital, ma'am. Sorry to have kept you waiting." He was sorry. Mostly because he's spent a tiring shift attending to stupidity-induced injuries and was relieved to tend to innocent ailments like Jason's.
"He was right, it is appendicitis. I've called a surgeon to come evaluate him for an appendectomy."
The mother groaned, dreading another wait, and Carter left regretting his dispassionate approach to this patient. These seemed like nice people.
Upon entering the lounge, he found Abby and Pratt, Coke cans in had, laughing about…what?
"Why can't we be friends with all of them?" Carter grumbled, twisting his combination lock. Pratt and Abby snorted.
"Friends with who?"
"The patients," he answered, exasperated. He hadn't intended his corny rant to be audible. "They seem like nice people."
"Some of them."
"What would you want with ten thousand friends?" Pratt joked. "Seems like too much work to me."
Carter's locker popped open. "Being a doctor should be hard."
"Not that hard," Pratt's pager beeped and he checked it. "Man, I gotta go make some friends," he laughed, and slammed the lounge door behind him as he left.
When he was gone, Abby snickered too, and even Carter joined in. As he rummaged about for his scarf, Abby opened her own locker and took out an envelope.
"Here," she thrust it at him uncomfortably.
"What's this?" he asked, opening it.
"Tuition money."
He paused, envelope half-open. "I told you not to repay me."
"I have to," she said, closing her locker. He looked at the check in his hands and almost told her she should remember to get the "Ms." changed to "Dr." Thankfully, her back was to him; he shouldn't be inspecting her check so closely.
"Abby," he called, breaking the uneasy silence just as her hand was pushing the door open. "Are you busy on Friday?"
She stopped and turned back toward him. "Whoring yourself out, are you?"
He gave her a questioning look.
"The money," she pointed, clarifying. He nodded and smiled in comprehension.
"I'm not sure my 'skills' are worth a thousand dollars."
"No."
"What?" The smile faded from his face.
"No, I'm not busy on Friday. And your 'skills' are priceless."
His grin reappeared, accompanied by an awkward tilt of his jaw, as if he were the slightest bit uncomfortable. "Would you like to have dinner, then?"
"Sure. Should I dress up?" she asked, and he swore he heard a tinge of excitement.
"Do you want it to be fancy or casual?"
"Fancy would be nice," she said after a moment, softly and with a little smile.
"Great, I'll pick you up at seven." He tried not to sound too excited himself, but he couldn't help it.
Still smiling a tiny smile, she waved one stiff hand in an awkward goodbye. Silently, she slipped out the door, and as she left, he called, "Thanks for the check!"
Realizing the whole ER had heard him, he left too, embarrassed, but not overwhelmingly so. That night, he exited the day much more at ease than when he'd welcomed it.