A Time to Mourn

DISCLAIMER: not mine etc etc

SUMMARY: Carter, well, umm, mourns, surprisingly enough

RATING: PG – nothing colourful, hopefully sad doom and gloom if I've got it right, which is unlikely.

AN: Ok, I'm bored, so I'm skipping straight to the end of the spoilers for 11.2, and thanks to carbyluvforeva and Happy Abby and for reviewing chapter 2

Abby hated seeing him like this. Hated the way Luka manhandled him out of there. He would've gone of his own accord, wouldn't he? She wasn't sure of anything anymore. She looked down at his cell phone in her hand, and suddenly understood how Carter had felt last year, when she'd been the one falling off the wagon.

The foreboding, the pain, but above all the helplessness. Carter had always been there for her, but now things were complicated between them, and even if she did try to help she wasn't sure he would want her to. Sure, she could stand on the sidelines and gently suggest that he attended a meeting or met with his sponsor, but above all she knew from her own experience that this was something that he needed to sort out on his own. It was not until she had lost the safety net that Carter had provided that she'd really sorted herself out.

Abby realised that of all the ER staff, her life was probably the least screwed up at the moment. It came as a bit of a shock. There was Neela, who no longer had a job, and who she'd just packed off to the station with that poor kid, Kerry, who'd just lost her child, Susan, who was still stuck on bed rest, Luka, who was having problems with Sam, Chen and Pratt who were both in ICU, Carter, obviously, and her, who'd just graduated, her mother was fine, and the cute doctor from upstairs had just asked her out. She wasn't sure what her answer was going to be yet, had told him she'd think about it. ##### "You gonna be ok from here?" Luka asked, turning to Carter as he stopped his car. Carter nodded dumbly, and got out of the car. "Luka? Thanks. For everything. And I'm sorry."

"No problem. And if you need, you know, to talk or anything..." Carter smiled weakly, closed the door and walked up the steps to his apartment, fumbling for the keys in his bag.

He walked across the hall and quietly opened the door opposite, walked through, and closed it behind him. He sank back into the couch, staring at the patches of paint in front of him. There was the one he'd liked, the one Kem had said had too much grey in it. Not that it mattered anymore. Nothing mattered anymore. His son was dead. George. That was the name on the birth certificate, and the name on the death certificate. The nurse had asked, and by that time Kem had been beyond caring. She'd never referred to him as anything but 'the baby'. Had rarely referred to him at all, in fact. Not since it happened.

He watched as the squares of paint on the wall slowly blurred at the edges, merging as the tears streamed down his face. He was drunk; he knew that. But It didn't change anything. George was still dead; Kem was still gone.

He lay down, burying his head in the dusty cushion next to him, surrendering to the hiccoughing sobs that racked his body. Never again would he see his son's small face, never again could he touch his tiny hands. A photograph and lock of hair were poor substitutes. He would never be able to rock him to sleep, to teach him to talk, to walk, to read, to play with him in the yard. George would never be able to do all the things he'd done growing up, never even get the chance to make all the mistakes he'd made.

He turned over the last few days in his mind, recalled how Kem had withdrawn further and further into herself until he no longer had the ability t reach her, before finally slipping away. And he'd tried to make her stay. Asking her to marry him, telling her he loved her, begging and pleading, not sure that he'd meant any of it, but desperate that he had someone to share his grief with, something to show that it had all been real, desperate not to forget.

He remembered their last conversation. The tears had glistened in his eyes as the Chicago wind had whipped about them. Gently, she had disentangled her hand from his, sadly brushing the back of her hand across her face. "No, John," she'd said. "You think you love me, but you don't. You're stronger than you think you are. You'll get through this on your own." If only she could see the wreck of a man she'd left behind. "Me– I can't bear all of the reminders of– of what happened. I don't belong here. I never belonged here." That was the most she'd said concerning her feelings since leaving the hospital. Until then their interaction had focussed entirely on the mundane, coffee, shopping and the like. He had been alone with his tears and pathetic histrionics, she impenetrable in her silent grief.

And the worst of it was that he'd known she'd go long before, known he was powerless to do anything about it, his impotence wrought in his every despairing action. It was all happening again, what his parents had gone through after Bobby's death.

He'd tried at first. Tried talking about the baby, anything to provoke a reaction. But gradually they'd lapsed into silence. At first she'd hardly left her bed. Then, she liked to go for long walks, and Carter had known that she was trying to come to a decision, convinced that something had to change. And so she'd left, trying to forget.

A psychologist would tell him that his was the healthier grief, he knew. That it was better to let it all out. But that was scant comfort now. Surely she couldn't just go back to her old life pretending nothing had ever happened, could she? Someday she'd have to face it. Or was that just a load of psychobabble, a myth that he'd picked up through his medical training? He didn't know anymore.

He awoke with a crick in his neck, his old back injury flaring up again, and his eyes were raw and puffy from crying. Kem's approach no longer seemed heartless or dangerous. It seemed like the only way he could live a normal life.

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