Summary: All is not well in Congo and Chicago after the events of "Kisangani."
Rating: PG-13 for graphic violence in later chapters
Spoilers: "Kisangani"/ "What Now?" / "The Lost"
Acknowledgements: Lotsa thanks to Kendra for supplying me with the needed info while I was many miles away from my Kisangani tape and helping me wrestle with my plotbunnies. You're a doll, hon - this fic would not be started without you. Also, hugs to my bud Christy for baking the biggest chocolate chip cookie I've ever seen for me to keep my spirits up. A big think you to Minka, my roomie and unwilling beta... And of course, thanks to my new mate Ollie, who related his malaria experience to me and did not go crazy after being dragged through the center of Vukovar three times in one day in search for the post office and toilet paper.
Author's note: There seems to be a dearth of serious post-Kisangani fics, so I decided to put in my two cents. The fic was (and will be) long in the making, since I will be in Hungary next semester, where I can't watch ER, and at some point this series will become a parallel universe. Also, humor me. I'm stressed out and bitchy and I want to have French in this fic one way or the other. For those who are French-challenged, which is pretty much everyone, I provide subtitles. Also, since Luka's sick, the chapter's not making any sense on purpose. Must be something about me and sick Luka fics lately. Some of the events mentioned in this fic will be from my other fic-in-progress, "Contradictions," so take a look at it if you have a bit of spare time.
I can't hear anyone anymore but the screaming in my head, screaming of a child – why is Chance screaming again? I feel an urge to laugh hysterically, to laugh at the absurdity that is my life, at the constant merry-go-round, déjà vu feeling of having the same things happen to me over and over. Do I just attract men with guns, or do they attract me? Has my death been a long, drawn out twelve-year process, or have I been already dead in a way all that time? I wonder what's going to happen to my body. Will I get to be buried or will I simply just be another corpse by the side of the road, a part of the grotesque landscape? There is a shot behind me and something warm and wet splashes on my back and I stare at the dusty ground before me with which I seem to be destined to become one and mumble Latin phrases to do with hematology, simply wanting the man to kill me next so I don't feel sick anymore, to commit a strange form of suicide, to bring an end to a long process of killing myself with a cheap Kalashnikov clutched in a fifteen-year-old's hands.
The ground before me is splattered with Mabel's blood. Her Bible lays in the dust, a worn book full of dried flowers and folded photographs of people she knew, who will cry for old maid Mabel who went of to a scary foreign land to convert the heathens and got herself killed, who will drink tea and remember the righteous lady who became a martyr, Mabel's secret wish come true. Mabel will have a pretty funeral when her body will be released to her relatives and friends – oak coffin and her favorite roses, fellow parishioners and loving nieces saying long speeches on the importance of Mabel Townsend in world history, and a pretty gravestone with a pretty inscription, just what she always wanted. I have a harder time imagining my own funeral. There might be a chance that my body will never released – what does the Croatian government care about one dead Croat lying in a mass grave in the Congo when they are still looking for mass graves in Croatia? If my family does get my body, they won't have much trouble with the funeral – they already had a rehearsal. They will wear their Sunday clothes and stare at the smiling picture of the young man that I used to be, the only reminder that I have actually been alive for the last twelve years. My father will sit in the front row and silently cry, not able to understand why he had to live longer then his youngest child and his family. Mladenka will be probably the one who brings my body home – knowing her, she'll dig it up herself if needed. It's good to know that I am still needed by someone, even when dead.
At County there will be probably a tear or two. I have never been particularly popular there – people at the Vukovar hospital who remember me from my time there will probably cry more then my co-workers in Chicago. Abby will possibly recall that she once cared about me and maybe cry quietly on the roof, remembering the nights when we lay together on her bed holding hands and feeling impossibly happy. The rest will talk about crazy Dr. Kovac who went off and got himself killed, such a pity, and then forget that I ever existed. A new doctor will come in my place, perhaps friendlier and nicer to others, and I will be just one of the County ghosts, along with Dr. Greene and Lucy.
The soldier who is young enough to be my son grabs a handful of my hair and presses the barrel of the gun to the side of my head, bruising the skin there. I start laughing silently, and soon I'm shaking with hysterical laughter, not really caring about the gun to my head or the rope digging into my wrists. There a flash and I jerk forward, thinking that I've been shot, when I realize it was a flash of a camera. I look up and see another soldier, a young man barely out of his teens with a Polaroid camera, who is intently staring at it like a kid at a new toy. This just makes me want to laugh even more and I can't contain my laughter anymore, and I begin to chuckle, and then to laugh aloud, tears streaming down my face and obscuring my already blurry vision.
"Why is he laughing?"the young man with the camera asks.
"I don't know. Henri said he's sick. Just shoot him so we can go eat."
The man who is holding the gun to my head takes it away for a moment, and then pushes me in the back with his boot so I wind up lying facedown on the ground. I continue laughing, not really caring that I'm inhaling dust, but I just can't stop anymore, I can't, this is all so stupidly absurd. In an attempt to overcome the laughter I start reciting the Pater Noster – what if there is a God after all? It wouldn't hurt to be in His good graces so I won't wind up in hell right away…
"Our Father, thou who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name-"
"I'm not hungry. Can I shoot him?"
"-Thy kingdom come-"
"We want to kill him, not make him laugh himself to death. You shoot like a girl."
"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
"What did you say? Give me the gun and I'll show you how I shoot!"
"-Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us-"
"But it it's going to take you a while to kill him, it's not my fault."
"-And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil-"
"-Don't shoot-" a familiar voice yells and the world becomes a giant burst of fireworks.