Chapter 4: Chance Encounter

I had learned more in the one week working under Dr. Carter than I thought humanly possible. The experience that Abby had, the compassion and patients was something that I had never seen from anyone before. She was patient with me in more ways than one. It seemed that every night there was something different that we were doing. She had already let me in on two traumas and let me run one, which I had found to be an adrenaline rush beyond anything that I had ever experienced. I rushed up the EL steps. I was running behind tonight. My soon to be ex- husband had decided to call right as I was getting ready to leave and instead of letting the machine get it I had to answer it and once I did I regretted it.

The train was crowded as I got on and hoped that we could just get to my stop fast. I was only two EL stops from the hospital. Most medical students lived in the dorms, but I preferred to live off campus, and fortunately for me, my married status allowed me that option. Not that I could really afford much, the apartment I was staying in wasn't anything fancy, but it was a roof over my head. My student loans were paying for it right now. The rain was starting to fall again as I ran as fast as my legs could carry me across the parking lot and in thru the double doors. Shaking the water off as I sprinted for the lounge. "Damn it." I curse as I look at the clock. I am almost 30 minutes late for the start of my shift. I toss my stuff into the locker that they had given me and run my hand thru my hair trying to get it to lay down at least a little bit before I pull it back into it's ponytail for the night. I turn shutting my locker and heading for the admit desk.

"Hey there Jerry," I say trying to find a smile for the sweet teddy bear like desk clerk. "Slow night?"

"Yeah, but don't say the S word you'll start a stampede." He chuckles.

"Oh okay." I nod a true smile finding its way onto my face. "Where's Dr. Carter?"

"She's not coming in tonight. She set it up so that you would be working with an attending tonight." Jerry said.

I walk around the desk. "Oh is the attending here?"

"Nope not yet seems like everyone is running a little bit late tonight." Jerry said smiling at me.

I grin back at him, "Dr. Weaver here?"

"Nope she's off."

"Well then Jerry what you waiting for." I say as I the smile on my face as I watch him reach over to the radio as I toss him a cd and as the music starts to play. I look at him, "Passenger side I slide on in. Vinyl seats soft from the heat of the sun. Chewin' on a Slim Jim, can't stop thinkin' bout him. Yeah, yeah, yeah he's the one Yeah, yeah, yeah he's the one." I started to sing. I peruse the labs that were there, double checking them and putting them with what charts were in the ER. Not that there were that many tonight. It was pretty slow right now. I knew that it wouldn't be that way for long. I have my back to the ER entrance now as I am belting the song out, not hiding my accent anymore. True southern Kentucky girl, letting it all come out. Jerry is smiling as I bop my head my strawberry blonde hair bouncing up and down as I swing my head. "Ooo, Ooo, Ooo, loves so sweet right here in the passenger seat Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooooo yeah life's so sweet. When I look to the left see his suntanned hands his muddy river hair and his thousand acre plans. I'm all shook up like a quarter in a can ain't life sweet, in the passenger seat."

I felt Jerry poke me as he turned the radio down once again, oh shoot the attending must have been there and Jerry didn't want us to get into trouble. I just kept my head down and pretended like I was working with out turning around. It would have been a lot more fun if Abby had been there and Jerry and I could have kept goofing off until something came in, but oh well. After a few minutes I stepped back, "is the coast clear?" I say laughing softly.

"Yeah it was just Dr. Ross." I hear Jerry say as my mouth fell open and you could have picked it up off the floor.

"Dr. Ross?" I ask trying to pull myself from the shock that I was feeling. Surely it wasn't the Dr. Ross that I had been dreading accidentally bumping into, the one that I thought was in Seattle. I was in Chicago, not Seattle.

"Yeah Doug Ross, he came back early last week from Seattle, he used to work her awhile ago, he and his wife now have moved back to Chicago." Jerry said giving me an odd look, "Hey there Erica you look like a deer caught in a headlight. What? You related to him or something there slim?"

"Uh uh." I say feeling my mouth moving before my brain, and my head bobbing up and down when I didn't want it to. I blink a couple of times trying to regain my bearings not that anything would help with that. I was momentarily lost in a void. I took a deep breath and slowly let it out watching my bangs go up and come fluttering down.

"How?" Jerry said moving so that he was standing right next to me, as if he was trying to get some kind of a scoop.

I look him, "this is not next week's gossip Jerry." I snap not meaning too and once I realized what I had done, "oh I'm sorry Jerry. I didn't mean to snap at you. You're still cool with me." I said trying to smile; I didn't want to hurt his feelings. "I just don't really want to talk about it."

"It's okay." Jerry said, "you know you can trust me if you need someone to talk about."

I wrap my arm around him, "oh I know that Jerry." I say softly. "I'm okay I will be okay. I've been thru worse; this is just a speed bump."

"You're my favorite med student Erica." He said smiling.

"Yeah Jerry I know, don't worry I'll bring you coffee when I get mine." I let out a little laugh, "I suppose that you want a donut or maybe a muffin to go with it for those late night joneses." I watch as Jerry just smiles at me,

"I'm gonna miss you when you have to leave us."

"Ah Jerry you don't have to worry about that for awhile." I say smiling back at him, "I'm seriously thinking of going into emergency medicine. I have really liked it here."

"You'd be an asset here." I hear him chirp back at me.

"I'd be an asset to you Jer." I nonchalantly reply, "I think that I am the only one who takes care of you."

"You know you are right on the money with that one." I hear him say back to me.

"Ah just turn the music back on would you there. Enough of this talking about assets and taking care of each other, you are too mushy now for me." I grin leaning back and turning up the volume on the stereo, the song that was playing had finished. Better than Ezra is now playing loud in the ER, I stand there dancing as I read the chart over. It is not like I had anything better that I should be doing. There was no attending standing over me and the ER right now is a ghost town.

The one thing that I had learned is not to say anything cause then you jinxes the peace that a quiet night would bring. But I knew too well that come 2 am, the bars would close people would end their night of heavy drinking, be getting into their cars and hitting the road. One too many beers and a car would lead them to the door of County. The battered, the broken and the bruised, all wanting us to find the way to put the pieces of their lives that they had shattered because of their own stupidity back together again. That was a never ending cycle, one that nothing could stop. But then if it did ever manage to stop, I'd be out of a job, and that just wasn't overly appealing to me after all the time that I had put in to get this far.

I must have been more quiet than I realized, standing there lost in my own little world of twisted thoughts. I didn't even hear the doctor come walking up to the admit desk, or Jerry greeting him. Which was almost shocking considering Jerry didn't have the quietest voice around. But yet I had managed to tune it all out and stay focused on what was dancing in my own little brain.

I glance up to see a man in a lab coat standing on the other side of the desk in front of me, unsure if he had said anything to me or not. Unsure if I should say something or just keep my mouth shut now, as to not project the image of an idiot to him. I look him over, not overly tall, but he had a nice build, for an older man, his hair, which you could tell once, was a dark brown not a salt and pepper color. The time showed on his face. Not that he looked old, but time had worn something on him, perhaps it was wisdom that I was seeing staring back at me, but one could never fully tell just be looking at someone anymore. I realize that I am almost staring at this man now. Not quite the first impression that I want to make, but hey he caught me off guard, not the other way around.

My hand flies out, almost with out control from the rest of my body. 'What are you doing?' goes thru my head as I found my mouth and the words that are in my head flying out with out a second thought, "Erica." I say, my southern accent flying out right with the words.

"Doug Ross," I hear him say back to me, so this is where David gets his good looks from. I can tell that they are definitely father and son, that don't shock me as badly as I thought seeing him for the first time would. In fact, I don't feel anything right now, except for the fact that my foot is starting to fall asleep cause I am standing in an awkward position leaning against the admit desk. I shake the doctor's hand as the tingles of pins and needles come flying from my foot. I try not to let the fact that I am dying from the sensation show on my face. I so desperately want the pain to stop, as I try to wake my foot up gently kicking it against the other side of the admit desk.

"So Erica, do you have another name besides Erica?"

Oh he would have to ask me that. Did I tell him? Well it's not like I could go around forever with out him hearing it from someone else. What was the harm in telling him my last name? Everything that I could ever imagine was the harm in telling him my last name, which just happens to be his last name. His last name because I am married to his son. A son that he hasn't seen or talked to in over twenty years, yet something inside of me said that it wasn't just his fault that my darling mother-in-law had a lot to do with that. Dana was no Georgia peach by a long shot. She had always, well the time that I had known her, self-centered and demanding. It was her way or no way. David had always dropped everything if she needed something. I know that my mom was different after Dad died, more protective, but then she wasn't like Dana. In my eyes she had every reason to be that way. It wasn't her choice that Dad wasn't there with us. Dana had made the choice not to have Doug there. 'Erica don't judge' I find myself telling me. I wasn't there and I didn't know the whole story, just what David had recited to me after his conversation with Dana.

"Uh yeah," I find myself stuttering, I couldn't leave him standing there with out an answer. "It's Ross." Wow could that have been any harder to choke out. Could I have made that pause anymore noticeable and awkward? Maybe I should have just shot myself in the head; it would have been a lot less painful. No, that didn't hurt. Telling him my last name didn't hurt. It was being so wrapped up in my own thoughts of what he was thinking that was hurting. I was probably making more out of this than he would.

"It's a pleasure to meet you." I hear Doug say to me.

"The pleasure is mine Dr. Ross." What where did that come from, what the hell was I doing? Pleasure, no this was not a pleasure; this was torture, but a torture that I was bringing onto myself. Stress that I was creating myself. It didn't seem to even faze him that we had the same last name, so why was I working myself into knots wondering about this man and what he thought. His reaction verses mine, why because my husband had been cut to the bone by this man with out him even having done anything really. I found myself blaming him for what had gone wrong, and inside my heart I knew that it wasn't his fault. But it felt good to have someone else to blame other than me or to blame David.

"So are you from Chicago?"

Ah, I wanted to scream not he was trying to make idle conversation with me. This had to be my night. Now I almost wished that I had said something about it being so slow. Jinxed it all to hell and gone but I hadn't. Okay, okay just be cool and calm about this. Is just conversation, it won't go very far before we have to do something. But this was just the start of a 12 hour shift.

"No, I'm not actually." I say still standing there; maybe I could find something that I needed to do to get me out of this.

"You from somewhere down south then, you have a pretty accent."

I see him smile at me. Now my nerves are starting to go haywire because it doesn't appear that I have an out to this conversation now. I needed an out, oh no, not a panic attack, I did not need a panic attack to set it, but I could feel one coming on as I was extremely uncomfortable standing there talking to him. I try and take a deep breath before I say anything else.

"Augusta Kentucky." I look down at the chart; maybe if he thinks that I am busy he will stop talking to me.

"Small world, I grew up there."

Ahh, no such luck he's still talking to me. Wait a minute of course he is. Why would he stop talking to me, he's stuck with me all night long. Surely he's just trying to be nice to me, make me feel a little more comfortable working with him, and he doesn't know that it's doing just the opposite. It is making me want to put my tail between my legs and run away screaming. I bite my lip hard enough to get the metallic taste of blood on my tongue.

"Yeah I've seen your picture in the high school." What did I just say? Why did I just say that? Bite your tongue girl; you are going to get yourself into hot water.

"I played ball there all four years."

I hate to bit my lip again to keep from saying anymore. I had met his mother once. But just the one time, she had kept in touch with David, but I don't think that Doug knew about that. Dana didn't seem to mind too much that David was in contact with his grandmother, she just didn't seem to want Doug around. I found myself relaxing a little, seeing that he didn't seem to have any clue that we were related now, which was fine with me. If he never put two and two together on his own, I never had to tell him.

"Yeah," I say pretending that it is not that big of a deal. "My husband played there too." Okay now I had just spit out something that I really didn't want to. I had let my guard down and screwed up.

"You're married."

That was a loaded question in itself, but one that I could easily dance around. At least now, I could still dance around. He didn't need to know that I was getting a divorce, and he didn't ask my husband's name so this would be simple....or so I thought.

"Yeah I am." I say now really pretending to pass it off as no big deal.

"Don't know of many married med students."

"Yeah I know I am more the exception than the rule." I say not looking up from what I was doing which was pretty much now just staring at the same page on the chart. But I couldn't bring myself to look up and see his face again.

"Must be a pretty understand guy. You guys living here in Chicago."

I seem him out of the corner of my eye picking up his charts. I don't know how to say answer that one. Cause I'm in Chicago he's back in Kentucky brewing over the fact that I decided to come here with out him, but there's no way in hell that I am going to let him come up here now that I know that Doug is here.

"No, we decided right now it was best if I just came up myself." I reply.

"Must be hard for you to be so far apart right now, I couldn't imagine being that far away from my wife for so long."

I'm not sure what to say to that now. I felt like I had boxed myself into a corner, "oh we are doing okay with it. He's pretty busy." I hoped that was enough of an answer to keep him satisfied for now, we needed a change in conversation now. All this talk about me was starting to wear thin. Besides how much information did the attending really need about me? It wasn't like we would be working together for long; this was just one of my many rotations here at County.

"I see."

Thank god, it seemed as if that part of the conversation was over and that there was nothing else we would be talking about would relate to my marriage, my marriage to his son. I didn't want to get into it really anyway. The less that he knew about me, the better I would feel. I turn and close the chart that I had in front of me. There still was no one in the ER.

"Erica, there a call for you on line 2," I hear Jerry say to me.

"Thank Jerry." I say as I pick up the phone unsure of who would be calling me at County. "Erica Ross."

"Erica its David," I hear my husband's voice on the other end of the line. Great what was he doing calling me here. Didn't we have enough to say to each other when he called the house making me late for work? I look at Doug still standing there with in earshot of my conversation. I really didn't want to get into it with him, not here.

"Look this is not a good time for me to talk." I say into the phone.

"It's never a good time for you to talk to me anymore." I hear him say back to me. Here comes the same old fight, same story just a different day.

"That's not fair, you called me at work." I reply.

"When else am I going to catch you, I leave messages at your apartment but you never call me back."

"Look I just haven't had time. We really can't do this right now." My temper is getting short with him, I don't mean for it to, but now it just happens.

"Make time for me Erica."

"Not right now." I snap.

"No now Erica. Stop putting me off, stop pretending that I don't exist that you can send me papers and that's the last of it."

My patients had reached the end of its rope with him right now. I forgot where I was when I started to yell into the phone. Forgetting that his father was standing there practically next to me, that he would probably know his own son's name, just not know his son. Something inside me screamed hang up the phone, but I couldn't bring myself to hang up on him like that knowing he would call right back.

"David Douglas Ross, don't give me that. I am not putting you off; I am not pretending that you don't exist. This is just as much your own damn fault as it is mine. I'm not the one who found the little blonde-haired woman, the red head, or the server from Smokey's a lot more appealing than my wife. Do I need to go on? You honestly don't expect me to turn my eyes to that and pretend that you didn't do it do you?" I yell now into the phone. As my eyes shift to those who are in the room with me, seeing mouths almost on the floor, I wipe the tears that are forming under my eyes away. I don't give David the chance to say anything else before I slam the receiver down, "excuse me."

I couldn't stay in there right now, not with all those eyes on me. Seeing the look from Doug, one of almost being puzzled or was that sheer confusion that was on his face. I didn't care all I knew is that I had just had a fight with my husband again, yet this time instead of it being behind closed door where no one could hear us; it was out in the open, in the place that I worked, so that I couldn't hide it anymore. I took off at a full run for the stairs, running away to the roof for some air and the chance to get the tears out of my eyes with out breaking down completely in front of my co-workers.