Chapter 9: Unexpected Visit

I arrived at County the following day to start work there as a doctor. Word had come down that I had matched at County. I was happy about that. I wouldn't have to go and try to find my way around a new hospital and I could stay in Chicago too.

"Good morning Jerry," I said smiling as I looked over the board.

"Well hello to you to there Dr. Ross." He said smiling at me.

"Thanks Jerry." I just stood there in my new lab coat staring at the board for a few more minutes before starting into the charts that were in the rack. The morning flew by before I knew it, it was after lunchtime already and I headed into the lounge. A few charts that needed finished tucked under my arm as I sat down writing on them while sipping coffee.

I looked up to see Doug coming into the lounge, "don't you take any days off?"

"Nice to see you too," he replied back to me, "and the answer is yes I do, tomorrow is one of them."

"Must be nice for you," I reply smiling.

"I did my time as a resident thank you." He batted back at me.

"Yeah was that right after the stone age or during." I joked.

"Ha, ha," he gave me a fake laugh, "you are so funny."

"I try to be." I say with a smile on my face.

"Don't quit your day job." He said back to me now as he got himself a cup of coffee. "What time you off today?"

"I'm working until 5." I said not taking the time to look up from my chart. I had two more to do and then I could go and grab some real coffee the stuff in the lounge was like mud.

"You're off early today." I hear him say as he took a chair across from me.

"Well yeah but then I was in here early. I've been on since 5 this morning."

"Could be worse, you could have vampire hours." He said looking at me.

I actually looked up this time, "I have those next week thank you very much."

"Well someone has to work them." He grinned at me now, "and hate to say this, but it's better you than me."

"Oh but see, I'm just a resident now, and there has to be an attending on during those vampire hours." I jest with him, "better be careful or it might just end up being you."

"Not next week it's not." He said with a smile now.

I finish up the last chart that was in front of me, "glad to hear it." I say back to him, "I'm going to get some coffee and fresh air before going back to the grind." I turn to walk out of the lounge now, "I'll talk to you later."

I made my way out of the hospital and across the street getting my coffee before heading back and taking a place on the bench outside the ER. I lit up since I had left Doug inside, my eyes drifting across the ambulance bay not looking for anything particular, mostly wishing that nothing serious came in while I was sitting there. I leaned back against the cold concrete closing my eyes for just a second savoring just sitting there.

"I had a feeling I would find you here."

My eyes flew open hearing that voice, the one voice that I thought I would never have to hear in person again, there David was standing in front of me. "What in bloody blazes are you doing here?"

"Well that's not the welcome I was expecting but it will do." He said to me.

"Well if you were expecting a warm welcome that's not happening in this lifetime." I said looking away from him, "you are not welcome here, or anywhere that I might be."

"Come on Erica." He said sitting down next to me.

I immediately stood up, "no there is no second chances. I don't have three strikes you're out policy David."

"I want to reconcile." He said rather flatly to me now.

"Not going to happen." I respond to him, "I'm in the middle of a shift right now and I can't sit out here and discuss this with you. Might I recommend that you put your ass back on a plane to Kentucky where you belong!"

"I'm not doing that." He said standing up almost towering over me at this point. He put his hands on my shoulders as if to hold me there and make me listen to what he had to say. "I want to prove to you that I have changed and that we can make this work."

"We, there's no we David anymore, you might want to make it work, but I've gotten past that. I don't want to try to make it work." I tried now to pull away from him.

His grip on me was firm, "would you please just take the time to listen to me, I have given you space and support and this is how you want it to end, with us not talking, with you running away never returning my phone calls."

"I didn't return your phone calls for a reason." I said pushing his hands off me now. "What part of divorce do you not understand?"

"We aren't divorced yet." was his simple reply.

"Technicality, that's all." I say to him as I am turning away. "Forget what ever romantic notion you have about this and us. I will not be forced to do this again; I let you stomp all over my heart once I will not be put in that position again."

"Erica, I'm sorry for that, I am truly sorry that I hurt you like that, I would never do that to you again."

"As much as I would like to believe that, and you keep saying it forcing me to hear it, we as a couple are done. You are trying to resurrect a marriage that has gone past the point of salvageable." I wished he would get the point.

"Are you saying then that you don't love me anymore?" He asked.

I knew I was lying to him by saying what I was going to say, but I had made a clean break in leaving and I wasn't going to give him the slightest idea that he stood any chance in bringing us back together. I had made my peace and just wanted to move on. "I don't David. I don't love you anymore."

Saying that to him hurt, but I knew that if I didn't that I would be leading him on, it wasn't that I didn't love him anymore, but that I didn't love him the way that I had when we first got married. Those feelings were long buried and I didn't want to spend the time to dig them out only to be burned again by him.

I noticed that he couldn't look me in the eyes right now. Not that I blamed him, the time for blame had come and gone and now we needed to move on from this, not that for either of us, was it going to be easy. We had given each other several years of our lives.

"I see," was all I could barely hear him say. "I'm sorry you feel that way."

I looked at him unsure of what to say. I could feel my pager now softly vibrating against my hip where it was tucked into my scrubs. I knew I needed to go. "I have to go," I said looking up at him, "I am needed inside." I pulled the pager up to look at it.

"You always have something Erica." He said now turning his back away. "There's nothing new there. You couldn't make time for me when you were a medical student and now you can't make time for me as an intern."

"Okay David that is not fair." I said looking at the pager rather than at him now.

"Dr. Ross." I heard a voice calling me, "get in here. You're patient is coding!" I look over and see that Doug yelling at me.

"I'm on my way." I yell back, "David if you insist on trying to talk to me you have to do it on my schedule not yours. I don't control patients and their problems." I am almost running now for the front door.

I pushed my way back to my patient trying to get them stabilized. This was not how I had wanted my day to go and I really didn't want my first day as an official doctor to end with my patient dying. Finally, after several attempts and help from the other doctor I was able to get him back and into a normal rhythm again and shipped off to the cardiac floor to be their problem not mine.

"Thanks." I said to Doug as I snapped off my gloves.

"You did most of the work, I just gave you that extra bit of guidance that you needed nothing special there." I heard him say.

"Well that's still debatable. It would have sucked to lose a patient on my first day as a doc." I said looking out over the waiting room, "ah hell." I said as my eyes caught David sitting out there waiting for me to talk to him. I look around seeing that most of the patients in there were being taken care of and I only had two more on the board. There was only about 20 minutes left on my shift now as it was. "Can you cover the rest of my shift?"

"Well that's a first." Doug said to me, "I suppose I can. There's not much going on."

"Thanks Doug." I said looking back out over the waiting room where I knew his son was sitting.

"What has come up?" He asked, his hand resting on my shoulder as if he could sense that something had me riled up enough to ask him to cover for me. "Is there anything I can do?"

"No," I say softly, "I think I have it all under control."

"You have my number if you need anything." He said touching my shoulder.

"Yeah I know." I reply as my eyes meet with David's now and he's looking directly at me. "I'll be okay." I walked into the lounge and grabbed my stuff before heading out to where he was sitting, "okay you want to talk we can talk." I say rather coldly, "I hope you know that I had to get my shift covered, so don't you dare say that I don't make time for you."

"Oh and I'm sure your doctor boyfriend there minded covering so much." He said snottily to me.

"That's not my boyfriend." I snapped now, that comment pissed me off.

"You were mighty friendly with him for him to just be a colleague."

"Now wait just a bloody minute." I said standing firmly in front of him, "you have no idea what you are saying or who you are saying it about."

"Does it really matter?" He asked me.

"To me it does, and you will feel like such an idiot for making that assumption." I say to him now as I look back over my shoulder to see Doug keeping an eye on me, as if he was watching a child. "I am not like you, there is no other person in my life, and I am not seeing anyone. I have been up here busting my ass to get thru medical school."

"Oh Erica, Erica, Erica," He said shaking his head, "after seeing that, I doubt that you have been all alone up here."

"Oh," I was getting extremely mad at him and I was trying to keep my temper under control as I grabbed him pulling him out of the ER. I had gotten into one fight with him on the phone in there and I wasn't going to have a drag out fight with him yelling and screaming in the place that I would actually be spending more time in. Once we got out into the ambulance bay, I turned to him facing him before laying into him. "Don't you dare, don't you dare turn this onto me. I have not been the one that has been unfaithful, I am not the one who was sleeping around, and you are the one who did that. You are the reason that we are no longer married not me!"

I realized that now here I was yelling at him, venting the anger that I should have vented a long time ago. He was silent for a minute as I watched him look at me, almost surprised that such anger could come out of me, but right now, I was more livid with him than I had been in a long time.

"I'm not tuning anything onto you."

Ice would have come spewing from me at that moment in time if it had been humanly possible. Any warmth or hint of tenderness that I had felt towards him or for him melted away. "Yes you are." I am animated now by the movements of my hands as I talk, pointing back towards that admit desk, "You are accusing me of doing what you did to me." My voice was colder than any wind in Chicago could have ever blown, my southern accent thick as I spoke now, "I never did that to you, that is the one thing that I never would do to anyone and you off all people should know that. But since you seem to have forgotten it, you don't know me, who I am anymore; I see no reason to continue this conversation with you."

There coming from the ambulance bay doors was Doug. He was looking at me rather intensely as I angrily fought with David. My voice not soft and gentle as it was with patients, but loud and full of the hurt and anger that I felt for this man.

David's hand shot out again once more for my shoulder as I fought to brush it away.

"I do know you," his voice was much softer, gentler than mine was, he seemed to have some new found patients that I didn't know about, or had never bothered to look for him.

"No," I said pulling back a few step, "I wish you would just go away."

My eyes now are still on Doug who looks extremely concerned. I'm sure that my body language is now giving him alarm with the way that I am standing and acting. I see him taking a few steps forward as I start to panic almost. If he came over to where we were father and son would meet for the first time in over 2 decades and I didn't want to be the one that brought them together. Or be standing there when the fall out occurred. I had enough trouble in my life with out adding this on top of it.

I put my hand up as if that would stop him, trying to let Doug know that I had it all under control. I might now have had it completely under control but enough that I didn't need rescued. This would end like all the other confrontations that we had had, in the end I would walk away from him to end the argument.

My eyes shift from David to Doug, back to David, who has appeared now to notice my shiftiness.

"What, your "colleague" coming to rescue you?" He said, "Does he not know that you're my wife and I'm the last person you need rescued from. Or did you forget to mention that during you little trysts?"

"You are an ass David." I said watching Doug walking closer now, my stomach almost turning. As I watch Doug now almost standing now more than a few feet from me.

"Dr. Ross, is everything alright?" I hear him ask.

"Yes," I say looking at him, "am I needed inside?" I ask almost as if that would be an excuse for me to leave this situation.

"We have a trauma coming in 5 minutes out." I hear him reply to me.

I nod in response now; my one way out of this had come. "I'm sorry David but I'm needed now inside. Trauma coming in and they will need another set of hands."

He grabbed my arm again as if that would stop me from leaving, "we need to finish this Erica."

Doug's eyes never left me as I looked up at him, "right now I'm needed David, I'm a doctor that's what I do, trauma's come in and I fix people."

"Then fix this." He said to me.

I watch Doug take two more steps closer to us; I'm on pins and needles now wondering how this is going to turn out.

"Dr. Ross."

I looked up at Doug, "yes, I heard you Doug." I say, "This is my husband," I say with a shaky voice. I looked at David now, "David this is my attending, Dr. Doug Ross."

The look on David's face as those words left my mouth was one of complete and total shock as well as almost disbelieve. I look now at the two men standing there in front of me. Unsure of where this was going to go, or what their actually reactions to each other were going to be.