TITLE At the End of Chaos
RATING PG-13
SUMMARY Carter and Abby are slowly becoming closer, but I put emphasis on the slowly…I'm trying to make this as realistic as possible.
AUTHOR'S NOTE Nothing much else to say; I so appreciate the feedback y'all are giving me, and I just hope it keeps on comin'!!
DISCLAIMER Oh, come on; I'm so broke, I've taken to eating pb and j every day…do you honestly think someone who does that could possibly own anything as cool as Carter and Abby?
CARTER
It's funny how the roof gives you perspective on things. Perhaps that's why important moments have a tendency to happen up here. It's not as monumental a shift in perspective as going to Africa provided, but it's certainly more readily available. Looking out on this city--Chicago--a place I have observed for so many years, I see the people out there struggling just to get by standing next to the people who glide peacefully through life without strain. I see the streets I have walked, driven, and watched so many times, either by myself or with any of a number of different people. And whether during the day or at night, I see that, inevitably, things change, wounds heal, and I finally understand that I will be okay.
I stand up here today, the face of Thanksgiving leering at me, not two months after standing up here with Abby last. It is not lost on me that our relationship shifted that day, though I can't quite pinpoint how. Maybe it's just that we began to melt those icecaps that were looming behind us, those scenes that had transpired between us that we'd never addressed. It's not an easy thing and we haven't attempted it since, but some matters are best left to the slow and steady pace, and I think our reconciliation is one of them. Abby seems content with where we are right now, and though I am healing, I'm not sure how much effort I can put into that at the moment.
The straw I'm chewing does little to stem the urge I have for nicotine, but I'm determined to let go of that addiction before it goes on too long. It was a decent anti-depressant for a while, but it's been long enough since the baby died and Kem left, and it's time to put those desires to rest. My therapist would say that this is an auspicious sign, but I think it took me far too long to make the decision, considering that I'm a doctor and I should just plain know better.
Yes, I've been seeing a therapist. It's something I never thought I'd do, but though Luka was great at listening to the thoughts streaming through my mind, he couldn't tell me how to deal with them in a healthy way. Not in the way a counselor could, anyway.
Partially, it was Abby who made me do it. Not that she ever said it, but I watched her as the doctor she has become, and I knew that it must have taken huge amounts of courage for her to get beyond her fear and finally finish med school. And I knew that if she could do that, then I could put aside my pride and talk to a professional about the tragedy I was facing. Though I'm loath to admit it, it has helped, a great deal. Dr. Thatcher specializes in grief counseling, and thanks to him I have dealt with Gamma's death as well as beginning to deal with the baby and Kem leaving me.
The scary thing about therapy, however, is that it forces you to face things about yourself that you never would if you didn't have to. One of the things I've learned is that maybe I wasn't as in love with Kem as I thought. I had run away from everything in my life, felt abandoned by both Gamma and Abby, and here was a woman willing to love me with all her heart without complications. How could I not love that? Then, of course, she got pregnant, and I think, to me, at the time, that meant that we were supposed to be together.
Because of that, I think I'm grateful to her. She saw the truth when I couldn't, and left. If she hadn't, we might still be together, and I would probably not be working through the pain of everything that took place in the last year and a half.
So here I am, pondering all this, with a smile on my face. When you experience tragedy in abundance, you measure progress in the number of real smiles that cross your face. Generally, those smiles come when you are alone, because you show everyone else the fake ones, the ones that lie. And lately, more of the real ones have popped up, and more often when I'm around other people.
Especially Abby.
One of the other things I've learned about myself through counseling is that I may not be entirely over her. It was so easy being with Kem, there were never any complications. But I'm coming to realize that that's probably because she never got me. She never knew when I was full of shit. I don't think she even knew how I liked my coffee. She was wonderful to me, so affectionate and open, but we didn't know each other.
With Abby, everything was complicated. We both have so many insecurities, we're so scared of hurting and being hurt. And she can be such a pain in the ass. But at the end of the day, despite all of the crap we waded through, I just love her. She knows me inside and out, without really trying. She tells me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear, without my even knowing it.
I think what scares me the most now is that I may not have anything left to give her. She has accomplished so much in the year that she hasn't been with me that I wonder if I held her back from her true desires.
Hell, I don't know if she'd even want to be with me again. All we ever seemed to do sometimes was hurt each other; who would want to go through that again?
Well, I would. I realize this with a start, also realizing I have been thinking about it subconsciously for weeks. I wonder if Dr. Thatcher has noticed it, too? I wonder what he'd think about it? I have an appointment with him tomorrow; I'll have to bring it up.
Maybe this not smoking thing is more auspicious than I gave it credit for.