The Lucky Ones
Chapter Seventeen
A couple of hours later, Lucy stood at a window, looking at how much snow had fallen. There were only a couple of inches of the window that wasn't bombarded with snow. Standing there, she started to reflect upon the day's events. Seeing Paul Sobricki had shaken her up more than she really wanted to let people know. He was her least favorite person on the planet and wondered why he wasn't being held in prison or at least a mental institution. Pushing thoughts of him out of her mind, she decided to focus on how lucky she and Carter had been with Dr. Anspaugh. He could have really destroyed their careers, but instead, let them go without a serious punishment. Sure, they wouldn't be able to see each other as much, but maybe that would be a good thing. With her free time, she could start planning their wedding. She smiled as she thought about their wedding. She couldn't wait until she could become Mrs. Carter. Just the thought of being able to call herself his wife gave her goose bumps on her arms. She loved him, and she couldn't wait until they started their life together as a married couple. She heard someone approach her and was surprised to find Anna.
"Still snowing?" Anna asked.
"Yep. Feels like we'll never get out of here." Lucy replied. She turned to walk away.
"Um, Lucy? Can I talk to you for a minute?" Anna called out, causing Lucy to turn back around.
"Sure." Lucy finally replied.
"I just wanted to apologize for what happened in curtain two earlier. I swear if I had known, I would've made the EMT's take him to another hospital."
Lucy looked at Anna and could tell that she was being sincere. "Hey, it's not your fault. How were you supposed to know?"
"So we're ok?" Anna asked, hesitantly.
"What do you mean?"
"Well I get the impression that you don't like me very much." Anna replied.
That's because I don't! I think you're after my fiancé! Somehow she managed to not show her true feelings. "It's not that I don't like you. I just don't really know you very well." Lucy replied.
"Oh. Well, maybe we could go grab some coffee and get to know one another a little better?" she suggested. She had a feeling that the reason Carter didn't want to rekindle their relationship was because he was seeing Lucy. Maybe if she became friends with Lucy, she could find out for certain and then break them up.
Lucy thought about it for a moment. "Sounds good." She accepted because this was the perfect way to snoop around about just how deep Anna's feelings for Carter were since Anna didn't know about her relationship with Carter.
Carter walked up to the front desk and saw Chuni flipping through a magazine. "Hey have you seen..."
"Your harem went off to the cafeteria together about a half-hour ago." Chuni replied.
"My harem?" Carter asked, confused by that statement.
"Yeah. Lucy and Anna. Your harem!" Chuni reminded him.
"They are not my harem!" he yelled as he headed into the lounge. Once in the lounge, he saw that Dave was reading the newspaper. He sat down next to him and picked up the sports page.
"I'm glad that we had this time to talk." Anna smiled at Lucy as they walked back down to the ER. She hadn't been able to find out if Lucy was dating Carter, but realized that it would take time before Lucy trusted her enough to tell her something like that.
"Me too." Lucy replied. As much as it pained her to admit, Anna actually seemed like a pretty nice person. Things would be a lot easier if Anna was this horrible person that no one liked. But that wasn't the case, and she would just have to trust that her relationship with John was strong enough and that he loved only her. They entered the lounge and saw Dave and Carter arguing.
"You're wrong! You're so wrong about this!" Dave yelled.
"No you're the one who's mistaken!" Carter yelled back.
Lucy and Anna looked back at each other and shrugged. "Excuse me, but what are you two arguing about? Maybe we can help." Lucy suggested.
"Carter over here thinks that the second Godfather movie was the best one of the trilogy." Dave laughed.
"And Dave over there thinks that the first one was the best." Carter pointed.
"Well I have to agree with Carter on this one. The second one was the best. The acting and plot were far more superior than the first one." Lucy replied.
"But the first one set everything up!" Anna objected, siding with Dave. "The first one was brilliant! And who can forget that awesome scene where Sonny gets shot a million times at the tollbooth?"
They all started arguing about which movie was better, when Mark entered. He whistled to get everyone's attention. "Excuse me! What is going on in here?" he yelled. "I can hear all of you yelling all the way down the hall!"
"Uh, we arguing about which movie is better." Dave pointed to himself and Anna. "We think it was the first Godfather movie and Carter and Lucy think it's the second one."
"That's what you've been yelling about?" Mark asked, starting to laugh. "Which Godfather movie is better?"
"Yeah." Carter replied.
"Well, that's not even a contest. Everyone knows that the second one is the best." Mark replied, getting something out of his locker. He shook his head as he left the lounge.
"See?" Carter and Lucy said at the same time.
Dave laughed. "You guys have got to quit doing that."
"What?" Carter and Lucy asked in unison.
"That!" Dave replied. "Saying the same thing at the same time! It's weird and creepy! It's like you guys share a brain."
"We do not share a brain!" They said together. Then they smiled at each other and started laughing.
"Ok, maybe we do talk in unison a lot." Lucy giggled.
"Hey, you know what they say. Great minds think alike." Anna told Dave. She turned to face him. "Can I talk to you for a minute?" Dave seemed like he was a close friend of Lucy's. Maybe he could tell her about how deep Carter and Lucy's relationship was.
"Sure." Dave replied, leaving the lounge with Anna.
"What do you think that's about?" Carter asked, referring to Anna going off with Dave.
"Don't know, and don't really care." She replied, sitting next to him.
"So, I heard a rumor that you and Anna went to get coffee together."
"Do you always listen to rumors?" Lucy asked with a chuckle.
"Only sometimes."
"Well this one was right. We got coffee and actually had a nice conversation. Maybe she's not Satan, like I originally thought." Lucy laughed.
"Well I'm glad that you guys could get along." Carter replied, giving her a quick kiss.
"I want to apologize again for acting a little crazy lately."
"Only a little?" Carter teased.
Lucy playfully hit his arm. "It's just that I don't know what I'd do if I ever lost you and I just feel like I'm on an emotional roller coaster right now."
"I know. I've been feeling the same way. But you'll never lose me." He replied. "Cause I don't ever plan on leaving your side."
After sitting there in silence for a few minutes, Lucy spoke again. "So, we still haven't talked about seeing him today."
"No we haven't." The smile that was on his face quickly faded as the topic of Sobricki was brought up.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Lucy asked, hesitantly. She didn't want to talk about it, but knew that they needed to.
"Right now?"
"Well we are alone right now, and the longer we put off, the more we won't want to." She reasoned.
He paused for a moment. "I just don't understand what he's doing out living his life like nothing happened. He...he almost killed you, but he's not paying for it! He's out roaming the streets and living his life!"
"He almost killed you too." Lucy reminded him softly, as she grabbed a hold of his hand.
"I know, and I'll always be mad at him for that. Every time my back hurts, I curse him. But you...I'm furious with him about what he did to you. There are still times that I enter an exam room here and I see you lying on the floor in that pool of blood. I hate him, and I'll hate him for the rest of my life." As he concluded his statement of hate, a single tear cascaded from his eye.
Lucy quickly wiped it away and put her arm around his shoulder, not caring if anyone walked in and saw them sitting like that. "I hate him too." She whispered. "I thought that I was finally ok. I mean, I've had therapy, and I thought that I was past it; that I had gotten some kind of closure or something. But seeing him today, brought everything back again."
"We'll never be completely free of him, will we?" he asked, looking into her eyes.
She sadly shook her head. "Probably not. But I don't think our lives have to be defined by him and what happened. It's in the past, and we can't change the past. We can change the future though. We don't need to let him control our future." They sat there for another twenty minutes before going back out and joining everyone at the front desk.
About an hour later, Carter looked around and couldn't find Lucy. Everyone had been standing around the front desk talking, but now Lucy was nowhere to be found. After a few seconds of thought, he immediately knew where she had gone.
Lucy walked down the hallway and stopped when she got to the security guard in front of the door.
"Excuse me Miss, but you can't go in there. No one except his doctor and his nurse can go in there." The guard smiled. He knew who she was, and for a second, tried to figure out why she would ever want to go inside.
Lucy smiled a little. "Your name is Steve, right? You come down to the ER a lot to take care of disturbances?"
"Yes Miss."
"Then you probably know who I am, right?"
"Yes Miss Knight." Steve replied.
"I'd like to go in."
"I don't think that's a very good idea."
Lucy looked in the room. "I see the patient is in restraints and you're right outside the door. It should be fairly safe to go in for a few minutes."
"I'm very sorry. But my instructions were not to let anyone in."
"Please?" Lucy asked nicely. "If you know who I am, then you should know why I feel the need to go in there. I just need a few minutes."
Steve debated it for a minute. "Alright, but only five minutes. After that, I'm coming in there and dragging you out if I have to."
"Thank you." She smiled. She hesitated before entering the room, as if trying to decide whether or not this was a good idea. Giving herself a short mental pep talk, she walked into the room, staying a good five feet away from the bed.
Paul looked over and saw Lucy standing there. "I didn't expect to see you here." He said after a few moments of silence.
"I didn't expect to come here." Lucy finally replied. "I wanted you to know something. I'm not a vengeful person. I've never hated anyone in my entire life--until I met you. I'll never forgive you for what you did to me or to Dr. Carter. The fact that you have a mental disorder is no excuse for the pain that you caused us both...that you caused our family and friends." She almost started crying, but held herself together. "And as much as I hate you for what you did, I do genuinely hope that you get better and stay on whatever medication that you are on, just for the fact that I don't want you to go around and do this to another person." She lifted up her shirt to show the scars along her stomach that she would have for the rest of her life. "Like I said, I'm not a vengeful person. But if I ever hear that you've gone off your medication and hurt someone else, I won't hesitate to hunt you down like an animal and carve into you like you carved into me. Understand?"
"She won't be the only one hunting you down." A voice said from the doorway.
Lucy turned to see John coming into the room. He walked over and held her hand.
"I'll be right there with her." Carter continued. "Understand?"
"Y-y-yes." Paul stuttered.
"C'mon, let's go." Carter whispered into Lucy's ear, leading her out the door. Once they were in the elevator, he gave her a hug. "You had me worried when I realized where you had gone."
"You aren't mad that I went in there?" Lucy asked, figuring that he would be furious with her. That was why she hadn't told him she was going.
"I wasn't thrilled that you went in there alone. But I trust your judgment." He replied. "I know that you needed to do that."
"Thanks." She smiled, letting go of him since the elevator ride was almost over. "I love you John."
"I love you too Luce." He replied as they walked out of the elevator. "The good news is that the roads are starting to open up now. We're free to go."
"That's good, because it's been a long day." Lucy sighed.
"Yes it has." He agreed.