"Where the hell is the chart for Doctor Kovac's patient in exam two?" Sam asked loudly as she flicked through the charts in the chart rack.

"Doctor Kovac? What happened to Luka?" Haleh asked with a slight laugh in her voice.

Sam glared at her and angrily flipped the next few charts.

"Where's the chart for Luka's patient?" She asked, frustrated.

There was silence and Sam looked up, her eyebrows raised in exasperation.

"Uh, I saw him in exam two about five minutes ago, he seemed pretty pissed off for some reason," Chuney supplied as she noted something on her own chart and slid it back into it's place on the rack.

Sam slammed her pen down onto the worktop and growled.

"I told him I'd get the IV hung when I got back from the lab!" She snatched up her pile of five charts and stormed off in the direction of exam two.

Chuney, Haleh and Frank shared a look, and Frank raised his eyebrow.

"Either someone's on their T-O-T-M, or there's trouble in paradise," Frank leered and Chuney threw a scrunched up ball of paper at him.

"That's not even funny."

Sam yanked back the curtain in exam two and saw Luka standing to the side of a fifteen year old girl, with short blond hair.

"I told you I was going to the lab," she said by way of introduction.

She dropped her charts onto the table at the side of the bed and yanked open the drawer. Pulling out the banana bag, she hung it up on the hook above the bed and inserted the other end into the young woman's hand. She felt her wince.

"Sorry," she said with a smile and secured the tube in it's place with some surgi-tape.

"Sam, can I speka to you outside for a moment?" Luka said and motioned with the clipboard and stepped out.

Sam turned to the girl - Layla - and raised her eyebrows, putting on a "eek" face. The girl smiled and lowered her head.

Sam stepped out from behind the curtain and saw Luka talking to Abby, his hand on her arm. Abby saw her and smiled, before saying something Luka and moving away. Luka stood where he was as Sam pulled the curtain back around to give Layla privacy as Sam heard sobs escape her chest. Luka eventually turned around on his heel and strode over to Sam.

"She's pregnant," he stated simply and Sam frowned at him, taking the proffered clipboard from his hands.

"What? Oh my god..." Sam shook her head slightly and tried to fight off her own memories.

"She uh... won't talk to me about it, so I was wondering if you could..." Luka started and Sam nodded almost instantly.

"Yeah, sure, of course," Sam heard her own voice crack and winced slightly and lowered her head further.

"Hey, are you okay?" Luka asked and reached out to touch Sam's wrist but she pulled away.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she lied and turned back into the room, leaving Luka standing in the middle of the ER with a frown of confusion and concern on his face.

Sam stormed out of the examination room twenty minutes later with tear tracks staining her face. She ran past the admit desk and ignored the concerned shouts of Luka, Abby, Chuney, Haleh and Susan as she bumped into numerous orderlies in her mad dash to the toilet. She slammed the door against the wall and fell onto one of the sinks and let even more tears streak down her face. She sank to the floor as she heard the door open and heard several sets of footsteps rush in.

She felt arms wrap around her and turned into Abby's embrace. At that moment, she didn't care who saw the state she was in. After several minutes of uncontrolled sobbing, she pulled back from Abby and saw Susan standing guard at the door.

"God, I'm sorry," she said as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

"What the hell happened?" Abby asked as Susan stepped into the room and leaned against the door.

"The kid in exam two, she's pregnant." Abby nodded, urging her to continue. "She uh... her boyfriend - son of a bitch - he uh... he let his mates watch them having sex and... he let them join in. The bastards all gang raped her..." Sam sobbed again and dropped her head into her hands.

"Oh my God," Susan said from her position on the door. "We should call the police. Sam... are you okay?"

Sam nodded and stood up.

"Yeah, I just... I don't know what's wrong with me today," she lied and moved towards the sink and ran the cold water and splashed it on her face. "It just... really got to me..." She dried her face on some paper towels and turned to Abby and Susan. "I'm sorry for causing a scene." She smiled and laughed lightly.

"No, it's fine. Are you sure you're okay? Do you want to go home?"

Sam shook her head. God no, she thought as she remembered the fight her and Steve had had that morning. He had pushed her and she bumped her hip in the dining room table again and she had stormed out of the house and arrived at work two hours early.

"Let's get back out there and help clear that board, huh?" She said as she moved around Abby and missed the concerned look that passed between Abby and Susan.

As soon as she stepped out of the bathroom she saw Luka make his way towards her from admit. Halfway towards her, a trauma was rolled in and he sent her a worried look and moved towards the rushing gurney and Sam followed his steps.

When she reached the trauma room, she saw that the patient was a tiny baby and the hysterical mother was clinging to Luka's side pleading with him to save her son. Sam looked to Luka and saw him shake his head, indicating that the child was dead. Sam nodded and moved towards the woman and placed her hand on her back.

"If you want to follow me, I'll take you somewhere that's quiet and you can use the telephone," Sam said gently as she looked at baby on the bed. His skin was a light blue and his eyes were closed. He looked about six months old.

Sam heaved back a sob and concentrated on prying the woman from Luka's arm. The woman was still insisting that her baby was alive and could be saved but Sam could see the young woman knew it wasn't possible. She tried to control her own raging emotions and she could tell from the panicked, concerned look in Luka's eyes that she was failing.

Sam finally managed to get the woman - Lisa - to let go of Luka's arm and was halfway out the door when she heard Luka address Haleh.

"Can you take Ms McKenzie to the family room?"

Sam turned and saw Haleh look at her hesitantly but then nod when she saw the strict look on Luka's face.

"Of course, Doctor Kovac."

Sam let go of Lisa's arm and moved back into the room but avoided looking at the motionless form on the gurney.

There was silence in the room as Sam moved to the opposite side of the bed from Luka, not looking at his face.

"Are you okay?" She heard his voice ask her gently and she began to nod, then shake her head.

"I just... I need to get out of here," she told him honestly and he nodded.

"Okay. Come on."

Sam looked up at him then and subconsciously raised her hand to her neck, where his necklace was. He saw her gesture and dipped his head to hide his satisfied smile, then looked back at her and he saw tears begin to form in her tepid brown eyes.

"Come on, Sam. Let's get you out of here," he said as he moved around the bed towards her.

"No, I've still got two hours of my shift to go," she shook her in protest and raised her voice slightly.

"You're in no state to keep working. You don't have to tell me what's wrong, but you have to let me take you home."

"I don't want to go home, not just now."

- -

Luka opened the door to his apartment and ushered Sam inside. The clock on the wall read 8.42 pm.

He lead her to the sofa and sat her down. She hadn't said anything since she told him that she didn't want to go home and Luka's worry had only grown in magnitude. He placed a hand on her back between her shoulder blades and asked her if she wanted anything to drink.

She nodded.

"Tea, if you have any." She paused for a second and Luka stood to leave but her hand on his arm stopped him. "Do you have a pillow?"

Luka frowned down at her but nodded anyway. He moved into the kitchen and prepared the cups and boiled the kettle. He then moved into his bedroom and lifted a pillow fromhis bed and carried it back to the lounge to Sam, who was sitting huddled up on his sofa. He handed it to her and she thanked him and pulled it quickly to her body and dipped her head into it.

Luka watched her for a second and then moved back to the whistling kettle on his stove. He heard the TV switch on and he smiled to himself. He heard gentle music play out from the speakers and then grow dim as Sam turned to volume down. He made two cups of strong tea and moved back into the lounge.

What he saw was enough to run his blood cold. Sam was sobbing quietly into a pillow from his bed, her whole body shaking and rocking backwards and forwards.

He placed the two cups of tea on the coffee table that had been resituated and sat down next to her. He gently pulled the pillow away from her and put it behind her. He was about to wrap his arms around her, when he felt her chokehold on his neck. Instantly, he threw his arms around her and pulled her body into his and placed a hand on her head, not saying anything.

There's a bar on my head
There's a cross for my bed
There's my heart in my hand
There's my stick in the sand

"Today is his birthday," he heard her sob into his chest. "He would have been ten," she mumbles again into his chest and Luka can feel the sound vibrations in his breast bone and feel her lips moving over the fabric of his shirt.

Confused he asks her, "Who?"

"My son," she says and her words are lost in her sobs as Luka's throat closes up.

She has a son?

He doesn't say anything, instead, let's his mind wander back to his own son, Marko and he can feel the familiar clench in his heart.

"He was so little..."

Luka pulled his legs up onto the couch and shifted her body so she was sitting across his lap and he rocked her, as he ran his hands through her hair.

"I was fifteen. Sixteen when he... died."

Luka froze all of his actions and he felt his whole body stiffen involuntarily. She had had to endure the same pain that he had?

He lowered his head onto hers, and tried to breathe in her pain, to take it all away from her.

"What happened?" He asked as he stroked the tresses of her hair that fell around her face.

Here where the world starts spinning round
take a ride and you'll feel what you've never found
Here when the stars start fading out
you hear the angels laughing without a sound

"I don't know," she choked out and he felt his own throat close up with familiar emotions. "I... SIDS happened... I..." Her whole body shook violently and Luka knew that she was very, very close to losing it. "And today..."

Luka then realised why she had reacted so violently to the baby on the bed, to the pregnant teenager. It was bringing back all the things that he knew she would be trying to bury deep inside her.

"I'm sorry, Sam."

They didn't speak, instead, he just held her and let her cry and allowed - for the first time in years - tears to escape his own eyes.

She sits here… far away
in my breast, in my grace
She's the best… the best of me
She my love, she's my queen…talking to me

"I hope you never have to experience this," she says into his chest after many minutes have passed.

Luka looks at the clock on the wall: 9.18.

Welcome to the beautiful...

"I had a wife," he whispers into her hair. "And a son. And a daughter." He pauses as he feels her attempt to pull away from him but he increases his grip on her, and urges her head back onto his body. "In the war in Croatia. I was out and... when I got back, there was nothing left of the building where I stayed. Marko was dead, I couldn't save him," he choked on his words and he felt Sam's hand in his hair, her fingers tightening around his scalp as she tried to comfort him. "Danijela... she was dying, right in front of me. But she wouldn't let me help her, she made me try and save our daughter, Jasna." He was crying openly now, his salty tears falling into Sam's hair. "I couldn't... and they both died there, right in front of me, in my arms..."

Sam shifted and wrapped herself fully around him, pulling his head down further onto her shoulder and he could tell that she was crying, like him, uncontrollably.

And when your world starts spinning down
take a ride and you'll feel what you never found
When the stars start fading out
You hear the angels laughing without a sound

"I couldn't have another child after that. Steve... he wanted to try again but I told him that I had a weak cervix and couldn't bear another child and went on the pill. He wanted to keep trying..."

"I couldn't stay in Croatia anymore. Everywhere I turned, I would see them. I didn't know where to go, so I went to Rome and then came here."

Sam heaved a sigh and crushed her head further into Luka's chest and felt his grip around her waist tighten.

She couldn't believe she had told him about Alex - she hadn't told anyone that. She looked to the clock on the wall: 10.07.

Luka sat, his arms wrapped around Sam, and felt, for the first time, needed. She needed his company, she needed his body to hold, she needed him to hold her. Just like he needed all those things from her.

I met myself just today
Came alive in my grave
And I'm the best, the best of me
For you my love… for you I'll be

"Since then, I've never felt like I belonged anywhere," he murmured into her neck as he slid his and Sam's bodies down the sofa so he could lie on his back, with her body covering his.

He felt her leg hook over his and he reached his hand up to her hair, and rested his chin on top of her curls.

"You belong here," she whispered into his chest and yawned loudly.

Luka chuckled slightly and rubbed his hand up and down her back, trying to soothe her as the occassional tear slipped down both of their faces. Her thumbs were rubbing over his ribs and he let out a sigh.

Welcome to the beautiful...

10.59, Abby read as she looked at her watch and knocked on Luka's door again. When he didn't answer, she leaned her head against the heavy wood and sighed.

"Where do you go at night Luka?" She whispered and placed her hand over the middle of the door. "Where do your dreams take you?" She waited a few seconds more and then turned and left.

11.00, the clock read in the apartment, whose silence was permeated only by the sound of sleep.

When the world starts slowing down
Take a ride and you'll feel what you never found
And as the stars are fading out
I hear the angels laughing without a sound

Welcome to the beautiful…the beautiful…

TBC

The song used it "The Beautiful" by Five For Fighting. If you haven't heard it yet, I strongly recommend that you find a way... it's amazing.