Luka walked down the corridor to where he saw the English doctor, Elizabeth Corday, standing speaking with one of the ICU nurses. She turned and Luka saw that her features dropped slightly when she saw him and he rolled his eyes behind his eyelids.
"Luka," she greeted him as they approached one another and Luka nodded at her. "We've been trying to call you for over a week..." She trailed off, hoping for an explanation. She didn't receive one and sighed. "I'm surprised you haven't been in."
"I've been busy," he mumbled as he thrust his hands into his pockets and followed her to an empty bay.
They both stood at the side of the empty bed and crossed their arms in front of their chests.
Elizabeth couldn't believe the sight before her. Luka's hair was covering his ears, greasy. His eyes were sullen, dark and empty. His cheeks were hollow, his neck bones protruding sharply. His clothes hung loose on him, his hips shown to her when he thrust his hands into his pockets again and his jacket flew away at the sides.
"So... what's the problem?" He asked and she could hear the tiredness in him ooze out in that sentence.
She wondered how he had managed to drive to the hospital in safety without nodding off at the wheel.
Clearing her throat, she looked down for a second and then back up at him.
"Sam will be discharged at the beginning of next week," she told him vaguely.
"That's good," he said and she noted how he had somehow managed to make it sound like a question.
She nodded and shuffled on her feet.
"She wants to go back up to her mother's," she spoke quietly, slowly as though Luka wouldn't understand the words she was saying.
Luka bit the inside of his bottom lip and raised his eyebrow, nodding to Elizabeth.
"And..?"
Corday looked at him for a second and then dropped her gaze again. This wasn't the Luka Kovac that she knew. The man she knew wouldn't have left Sam's bedside until he was sure she was going to be okay, not standing in front of her looking like death warmed up asking her why Sam travelling was a bad thing. He should be practically carrying Sam through the doors to his apartment.
"She's unfit for travel, well for travel that far - and her apartment is still a crime scene, the poli-"
"No."
Elizabeth drew her eyebrows together and scrunched up her nose up as she stared at him in disbelief.
He couldn't let her be in his presence anymore. All he had did to her was cause her harm. The last thing she needed was for him to be the one to look after her. He'd probably end up killing her.
"Luka, she has nowhere else to go."
Luka shook his head and clasped his hands together in front of him, raising them in front of his chest then flattening his fingers out against one another.
"Have you asked her if she wants to live with me?"
Elizabeth looked down and shook her head causing a curl to fall in front of her eye.
"No."
"Then how do you know she will? I mean, she has every reason to hate me, why would she want to live with me?"
Elizabeth raised her head at that and stared at him in horror.
"Is that what you have been busy with? Self-pity? Oh, Kovac, please!" She threw a hand up into the air, narrowly missing his chest and Luka cocked his jaw at her.
"It's not self-pity. It's the truth."
"Oh please."
"Look, I said no. Find somewhere else," he told her harshly and attempted to step past her but she blocked his path.
"Why are you so reluctant to have her in your apartment? Are you cheating on her now?"
She saw the fire erupt in Luka's eyes and she saw his jaw tighten as he stared down at her, his stance almost threatening.
"I said no."
He pushed past her and Elizabeth stumbled slightly and was too surprised to be able to do anything other than stare at his back as he stalked down the halls of the ICU, walking straight past Sam's room without even glancing in at her.
"And you say you love her," she shouted down the corridor, eventually finding her tongue and she smiled smugly when she saw him stop abruptly.
- -
"Luka will be here in about an hour to pick us up," Jocelyn said to her daughter as she stepped into her room.
Sam froze at the mention of his name. Him coming to pick her up.
"What?" She asked, her voice louder than she had anticipated.
Jocelyn smiled innocently at her as she began to open drawers and empty Sam's belongings into a bag.
"I thought we were going home?" Sam asked as she grabbed onto the crutches at the side of her bed and hobbled over to her mother's side.
She found it funny that her crutch was multi-coloured, having been taken from the children's ward so that it would fit her petite form. The only thing that she could laugh at that moment in time.
"You are," Jocelyn smiled at Sam's confused face but tried to hide it. "With Luka."
Sam stuck her bottom jaw out and ground her teeth together slightly as she glared at her mother.
"And when was this decided?" She asked as she hobbled over to the other side of the room.
God, she felt like Kerry Weaver.
"Uh... last week?"
Sam gawked at that.
"I haven't even seen him. Where the hell was I?" Sam asked and raised her hand, realised her crutch was attached to said hand and dropped it back to the ground.
"Uh... asleep probably. He didn't come in, he just spoke to Corday and then went home," Jocelyn stated matter-of-factly.
She folded up a pair of jeans that Sam had insisted she allow the police to give her because there was no way she was travelling in a hospital gown. But the officer had been kind enough to give Jocelyn a pile of Sam's clothes and allow her to go in and remove some underwear from one of the boxes that were still piled at the front of the sofa in the lounge.
"I can't believe him," Sam muttered under her breath as she clicked back over to Jocelyn's side and leaned against the bed. "He wants me to live with him? God, he's a masochist. Why? Why does he want me in his house?"
Jocelyn turned to Sam and raised her eyebrow.
"I thought we'd gotten past this Sam?" She said as she reached out and touched her daughter's arm. "This wasn't your fault."
Sam rolled her eyes and nodded before walking around to the other side of the bed. The sound of her crutches drowned out all other noise in the room. She perched herself up on the bed and reached down to lift her cast leg onto the bed along with her.
When she was sitting up on the bed, she froze as she saw the person standing at the entrance of the room.
"Luka!" Jocelyn said enthusiastically as Sam and Luka stared at each other.
He looked like he hadn't slept at all in days. But he looked good. She hated how he did that. He wore a light blue shirt and a simple pair of black trousers. His cheeks looked freshly shaved, his skin tanned, his eyes dark. His hair was - different.
"You're early."
"Have you straightened your hair?"
Jocelyn and Sam asked at the same time and Luka dipped his head slightly, lifting his hand to his hair.
"I was at the hair stylist, so I just thought I'd come here as soon as I left," he said to Jocelyn but still managed to answer Sam's question.
Damn, he looked good with his hair like that, Sam noted and chastised herself: she had to stop thinking about him like that, they were over.
"Are you ready to go?" He asked again and Sam looked away from him and concentrated on getting off the bed.
When she felt his hand on her shoulder, she stiffened and shrank away from it - she hadn't had a man touch her since Steve... apart from Carter but she really couldn't have stopped him at that point.
He removed his hand quickly and pulled away from her, taking a step away from the bed.
"Yep," Jocelyn answered his earlier question as she zipped up Sam's duffel bag.
"Here, let me take that," Luka said as he reached his hand out, trying not to turn to Sam when he heard her curse under her breath when her foot hit the floor with a dull thud.
"No, it's fine," Jocelyn smiled and nodded to Sam. "You can help Sam for me."
She had moved away before Luka could protest and, slowly, he turned to see Sam shooting a glare at the now empty doorway.
He hated that look in her eyes. Even she blamed him for what had happened.
Why had he agreed to this again?
He saw her reach for her crutches and he tried to repress a smile when he saw that they were from paediatrics. He let her walk a few steps and then he reached out and put his hand on her back to guide her out of the room and down the hall but she shied away again.
He clenched his fingers up and hovered them over her back for a second then dropped it, letting out a sigh.
"Žao mi je, Sam," he said as he walked closely behind her.
TBC