Elizabeth stopped, realizing that she was about to tell Robert that she imagined him with her very, very often. In surgery, of course, but also at home, after Ella was asleep, when she was alone. Wondering if he was alone. Wondering if his ache felt like her ache, if his emptiness could fill hers. Sometimes she closed her eyes, leaning back against the back of the couch as if it were his chest, strong and solid. She nestled into the cushions as if into the warmth of him, the warmth she knew was there despite his recent coldness to her. The heat. She let herself slip into the fantasy of the two of them finally finding each other, mouths meeting, bodies melting...She shook her head back to the here and now. Silence on the other end of the phone. Where was he? What was he thinking?
Swallow.
He must have heard her. Why didn't he help her? But why should he reach out when she had spent so long pushing him away?
"Robert?"
"I'm here... Look, it's late. I should let you go."
I called you, Elizabeth thought. But instead she said, "Right, then. Goodnight."
"Goodnight," he answered, neutrally, a bit quietly. And then he hung up. The loud echo of the dial tone in her ear surprised her. Hurt her. As if he had pushed her away physically. She felt winded, blindsided. She sat down on her couch, dropping the phone softly, and buried her head into the cushions.
The next day, in her office, Elizabeth felt him there. When she looked up, he was standing in the doorway looking at the floor. She cleared her throat.
He looked up at her, his eyes dark and quiet. Silence. She would let him break it. He cleared his throat. Nothing.
"Robert?" she couldn't help herself.
"I need a favor," he said in a low voice.
"Of course." Still nothing.
He shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Looking at the floor again.
"Robert..." she repeated, this time with a note of impatience. Not that she minded him taking her time, but she minded him taking his time to ask her, as if she would ever turn him down. Except that she always had in the past. Just as she was about to try to say something encouraging he spat out,
"I need a letter. A letter of recommendation. Will you write it? Just something short and glowing about what a good surgeon I was. How I could still, well, still be useful somehow..." He started fast, words sputtering out and then slowing, looking back at the floor, awkward again.
"Of course I would, Robert," she replied warmly, happy to help him even in this seemingly insignificant way. "But what's this for?"
"Look. I don't want to talk about it. I'm not sure I even want to do it. But I need a letter," breaking eye contact again and then continuing more softly, "and you know me best."
"Robert, I want to help you. In any way I can. But I can't recommend you for a position without knowing what it is..." while trying to reassure him she realized she was staring to feel anxious. Was he talking about leaving County? Chicago? She needed him to tell her what was going on.
"Fine," he blurted, turning on his heel, "if you won't do it, I'll find someone else," and he was about to leave, when she rounded her desk and caught the sleeve of his lab coat.
He turned to face her. She was flushed, his eyes were glittering. "Please don't..." was all she could muster, not knowing what she was asking, almost asking him not to go, not to leave her.
She caught herself, still not letting go of his lab coat, still looking into his eyes, and said sincerely, "I'll do anything you ask. Anything you need me to do. I'll do it today if you want." She was still looking at him , almost breathless, wanting to offer herself to him, to give herself to him, just waiting for him to ask.
He stepped back, snagging his sleeve from her weakened grasp but not breaking eye contact. "Okay," he said, the word catching in his throat. "Okay then. Just put it in an envelope and leave it at the desk. Today or tomorrow..." He was edging into the hallway but still holding her in his gaze. "Thank you," he finished quietly before turning his head and walking away without looking back.
He fled quickly down two flights of stairs and into the lounge. Good. No one. God. He dropped heavily into the old, creaky sofa. Head in hands. Well one hand and one plastic hand. That had been...Awful.. He hated asking her for anything. It made him feel so weak. Just being near her made him feel weak. He wanted her so badly, but at the same time he needed her help to get away from her. And when he asked for her help, she had answered, "Anything." She would do anything for him. If only that were true. He closed his eyes tighter, trying to push the image away. Of Elizabeth giving herself to him, giving in to his desire, moving closer, bringing her hands to his face, pulling him towards her, him mirroring her movements, his fingertips buried in her hair, bringing her mouth to his...
He just wanted to kiss her, he told himself. If he just asked for that...Would it be too much for her to give him one kiss? A kiss goodbye...
He had seen him crutching across the waiting room and into the E.R. Nurses, doctors crowding around him for a tearful welcome, a hero's welcome. Home at last. Neela looks up at him, asking permission to leave the pile of charts they are reviewing to join her fiancé. He nods slightly, as if not acknowledging his own assent.
A few minutes later he hears the crutch clicking towards him. He doesn't want to look up into the mirror of another broken man. But when he hears the clicking stop just in front of him, he does look up, into the eyes of someone strong and solid.
"Michael," he says extending a hand.
"Doctor Romano," Gallant smiles warm but serious as he shakes his hand. Then nodding toward the chair next to him he asks, "May I?"
Romano nods and Gallant sits, but not without difficulty, bending the knee of his prosthetic leg. Romano winces, not wanting to say anything in sympathy but feeling nonetheless a knot of tears in his throat, pity for this young man but anger too at the stupidity of war. And envy that in the end Gallant still has what he really needs to be a doctor: two hands and a heart.
"My docs at the VA didn't want me to leave til I'd figured this thing out a little more, but I needed to get back," Gallant explains the awkward use of his titanium limb. "I wanted to talk to you."
Robert straightens, surprised, wondering if Gallant expects some sort of new friendship here, a fraternity of amputees. He feels in fact that Michael is the person he least wants to be around right now. He is the successfully recovered amputee, one coping with his loss, returning to life, to love, the opposite of Robert himself who has never accepted the accident and its consequences. And in the end Michael makes him feel ashamed that his own loss was a result of anger and carelessness while Gallant's was a result of valor.
"When I was at Walter Read, I was bounced around from surgeons to ortho guys to P.T.s to psych. I could negotiate the system, figure out who to ask for a change in my meds or a refit for the prosthetic. But these kids who come in hacked up and shell shocked and too brave to ask for anything, they don't know how to manage it. They think they're being taken care of, but there isn't one person really in charge of their care. Maybe a mother or a wife who writes down the names of all their docs and meds, but no one to work the system so that it really works for them, who can read their chart and look at their scans and really know why the brace isn't working or why their shoulder still aches or why the infection still won't go away." He pauses and looks right into Romano's eyes: "They need a head of amputee care, and I know of no one who could do the job better than you."
"Oh no," Robert feels himself saying, hands up in self-defense, "Whoa. You have got me very wrong, here. I don't know what Dr. Ragosthra's been telling you about my management skills in the E.R., but I am not exactly looking for new challenges right now." He swallows and then more quietly, "Much less am I looking to work with guys who've had half their bodies blasted off. I just can't do that. I..." And although he doesn't finish the sentence he thinks, "I can barely look at myself..."
"Michael. Thank you. Really. But I'm not looking for a new job, despite my questionable qualifications for this one."
He pauses again, looking down at Gallant's crutch and then up into his eyes, "I'm just not that brave," he shrugs and then starts to get up, to leave.
Gallant's quick, strong grip closes around his arm, gently but firmly keeping him captive for a moment more. Romano turns, bristling a little at this use of quiet force, but Gallant just extends a file folder to him with the other hand.
Romano looks at it, realizing he is being forced to take it with his prosthetic hand, a gesture he usually avoids. He does, to end the moment, and Gallant lets go.
That night, before Elizabeth's call, he had read it. About ten times. A job description in about three pages. He had skipped the army brochures and the general bullshit about the hospital's facilities. But he can't stop looking at a few polaroid photos and flipping them to read Gallant's notes on the back. Corporal Matt Sanger. Lost his hands defusing a land mine. Lost his left arm to an undiagnosed infection after discharge from the VA. ("Who's following up with these kids?" Romano thinks.) Specialist John Lee, lost his legs in a car bomb but refused to be fitted for prostheses. Wheelchair bound, severely depressed, shot himself one week post discharge. ("Shit." And then quietly, "But I know what that's like. That denial. That desperation.")
With that he decides to write a few e-mails, to start putting together his application, to start thinking about how he could change things, narrow the cracks, keep these guys from slipping through.