Chapter Three:

With three other job offers on the table, it would have been so easy for Erin to just pick up and run now that things had gotten uncomfortable for her at County. Something inside of her didn't want to leave them in a lurch and yet short another set of hands. She would have to find someway to put any emotion that she felt for John on the back burner and do her job. However impossible that might have felt at the moment she knew that's what she had to do.

There was something about him that still got to her. She wasn't sure if it was that boyish smile of his, the charm that he had, the way that he always wore his emotions on his sleeve or just the plain and simple matter of the fact that Erin had never gotten over John. He wasn't an easy man to forget.

He was the one that she thought about on those cold nights while studying for exams. His picture she had always kept and had a special place for where no one else could see it, right now the last photo that they had taken together was sitting on her dresser where it always had been. Never able to put it away and not look at it, she had tried, god knows she had tried; she made it three days before having to put it back in her place.

She had even tried dating someone else, but that hadn't worked. He had been the one that she had loved, truly loved and had gone and thrown it all away. Her reasons for leaving at the time had seemed so sound, so realistic, as if they really mattered to her. She hadn't done it for the money, that wasn't why. She did it because she knew the importance of family. Erin had grown up most of her life without one of her own.

For the longest time it had been just her and her dad. Her mom split when Erin was only a few months old, so she had no real memories of her. She only had her dad's side of the story, but her mom was really young when Erin was born and couldn't handle the pressures that having a child brought. Basically she didn't want to grow up and be responsible for Erin. She and her dad lived with her grandmother until Erin was about 10 and then they moved out into a small apartment.

Her dad had always taken really great care of her, making sure that she was never alone after school, that she had food on the table and clothes on her back. He was a hard working single father who did everything he could for his little girl. Erin knew that whatever you wanted from life too hard work. The thing that she had never learned was how to make a relationship work, she'd never seen it. Erin's dad never had a girlfriend for more than a few months at the most. They came and went like the months on a calendar. She wasn't sure why her dad couldn't find someone, in her eyes it wasn't from lack of trying.

She crossed from the living room of her apartment into her bedroom now, she might as well go in early since she was up and awake. She changed from her pajamas into her clothes and then headed for the hospital. It didn't look nearly as chaotic as the day before but it was still busy and they looked like they could use another set of hands. She put her things into her locker and then jumped into treating patients. Using it as yet another distraction rather than actually having to deal with what was on her mind. It wasn't long before she was bombarded with medical students needing help or charts signed by residents needing an attending physician's signature before discharging a patient. She was working Noon to midnight there to cover when the day became the night shift so that they wouldn't get back up as doctors handed off patients leaving or coming for the day.

"Erin!"

She heard someone calling her name and stopped in her tracks to see who it was. "Yeah Susan."

"We've got a multiples coming in. Pile up on the Eisenhower, Mercy's closed to trauma so we're getting the brunt."

"How many?" Erin asked back as she headed the direction she had just come from.

"As many as 12 critical and probably 50 minors." Susan replied as she picked up the phone to call in more hands.

"Got it." Erin answered as she helped to get things set up. "Whose doing triage?" She asked as she passed by Susan uncertain if they wanted her to do it or if she was going to be taking cases as they came flying through those doors. Erin knew that it wouldn't be long before the ER was a zoo.

"Pratt will triage you take the first one that comes in, I'll be right behind you." Susan answered her. Erin dawned a yellow trauma gown as she headed to meet the first of what was to be the start of a very long night.

She followed the first one in, the estimates of how many they were going to get were off, as to be expected. She handled the first two patients pretty much solo as the got hit and hit hard. Everyone was up to their necks with patients and spare hands where hard to find.

She was on her third critical when she heard another doctor's voice in the trauma room with her. "What do you have?"

Erin looked up from what she was doing just long enough to see that it was, oh just her luck, Carter in there with her, "25 year old unrestrained driver, LOC, intubated." She started in knowing full well that she didn't need to explain it to him of all people. She started to put in a chest tube on the left side since that's where she was at.

The next thing that Erin knew was that Carter was jumping in on her patient. There were plenty of other ones and she didn't needs his hands in her patient. "I've got this Carter." Erin said, "go help someone else."

"He needs another chest tube, hang another two units." Carter said.

"I've got it Carter get out of here." Erin yelled now as she worked to get the tube in.

"I'm staying."

"The hell you are get out of my trauma."

Carter continued to put in the chest tube, "he's crashing." Carter moved now to listen to the chest glancing at Erin, "tubes not in."

"What do you mean the tubes not in I checked the placement myself. I'm the one that did it."

"I'm telling you the guys not getting air." Carter said as he moved to re-establish the patients' airway.

"Touch that tube and I am tossing your ass out of here." Erin said getting defensive over her work, she didn't like the fact that another doctor was telling her that she had done something wrong that she knew she had done right.

"You couldn't commit to tossing me out." Carter said as he repositioned the breathing tube and listened to the lungs.

"I sure as hell could." Erin yelled back at him now, "I don't have the issues that you think I have."

"Prove me wrong."

"Get away from my patient." She said as she continued to try and save the poor schmuck who was on the table and unfortunately now caught in the middle of a battle. "I don't have anything to prove to you, just get out of here and let me work."

"Why so you can kill him," Carter said, "you obviously have no clue as to what you are doing you can't even tube him right."

"I had him intubated." She said giving Carter the evil eye, "you must have knocked it when you came barging in here and took over. I know what I am doing." Erin snapped back.

"Doctors, we've lost his pulse if you care to treat him when you are done fighting." One of the nurses said to them both.

"Push an amp of epi," they both said at the same time.

"Start CPR and get me the paddles charge to 300." Carter said.

"You start it yourself." Erin said shocked that even she could be that petty but he was coming in here and taking over as if he was god almighty. She snapped up the lab results that had just come back and read them quickly over this wasn't good. "Where's his x-rays?"

"Not back yet."

"Run and get them I need them now." She said, "get the sonosite in here too," she knew he was bleeding from somewhere she just didn't know where. "Squeeze in another 2 units now." She said as she watched Carter doing CPR.

"What are you thinking?" Carter asked looking at her.

"Duh Sherlock he's bleeding from somewhere." She answered.

"Want to curb the sarcastic remarks there and work with me?"

"Not particularly." Erin said as she watched her patients heart still not want to beat on it's own, "nothing high dose Epi and let's shock again." She said.

"Clear." She said once the paddles where in her hands and she didn't give Carter enough time to fully clear the patient before she sent that jolt through the patients. She watched Carter as he went down to the floor, "oops." Well that was one way to get rid of an annoying second physician.

She worked to stabilize her patient and get him up to the OR and the nurses took Carter off to take care of him, so what she gave him an extra jolt to start his day, she really didn't feel horrible about it. Granted she didn't feel great about it either, but he had pushed her buttons and well frankly she did say clear.

She went back to work not giving it much thought. She finished triaging what patients there were and suturing him the last of the minor lacerations before heading into the lounge to get a cup of coffee it was now nearly midnight and soon she'd be able to go home, take a hot shower and climb into bed.

"I hear you tried to kill one of my doctors today." Susan said as she entered the lounge a few steps behind Erin.

"That's a little on the harsh side." Erin said.

"Nurses said you two were arguing and then you shocked him."

"I said clear he didn't move that was his poor decision." Erin replied.

"You two need to find a way to work together, I can't have my staff at each other's throats all the time." Susan said, "I have nothing against you or him but this has got to stop when you endanger patients."

"I didn't endanger anyone today." Erin said okay well maybe Carter. "I had that situation under control and cowboy bob decided that I needed another doctor in there when I didn't. You keep him from stepping on my toes and treating me like another one of his students and I'll keep the hatchet out of his back."

"You two need to play nice Erin, I mean it, granted I'm glad to have another set of hands around here and you seem to know what you are doing, but Carter's been a friend for a long time, he's got seniority here, don't make me choose between him and you."

"Dr. Lewis." Erin said now, she stopped herself before she said something that she shouldn't. "I think that you'd better work us opposite shift, cause the problem doesn't lie with me, it lies with him." She said changing her tone. "I'm not one to hold grudges but I will not have someone come in and take over a patient like I'm a first year medical student who needs their hand held. I know what I am doing, I'm good at my job and he needs to respect that."

Susan just shrugged her shoulders; her new attending did have a point there. "I'll talk to him, but you might be working a lot of nights."

There was nothing that Erin could do about that, "then so be it." She looked up at the clock. "You board is caught up and I did the more complicated suturing." She said, "I'm off at midnight so I will see you tomorrow. Just let me know what my new schedule will be after you talk to Carter." She knew that stubborn ass wasn't going to want to work with her anymore than she wanted to work with him. God it sucked, she had a thing for Carter but to act on that would be playing with fire.