Chapter 5:

She stood there for a moment gathering herself up, did she dare open up that door. She was shocked to say the least that he was standing out side of her apartment after everything that had happened today. It just seemed as if the two of them were no longer destined to get along and the past needed to stay in the past.

"J… J… John." Erin stammered as she pulled the door open, she shook her head gently, "what… what are you doing here?"

He looked at her with an expression on his face that she couldn't read. There had once been a time when she could decipher any look that he had pass across his face but right now that time had long gone.

"We need to talk."

"John, it's four am. You are aware of that aren't you?" Erin asked him, her hands now laid folded across her chest, and effort to stay warm as she stood there in her doorway wondering why he had come here now.

"Yeah, I know." His voice was softer than it had been earlier in the day.

Erin very well couldn't just turn him away, while part of her wanted too. The more guilty part of her knew that she shouldn't do that. She shudder for a second as her mind caught up all the way with the rest of her. "Come in." She finally mustered the ability to speak and moved out of the door way to let him cross into her apartment, shutting the door behind him.

"Thanks."

"Do you want me to start some coffee or some tea; I have cocoa with those tiny marshmallows you used to like." She said moving towards the kitchen area.

"Whatever you like." He replied back to her again.

At this rate any kind of conversation that they were going to have was going to take all night and at some point in time Erin did want to go back to bed. "Is there something on your mind John?"

He just looked at her with those big brown eyes, and it was the look that could melt your heart. He had settled himself on one of the barstools and was looking at her standing in the kitchen as she put hot water on to boil. Her hand resting on top of the kettle caught his eye but he just couldn't bring himself to say anything about that right now.

"How is it that someone can come back into another person's life, in this giant whirlwind and have everything in their life come completely unglued?" He asked soft as could be as he looked at her.

Erin just looked up at him. "I didn't come to Chicago with the intentions of ramming through your life like a tornado John." She answered him now. Her eyes had for a moment locked with his but it was too uncomfortable to keep the gaze like that. "I didn't know that you were here. Running into you was the last thing that I honestly thought that I would do. I didn't know you were a doctor, I didn't know that you were still in Chicago. I thought for sure that by now you would be off overseas running some branch of the Carter Family Enterprise."

He just looked at me wide-eyed full of disbelief, "why would you think something like that?"

"No particular reason." She muttered back as she got down the coffee mugs from her cabinet.

"There has to be a reason that's not something that you just think out of nowhere. Why do you think that I would have given up medical school after you left?"

"There's really no reason John." Erin said as she sat the mugs down and looked at him, "it just made sense at the time to think that."

The kettle started to hiss making it's own sound as she removed it from the burner it was sitting upon. There was silence in the room now as she finished what she was doing and moved around the counter setting on in front of him and then motioning him to follow her. If she was going to sit and try to have any form of conversation with him she was at least going to be comfortable. She sat down in her chair and pulled her blanket over her lap, her legs curling under her as she turned to where she could see him better.

He sat down and looked over at her, "you think that because it's what they wanted."

She nodded her answer to him. "Yeah you could say that in a round about way."

"This is what I have wanted to do for a long time, and you of all people should know that. I thought that I didn't have to explain it to you like I did to them."

Erin reached over and touched his hand. "No, you don't have to explain it to me." She said her voice soft with him. "I know why you want to do it, and I'm sure that you are very good at what you do. You put so much of yourself into everything that you do John." Erin was almost at a loss for words now.

It just didn't feel right sitting there talking to him like this, not with the way that she was feeling, and something inside her wouldn't let her tell him what she was feeling. She didn't just want to come right out and say it, but he had a right to know didn't he? No, she couldn't say anything like that after being gone for so long it just wouldn't be right, it wasn't fair to him and she shouldn't have expected him to be able to return those feelings.

She didn't even know why they were attempting to have any kind of a conversation. They really didn't have anything of importance to say to each other, or that was what was running through her mind right now.

"Well I am and as you can see I am still in Chicago." He said to her, "why did you pick Chicago? If you are in such high demand as a doctor, have other offers on the table, why would someone like yourself pick a county facility, there's no money in it Erin."

"Money? What do you think that this is why I am doing this, why I became a doctor? You think that I am just in this for the money." She rolled her eyes and him and if for the fact that it was cold she would have gotten up and moved away from him, "money is not my motive it never has been."

"You could have fooled me."

"That just goes to show how well you really know me." She said now finding the courage to stand up and brave the chill that was in the air. More of it was coming from the two of them than from it actually being cold out side and with every word exchanged between them you could feel the temper drop even more. "I am not in this for the money, I never have been. Money can't buy you everything that you want in life not even close. Of all the people in the world that I know, you should know that more than anyone else."

"I didn't mean anything by it like that." He said as he noticed her now defensive posture. "You can relax Erin; I am not going to do anything."

"No you're not." She said rather matter of fact like. "Because I am not going to take the bait. I am not going to have constant battles with you. And while I might have over reacted in that Trauma and gone over board, you have been acting like an ass and I am not going to tolerate it."

"Tolerate it?" He said, "as if you have much of a choice. I'm not going away."

"I am well aware of the fact that you are not going away, and I hate to disappoint you on this one John, I have no intention of leaving my position at County."

Erin watched his mouth drop open as she said that. It was as if he had expected her to say something else. Almost as if he expected her to say fine and that she would pack her bags and be gone in the morning. "What John, did that one catch you off guard? Did you not think that I would stay?"

"No I had already half expected you to be on a flight out of Chicago."

"Well that's not happening. I have been ran out of the town once by a Carter and I am not going to let it happen again. I am staying. I like where I work, I am needed where I work, and not you or anyone else is going to get me to go. So you had better just get used to the fact that you and I will be working together. To back off and do my job and there will be no more problems between the two of us. You do what you do and I will do what I do." Erin said before turning her back towards him as if she was looking out the window. "Cause you are stuck with me."

"Ha, stuck with you." He said standing up from where he had been sitting, "stuck with you, well that ought to last a whole what maybe week if Susan is lucky. I promised her that I would not run off the new attending, and that I won't but I can't make you stay."

"You are right there, you can't make me stay. I have made the decision to stay whether you like it or not." She said.

"Like it or not, well that's some kind of option." He said. He knew that he was getting under her skin; you could tell by the way that her cheeks had started to flush and the nervous way she was shifting her weight back and forth between her feet.

"It's the only one you have right now."

"Erin who are you trying to fool? Do you think that you have something to prove to me?"

"I have nothing to prove to you John, I never have and I never will. You are not a factor in any of my decisions anymore." She bantered back.

"Oh," he said as he crossed the room over to where she was standing. "I don't factor into anything huh." He reached out and grabbed her hand. "Seems like I factor into things more than you are willing to admit."

She pulled her hand back as if his touch had burned her. "No you don't."

"If I don't matter anymore, if you don't care anymore, tell me then why this?" He pulled her hand back and held it up where both of them could see it. "Tell me, are you just sentimental or do you have an ulterior motive that you would like to share."

"In your dreams."

"Well that's something that I will only know."

"John, what's all this about, huh, why do you show up at my doorstep at 4 am. Insist that we need to talk and then just sit here and fight with me?" She asked, "surely there has to be something else that you could be doing rather than tormenting me."

"Nope that's all that is on my social calendar for the next two weeks, I figure that's about how long you will stay. If you stay that long."

"God, what the hell are you doing? This constant barrage of insults, of saying that I have commitment issue's really it needs to stop cause why you think you know the truth of everything you really have no idea. You don't know what it's like to be me, what I have done, or had to go through, you know nothing other than what you have in your mind." Erin said now as she pulled even further away from him.

"What I think I know, no honey, it's not what I think I know it's the truth that lies behind everything that I have ever needed to know that is what has been eating at me for the last 10 or so years."

"Then it can continue to eat at you for the next 20 years for all I care. When I first ran into you I told you that I wasn't going to relive this and I have no intentions of it." She wished that what she was saying was true for it seemed that even if she wasn't going to hash it out with Carter it was still there plaguing her nightmare, eating at her when she least expected it. She had no idea how to tell him that she couldn't do it anymore. That she was haunted for what she had done, but it was her penitence to pay not his. He couldn't feel the same way about this as she did, no time would have eased the ache that he felt in his heart, if there was any ache there. Maybe she had hurt him more than she ever imagined was humanly possible and he was holding some kind of giant grudge and was getting nothing but sweet kicks out of doing this to her.

There it was that horrible silence again. You would think that they would tire from trying to cut each other to the bone but that didn't seem to be happening, no it seemed to be the opposite as if this constant bickering was fueling some fire between the two of them and they didn't want to stop feeding it. For even fighting one had to admit, they were forcing themselves to spend time with each other.

"Ah, you know what I don't know what to do with you." Carter finally said.

"Who says you have to do anything with me John. There's the door you know how to walk right back out it the way that you came in." Erin replied.

"And if I don't want to do that?"

"Why in hell wouldn't you. I'm sure that I could come up with something else to say that would once again piss you off enough so that you would want to leave, perhaps this time never come back here again."

"You don't have the heart to do that." He said.

"Do you really want to try me?"

"What I mean with I don't know what to do with you, is that I don't know if I should take your stubborn ass into my arms and kiss you like I want to, or continue to stand here and fight with you because it's the only other thing that I know what to do to spend time here while I sort out how I really feel."

She took a step back, shocked by what she had just heard come from him.

"Did I finally manage to leave the great Dr. Delaney speechless?" When she didn't respond again, he could tell that either she was taken way back by what he had just said or she was in complete shock that after all this time he would want to or even suggest something of that nature. He took another step closer to her, approaching as one would some wild animal afraid to startle or scare them. "I know what I want now."

Her eyes got a little wider, unsure of what she was going to do, or even how to react to what she thought that he was going to do. She wasn't expecting this and was caught completely off guard by all of it.