Author's establishment of her continued existence: Hello, I'm terribly sorry for the lack of updates. It's really due to a factor of schoolwork, the business of life, and, well, schoolwork. I am currently being held prisoner by a force known as the Australian Education System, and you see, sometimes… It gets more than a little hectic. I will, however, be free in around about… glances at calendar five months. Groan.
Anyway, here is the next chapter. I still have quite a bit planned, so thankyou, oh ye faithful, for your reviews. They bring light into my cell… uh, classroom.
Author's disclaimer: No, I still don't own it.
Chapter 6 – Missing
Abby breathed a deep sigh of relief as the elevator doors closed in front of her.
It wasn't often you found the elevator completely unoccupied in a place like this. It wasn't often that you found even a square inch in the ER that you could call your own for a few moments before someone else would insist on tearing you away from it, joining you, or kicking you off – so Abby considered just how lucky she was. She'd been lucky to get this far away from exam two without being spotted. She was lucky she knew her way around this place like the back of her hand, it made a silent and stealthy escape from the emergency floor a lot more probable. Not that she was trying to escape the hospital… just the floor of the ER. That was all, nothing big or exciting. And she was lucky that anybody who might have recognised her without a double take was presently at an impromptu staff meeting with Susan.
She was lucky. But was she crazy?
When Susan had left, all had been silent. There had been no Mrs Arbett in the next bed making haphazard conversation, no nurses scooting in the check on an IV line, no nothing… inside the room, that was. Abby had suddenly discovered, with nothing to do but sit alone, twiddle her thumbs and try to keep her mind off herself, that the exam rooms weren't very well soundproofed. Funny, she'd never noticed before. It was the outside that had suddenly become overpowering – the continual background noise of the emergency room that had only become more grating and more jarring to her nerves, while she still couldn't seem to explain why such mundane noises were so aggravating. Aggravating, yes – almost unbearable. She had to go somewhere quieter. Not somewhere deathly silent – just quieter. And she had to go somewhere that wasn't so close to the people she knew. So close, they were only separated by a wall, so close she could practically hear their individual tones, imagine their individual profiles through the thin slats of the blinds, going about their jobs, going about their lives. And she knew exactly what Susan was doing. Susan was telling them all. She was telling them everything.
Not that she cared. Of course she didn't. She didn't mind at all. Not one little bit.
There were two reasons Abby had decided she absolutely had to make her temporary escape: firstly, the noise was driving her mad. The constant droning of the patients, the endless streams of voices she was sure she knew. It couldn't have been her imagination that she'd heard Ray coaxing a favour from Sam, Luka's deep voice mumbling a string of instructions to a gaggle of med students, or Neela's sharp, clean accent rattling off medical terms as if she'd been using them since the age of six… and it was driving her mad. Secondly, she was driving herself mad. She could swear that her mind was going to explode at any moment. She'd never imagined it was humanly possible to contain so many questions and so many fears in one mind – she had to get away from herself, before the combination of the droning noise and her own introspective silence drove her up the wall. If anything, she just had to do something to keep her mind preoccupied for a moment or two. Besides, if she couldn't sleep, why the hell shouldn't she go wandering?
Abby couldn't help but wonder what would happen as soon as Susan released the fateful words, spreading the news that Doctor Abby Lockhart of the ER had been abducted. Strangely, she'd somehow imagined there would have been a large explosion of some sort, taking out at least a few rooms. It had somehow come to be that in her thoughts, she had imagined that words with such potency should be accompanied by a large, physical outpouring of some sort. Maybe it had been a simple case of imagining that the world sometimes stood still for you – or the fact that any sort of a reaction at all was better than waiting endlessly in silence… then, yet again, it seemed that time stood still for no man. Or woman.
Would there would be an uproar? Would there be people coming from offices floors away to stand with their fingers and noses pressed upon the glass, bearing gifts in sympathy, walking in uncomfortably to stand by her bedside and offer a few hasty words of well-wishing, before scooting away and breathing a sigh of relief as the door closed behind them, knowing that they had done their part? Was that how it would be?
Some part of her, albeit a disgruntled and guilty part of her, liked having the idea that somebody was thinking about you. She liked having had that little bit of sympathy from Susan. After all, she was only human – to know that someone would stand by you, let you cry and choke all over their clean white coat and even take the task of releasing to news to the public when you knew you never possibly could… it was nice. Yet a large part of her wished that the entire damn thing would just blow away. What she wouldn't have given to be able to wake up the next morning and come to work like an ordinary day, wasn't worth giving. Abby didn't mind lending her own life, she was used to it. But having someone else lend you theirs, was a staggering proposition. Abby didn't know who that woman had been, with the blonde highlights, the smudged eyeliner and the thin shoulders protruding from a hospital gown, but that woman had been caught in a weak moment.
Abby could only wonder. Was she crazy? Here she was, dressed half as a patient, standing awkwardly by herself in a hospital elevator while she waited for it to take her to goodness knows where. Well, she had ruled out two possibilities, at least – the roof, and the morgue. Some places were just too quiet.
It had been all too easy for her to hop out of bed, and to slip through the two adjoining traumas, which had been conveniently empty. It was a graveyard there, alright… a quiet time for emergencies. She wasn't sure how much longer it would last, until a fresh batch of patients would be wheeled in, but she'd been lucky for the moment. Only the rest of the hospital seemed to be buzzing with sound. Abby could have sworn that in the curtain area outside her room, there had been at least three puking kids whose stomachs never seemed to relent. And even though she'd never been a sympathy hurler, the sounds had been so nauseating she'd only just managed to keep herself from having a reason to use that silver medical dish… yet another reason to escape.
It had been easy to slip into an empty storage room, and to thank her lucky stars or whoever was there that there was at least something useful about everybody besides her being in the same place all at once. It was easier to build confidence about this brave new venture as she successfully found and slipped on a pair of clean scrubs beneath her gown. It had been oh so tempting to get rid of the gown completely, but she'd gritted her teeth and forced herself to keep it. She was still a patient, after all. Actually, she figured she was more half patient half Doctor, which gave her half the right to be sneaking around areas that were restricted to hospital personnel. So she was only being half bad.
The tricky part had been trying to slip through the elevator doors. It was the most dangerous element of the entire escapade… venturing out into open ground, without the safety of any storage closets or adjoining rooms. She felt like she was on an army raid of sorts, and as she didn't have all day to stand around pressing buttons and waiting for it to arrive, she'd hidden in storage and waited for someone to walk out.
Five minutes was all it had taken. The elevator doors had opened, yielding a tired, harried nurse hefting an impossibly large amount of bodily fluids beneath one arm. Shielding her face with her hand, Abby had prayed no one would recognise her, emerged from her hiding place and slipped quietly through the elevator doors before they'd shut. Success. She'd made it. She had successfully escaped the ER. And now, she was waiting. Waiting to go where, she didn't know, but waiting nonetheless.
It was a satisfying feeling in some ways, knowing something that no one else knew. It filled her with a strange sense of inner pride, that she had really disappeared without anyone's knowing. It meant that she was invisible, that she was free to come and go as she pleased, and that she really was alone – alone and free to wander, free to walk around the outskirts of life and just watch for awhile. Perhaps she could take her mind of her own troubles for a moment, if anything. But like it or not, that was one of the times when she was at her most comfortable. When she was alone. She knew herself better, then. Better then when another person was there to confuse her.
Didn't she?
The elevator suddenly slowed to a stop, and Abby felt the characteristic feeling of her stomach dropping right through the floor and then leaping back again. She looked across for the control panel, and found the light was only on the second floor button. Damn. She'd barely gotten anywhere and already, she'd stopped. Maybe her luck was starting to fail. Yes, there had always been the possibility that someone else would have to get into the elevator, but before she'd even gotten at least a few levels? Come on! Abby swallowed hard as the steel doors slid open, and putting on a brave face, she braced herself.
She prayed that it wasn't someone she knew.
Wether it was that God heard her, or her luck continued to hold, but when the elevator doors slid open it was only a tired looking med student who hopped in without so much as a glance her way. Abby could tell he was a student without a second take. The dark bags beneath his eyes, the suspicious fluid staining his smart, white business shirt and the thick notepad between his fingers all said 'I came completely unprepared, and I am now finding out what a furnace this place is. Give me a few more months, and either my nerves will be taking it a lot better, or I'll have pulled out completely. Either way, right now, I think I'm pretty much screwed.'
All the same, she didn't know wether he was going up or down, and decided that a backwards step would not suit her at all, so her stop would now be the second floor. Hey, at least it wasn't the ER. With a quick, forced smile, Abby bowed her head and padded out into the empty hallway. Padded, because all she wore on her feet were socks - She'd discovered them underneath the gurney as she'd been plotting her escape, but could only find one of her shoes. Even in her dishevelled, half-dressed, half-patient state, she'd decided that no shoes were better than one.
So Abby ambled awkwardly down an empty corridor, trying to pretend that she knew exactly where she was going, and knowing the only constant thing in her world to be the pad-padding of her black, ankle high socks. Her world seemed to be a little broken. Maybe her life had a stress fracture? It didn't feel like a clean break – their were definitely bits and pieces snapped here and there and little chunks floating about, lost in time and space. Abby stopped padding as she happened upon a floor directory, pinned neatly up to the wall beside a sign telling her there was to be no smoking in the corridors. Hmmm. Perhaps she could book herself in for an X-ray? A Cat Scan? No, definitely not. She knew what they'd say.
They'd say she was perfectly healthy.
Abby sniffed and continued padding morosely down the corridor, pausing now and then to glance through the doorways that had been left open. She had no idea what she was hoping to find, but for some reason, she continued to search anyway.
On a positive note, Abby thought, at least her feet weren't cold anymore. That was one thing.
---
"Kidnapped? Man, I can't believe it." Morris said, half to the group of residents gathered around the storage closet, and half to his last remaining mouthful of donut. The gathering of residents wasn't a planned one. They all stood awkwardly around storage, occasionally meeting one another's eyes with a quick, furtive glance or trying to look as though they were doing something remotely useful, something that they at least should have been paid for. It had just so happened that they'd all seemed to gravitate towards the one place, and nobody could explain why. Perhaps to bond together in a time of need – unlikely, considering the fact that the farthest each would have wished to 'bond' with the next was to pass off a horrible bumper of a case, or to sign out. And that didn't count for much quality time at all. Perhaps it could have been to discuss the most recent and shocking announcement – unlikely, again, due to the fact that the only discussing that seemed to have taken place so far was Morris' one sided conversation with his donut, and an occasional disapproving glance from Pratt, who was wondering more than ever that if someone like Morris could make it through to his residency, what kind of hole was the world falling into? Or perhaps it was just human instinct to group together in the wake of a disaster, when not one person seemed to know what else to do or say, especially towards the afflicted person or persons in question. Neela decided it was most likely the latter, as she tried to busy herself by arranging a row of bottles in order of their size while at the same time pretending not to notice the awkward silence. It was the latter in her case, anyhow.
"I mean, I really can't believe it." Morris said again, apparently taking no notice of the stony hush around him as he licked his fingers and wiped them on a paper towel. Ray, Neela, and even Pratt watched him in slight disgust, before Ray finally cleared his throat and raised an ominous eyebrow.
"Well, it is possible."
"Possible, yes, but I still can't believe it."
"Well believe it, man, 'cause it happened." Pratt interjected dryly, without glancing up from his chart for even a moment.
"But seriously, how often do we get kidnapping victims? I mean, when was the last time you treated one?"
Pratt paused momentarily, halting his perusal of a finished exam and honestly giving a little thought to the question. It was true, he couldn't remember when he'd last treated a kidnapping victim, but then again – they were a hospital. What was to be expected?
"I don't know," Pratt eventually relented, getting the edge in his tone that surfaced whenever he was uncomfortable, "But it's usually the cops who handle that unless they've been a victim of assault."
"So you think she might have been assaulted, too? I mean, if we had the chance-"
"No, but I don't think that we should start classing Abby as a patient-"
"But if we could just get another look, we could all come to a conc-"
"No!" Pratt cut in, frustration building. For the sake of all that was good… how had Morris lived through med school? "You heard Doctor Lewis."
Morris stared blankly.
"And you always follow orders?"
Pratt glowered. Sometimes, he swore, he felt like punching the man's lights out.
"No." Pratt had to say, in all honesty, as he gripped his pen tightly between his fingers and tried to retain the calm, controlled Doctor image. It was hard. "But this time, I do."
"How come we're all 'gathered here', then, huh? Somehow, I don't think it's to pick flowers." Morris cackled appreciatively at his own joke, and panned an arm across the small group – Ray sifting through a truckload of plastic gloves and Neela hesitating with a small, plastic bottle between her thumb and forefinger. Neither said a word. "Did Doctor Lewis honestly say anything about not talking about it?" Morris queried, voice implying perhaps 'wake up and smell the coffee, man!' "I mean, come on!" he spread his arms wide for emphasis, "Doctor Lockhart gets kidnapped. And you're telling me we shouldn't talk about it?"
Pratt shifted uncomfortably in his shoes, never breaking his gaze. Ray, appeared to be very interested all of a sudden in finding a pair of gloves just the right size, murmuring something about how they never made them for musicians, and Neela started arranging the bottles in order of label colour.
"Like I said, are you saying we shouldn't talk about it?"
Pratt exhaled noisily, folding his arms across his chest. He was cornered. He was floored. By the resident clown, of all people. Why?
"He's saying you shouldn't talk about a Doctor like that. Like she's some kind of medical oddity!" Neela suddenly burst from the storage room, her dark eyes flashing as a rapid hand movement inadvertently sent a bottle with a purple label smashing to the floor. Pratt, a little shocked that Neela had cut him off in the middle of a row with Morris, yet still thinking clearly enough to know that give or take a few words, that was something he damn well wished he'd said sooner… squared his gaze with Morris, and nodded his head.
"She's a Doctor of this hospital, she deserves her privacy, and our respect. She was kidnapped with a bloody gun. For God's sake, leave her alone!" Neela ranted, teeth gritting dangerously.
"Hey…" Morris suddenly twittered with a nervous laugh, eyeing Neela's balled fist like he expected it to connect with his face at any moment. "It's not like I ever said anything bad…"
Neela's eyes widened as she stared unblinkingly at Morris for a full five seconds. Then, without any warning whatsoever, she slammed the cabinet doors shut, seized a bottle from the counter and stormed past Morris out into the hallway. Morris followed her with his eyes, as the stomping of her shoes seemed to resound through the hallway.
When he remembered where he was, two raised eyebrows from Ray and a somewhat smugly satisfied look from Pratt prompted Morris to shrug, wonder out loud, "Was it something I said?", pause and briefly consider the effect his presence may have if he left in the same direction… and choose out of fear for his life to scuttle quickly the opposite way.
Watching the retreating white coat with a slightly amused expression on his face, Ray pocketed a few pairs of gloves smiled. "Go Neela."
Pratt shrugged, smiling quietly as he turned back the to details of his chart. He didn't mind so much being upstaged by a woman – not if it was Neela. Had he possessed the same clean, British, articulate sense, perhaps he would have said something similar a long time before.
Then again, he mused, some things seemed to go without saying.
---
Luka couldn't concentrate.
It wasn't that he was reading anything interesting. Quite the opposite… given any other time, a distraction of any sort would have been most welcome. The article he'd printed off not so long ago frowned up from his desk, teasing him, taunting him, the stark whiteness of the paper glaring ominously and giving him a splitting headache. 'Come on, read me!' It said. 'Drain me of my wealth of knowledge, take your mind off all your troubles. Off other people's troubles. Reeead me…'
The tall Croatian leaned forward, pressed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, and heaved a sigh. He supposed he should been fascinated, wrapt, or at the least - mildly interested. But somehow even he, Luka Kovac, could not bring himself to enjoy the fine art of wart treatment. It wasn't such an embarrassment, as he very well knew. He could wager that any other Doctor would have been bored. Any other Doctor, were they less kind than himself, would probably have ordered their student to summarise the content of the article and report back in point form, but he couldn't bring himself to do that, either. However, it was not his lack of fascination that worried him – something quite the opposite. His mind seemed to have a sudden penchant for straying into the past. Backwards into the not so recent past, to be precise. Backwards to barely a few hours into the past, to be very specific – to be exact, to visions of a fragile, shivering, near hysterical bundle he'd carried through the doors and straight across the emergency room floor.
Kidnapping? Who could have imagined! The thought hadn't even entered his mind as a possibility. And yet, a reality it now was – a terrifyingly real reality, at that. It was bad enough that his own small world had continued to move forward while in his mind, Abby's had ceased revolving. It was strange, the way that out of sight, meant out of mind… sure, he had wondered concerning her whereabouts. He had been a little worried as to why she would walk away and not return. He'd been concerned when they hadn't heard hide nor hair of her for hours, but he'd never imagined she'd been living through hell. He'd never stopped to think that her world had been moving forward, too. Far from blowing off smo- steam, somewhere, while he had been safe and sound she'd been looking down the barrel of a gun.
Luka shook his head a little as a shiver spiralled down his spine, and he trained his dark eyes intensely upon the first paragraph.
'Intralesional immunotherapy is a highly effective and safe method for treating any patient with a wart…'
Where exactly had he been when he'd head Susan's call from the ambulance bay? Ah, that's it, it had been an emergency of sorts. It was a lucky thing there'd been that wastepaper basket nearby, and exceptionally lucky it hadn't been the wire kind with all the holes, or the entire contents of that kid's stomach would have ended up all over curtain four. A lucky thing indeed. But there'd been a call for help, in a voice that he knew and recognised, so of course he'd handed the basket to the bewildered parent and answered the call immediately. And after failing to hand in his QA report on time, he felt he should do everything in his power to appease Susan.
He'd expected a difficult trauma. Perhaps a car crash or gunshot victim, something where he could be of use, instead of holding children's heads over buckets while they emptied last night's meal all at once. He'd expected something different, above all else. His expectation had proved correct.
Luka was sure it had been ten full second before his mind had managed to tell him that the sight he saw was real. Abby, sobbing and choking, cradled in Susan's arms, being rocked back and forth like a baby, with blood all down her front and Susan's voice, telling him to do something, anything.
What else could he do but shift into emergency mode? It was the way he'd been trained to act. But when he'd jumped in and lifted Abby straight from Susan's arms, he'd been surprised at how awkward she'd been to carry. He'd almost buckled as her hands had swung uselessly in the air and her head had hung limply over her chest, and she'd cried… such awful, draining, choking sobs, that he'd wished he had his hands free to cover his ears. Were it not for Susan's steady arm on his back, he could have lost his balance altogether and sent that precious bundle crashing to the concrete.
Then, regaining himself and barging through the doors, he'd been completely taken aback by Abby's lack of fight. The Abby that he knew, the one he'd worked alongside for so many years, would have demanded to be placed on her own two feet. She would perhaps have pummelled him in the chest, or if he'd continued to carry her, have leapt out of his arms without another question asked… but then, when she'd shrunken close and quivered uncontrollably, no coherence whatsoever in her mumbled gasps, the only thing that he could think to do in his astonished state was to keep moving forward. In any other circumstance, he may not have blown Neela away so hastily. In any other situation, he may have welcomed her help. But all he could do was to move forward, just as they had done while they'd been apart… now that he and Abby were face to face again, he would keep on moving forward.
Or, more specifically, now that she was shaking in his arms.
Luka sighed, rubbing his eyes. His desk lamp was burning brightly. Too brightly. Extending the nimble finger of a Doctor, Luka reached for the switch and decidedly flicked it off, hoping that the whiteness of the article might not glare so intensely at him. In the lessened light, the Doctor tried to bring his eyes into focus upon the text.
"Inter- Intra- Intralees-"
It was no use. Luka sighed, and flicked the lamp switch back on. He couldn't even read the first word, for goodness sake.
As soon as he'd set Abby down on top of a gurney, Luka's first impulse had been to speak to her.
"Abby? Abby? It's Luka –Susan and I are here now. You're at county, and it's almost midnight. Abby? Can you hear me? Can you tell us what happened to you?"
He spoke and he'd watched her – he'd watched her closely, the rise and fall of her chest that was too fast, the mess of blonde-brown hair splayed across the pillow, the bend of her knees still in the angle he'd set her down at, and the deep crimson of the stains on her scrubs. And he'd looked at her eyes… and realised that they weren't looking back at him, they were looking past him, watching for a person he couldn't even see. And then she'd practically screamed. "Please, no!" And he, Luka Kovac, in spite of all the things he'd known and understood… had been afraid. For a moment, her eyes had been wide. They'd been wide, deep, and full of fear – and then they'd flickered momentarily, her body had sagged, and she'd been fast asleep. Just like that.
Luka would have feared seriously for her health at that moment, had he not seen the steady rise and fall of her chest, or heard Susan's reassuring words as she placed her stethoscope back around her neck and exclaimed, "She's just sleeping."
There wasn't much more he could have done… yet still, he'd stood there, watching both women uncertainly. Susan, now that she was back on her own two feet as a Doctor with a patient, flitted about quickly and barked instructions.
"Can you get me a clean gown? We've got to get her out of these. I can't see any wounds…"
"Do you think it's her blood?" Luka had asked as he'd handed over a fresh, neatly folded gown.
"No, I can't see any flesh wounds, but she's covered in the stuff. Can you get me a blanket? Or two?"
Luka had reached into a side drawer, producing at least three plain, woolen blankets.
"Should we wake her up?"
Susan had paused momentarily, with one hand on her hip and the other pressed against her forehead. Luka had known the answer even before she'd even had to say it.
"No. Ok, you can leave now."
"What?"
"You can leave, Luka."
Luka had stood there for a full five seconds, gaping wide eyed as he'd calculated what he'd just been told. Had he been ordered to leave?
"Please go, Luka."
Luka listened to the slight tremor in Susan's voice, and as she'd started unfolding the gown he had suddenly understood why his presence was no longer needed.
Without another word, he'd turned around to leave. And that was that. Abby had been found in their ambulance bay covered with blood that didn't seem to belong to her, and he had no idea why. No one did. The only question that had been in his mind as he'd stepped through the doorway must have been the same question he saw written upon the faces of the crowd gathered at the admit desk. What had been done to her?
And now, they knew the answer. The Doctor shook his head suddenly, and furrowed his brow. He tried to bring the small, black print into focus once more.
'Intralesional immunotherapy is a highly effective and safe method for treating any patient with a wart…'
It was no use. He'd read the same paragraph five times already.
With a heavy sigh, Luka leaned back into his chair, gazing aimlessly at the ceiling.
When it came to friends, Luka knew he was one for jumping to conclusions. It was not like rape or assault had never been a possibility, quite the opposite. They were terrifyingly real possibilities. But where he'd come from, when you jumped to the wrong conclusions, they'd often been right. Or even worse than you could ever have imagined.
Luka couldn't make up his mind about which was worse: rape, assault or kidnapping. Each was against free will, each was as terrible a crime to humanity as the other, each committer was as deserving to die. But what had broken his heart, more than finding out the terrible deeds done to a friend, was the fact that all he'd been able to do was carry her to safety. Yet again, he was powerless against the forces of the world.
Luka understood the power of memories, all too well. On the worst of days, he sometimes wished he could erase his own. In the same manner, he wished he knew a way of erasing Abby's… so she'd never have any memory of the gun, or any of it. He knew her. Despite the bravado she often liked to play at, he knew her history – her tendencies, the fagility of her emotions. She was in for a long haul. And he wished he could prescribe a medicine, a treatment, something to make it easier.
And Sam, his beautiful Sam. What might happen to her? What would happen if she decided to go against instruction, as she was sometimes wont to do, and wait by herself in an empty ambulance bay? He couldn't bear to imagine.
At that very moment, as if the physical world was trying to match its actions against his mind, or if it was trying to break his heart further, Luka suddenly spied Sam approaching from the corner of his eyes. Her small form was striding forward, moving, like always, at such a fast pace that he wondered how it was physically possible for anybody but a nurse… Casually, Luka tried to put his head back down and appear as though he was doing something constructive. He focused his eyes on that infernal first paragraph once more. 'Intralesional immunotherapy-'
"Hey."
Luka looked up, not in the least surprised to see Sam standing with a hand casually rested atop his cluttered desk.
"Hey," he repeated, feeling a little awkward at using such slang with his accent. Even though he'd tried many times to quote sayings, to use expressions and americanisms, they often seemed to backfire. Luka was glad, however, when he saw Sam's warm smile. He would have done almost anything to make her smile, he hated to see worry lines streaking her forehead, but what made him even more happy was the fact that she knew just how to make him smile, too.
"How you doing?" Sam murmured, drawing a little closer. Absently, Luka reached a few fingers across for her hand and stroked it lightly.
"Ok." He replied. It wasn't entirely honest, but he satisfied himself with the fact that it wasn't entirely false, either. He was doing a lot better than Abby was, to be sure.
"How're you?"
"Ok," Sam mimicked his response, as she took a quick peek over the article sitting on his desk, "At least I'm not stuck reading about… warts."
Luka chuckled slightly, pushing the sheets of paper to the side.
"I was thinking about calling Alex." Sam released in a breath after a moment's silence. Luka nodded. "Then I remembered It was three o'clock in the morning, and he probably wouldn't be that appreciative if I, you know, did it now."
Luka smiled, waiting for Sam to go on. He knew the way she worked… the way she warmed up to a point, and that when she had something she wanted to say, he'd have to wait. Asking wasn't much use, eventually she'd say it on her own. So he watched her, now, as she glanced over her shoulder in a slightly distracted way, and as her fingers of her free had absently traced the edge of the desk. Eventually, she brought her gaze around to meet his and Luka listened as he restrained the urge to pull her into a tight embrace, then and there.
"I was just kind of worried, you know? Scared about what this might mean for the rest of us… for the ones we love…" Sam paused, her gaze flitting across the clutter of the desk. And then, with sudden decisiveness, she stepped forward and looked half pleadingly down into his eyes.
"You don't think it's selfish to be scared, do you? I mean," Sam hesitated, visibly searching for the right words, "Is there some way we can help her at all?"
"No, not really." Luka replied honestly, as he stood up and wrapped his arms gently around Sam. He loved the way she settled into his embrace, as if it was her home… he knew it was his.
"But if one of us had been there…" Sam's muffled voice murmured into his shirt, "…no one would have even made a play at trying to kidnap a person. I mean, what kind of idiot abducts a Doctor? What if – what if one of us had been there?"
"Hey, hey…" Luka murmured into a cluster of golden curls, completely forgetting his use of slang, and wishing he could have stayed that way forever. With the warmth of her form safe inside his arms, her head buried into his chest and her hands linked around his back as if she would never let go. "It's over. We can't change it now." He whispered softly into the space above her head, stroking the softness at the nape of her neck as if he was holding a distraught child. How priceless it was, the countless number of times during their short life he had held his own children so close. How terribly heart rending, yet priceless. And how priceless it was that he should be blessed with the chance to hold another person so close… another person whom he loved. Luka suddenly remembered the reason why he could not erase all his memories. How precious, if terrible, some of them were.
Luka suddenly heard a muffled chuckle, and Sam shifted her shoulders and craned her neck upwards to look at him. Despite the worry in her eyes, there was a smile playing on her lips, and he couldn't help but return it.
"Well, fat lot of good you are, aren't you?" Sam murmured, standing on her tip-toes to place a quick kiss on his cheek.
Luka grinned, but swallowed with a dry throat as Sam burrowed her head into his shirt again. It was a good while before he responded, but when he did, he wasn't quite sure what to say. Was he really useless? Would he lose Sam if he ever let her out of his sight again?
"I'm sorry." Luka apologised quietly, trying to contain a range of emotions in two such small words.
"Don't be." Was Sam's muffled response, and Luka planted a quick kiss amongst the cluster of curls, not caring if anybody was watching. If it was true that he'd managed to fit so many emotions into barely two words, then Sam had just about done the same thing.
---
Neela was furious. She couldn't remember when she'd last felt so mad, and she couldn't remember the last time she'd acted so rudely towards a superior… and to tell the truth, she honestly didn't care. She'd been fuming the entire length of Morris' spiel, and she was surprised she'd lasted as long as she had. There were a number of factors fuelling her anger, and Morris was only one of them, but he'd just tipped her over the edge.
She couldn't stand it anymore.
She was mad at Morris, she was mad at Ray, at Pratt, at Doctor Lewis, at Aster, at the entire medical universe… but most of all, she was mad at herself.
"Right, this is it." Neela muttered under her breath as she sped along the corridor, dodging patients, nurses and orderlies at lightning speed. She wasn't a Doctor for nothing, her reflexes were good.
This is it, she said to herself, you're going to see Abby. You should have done it hours ago, you bloody git, but what the hell? You're going now, and you're going to think of something to say. Something to say, and fast, because here comes exam two right now-
"Neela!"
Neela stopped dead in her tracks, fuming. She could practically feel the heat rising from her, and she was deadly sure that smoke was pouring out of her ears. She felt like a dragon. Like she was going to bite some poor, unsuspecting person's head of at any moment. She was tired, she was cranky, she was flaming mad… and now, of all times, someone wanted her. Neela spun around on the spot.
"What!" She snapped angrily, thinking that whoever was interrupting her now, better have a damn good reason.
It turned out to be Haleh, standing motionless in her floral scrubs, a wary look upon her face.
"Aster James, from exam three…"
"What about her?"
"She's gone."
Neela's jaw abruptly dropped.
"Gone!"
"Yes, gone!"
"She's not there?"
"No, she's gone."
Neela hurriedly closed the distance between her and Haleh, momentarily snapped out of her flaming dragon phase.
"Gone, as in left the hospital?"
"No, gone, as in left her gown folded neatly on top of the bed, and her backpack sitting on a chair."
"Dammit!" Neela cursed under her breath, striding as fast as she could to bridge the distance between her and exam three, and barging through the glass door.
As soon as Neela entered the room, she knew something wasn't right.
The first thing her eyes saw was the hospital gown folded neatly on top of the bed. That in itself was odd, because nobody ever folded a gown unless they were an orderly, and had been cleaning it – and this one still had tell-tale creases all over it. There was the backpack, sitting neatly on the chair beside the bed, and the bed itself, was completely empty.
Oh please, no. Not now, not now, not now.
"See, just like I told you." An out of breath Haleh suddenly appeared behind her, and Neela followed her first impulse, which was to call the girl's name.
"Aster?"
"Aster?" She called again, pulling back the curtains to the next bed, only to be met with the sight of a perturbed elderly woman hooked up to an IV.
"Do I look like a florist?" The old lady said and gave a stony glare.
Neela hurriedly tried to explain. "You didn't see a teenage girl leave this room at all, did you? Tall, pale, wearing jeans and a… a brown coloured t-shirt."
"Well, how am I supposed to know? The curtain was closed. And if you don't mind, I'd like to keep it like that."
"Dammit…" Neela cursed again quietly as she whipped the curtain closed and moaned.
Why did it feel as if they'd started an El route straight through her brain?
"Listen. Even though us nurses are never busy at all, I'll take a look around, but I can't promise much."
Neela turned a head back over her shoulder, already on her way out the door.
"…Thanks, Haleh."
With a last, lingering glance towards the empty bed, she hurriedly exited the room. "Why? Why? Please, no, please no, please, no…" she kept repeating over and over to herself like a mantra, as she ran from room to room and skirted the ER with her eyes. "How could I bloody lose a patient at this time of the morning?" No sign in curtain two. No tall, limping teenager with hair the colour of her shirt in curtain three, either. No results from four, from admit, from triage, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Then, out the corner of her eye, the dark, purple shirted figure of Doctor Pratt. Ohhh no. Not now. I don't want to talk to you now.
"Neela… what are you doing?" Pratt stood by her left elbow, arms folded across his chest and a quizzical look upon his face.
"I lost a patient." Neela intoned flatly, bluntly.
"How did that happen?"
If Pratt had been angry with her, Neela would have been fine. She could handle something like anger. It was straightforward, blunt… but the way Pratt has asked her that question, it sounded more like she was a little kid in whom he was very disappointed.
She couldn't stand being a disappointment, not even when she was so mad.
"Look, I just left the room, I went back, and she was.. gone. She's still in the hospital, I'm sure of it - I've looked everywhere, honestly, I have."
Pratt looked down at her, his arms still folded across his chest.
"Have you tried upstairs?"
Neela sighed, pressing a hand to her forehead. She swore there was now an interchange and an entire station in there, too.
"No, not yet."
"Well then quickly, Neela. We can't have lost patients wandering all over the place. Go go go, quick!"
Leaving her to her own devices, Pratt wandered away in the direction he'd appeared from.
So that's the thanks I get, thought Neela, for getting back at Morris for you. Well, that's the last time…
Suppressing another rising sigh, Neela adjusted the stethoscope around her neck and headed in the direction of the elevator. Just where could a seventeen year old girl with rheumatoid arthritis possibly go in a county hospital at three o'clock in the morning? As Neela hit the button about fifty times more than was necessary and waited outside the doors, she muttered under her breath, "How can I lose a teenager in a place like this?"