Title: "Time Of Death"
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: PG-13 Character Death
Timeline: Season 6, episode "All In The Family"
Summary: Lucy Knight dies. Her last minutes.
Disclaimer: ER doesn't belong to me.
A/N: For all those who mourned Lucy's death.
TIME OF DEATH
Time of death, 2:56.
Elizabeth Corday: (reporting Lucy Knight's death).
'Tell me I'm not dying', she pleaded silently, 'tell me I'm gonna be okay. Please, tell me it's not over yet!'
The nurse bent over her, fixing some tubes in the life-sustaining device, and cast her a fake reassuring glance. 'They don't know for sure', Lucy realized with awe. 'They have absolutely no idea'.
She was paralyzed since the moment she felt something sharp and awfully painful plunge into her flesh. Then she sank on the floor, gasping for air, and every breath was suddenly so hard, so sharp, so painful. Tears splattered onto her face. Smeared with her own blood, she just lay there. Cheerful music rolled in the distance, wave after wave, fading and rising over and over again, and Lucy tried to adjust her breathing to that hectic rhythm just to stay aware of her own consciousness.
Her memory flicked back to the moment she entered the lounge. She couldn't recall what she had come there for. The man (it took her several minutes to recognize him as Sobriki, her schizophrenic patient) grabbed her and roared in her face: "You wanted to take my organs!" – and then he his her, and punched her, and stabbed her with a knife. And Lucy's world exploded in a horrible outburst of pain.
Another leap of memory – and she found herself in her dorm writing a letter to her mother. It went as follows:
"Dear Mom,
Just got assigned to the resident. His name is John Carter, and he's a wonderful doctor. You should have seen him at work. He really cares about his patients. He's a bit grumpy but I think he just needs a few hours of good sleep.
Moreover, the whole Chicago County staff if great! The nurses are very supportive. On my first day a doctor showed me the hospital. I'm really thankful for that excursion, though I didn't understand much of where to go or what to do…
Anyway, I'm beginning to enjoy all that fuss.
Hugs and kisses!
Yours,
Lucy."
She fell into some blackout. Her head was buzzing, the walls of the hospital enclosed her. She grew claustrophobic and very small, and the doctors around her became gigantic, and she wasn't sure at all they had been working to save her.
'Help me! I don't want to die! I'm so scared'.
Lucy got stuck somewhere between full consciousness and trance. She was cold and overheated at the same time and memories of her life danced around her in a wild whirlwind.
They had to open her ribcage…
Her heart beat faster, then it wasn't beating, then it started again, and she cried silently to herself, voices, and words, and images burning in her head, glued together by overwhelming terror.
"Lucy, we had to stick a tube in your throat", someone said. "So that you could breathe–". Flaming red hair. Was it Dr Corday? "But you can't speak now".
On the floor, in a puddle of her own blood, Lucy felt she was passing away. She tried to focus on something, just grip something out of this life to stay alive. Please, stay alive! 'Don't let me die! Here. Not like this!'
That bastard was still in the room, wasn't he?
No, no, Sobriki was just a poor man that needed medication. His friend described him as a completely safe, sane person. Oh God, she told Carter Sobriki required special attention but he was just too busy. Too busy, as always.
Lucy suppressed another raging wave of horror. Blurry images raced through her mind. And then the worst thing happened.
She heard somebody come in.
"Lucy?" Carter's voice called.
Lucy wheezed inaudibly. 'No, no, please, go away, get out of here right now!' But he was still by the door. She couldn't see him but she heard that he paused, and he bent down, and he was still looking for her because he was informed she should be here.
Everything slowed down. Lucy heard someone else move, and she wanted to scream, to warn Carter, but it was too late, it was inevitable, and she could stop it no more than she could stop sun from shining, than she could stop her own death. She heard Carter groan and collapse on his knees. Lying under the hospital bed, she saw his leg first, and then he fell down, and his white, horror-stricken face was revealed to her. He laid his eyes upon her and gasped in a fading voice: "Lucy…" But she could just lie there, staring at him, aware of their helplessness, and fade, and fade away, and fade away with each passing moment…
Her friend from Philadelphia once came to visit her in Chicago. The girls took a walk by the lake Michigan and chatted all day long just about anything that came in mind. Felicia was one of those girls that couldn't go a day without a boyfriend, and she strongly recommended Lucy to find someone.
"And do it quickly! Otherwise, all the good guys will have gone!" she jested.
"Very funny. Who, for example?"
"How about that cute resident of yours? What's his name again?"
"Carter?" Lucy shrieked. "You've gotta be kidding me! Once I thought there was something going on. A spark of infatuation, maybe… But naw! I mean, come on! He's so-o-o not my type".
Felicia shrugged. "So what?"
"He doesn't like Titanic. He called it a 'chick flick'". Lucy smiled. Gee, it sounded really stupid. "Besides, he's such a big nuisance".
"You do have the hots for him, don't you?" Felicia nudged her.
Lucy rolled her eyes.
Visions of a dying brain… Funny what pictures it picked at the very end. Lucy looked into Carter's eyes as they grew dimmer.
Reality washed over her in a typhoon of sounds.
"I can take the tube out if you like", said Dr Corday. "But don't try to speak".
Lucy blinked. Elizabeth performed the simple operation quickly and looked down on her.
"Thank you", Lucy whispered.
It's lethal. The word hammered frantically inside her skull. It's lethal. It's fatal. No salvation. It's some terrible lethal blood clot in there.
They took her somewhere. She just wished Carter was okay.
"Don't worry, Miss Knight", she heard Dr Romano's cocky voice. "We'll get you out. We have to after we've spent so much effort on your education here".
Lucy was willing to believe him. She held on to that as if her whole life depended on his words. At that moment it looked like it really did.
Stars looked down on her at the same time as she looked up at them. Stars were beautiful, breathtaking, captivating.
"Some patients get to you more than others, I know", Carter said back then. "But when you do everything that you can, sometimes even more than you thought you could, you've gotta walk away knowing you fought the good fight. You fought the good fight, Lucy. Tomorrow you'll fight another one".
She lowered her head on his shoulder. He hugged her. Even the stars burn out, she was thinking, looking at the glimmering infinity above her.
Lucy flatlined.
Then she was gone.
August 11, 2006