"You have friends Peter ... and you need to stop standing in the hall."

There he was again though, standing in the hall looking in to the PICU in Schaumburg, Illinois.

And here he still hadn't solidified any relationships except for his marriage to Cleo.

This time it wasn't his infant son lying in the NICU at Cook County General Hospital, but his teenage son lying in the pediatric ICU surrounded by machines helping him to breath yet again.

And it wasn't his ex-girlfriend Carla, but his wife and daughter who were inside keeping vigil at Reese's bedside.

Yet he still felt the same guilt and déjà vu.

Now he also knew how Mark and Elizabeth must have felt...

Mark...

Peter could mentally picture his late friend and colleagues face ... the glasses and bald head and the smile that either put patients at ease or the frown that dissolved families to tears.

And suddenly, standing there looking at his son in the hospital years later a flood of memories came rushing through his head:

Carter-both his faults and his strengths and how far he'd come from his naive days as a medical student.

Susan-Her feuds with his consults and her issues with her sister and her niece.

Doug-His cowboy approach to medicine, as it was rumored to be referred to, but the way the pediatrician cared so deeply about his young patients. Peter almost wished Doug was the one treating Reese.

Mark-His positions of authority and his years of playing referee between Peter and the ER staff. And later the man's own difficulty with his elder daughter. And in the end his slow slip from life.

Carol-Her relationship with Doug was what he remember most about the nurse and what had happened to her 16 years before. And her own twin daughters birth.

Peter was desperately missing all that he used to know ... nostalgia was what it was called.

And he was being doused with it.

Slowly, and without Cleo or little Kiesha seeing him Peter walked down the hall to the doctor's lounge.

Once inside he dialed a number he'd long ago thought he'd forgotten.

Now was the time to go back ... now was the time he needed his friends...