A/N: Sorry it took so long... I had a bit of writer's block...grrr... I hope this is to your liking! Unconscious-Regret, I hope this is better than you expected!


Chapter #3 – The "No Eye Contact" Rule

Neela's POV:

What a horrid day. And to think that I still have to work today. I don't think that I slept a wink last night. I didn't think that it was possible for me to cry for so long. About five minutes after I couldn't see Ray at the curb any longer I realized that I had no where to stay. So I did the next best thing; I called Abby.

XxFlashbackxX

"Hello? Abby?"

"Yes, this is Abby."

"Oh, good it's you. Look…ummm… I need a favor."

"Favor? Well it's a good thing you're not Italian or I would think that you're going to ask me to kill someone for you. What's up?"

"I just moved out of Ray's apartment. Can I stay at your place for awhile? It won't be for long… I just need a place to stay for a week or two."

"Oh, no it's alright with me. I'm usually at Luka's so you'll have the place to yourself most of the time."

"Oh…sure. Alright, I'll see you in twenty minutes."

Click.

XxEnd FlashbackxX

When I got to Abby's I completely lost it. As I took my bags out the cab, the tears began to well up inside of me and I couldn't hold it in. One by one the tears fell and burred my vision. I surprised even myself that I got into Abby's apartment in one piece. When she opened the door she asked, "Neela, what happened?" And that was it for me. I let all the tears out and bawled into Abby's shoulder. Every once in awhile I'd hear Abby's soothing voice, "There, there now. It's alright, just let it all out." I always thought of Abby kind of like a mother-figure kind of friend to me. Every time I'm stuck in a rut, she's always there for me. No matter what the circumstances, she was right next to me, guiding me to the right decision. Maybe it was just the fact that she's pregnant. Either way, it meant loads to me.

All night I cried with Abby. Lucky her, she didn't have to work today.

"Gee Neela, what's with you? You look like you haven't slept a wink. Are you feeling okay?" Frank said as I walked through the double door. I felt like crap and really only wanted to get the day over with instead of answering Frank's question, but being the little polite person I was, I answered him.

"Yah, umm… I had a rough night last night that's all. Couldn't get to sleep. Probably had too much caffeine before I went to bed."

Frank looked at me as if he didn't believe me, but he probably had no other reason in mind as to why I feeling the way I was. I didn't matter to me; at the moment the only thing that mattered was that I had seen Ray yet. I knew that he had the same shift I did so it was time to follow my absolute special rule; the "No Eye Contact" rule. As long as I avoided him and kept myself from looking him in the eye, I'd be fine.

It was a good thing that I played football all those years when I was younger, because that made it easier to turn in the other direction whenever I saw Ray. He looked like a little boy who'd lost his puppy. His facial expression hasn't changed since I saw him shrinking from the cab. He looked so dreadful. His shoulder where slumped forward, hands shoved deep into his pockets, and each step was heavy and labored.

I only had to work with Ray once. It was another gang shooting. This kid was only 16. He was shot 12 times in the torso; poor thing didn't stand a chance. He was dead five minutes after arrival. He probably would've been DOA if it weren't for the fact that one of his buddies called 911 immediately, the shooting wasn't even five minutes away, and the ambulance just happened to be in the area. The EMT told us that his heart rate kept going up and down. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Almost like he knew he was going to die and had some power within him to fight death for five minutes. After that, he just gave up. Ray kept shouting to keep going and wouldn't stop the compressions even though everybody else told him that it was no use.

It was so weird seeing him like that. Pratt was the one known to do that, but Ray wasn't. He was so determined to keep the boy alive even though he was done for. Finally he stopped, pulled off his gloves, and with a final, "Happy now?" he harshly pushed open the door walking out of the room with all of us gaping after him.

"What got into him?" Luka questioned, nodding after him.

"He did seem a little high strung, didn't he?" Sam said, eyeing me with suspicion.

Soon after we walked out, having pronouncing the boy dead, our job was done. I wanted so badly to go see Ray and see what was up, but I knew that was a bad idea. Still, after half an hour I gave in and went to go see him, seeing as he hadn't shown up.

I found him on the roof.


Ray's POV:

I left knowing that everyone's eyes were on me. Just to add to the tension in the room I pushed open the doors with a bang. I don't know what got into me. It didn't really make any sense; why did I react the way I did? 98 of the time, I'd rather let someone else deal with an almost DOA person. But no, Neela was working with this patient. Somewhere inside of me the "I-got-to-prove-something-to-her" part of me took over, causing me to want to work with this patient. Not that I knew what it was that I need to prove to her. "Yeah, real smart Barnett... what on earth were you going to prove to her by trying to save an already dead person. He shouldn't have even been brought here in the first place. You shouldn't have been in there anyways." I took comfort in talking to myself. I just had to make sure that nobody else was there to here me. I wouldn't want to be recommended for an asylum at the moment.

After walking aimlessly around for a while, I deiced to go up to the roof. The roof is my favorite place to be in times like these when I needed to sort things out in my head. What I needed to do was figure out why I felt the way I did about Neela. She changed me a lot and caused me to fall for her, but now she's left me standing out in the cold hoping that my Neela- Neela, she never ever mine- would come back to me.

So why was it that I didn't want to see her? The whole time we worked together on that kid for those five minutes, I couldn't bring myself to look at her. This new Ray I've found in myself is really beginning to scare me. I'm not used to feeling this kind of emotion. For a while I was happy-jolly in love, now it's like all I have to do is think about Neela and it was water works all over again. It was like I'm becoming a chick or something. It's really pathetic. Since when did I ever wallow in self-pitty? "Since Neela left you last night.." It was true, I've cried a grand-total of three times since she left.

Looking over the street below me, I began to fight the tears again. "Come on Barnett... pull yourself together... this is stupid."

Screeech! Someone was here with me now. Curious as I was, I couldn't bring my self to turn around and see who it was.

"Ray...?" It was Neela. Why wasn't I surprised?

Slowly, I turned around to face her. I couldn't look at her, though.

"Sorry you had to see that... I haven't been myself lately." I said, looking at the ground.

"Damn it, Ray! Why won't you look at me? Do I have some kind of posion that if you look at me you'll die?"

Actually, she did have a posion with her. It was love. A forbidden love that if I looked at her I probably would die, because she wasn't and never will be mine. She was married and I couldn't be the reason if she were to be unfaithful. She's married to a soilder, for christ sake!

"Look I'm sorry, Neela. It's just that since you're married, and by looking at how things have been for the past couple weeks...," I looked her in the eye and took a breath. "I've never ever been jelous of another man, untill now. Micheal is truly a very lucky man." I put my hand on her shoulder for a second, looked at her one last time, and left her there standing there on the roof.


"I saw you face,

in a crowded place,

And I don't know what to do,

Cause I'll never be with you."

You're Beautiful, by James Blunt


A/N: So did you like it? It's my longest chapter yet! Please reveiw! My review list is really small so I'll take any review. Good or bad, it doesn't matter. So go right ahead and push the little butten! You'll get a cookie!