Abby barrelled into the lounge, muttering under her breath, cursing men in general, Carter in particular, and throwing a few insults about poor genes in Maggie's direction for good measure.

Five weeks late. It just didn't happen. Three weeks and she could bury herself in the denial that it was simply stress, high levels of stress from her boyfriend up and moving to the other side of the country. Four weeks, she went with shock, followed swiftly by ignoring the problem in the hope it'd go away. However five weeks and she'd been forced to move onto acceptance.

She opened her locker and throws the grocery bag inside. She might have bought the pregnancy test but it didn't mean she was going to rush to have her answer. She had a fair idea what it would be anyway. "Idiot." She decided to try and take some out some of her latent anger on her locker and slammed it shut.

"Something wrong?" She turned to see Luka hovering in the doorway. He'd picked a bad time to walk into the lounge but she held back from insulting him, and managed to bite out, "I'm fine."

"Problem with your locker then?" He hadn't moved and he was blocking her escape route.

"Something like that."

He stayed where he was and said, "Abby, I'm sorry to hear about you and Carter. You deserve to be happy."

She didn't agree with him, and judging by her recent run of bad luck neither does Karma. "Yeah, I need to get to work." She gestured past him towards the ER.

"Right." He did stand aside but as she passed him, he put a hand on her arm. "If you need to talk..." He trailed off, letting his hand drop back to his side.

"Thanks." She briefly considered taking him up on that. It might be a little awkward, but at least she knew he wouldn't jump to tell Carter the news. She was about to say something when she had this sudden vision of him dropping to one knee, asking her to marry him and raise the baby as his, so no, maybe not. "I'll be fine."

He nodded and opened the door for her. "If you change your mind, you know where I am."

She did but she can't see herself changing her mind anytime soon. It was her problem and she'd deal with it on her own, she did it last time and she could do so again.


It was the silence she remembered most about the last time. There was a silence that hung over the room, each woman desperately avoiding eye contact with everyone else. Abby closed her eyes and leant back in her chair. She'd rushed into this decision, she knows that. She'd just been worried she'd change her mind if she didn't go through with it straight away.

However she was being haunted by memories of last time, and it'd only gotten worse since stepping foot inside the waiting room. Last time she'd known it was the right decision. It had still nearly killed her, but it had been the right thing to do. She still believed that. She just wished she could be as sure this time. In theory it should be an easier choice. She'd be a single mom, she was barely sober, but it was Carter's child and that makes all the difference.

She still couldn't tell him though. He'd jump on a plane, come straight back to Chicago, throw away his fresh start, all because of her. She'd give him six months before he resented her for that and left again.

If she kept the baby, she'd have everybody at County to deal with. They might appear supportive, but there'd always be those whispers behind her back. And there was Susan, whom she suspects would immediately phone Carter and tell him everything.

Vaguely aware of someone calling her name, she opened her eyes and blinked, trying to focus. "Abigail Lockhart?"

She stood up, grabbed her purse and crossed the room towards where the nurse was waiting.

"Hi, I'm Amy. If you wanna follow me, we'll go through and get you ready."

Abby hesitated, and she makes her final decision. "I can't do this."

The nurse nodded. "Okay, come through and we can talk about it."

"No, I'm ok. I just need to go."

Other than a halfhearted attempt to call her back, the nurse made no real effort to stop her leaving.

She hurried down the corridor, keeping her eyes to the ground, and rounding a corner crashed straight into someone.

"Hey, take it easy!"

Not even looking up, Abby mumbled, "sorry", stepped to the side and then continued walking.

"Abby?"

And she'd done so well so far at not being spotted by anyone she knew. She paused, taking a moment to compose herself before turning around, and almost groaned when she found herself face to face with Dave Malucci. "Hey, Dave."

"Hey. How you doing?"

She managed a fake smile, but couldn't bring herself to simply run away. "I'm fine. You?"

"Yeah. I'm good."

There was an uncomfortable silence and Abby thought maybe she'd get away with a 'nice to see you' and then leave, but Dave seemed to have other ideas. "So…what brings you to Northwestern? Finally looking to escape County?"

"Sorry, Dave, I'm kinda in a hurry." She noticed an unreadable look in Malucci's eyes, but it was soon gone and he was back to the old Dr Dave.

He nodded. "Yeah, it's cool. Good to see you, Abby. You look after yourself."

"You too." As she started to walk away from him, she felt a little guilty for not being more friendly.

"Abby?"

She stopped again and turned around. "Yeah?"

"You maybe wanna go grab a cup of coffee?" He shrugged. "The cafeteria here serves stuff you can actually drink."

Abby studied him for a moment, surprised. "Erm…well."

"If you're busy, it's ok. Just thought you might like the chance to be seen in public with me again. I know you must miss me at County."

"Drinkable coffee, you say?" She doesn't exactly have any place to rush to and a distraction from her problems might actually do her some good.

"Yep. I'll even pay."

"In that case, I'm in."

"Knew you couldn't resist the Dr Dave charm." He walked beside her as they moved towards the elevator. "What woman can?"


"So, how is everyone at County?" Dave joined Abby at the table, sliding onto the chair opposite her. He passed her one of the cups of coffee. What he really wants to ask is what she was doing up in OB, but he doubts he'd get an answer, so he decided to start with the small talk.

She cradled the Styrofoam cup in her hands. "Mostly they're good. Lot of new faces though. Lot of people moved on."

He paused, debating whether to raise a depressing topic when she wasn't exactly in the happiest of moods to begin with but he risked it. "I heard about Dr Greene. He was a good guy." She nodded but didn't speak and he took it as a sign to change the subject. "I miss it sometimes, County. But it's not too bad here."

"You down in the ER?"

"Where else?"

"What took you up to OB? Checking on a patient?"

"Actually," he leaned closer to her, lowering his voice, "there's this hot doc up there who's..."

She cut him off. "I get the picture." She gingerly took a sip of coffee. "Okay, you were right, this isn't half bad."

He laughed. "You doubted me? I'm a man of my word. I make a point of never lying to a beautiful woman."

She shook her head. "Why do I have trouble believing that?" She took a longer drink this time, then leaned towards him, echoing his earlier whisper. "Anyway how come you're here having coffee with me when there's a hot doc you should be chasing?"

"She'll wait. I said I don't lie to women, not that I don't treat them badly." She raised an eyebrow but didn't comment. He took a drink, then returned the cup to the table. "Real reason though, you looked like you needed a friend, though I'm guessing you don't wanna talk about what you were doing up there?"

"Not really."

"That's cool." He leant back in his chair, locking his hands behind his head. "Hey, you'll never believe this patient we had downstairs earlier. Comes in complaining of chest pain, right? So I order a..."

"I'm pregnant."

She had said it a little louder than was necessary and as well as bringing his story to a abrupt stop, it'd also caused a halt to several conversations from surrounding tables, their occupants turning to stare at Abby and him.

Three nurses from the ER, crowding the next table break the silence by sniggering. Glaring at them only seems to make them laugh harder so he gave up. "I work with them," he explained.

"Oh god, I'm sorry." Abby spun to face them. "It's not his. He's not the father." She was struggling not to laugh herself.

Not surprisingly, they don't appear to believe her and he gave it two hours before the tale of how his womanizing ways had finally caught up with him spread right down to the morgue.

She turned back to Dave. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh, it's just..." She couldn't say anymore as she broke down in laughter.

He shrugged, chuckling himself now. "Don't worry bout it. At least I'll have an interesting shift tomorrow."

Eventually she regained her composure. "You know it actually felt good telling you that."

"Technically you told the whole room."

"True."

"So are we talking about this now?"

"No."

"I take it you were gonna get rid of it?"

"Didn't I just say we weren't talking about it?"

"Do I not even get to ask who the father is?"

"No."

"Is it Luka's?"

"No."

"I think it's Luka's."

"It's not Luka's!" She rolled her eyes and rested her head on the table. "God, I need a drink."

"That's probably not a good idea now you're having a baby."

"It wouldn't be a good idea even if I weren't." Keeping her voice down this time, she confessed, "I'm an alcoholic."

"Oh." He wasn't sure what he was supposed to say to that. "I didn't know that." He decided to risk asking another question. "How come I didn't know that?"

"It's not exactly something I go around shouting about."

"No, you only shout about being pregnant."

"Hey, I said I was sorry."

"Don't worry. You only did it so people would think you were lucky enough to have slept with me. Happens all the time. It's that Dr Dave charm, makes women go nuts." He grinned.

"So what went wrong with Weaver then?"

He took a minute to think about that, then shrugged. "She went nuts."