Okay...so I took a little liberty with the timing of things. I think Abby was still married when she began her ER rotation...and the divorce took place in the summer, not in the winter when this chapter takes place.. Also, I borrowed some dialog from the season 6 episode 'Abby Road'. Hellloooo Luka!

Court and County

It took months, sometimes years, to plan a wedding. You had to find the right minister and church, the perfect reception location, photographers, caterers...the perfect dress. Even the wedding ceremony could possibly last an hour...to begin a marriage. It took 20 minutes in front of a judge and the bang of a gavel to end one.

Just like that. Eight and a half years of her life were over. Good years? Some of them. Others...well... Abby did not hesitate for a second when her lawyer showed her where to sign the paperwork. She never once looked at Richard. He looked at her however. Just before he signed his name to the divorce decree, he scowled at her. She could feel it.

Abby knew that her lawyer wasn't really happy with the settlement she had agreed to. She didn't really want anything. She didn't contest his desire to keep the condo, his car, the furniture...even though her salary had paid for most of it. Whatever he wanted, she gave to him. All she wanted was her med school tuition. Which he fought tooth and nail. Said she could earn a reasonable living on her own while attending school but in the end, even his lawyer said it was not an unreasonable request. She had supported him through medical school, his internship and residency. And she was third year after all. It wasn't like it was going to last forever. Tomorrow she would start her first hospital rotation cycle as a medical student. She had waited a long time for this. And it was perfect timing. The end of one thing and the beginning of another.

Abby stood up from the courtroom table and turned around. Richard was huddled in the back with his dad and his lawyer. His mother stood off to the side a bit and was watching her. She smiled wistfully when their eyes met. Jacqueline raised her fingers to her lips, kissed them and then tipped them in Abby's direction. Abby smiled a little and nodded. She knew. She understood.

Outside the courthouse she took a deep breath and decided to walk the blocks to the el station. It wasn't that cold and her new place was just a short ride to the hospital from there. She has a whole day and night before she needed to report for her ER rotation. She hadn't really spent much time in that department but she had heard all of the hospital gossip about how crazy it could be. She was actually looking forward to it.

They were terribly shorthanded and the middle of an onslaught of flu victims when she arrived to report to the admit desk. The desk clerk brushed her off as she spoke on the phone with someone about a flu shot. Abby looked up as a nurse in familiar pink scrubs rounded the entry of the admit desk.

'Abby!" she said. "Did they send you down here?"

"Uh, yeah..."

"Ah...I was wondering when they were going to send us some help," she said. Abby was confused.

"Carol..." she said.

"Hathaway!" It suddenly came to her. Thanksgiving.

"Yeah, you were my OB nurse."

"Right! Twin girls...how are they doing?"

"Oh, just great," she said. "Sleeping through the night...just not at the same time." Abby shook her head and chuckled.

"I don't know how you do it."

"Well, it's not easy," she sighed. "And neither is managing 36 patients when you're short two nurses." They started down the hall dodging patients, med students, residents and doctors. All the while Carol kept a running diatribe of the treatment nurses got from med students and residents. Abby was beginning to get a little uncomfortable with the misunderstanding. She stepped aside as a gurney was pushed in from the door with a little boy in a snow suit.

"Can someone take this? We've been waiting for ten minutes. Todd Sullivan, five," the EMT said. "Took a nasty header while sledding. Mom's on her way."

"I lost my teeth," the little boy said as he held up a plastic jar.

"Aw sweetie, don't worry," Carol said as Abby glanced into his mouth. "I bet they were your baby teeth."

"He's avulsed his front incisors," Abby said quickly as she followed alongside the gurney. "He'll need a C-spine and a head CT."

"Yeah, if we can find a doc to order it," Carol sighed as she looked around.

"I can do it."

"What?" Carol stopped.

"Med students work up patients, right?" Abby said .

"Yeah."

"I'm a third year. I start my ER rotation today." Carol stopped and stared at her as Todd's gurney was pushed into an exam room.

"You're a med student?" Abby shifted and shrugged her shoulders.

"What can I say? I crossed over to the dark side." She ducked in to the exam room after her first patient and left Carol standing in the hall.

She put her winter coat in the call room and changed into her lab jacket. She was examining Todd's CT films when an attending entered the trauma room.

"And what do we have here?' he asked in a jovial, heavily accented voice.

"Sledding accident," Abby said as she turned away from the light board. "His facial films are clear and I paged an oral surgeon to come down and take a look."

"Should we update his tetanus?" Carol asked.

"He had one a year ago," Abby offered.

"I guess not," the attending said as he smiled a little at her. "By the way, I am Luka Kovac." Abby was dumbstruck for a second. Those eyes...

"Abby Lockhart. I'm a third year." She shook her head a bit and tugged nervously on the stethescope around her neck.

"Another new resident in the middle of the year?" he asked.

"Well, I'm a med student," she replied with a sigh.

"Oh..." He was smiling at her. Their eyes met and he grinned wider.

"Another half gram of ancef?" Carol interrupted.

"Oh...uh...Abby?" Dr. Kovac tipped his head and looked at her again.

"Yeah...sure. Sounds good," she said.

"Okay," he smiled. "Nice job." Abby watched him go and then turned back to the nurses across from her.

"Wow, " she said. "We never had doctors like that up in OB."

"Yeah, easy on the eyes, isn't he?" Haleh chuckled.

"I'll say," Abby laughed. "Is he single?"

"He doesn't talk about his personal life," Carol said flatly as she drew up the meds for Todd.

"Oooh...tall, dark, handsome and mysterious," Abby sighed as she started gathering up the sponges and papers covering the blanket on the gurney.

"What are you doing?"

"Cleaning up," she said.

"I got it," Carol said flatly.

"Don't be silly."

"No, really, I've got it," Carol insisted.

"Okay." Abby dropped the papers into the bowl on the bed and headed toward the door. She turned around

"Uh, Carol," she said. "I'd love to see some pictures of your girls later. "

"Sure..." Carol replied. Abby sighed as she left the room. The friendliness seemed to be gone. She headed back to the admit desk which seemed to have calmed a bit.

"Check out my fever," an intern in dark scrubs said as he snagged her arm. She pressed a hand to his forehead and then was pulled away by the ER department head.

"Eh, Malucci, leave her alone," Dr. Weaver said and pulled Abby away. "Abby?" Abby nodded.

"Aw, give me a break, Chief," he said.

"Yeah, yeah...suck it up," she said and led Abby toward another doctor.

"Abby Lockhart, third year...Mark Greene, attending," she said.

"We've met," Abby said as they shook hands.

"Okay, good...I'll see you tomorrow," Dr. Weaver sighed as she turned to leave. "That is if I live through the night..."

"So she wasn't hallucinating?" Dr. Greene asked.

"No, I'm a med student."

"And an OB nurse..."

"I take a shift occasionally," Abby said. "To pay the bills." He erased a patient's name from the white board.

"Well, welcome to the glory that is the ER," he said. "Anyone given you the three dollar tour?" Abby looked around in dismay and double stepped to keep up with him as he took her on a quick tour of the admit desk and procedures and then through the various treatment and trauma rooms. He was throwing out names as quickly as they walked. Malik, Yosh, Carter, Cleo... She was a bit dismayed and yet found it a bit comforting. Dr. Greene was obviously in control and a calm center in the midst of the ER havoc. They stopped in the treatment room where Todd was still waiting for the oral surgeon and she looked at his chart.

"Still hurting, Todd?" she asked.

"A little," he said.

"We gave him four of morphine," she said. "Can we give him two more?"

"Sure," Dr. Green said. "Are you sure you need this tour?"

"Can't hurt," Abby said with a smile. And they were off again.

It seemed like days before the shift was finished. Abby was exhausted. And frustrated. And feeling a bit overwhelmed. She may have gotten a wee bit over her head already. She headed up to the hospital roof and stood looking over the lights of night time Chicago for a long moment. She lit up a cigarette and leaned against the side of the wall and shook her head.

"Hi." Abby turned around. It was an intern from the ER.

"Hi."

"You're the new med student, right?"

"Yeah," she said. "Abby Lockhart."

"I'm Lucy," the intern said as she approached the wall. "Nice to meet you. So how was your first day?"

"Uh..." Abby grimaced. "Well, let me put it this way. I haven't had one of these in two years." She held up her cigarette. Lucy laughed.

"What happened?" she asked.

"It was more like what didn't happen," Abby sighed as she stamped her feet in the cold. "Up in OB, I would deliver a baby and deliver a baby and then deliver a baby. Today I was puked on, spit at, bit...and then I tricked a psychotic woman and...almost killed a guy." Lucy laughed again.

"That sounds about right," she said. "And fortunately in the ER, 'almost' doesn't count." She opened a battered metal lunch pail and picked out a few dollar bills and dropped them over the edge and into the street below.

"What are you doing?" Abby asked.

"Patient's last request," Lucy said. "Come on, toss some. Might make you feel better." Abby looked into the lunch box and tipped her head. She dropped some of the money into the wind.

"Shouldn't we say a prayer or something?"

"I don't think so," Lucy said. When the lunch box was empty they stood for a few minutes and just looked out over the city. They hurried back inside, out of the cold and headed toward the ER again. They walked out through the ambulance bay together and separated at the street. Lucy hailed a cab to head back to her student housing and Abby turned to the el tracks. There was a little bounce to her step again. It had been a long day. Tiring. And yet invigorating. Her medical career as a doctor was really beginning to happen.