Dialog borrowed from Season 7's episodes 'Homecoming' and 'Mars Attacks'.
Abby stood in the doorway to the trauma room dumbfounded as she stared after Kerry Weaver.
'Your clerkship has been revoked by the registrar...late tuition notice...you are no longer insured to see patients..." she'd said. " "Turn your ID and lab coat in to Frank and leave." Her temper boiling inside, Abby turned on her heel and stalked angrily through the busy corridor toward triage waiting room She jerked her lab coat off and threw it at the admit desk.
"Hey, what's that for?" Frank cried as the coat hit him in the chest. Wordlessly, Abby headed toward the doors and bumped into Luka Kovac.
"Whoa," he said as he stopped. 'Whoa!"
"Sorry," she said without looking at him. "Sorry..."
"Abby, wait..." he said. "What's wrong? Abby?" She ignored him and strode through the ambulance bay toward the street. Where could he possibly be? Hands on her hips, Abby looked up and down the street with her mind racing. His office? Probably not. Too late in the afternoon. She wouldn't have the vaguest clue where to find him at Northwestern. No, she would go back to her apartment and get her car. He was a creature of habit. She was bound to find him someplace familiar.
She found him at the driving range. He was lining up his club to hit a ball when she strode up behind him and shoved him.
'You selfish son of a bitch," she cried. Richard was caught by surprise but turned and smiled a little when he saw her.
"Well, hello, Abby," he said.
"Is this fun for you or something?" she cried. "Or is it like an addiction? Do you wake up every morning and think 'how can I screw Abby today?" Richard shook his head incredulously.
"Okay, what's the problem?
"I just lost three months of med school - three months I can not make up!" she screeched. "THREE months! And that puts me exactly one year behind in my residency."
"This is about your tuition..." he said calmly and pulled a ball closer with his club.
"Yes, it's about my tution," she cried as she kicked the golf ball away from him.
"Calm down...I was going to call you. The IRS disallowed our home office deduction and they were going to hit us with a huge penalty..." She wasn't listening to him.
"I don't want to hear one more lie or lame excuse out of your arrogant... condescending...mouth! This was important to me and you knew it and you ruined it!" She kicked his bucket of balls and they bounced all over the tee off block.
"Could you be just a little more dramatic?" Richard sighed heavily.
"I put you through med school and you were supposed to put me through med school!"
"You didn't put me through med school," he said as he picked the balls up off the artificial green. "My student loans put me through med school..."
'I fed, clothed and sheltered you..." Her eyes rolled impatiently.
"...along with the loan for the house and your condo, two cars..." he was saying.
"And don't forget the apartment for the whore," she said. "Because I assume that you are cheating on the whore with another whore?"
"All right...just stop it." He straightened and looked around to see who was standing near.
"No," she said. 'You stop it!"
"I didn't make you unhappy and depressed and miserable," he said quietly. 'You did that all by yourself."
"Screw you, Richard"
"Right! Screw me...'
"Screw you!" Abby took his expensive clubs out of his expensive golf bag and threw them onto the green.
"You were the one who decided that you wanted more..."
"You cheating...spineless...spiteful ass..."
"You decided that you wanted to change your life... Are you done?"
"'No!" she cried. "You are in violation of our divorce agreement. I'm hiring a lawyer and I am getting my tuition money." She turned and stalked away.
"Oh..great!" Richard hollered after her. "Oh Abby! Why don't you do me a favor and take it all? Take the debt with you!"
"Shut up...jag off," she muttered as she strode to her car. She sat fuming in her car and watched as he gathered up his clubs and put them back into the bag. What was she going to do now? She glanced at her watch. Too late to call anyone but she was going to have to get back on the roster to take regular shifts at the hospital again. She was going to be needing the money soon.
Back at her apartment, Abby took a long soak in bathtub and tried to put the day out of her mind. The day? How about the last six months? She had loved her work. Loved being a med student. Loved the people she encountered...patients and personnel. Dr. Greene was her mentor. Luka Kovac, a friend. Sweet and helpful. And caring. She'd helped him work on a dead elderly patient for a little while so the husband wouldn't blame himself for not getting her to the hospital faster. There had been some horrible days...wonderful friends...testy situations. The stabbings. She had lost a friend when Lucy Knight died. Probably the very worst of it, though, was John Carter. Turning him in for using the drugs intended for patient care. She had agonized over that. And now everything that she loved, everything she had worked so hard for, was gone. Thanks to Richard.
She got out of the tub and wrapped herself in her warm chenille bathrobe and dried her hair. She wandered out into the livingroom and sat on the couch to go through her mail. Bills...bills...and more bills. She stopped for a moment and looked pensively at the heavy cream envelope that she had moved to the top. There was no return address. She knew what was inside. She had three more just like it stashed in her table drawer. They came pretty regularly...at the beginning of every other month. Five hundred dollars. One bill. No note. Abby hadn't spent the money because she fully intended to return it. She wasn't sure how to do it without hurting Richard's mother. She knew that Jacqueline saw it as the only way she could help her. Maybe make herself feel better about what Richard had done? Abby opened the envelope and fingered the crisp $500 dollar bill inside. So now she had two thousand dollars. Would that pay a lawyer's fees? She put the money back into the envelope and opened the drawer in the end table next to her. She lifted the papers inside and slid the envelope to the bottom of the pile with the others like it. She shut the drawer and then sighed heavily as she looked out the window at the rapidly darkening sky. She reached for one of the medical journals on the table. Might as well make good use of this time off.
It was three days before she was able to get back on the OB nurses' rotation schedule. She hadn't been there for 20 minutes when she took a page from the ER. She went looking for Dr. Weaver and found her in a supply room.
"Dr. Weaver, " she asked. "Did you page me?" Kerry Weaver smiled and handed her two glass blood receptacles.
"Yes...Abby!" she said. "I need those in exam room four." Abby was confused.
"Why am I here?"
"We're short nurses," Kerry said.
"I'm an OB nurse," she responded.
"Are you planning on going back to med school?" Kerry asked as she led Abby down the corridor.
"Yes...but..."
"You might as well work down here in the ER" she said. "You'll see more medicine down here that as a nurse than you will upstairs."
"But..." Abby shifted the glass bottles in her hands and stopped walking when Kerry turned around.
"I am offering you a learning opportunity that will put you way a head when you come back as a student," she said impatiently. Abby blinked as Dr. Weaver turned and walked away.
"Which is only going to take me about two more years..." Abby sighed heavily.
"It's really not so bad down here, Abby," Dr. Kovac said as he looked up from the charts he was reviewing. Abby grimaced.
"Oh, yeah?" she chortled. "Compared to what?" He shrugged and she shook her head.
What a shift. Someone who had tried plastic surgery with kitchen shears to create Dr. Spock ears. A biter...who bit her. Massive numbers of casualties - in costume - from the Sci Fi convention center after a stage collapse. She was helping Dr. Kovac by reluctantly sewing in a chest tube - a med student responsibility - when Dr. Weaver stepped into the trauma room. She'd taken the brunt of that exchange. Four Japanese businessmen who'd over done it a bit at a contaminated buffet. She was all over the place. Abby this and Abby that. "Abby can you"...and "Abby will you"...
She headed out to the ambulance bay for a much needed break and found Luka Kovac sitting on the bench. He looked up and smiled when he saw her.
"Hi," she said.
"Hey..." He slid over on the bench and made room for her.
"You're pretty popular today, eh?" Abby shook her head and settled on the bench next to him.
"Yeah," she chuckled. "What's that all about?" She took her stethoscope from around her neck and laid it across her knees. They both looked up at the sky for a second.
"I'm everybody's favorite nurse, " she said. "But that's the problem because as a med student I screwed up everything. Even things I could do with my eyes closed." She crossed her legs and shook her head slightly. Luka grinned and sighed.
"I think it's all up here," he said as he tapped his forehead. He looked at her for a moment and then tapped her crossed knee with his fist.
"You are a good nurse, Abby," he said. "But you would be a great doctor. It just takes a little...confidence." He held up his pinched fingers and smiled. She was looking at him as he spoke and getting more and more lost in those eyes. Darkly lashed and twinkling. Long dimples flashed in his cheeks as he spoke. She leaned forward and impulsively and quickly kissed his lips. Her eyes widened when she realized what she had done. Luka grinned shyly and looked down at his feet.
"Oh, my god...um...I'm sorry," she chuckled. Luka smiled and nodded.
"I think I'd better get back." Her face reddened with embarrassment as she stood up. She was almost glad to hear Chuny call her name.
"Uh...yeah," she said as she spun around.
"You have a code brown on Mr. Pozoni," Chuny said.
"Again?" Abby turned back and looked...everywhere except at him. "How much can a guy eat? Uh...I gotta go." She looked at him at last and laughed as she waved and went back inside.
"Talk to you later..."
"Bye," he said.
"Bye," she laughed.
Sheesh, Abby...what did you do? She was chastising herself for the rest of the shift. She felt like she was fourteen. She would never be able to work with him again. Or in the same room with him. Or next to him. Her entire body burned with embarrassment whenever she thought about what she had done. And he was being so sweet. So caring. So...so...hot. Sheesh.