"Could you possibly be any later? I had to pick up two of Pratt's cases so he could leave and one of them needs a differential."

With her labcoat hanging over her arm, Kerry Weaver approached the admit desk and shot a glance towards the clock on the wall. Thirty minutes late. He never would have been angry about thirty minutes before. No, he had been the one to walk in late plenty of times in the past. Thirty minutes. An hour. Half a shift. Sometimes he hadn't even bothered to show up at all. That, as anyone in the ER could have attested to, had been over for ages. It was his turn to make a big deal out of thirty minutes. He had paid his dues; worked the overnights, the split shifts, the doubles. Each rite of passage had come and gone years before, and it had taken him all of that time afterwards to settle into the idea of being an attending, all until his position as chief in the ER. He never did show it. Still, he had never bothered to care much about two extra patients at the end of a shift, not before. Two was better than ten, was better than a full waiting room, better than getting stuck there for hours, and that meant it was a good day at work. That kind of optimism just wasn't there anymore. He seemed fairly well-adjusted. Seemed to have dealt with everything that had happened in a far less destructive manner than she had seen him deal with things in the past. Seemed happy, even. Something was still missing, though. Something had changed him. Changed inside of him. Contemplating it for a moment as she looked over at him, standing at the board and scrawling out his name in a blank slot, Kerry decided that she knew what it was. Abby was gone. Nothing was the same for him anymore. But he had moved on as best as he could, and he didn't want sympathy. He never wanted it from her, or anyone else. She knew that.

"Sandy's parents are out of town and the babysitter was late." she explained as she pulled on her labcoat. "You don't want to get snappy with me, Dr. Kovac, I'm having the weekend from hell."

"Well, that's not so bad, if you think about it. The day is only going to get worse." he said. A slight smile- at least his sense of humor was never lost. "Clean labcoat- you won't get through half an hour before someone throws up all over it."

"Don't remind me. Give me the rundown on the two you've got, I'll take them so you can get out of here. I don't want to hear you complaining about this later."

"Curtain one is Evelyn Sanders. Nausea, vomiting, she's got some distention. Looks like food poisoning, ultrasound was negative. It's been three hours and her labs aren't back yet, if you can believe that." he said, handing her the charts. "EMTs brought in the guy sitting in curtain three, auto versus pedestrian, the only problem is that the car wasn't moving. Don't ask, I have no idea. His neuro exam was clear but he's altered, so, waiting on Psych."

"Sounds like I got here just in time." she spoke rather unenthusiastically, flipped the pages. Silence between them. She looked up at him. Concern? No. Too close to sympathy. "So how long is this sabbatical of yours going to last, Kovac?"

"It's not a sabbatical, it's just two months. I probably won't even stay gone that long." He shrugged indifferently. Crossed his arms, looked down for a moment. "This place can drive you crazy. I haven't really taken a break in a long time."

"Well, I expect to see you back here in sixty days or less. We can't have Morris running this place. Now get out, so the rest of us can get to work."

"You never change, do you? I'll see you, Kerry."

Hurrying down the hall, he let the smile fade from his expression. He was tired of smiling. He was tired. The ER was nothing but too many memories, shoved into a tiny corner of the hospital. It was easy enough not to think of it all when he was away, but they were everywhere at County and they were suffocating him. Even the things he had once hung onto, when it all started to go downhill; the good memories, the better times he had shared with Abby. How many kisses had he stolen at the chart rack when they thought nobody had been looking? How many times had they snuck off to an empty room for just a minute alone, just a few quiet seconds together, clearing their heads of the mad rush outside the doors? In those moments, he had honestly believed that they had worked past all of the problems that had caused them to fall apart in the first place. Maybe they really had. They weren't prepared, though. They weren't ready for a baby, the NICU, the weeks and days and hours they had counted. The seconds.

He had counted the seconds, sitting there, looking down at his son in the incubator, watching the slow decline as he got sicker, briefly better, only to get sick again. The seconds of the shifts he had taken, until he could be there with Joe; seconds with Abby, barely able to keep telling her that things were going to work out. It had hurt too much knowing the emptiness, the guilt. The ache that would never go away, if they lost their son. It was a feeling too consuming, too plaguing. But at the same time, vacant. Cold. Almost as if, in truth, he had felt nothing at all. At the time, he couldn't decide whether it would be worse for her, never having another chance to have a child, or for him, having lost before. No matter how happy he had been, he could remember it all so vividly if he allowed himself to do so, and he couldn't imagine feeling that way again. He couldn't imagine watching her feel that way. Her. He couldn't stop thinking of her and how he had, for that brief time, felt like things had finally fallen into place.

For a moment or two he stood there in the lounge. Looking around at the chairs, worse for the wear, and the counter top in it's perpetual disarray. It had grown familiar long before, but he wasn't sure that he would miss it when he finally left that place for good. When Abby had left, he had cleaned out her locker. Neela had offered to do it. If he wanted her to, she had said, it would be no problem taking care of it. But he was already there. The only one who knew the combination. It was almost as if she had died. The way everyone apologized, stopped him in the hall to ask how he was doing. Left the room when he walked into the lounge and turned the numbers on the lock. A sweater and a shirt or two. An extra toothbrush, countless papers. He had packed her belongings into a box that had once held suture kits, methodically arranging and folding, carefully placing each item in. The entire time, he told himself that he should just toss it into the trash. But he kept it instead, even as he tried to forget it all. Held onto every last reminder, believing that there was some chance she might be back. Reminders he would grow tired of and pack away into a hallway closet, on a night when he just couldn't sleep. How easy it would have been to do the same with his things. Just pack it all into a box and never look back. Just leave. If she could do it, he certainly could. They both knew that he had always been the stronger one. That was why he didn't. It was why he stayed. And he was fine on most days. He was happy enough on most days. It just wasn't one of them. Pushing his locker shut, he took one more glance around the room before making his way out. Maybe there would be no looking back after all.