CHAPTER TWO

- FLASHBACK -
POST-MORTEM
January 1997

Chicago saw a brutal winter that year. Wind chills of 40 to 50 below, and more snow than Gracie had seen in ages. That morning was like the rest of them — bitterly cold, grey, and ugly, and the snow fell thickly. Never before had it felt so reflective of a prior day's events. Indeed, that morning was utterly desolate, and Gracie found it appropriate for the life that had been lost.

She had ascended these tracks just like every other day, but it only hit her once she crossed the platform and stared out into the cold. He had died because of where she was standing. I heard he jumped. Or stumbled, she added to herself. But jumped was the predominant rumor floating around County. It was the kind of thing that made everyone step back and analyze their last conversation with Gant; every little nuance that could or could not shed light on what had happened. And even so, no one truly knew what happened. Just that he had been hit by a train.

Snowflakes kept collecting on her eyelashes, and it was while swiping them away from her eyes that she noticed him. Carter, standing on the edge, staring at the tracks. Gracie furrowed a brow. He had been affected by Gant's passing more than most.

The look on his face when they locked eyes should have been the first hint that today would not be like the other days. It would not be the kind of day where she would walk on past Carter, shoot him a glare or a snarky quip. It would not, because in that simple look she saw a glimmer of something that she had not seen there before. A soul.

"Do you think he…?"

And the question threw Gracie for a loop. She stared hard at him, as if not quite sure whether he was for real or not. It took a long minute for her to choke out, "I think he was in pain."

"But do you think he actually…?"

"Jumped?"

The silence felt cavernous, as if even the platform trembled from it. It felt strange to even say the word in this setting. Carter furrowed a brow. "I don't know."

"I think…" Gracie exhaled, and she could see her breath. "I think he needed a way out."

Carter was silent. He stared straight ahead, out at the tracks, as a train came rushing into the stop. He swallowed visibly, nodded, and stepped onto the El train without another word, and Gracie found herself staring after him in disbelief, almost missing the train when it prepared to take off again. Instead, she hung onto the handrail inside the car, zeroing in on a spot in the back of Carter's head, where he sat further up in the car. It was as if nothing more needed to be said.

She would never stumble upon the real question: why he cared what she thought.


EXODUS
February 1998

To say he suspected it would be a lie.

It was completely ordinary, the way she stood there, examining the damage this child had inflicted on his cornea — result of an adventure involving tinker toys and a rigged-up slingshot hurtling at great speed. Carter was taking part in his last week of an ophthalmology rotation, called to consult in the ER on this groundbreaking case. Gracie stood close behind him, inspecting his work with an abundance of interest. She had a mission in mind.

Why he does not catch on is beyond her.

"Will there be any permanent damage?" The mother asks, her worried tone more than overcompensating for the child's lack of agitation.

"I see no laceration," Carter said, leaning back on his stool and nearly catching Gracie off guard. She recovered quickly. "Just an abrasion of the cornea. It'll hurt for a while, but should heal just fine."

"But he'll be able to see?"

He got this expression on his face, this mildly amused, yet gently reassuring expression that had this tendency to drive her insane. He told the mother, "His vision will be fine." Gracie hopped out of Carter's way as he stood up, her task now complete. "I'm going to prescribe some antibiotic eye-drops, and Nurse Abrahams here will need to update his tetanus. But you, Mikey, will be just fine!" He ruffled the little boy's hair, and Gracie dutifully followed Carter out of the exam room. She kept her distance, waiting for the moment to drop.

At admit, she took the chart back from Carter once he was done with his notes, whistling innocently in her head. Carter is in such spirits that it does not take long for him to reach his hands down into the pockets of his lab coat.

Carter shouted, horrified, ripping his hands out of his pockets to find them covered in some sort of horrible, clear, mucousy-looking slime. It oozed off his fingers and dripped onto his nice leather shoes, and all the nurses at admit were doubled over with hysterical laughter; Gracie included.

"What the hell!"

Then he noticed the collection of empty SurgiLube packets Gracie had displayed on the counter. She was getting high fives, and giving him a sly smirk, and his eyes narrowed, and by God there was nothing more he wanted to do right then than throttle her. Instead, he pointed at her menacingly, and stalked away to wash his hands.

But it started later, with the plant workers.

They came in screaming, soaked in solvent, lugging with them a co-worker in respiratory distress. Gracie and Kerry Weaver were at his side immediately, trying to protect the man's airway while at the same time trying to protect their own from the overpowering smell of solvent. But it all got too hectic, too fast. Weaver was about to listen to the guy's lungs when she collapsed to the floor, unconscious, taken over by the fumes. Gracie was so caught up in the plant worker's sats that she could only watch as Carter, back in the department, stopped to help. He checked the plant worker over as Weaver started to seize, and a moment later he tore himself away from the patient to help support Weaver's airway.

And it all felt so ominous, like she was watching a movie. It was difficult to focus on the moment when so much of this felt like it was not happening. Gracie and Lily tried to handled the care of the plant worker as chaos erupted, waiting for a doctor to get back and order his treatment, but everyone just got swept up. Mats were put all over the floor to prevent the tracking of solvent, and a mad scramble was made to move patients away from the fumes, to close to paramedics, to do anything to rectify this situation at all.

"This is getting ridiculous," Gracie muttered to Lily, as she held an oxygen mask over the plant worker's face, checking his O2 level. He was gasping, his chest shuddering with every breath, and the three of them went relatively ignored as the rest of the ER milled frantically.

"Sats are down to eighty-two," Lily replied quietly.

Gracie said nothing for a moment, then decided, "I'm going to intubate," moving firmly and confidently as she gathered what was needed.

"Gracie—"

"Lily, fifteen of Etomidate and a hundred of succs, please," is all Lily received in reply. It was not like Gracie did not have the privilege to intubate, she had trained intensively in the area, but it was generally more acceptable to wait for a doctor.

Yet Lily pushed the drugs, and Gracie opened her laryngoscope, telling the gasping plant worker, "Manny, I know your wife's on her way, but I need to intubate you now. You're gonna feel kind of sleepy in a moment, and when you wake up, there'll be a tube in your mouth to help you breathe."

Manny was out less than a minute later, and it was when Gracie had the blade of the laryngoscope pushed past his tongue that Carter came sweeping by. "What are you doing?"

"I'm intubating this man," Gracie replied matter-of-factly, her tone absent as she spent her time focusing on properly placing the ET tube.

Carter forgot whatever he was doing and rushed to the bedside, tugging on latex gloves and hovering over Gracie as she, despite his reaction, expertly placed the ET tube. "You wait for a physician, Gracie, you know that!"

"I'm sorry, would you rather I let him go into arrest?"

He said nothing, visibly torn between anger and distraction — as if habit told him that this was what he should be focusing on, but the ongoing situation said otherwise. "Get ready to bag him," Gracie said, a second later announcing, "I'm in." She removed the laryngoscope, took her stethoscope from around her neck, and listened to Manny's lungs. Lily began to bag him.

"Oh, sure, let's all ignore policy—"

She ripped the device from her ears. "Lily, keep bagging, I'm going to get a vent, and you —" Gracie pointed at Carter, beginning to bustle away. "I'm not dealing with you right now."

"I'm not dealing with you, either!" He shouted after her. All he received was a rather dismissive wave in return before she completely disappeared from sight.

It seemed like ages later when the paramedics came storming in through the double doors, despite calls placed to close for trauma. Corday was with them, and with the two extra gurneys and the influx of people clogging the main hallway, it became noisier than ever before. Gracie was stuck behind one of the gurneys when Carter snapped, shoving his way to the front of the arguing crowd.

"Everybody shut up!" Carter yelled. "Everybody shut up!"

The silence was deafening.

"We are going to evacuate the entire ER," Carter announced authoritatively, despite how out of the blue this decision seemed. "Check every room. All contaminated patients and staff go to the ambulance bay right now."

Malik asked how to know if one was contaminated.

"If you've got a spot on your skin, if you've got a spot on your gurney, if you've got a spot on your clothes, go outside right now."

Gracie knew that meant she was contaminated. She had treated the plant worker. She was not thrilled to have to go out into the cold, but she obliged. With the arrival of Hazmat suits came decontamination, in the form of showering outdoors.

She shuddered as she stood under rushing water, soaked to the bone in her bra and panties, getting scrubbed down as she watched Carter rush around the ambulance bay. He had a newfound air of authority, but it was different this time. Every now and then she caught his eyes darting in her direction, as if he wanted to make sure of where she was situated at all times. She wouldn't think more of it if a feeling hadn't already been stirring.

She felt guilty.

For four years she had known Carter. For four years she had watched him go from a bumbling med student, to a surgical intern, straight into emergency medicine. For four years she had worked with him, argued with him, triumphed with him, and loathed him. And now it was as if he had transformed into a doctor. Right in front of her very eyes. It was disconcerting in the wildest way. And the guilt for her prank that afternoon swirled in her gut, in a way Gracie hated intensely. She felt guilty for that afternoon, but even more so for how they had treated each other.

She knew there was a word for this, she just could not put her finger on it.

Gracie changed into a new pair of scrubs and was off at the word go, her wet hair flapping in the wind as she rushed to get to the cafeteria before anything else could possibly go wrong. She heard briefly about an elevator being stuck between floors, but had no time to truly think about it. Her services were needed upstairs.

Hours later, after cafeteria codes and non-stop movement, after a return of triumph to the ER proper, Gracie found herself hit with a thud of realization on her way home. It was enough to stop her dead in her tracks in the middle of the sidewalk, mostly for the surprise of the feeling.

She respected him.