Disclaimer: I don't own ER. First of all I have to apologise for taking so long to update this, real life has reared its ugly ass over the last few weeks and I haven't really had the chance to write, and if I'm honest this chapter was causing me some problems. I'm not 100 happy with it, I couldn't get Greg at all, so much for those few days last months when I could hear the characters speaking their lines in my head, no such luck this time. Hope you enjoy, and reviews always welcome.
He couldn't bring himself to leave the comfort of the lounge, couldn't bear to tear himself away from the security and reassurance it offered him. As long as he stayed there he didn't have to face what was going on out there, didn't have to face up to what she'd done. So many emotions were doing battle within him, he was filled with anger that it had come to this, that'd she'd taken it this far, he was terrified that he'd never see her again, never have her in his life again. He wanted to shout, scream, cry, he even wanted to laugh that life could be this cruel, what the fuck had either of them done to deserve all that had happened in the last year. But most of all he felt the overwhelming need to love Neela the way he loved her now for the rest of their lives, and for her to return that love. That was what mattered the most. The feelings and emotions overwhelmed him, made it impossible for him to move from the couch.
'Ray' he tore himself from his thoughts 'we should get back in there'
She didn't ask if he was coming with her, it was taken as given that he would accompany her back through that door, and now that she'd put a stop to his introspective there was nothing else for him to do. He just had to make his body move, place one foot in front of the other, that technique that he'd had so much practise at this year. This was different though, physically and emotionally that had been hellish, but he'd never questioned the purpose, the fact that ultimately life would be easier, better for doing it, this time though he wasn't sure he'd be able to say the same. His future was unknown, yes, he knew from experience that that was always the case, but he'd never felt it more than now. The future that he wanted, had dreamt about, lay with Neela, and from what Abby had said her future was hanging by the thread; even if she physically made it through this, how would she be emotionally, couldn't she survive this and still be the woman he'd fallen in love with, or had that thing that made her Neela already died? He dreaded the answer, but hoped with everything he had for the opportunity to find out. That way she'd still be there, the other possibility wasn't worth considering.
As they approached the doors to Trauma 1 the thought that kept crossing his mind was that it had never been about these doors so why was he so scared about what lay inside. He'd thought about walking through the doors to the ER, of walking back to Neela, but he'd never thought that the doors to Trauma 1 would fill him with such dread. How many times in the past had he barged through them to deal with some trauma, to treat some patient? How many times had she been at his side while he was in there? How many times had he raised his eyes to see her standing there, dealing with said trauma, a serious, determined look on her face? How many times had she raised her eyes and met his in that moment and smiled? Never, in all those times, had he ever imagined that it would be those doors that he would have to walk through when he walked back to her.
He stopped short of the doors, the emotions he was feeling inside causing such conflict that he couldn't move any further for a moment.
Abby hovered beside him, looking at him in concern 'you okay?'
He dragged his eyes from the swing doors and looked at her, all his emotions laid bare for her to see. He exhaled 'yeah' but still made no effort to move.
She smiled up at him 'I should get back in there, are you coming?'
'Yeah' he breathed the words and consciously placed one foot in front of the other until he stepped inside the room. He looked around the room, not allowing his eyes to drop to the gurney in the middle of the floor as he hovered just inside the doorway. Despite the refurbishment it hadn't changed that much since he'd last been here, he was sure the walls used to be yellow but now they seemed to be a dull sage green but apart from that it seemed the same. He looked at one side and glimpsed Trauma 2 through the adjoining doors and for a second his mind flashed back to being in this room with Greg the night of the plane crash, administering chest compressions to some patient, he couldn't remember his name, whilst berating Greg for not knowing where Neela was. He'd made his feelings perfectly clear that day as he'd harangued his friend for losing contact with her, and he remembered the sheer relief that had washed over him when he'd seen her through those doors. He steeled himself before he pulled his thoughts back to the present day, he didn't feel that relief today, but he still wasn't ready to face the woman lying on the gurney.
As he edged forward he took in the signs of trauma, the floor slippery with blood, the paper sheeting thrown down to absorb it, the machinery all with its specific purpose none of which he could remember for the life of him at this moment. His eyes fell on the doctors in the room, as they went about their jobs, only Morris and Abby wearing their lab coats, Greg's tie askew, but what held his attention was the dark staining on his shirt.
It was only when he was standing alongside her feet that he finally allowed himself to look at her. He felt all the oxygen in his body rip from his chest, it was enough to send him figuratively to his knees, this wasn't Neela, not the Neela he knew, not the Neela who'd been on his mind constantly in the last few days, much longer if he would only admit it. Subconsciously he reached out a hand to touch her, letting it rest just above her ankle, feeling her body temperature through the blanket, reassuring and warm. It was the only thing that was reassuring. Now that he'd finally made eye contact he couldn't look anywhere else, couldn't remove his hand from her body, the warmth one of the few things registering in his mind, that and the tingling sensation he always got when he touched her, even now, even here, he could still feel that.
He watched his hand resting on her leg, feeling somewhat detached from it, as if it was someone else's hand, as if he was someone else, and this was happening to someone else. He finally allowed his gaze to travel up the bed, finally taking in the details he'd missed the first time. Her heavily bandaged arms lying at her sides, the blood stains still visible on the blankets; the structure of those arms, flesh barely holding the bones and muscles in place such was her weight loss, the same was true around her neck line, her beautiful face grey and hollow, her cheekbones pronounced in her sunken cheeks, the dark, dark shadows surrounding her eye sockets, the silky soft hair that he'd so often wanted to reach out and touch, lank and dirty.
He felt the unmistakable crash as his heart plummeted from its place in his chest to the pit of his stomach, the taste of the warm bile that lurked in his throat, suffocating his words and breath, the salty tears shining with their desire to leak from his eyes as he watched her lying there. Without breaking contact he moved up the bed, his hand continuing to touch her, craving the contact, the sounds fading, dying away until they were the only two people in the room, the only two people left in the world. He stood stroking her hair, gazing down at her face whilst every memory he ever had of her flashed before him. Somehow, despite everything that had happened to her, she was still the most beautiful woman in the world to him.
He wasn't sure how long he stood there, it was only when he heard Gates clear his throat that he looked up again. He was standing with one hand on the swing door, his face was heavy with stubble, and for the first time Ray noticed how drained he look, which made him question, only very slightly mind, his belief that Gates only had one use for Neela.
The other man finally spoke 'you don't need me in here. Just… let me know if there's any change' the door reverberated behind him as he left the room.
Ray looked around the room again, Morris and Sam were no longer there either, he wasn't sure how he'd missed all these comings and goings, obviously so absorbed in the woman in front of him 'How…' he hadn't realised until he tried to speak how tight his throat felt and how thick his tongue had become, he made another attempt to ask the question 'how is she?'
His mind wavered again, slipping back into the past to a time when he'd give anything to watch her sleep, when he took such pleasure in realising that she'd fallen asleep whilst they watched some horror movie, or even on occasion one of her chick flicks, her head curled against the arm of the couch or, if he was really lucky, his shoulder, her face softening as sleep overcame her, her chest gently rising and falling with every breath. On those nights when it was his shoulder she was using as a pillow, he would tenderly ease his fingers through her long, dark hair, much as he was now, praying that she didn't wake up, never had he imagined that someday he'd be praying that she did wake up.
'She's…' Greg looked across at Abby as if to ask how much she'd told him, how much he knew. She shrugged; indicating without words that she'd said very little 'she's got deep, horizontal, lacerations on both wrists…'
He found himself looking up in surprise, meeting the other doctor's gaze, searching for confirmation. Horizontal, but that made no sense. He knew how many patients they saw that cut that way, not understanding how the anatomy of the wrists worked, but Neela should have known, not better that wasn't the right word, but she should have known how to do it effectively.
'I know I don't get it either, I'm guessing we'll never know what was going through her head this afternoon. Crenshaw's managed to patch up the lacerations; she'd made quite a mess of it. She crashed twice, once in the rig, and once here, the second time she was down for about 15 minutes, right?' he looked at Abby for confirmation 'but we got her back in the end. She lost a lot of blood, but she's stable so we just have to wait now…' Greg sighed deeply, his face losing some of its composure 'I just… we should have got there sooner, if we had we could have stopped her'
It took a moment for Greg's last words to register in Ray's mind and then it was like holding a flame to a piece of tinder, the smallest spark ignited his temper into a roaring, overpowering blaze in his chest 'you weren't there? She was on her own? You LEFT her on her own?'
Greg sighed wearily 'Don't start, Ray. Things happened today, there was nothing we could do about it…'
'THINGS happened? Things happened so you left her alone. Even though you knew she was suic… even though you knew she was like this' he saw a similar spark in Greg's eyes but he couldn't make himself calm down, to step back from what surely was going to be a heated… discussion. If he analysed it deeply he knew why he was doing it, why he was picking a fight with Greg, he was trying to deflect some of the guilt and blame he was feeling onto someone else. If he hadn't missed that call…
A sneer appeared on Greg's face 'Fuck you, Ray. We're only human we've done our best for her. You can't fire of accusations that we haven't been looking after her. Do you know what it's like to have this person who is so dependent on you for everything, do you know what it's like to feed someone, to wash them, to dress them, even when they don't want you to, do you know what it was like in here today fighting to save her when I knew, we all knew, that she didn't want to be saved, do you? Because don't you dare judge us for what we've done over the last few months unless you, unless you've been there, we've done all we could…'
No he didn't know what it was like to have someone that dependent on you, to rely on you for everything but he sure as hell knew what it felt like to be on the other end of it, to be the dependent one, to not be capable of doing anything for yourself. For a while, when was in the depths of self pity he'd thought that was how it was going to be for the rest of his life.
Greg noticed a shadow pass across Ray's face, and he sighed internally. He'd done it again, taken his frustration out on Ray when the guy had been through enough already and didn't need him adding to it 'Look man, I'm sorry I don't meant to take this out on you, it, I just don't need someone saying we didn't do enough when I don't know what else we could have done. Today…' he sighed again 'today all of these things happened, I couldn't get out of work, Tony had to lea…'
'Might have guessed he was involved somehow. What happened, did he have a better offer? Another bed to warm?' he sneered.
Greg ignored him, continuing as if he hadn't said a word '…leave her as we had a major trauma and Moretti called everyone in, threatened his job if he didn't stay. Chaz said that he'd stay with her until I could get off, but he got called back in as well, but I didn't get that message until Moretti let us go'
Oh, he wasn't sure what to do with that information, it made him that think that they probably hadn't got his messages either, and he wasn't sure if he should volunteer that she'd tried to ring him that afternoon. He left it for the moment, though the idea of her being on her own and doing this made the salt water sting his eyes, how had it come to this, how come she'd got this bad? Before he even knew it the words had slipped out in a sigh 'how did it get to this?'
He saw Greg tense again and realised he hadn't phrased the question well 'I just said…'
He interrupted before he got too far 'no, not today, just, how come no one noticed that this was going on for so long?'
Greg shrugged, shaking his head, turning away as he busied himself 'I don't know man, I really don't know. She wasn't the same after her accident, after you left, but there were so many changes around the place that it was hard to tell, she just slipped away, we didn't go out much, you know, as a group, all too busy with our own stuff, and when we did she wasn't there. It wasn't until Dubenko pulled us up on it that I became aware that something was wrong' he suddenly lashed out at the wall, leaving a small dent where his hand had hit 'Damn it, I even told him that there was nothing wrong with her, that she'd tell me if there was, more fool me'
The room fell silent, neither Abby nor Ray knowing what to say in response to that.
'Why are you here Ray?' The subject change was instant.
'Here here? Or Chicago here?' he wasn't being deliberately dense, surely Abby had told Greg that he was back to work, though now that he thought about it they'd had made important things to discuss.
Greg shrugged again 'does it make a difference?'
His gaze was once again fixed on Neela's face, no it didn't make a difference, both questions held the same answer, he was here for her, to maybe, possibly make some dreams a reality. But he wasn't going to admit to that here, or to anyone other than himself 'you talked to Moretti for me, remember? I spoke to him afterwards he worked some things out so that I could come back, found me an apartment'
'So you're back here to work?'
'Yeah'
'And you didn't think to tell us you were coming back when we spoke to you?'
Ray found himself running a hand through his hair, scanning the room with his eyes before looking down at his feet, in the past he would have shuffled them as well, but that wasn't something he did these days; these were his nervous gestures, the things he did when he was unsure of himself or putting himself out there. He'd done every step of this nervous routine, right down to the shuffle, the night Neela moved out as he worked up the courage to tell her how he felt and here he was doing it again 'I didn't know if I could do it, it was one thing to say I wanted to come back, but actually to do it, I was scared. I'm not the same person I was when I was here before, I wasn't sure I could deal with it, if people would treat me differently because of what happened. I thought if I didn't say anything, if being back in Chicago was too hard, I could leave without having to admit I was a failure'
'But didn't you think it might have made a difference to Neela?' it was Abby that responded this time, asking the question he'd been asking himself all afternoon.
'I don't know, I thought about it, believe me I thought about it, but I didn't want to let her down if it didn't work out…' his voice trailed away.
'But if she'd known you were coming back now she might not have done this'
'I know what I just said, but I don't think it would have made any difference, Greg. You saw how she's been the last few days. I honestly don't think it would have stopped her, even if Ray had been standing in front of her trying to take the scalpel out of her hand, this was what she wanted'
It felt like Abby had just thrust that scalpel into his chest and was now gyrating it as it sliced and twisted in his heart 'she was that bag?' the words caught in his throat as he spoke.
Abby turned to face him, and he saw the stark honesty in her eyes and heard a softening in her voice 'yeah, she's been that bad'
'Abby's right, if I'm honest I don't think she'd have realised you were there'
Fuck, he blinked back the tears as he gazed unseeingly at Neela, he could have stopped her, if he'd got that message in time, if he'd rung her back, he, maybe, could have made a difference 'she called me' he hadn't intended to tell them yet, the words just slipping out, wanting to share the burden he was feeling with the others.
They looked at each other and then back at him 'what?' The words came out in tandem.
'She called me this afternoon, but I didn't hear it, I got the voicemail on my way here'
Abby's eyes were shining with moisture when they met his 'what…' she swallowed sharply, her voice thick with tears 'what did she say?'
A tear spilled down his face 'goodbye… she said goodbye'
0-0-0-0
It was like something was pulling me, dragging me to the surface, like I was waking from a deep sleep, but that couldn't be the case, could it? I shouldn't be waking up, should I? I could hear noise on the periphery not loud enough to make out specifics, just loud enough to know there was something there. If it had worked I shouldn't be able to hear noise should I? There was no sound once you were dead, so how could I still hear? Perhaps everything I'd ever learnt about death was wrong, perhaps there was an afterlife, an afterlife with quiet sounds, peaceful noise, that had to be it, didn't it?
But I was becoming more aware of the noises, the fog around my head slowly parting and they weren't the sounds of the afterlife, not how I was imagining it to be, I could hear voices, still indistinct, but voices all the same. I could hear mechanical sounds, a rhythmical beep, almost like a heartbeat, a sound that in my mind represented the presence of a heart beat. It couldn't be mine; surely it couldn't be mine, could it? My heart should have stopped on that bathroom floor. Perhaps, perhaps, but I couldn't come up with anything that it could be in the afterlife.
The voices were becoming clearer now, more individual, and more identifiable. Two male, one female. One with a southern lilt, a lilt I'd heard first thing in the morning, and last thing at night, but that couldn't be so, it couldn't be the case, I was dead, I'd finally, unequivocally ended things, hadn't I?
That was definitely… But why was he here? Ah, unless the afterlife was a place filled with all the people you treasured the most, that could answer it, couldn't it? And it did, until I slowly, torturously started to make out the individual words, sentences, the sentiments being exchanged and I knew that wasn't the case, I'd failed, as with everything else, I'd failed once again at taking my own life and I was going to have to face it again, face them again, face him again, because for some bizarre, incomprehensible, reason he'd returned to my world just as I was trying to leave it. Slowly painfully, excruciatingly I prised my eyes apart to meet the full impact of his shining, hazel green eyes gazing down at me. Eyes that I'd seen so many times when awake and when dreaming, colours I'd thought I'd said goodbye to as the blade slipped into my skin.
