Chapter Text
It had been a day full of mind-numbing, sick stupidity, and all he could think about was how much he wanted it to be over.
Sign the last chart. Toss it to the new guy at the front desk, that ex-cop, who looked like he wanted to say something but wisely held his tongue. Doctors' lounge reeking of Lysol; maybe the cleaners had been through early. He shrugged into his coat at the lockers and slammed the door. This country and its fucking guns. Their solution to all the problems caused by men with guns was to bring in more men with more guns. He'd seen enough of it back home, thanks. At least this kid made it. Couldn't say the same for the other one. Should he stop to say good-bye to the other attendings, or just get the hell out? Impatience won. He shouldered his way out the door, brushing past an exhausted Malik who was clearly on the hunt for more coffee.
Kerry was flipping through a thick stack of forms at the board, looking worried. Ordinarily he'd ask, and he probably should anyway, but the hell with it. Whatever she was dealing with, it was none of his business. He mumbled a peremptory good-night. She nodded at him, still distracted. Anspaugh was at the end of the hall talking to Jing-mei, who was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed and not looking at him. Mark was nowhere to be seen. Something was clearly going on; he'd overheard Yosh and Lily whispering about some unspecified dispute that Carter had had with Mark, and he'd passed a stone-faced Carter with a stack of charts that afternoon, conspicuously not seeing patients. Cleo didn't know what was going on either. Nobody seemed interested in looping them in, and at the moment he didn't much care. The day's quota of pointless bullshit had already been reached. Enough already.
Out the door and into a surprisingly cold night. Lake Michigan was in its one of its moods.
He missed Danijela horribly even on the good days; on the bad ones, it was almost more than he could take. His mind flashed back to his internship and the 18-year old MVA who became the first patient he ever lost as a physician. The attending was yanked into another trauma, and left him to tell the family. All of his training went out the window when he saw the parents. His stammering left the mother screaming at him to tell them what had happened. A disgusted nurse finally stepped in and told him to go do paperwork while she handled the family. He scuttled off, as much as someone of his size could.
Danijela heard about it from the wife of another intern, and met him at the door to the apartment when he came home. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her neck; he still remembers the scent of her perfume that night. She took his hand and brought him to their tiny kitchen, and sat him at the table with a bowl of hot gulaš and bread. Jasna had left him a crayon drawing of flowers and dogs to make him feel better.
("Cats, actually," Danijela corrected him as she set butter on the table. Jasna missed no opportunity to remind her parents of the injustice of not having a pet.)
She'd tried to reassure him, but he shook it off. "It was never going to be good, but I didn't make it any better."
"I don't think there's a good way to find out that someone you love has died." She hugged him from behind.
He closed his eyes, feeling her cheek resting on his neck. "I made it worse."
"Maybe, but their son died, Luka. It couldn't really get any worse. They were scared and didn't know what was going on, and they didn't understand what you were trying to tell them. You can get better at that, but just remember that their reaction was never really about you."
They fell asleep on the couch later watching whatever, he didn't remember, and they only got three channels on that shitty TV anyway. With his wife curled against him and the children asleep in the other room, they could have been watching static and he wouldn't have cared.
He had to stop thinking about it; it was just making him even angrier. He couldn't fathom anyone who had a chance to save their child, or save anyone who should have been important to them, and just ... didn't. That miserable bitch who'd thrown her child's life away for her own convenience was almost too stupid to be worth hating, but he did it anyway.
He turned his collar up and headed for the El station, hearing a train pull away as he did. Of course. He was in for a cold spell on the bench.
Not that it mattered. No one was waiting for him to come home anymore.
Someone was crying at the far end of the platform.
He looked: Abby Lockhart.
She'd been shadowing Mark and Kerry that day, and he hadn't seen much of her. He didn't often have her as a med student. Whenever Abby wasn't following Mark, Kerry usually assigned her to Malucci, perhaps out of the insane hope that it'd get him to take his job more seriously. The last time Luka had talked to her for any serious length of time was the night Lucy died.
What he'd seen of her was still promising. She had the usual slip-ups he'd come to expect from med students, but he'd been impressed by some of her catches. She was a fine diagnostician, and managed patients with the skill of an experienced nurse. The attendings all agreed she'd be an excellent doctor, but needed to learn how to delegate. She was awkward and timid making any request of the nurses, and some of the lazier ones were taking advantage of her. Haleh, always the final word on which med students were worth the trouble, liked her just fine.
Though Carol, who'd previously had nothing but praise for Abby as an OB nurse, had been strangely hostile. He'd been meaning to ask her about it, but supposed he'd never find out now.
Carol. Don't think about her either.
Given the time difference, she was probably enjoying dinner in Seattle now with that asshole who'd walked out on her and the girls, and --
Don't think about her.
"Abby?"
She looked up, eyes red. "Dr. Kovač?"
"Are you okay?"
She wiped her face. "Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, I didn't ... I didn't mean for you to have to come over, and ... " She gestured lamely. "Sorry."
"It's okay. Did something happen?" He sat next to her, racking his brain. He couldn't remember seeing any unusually hostile or difficult patients on the board (apart from the one he'd been dealing with, and she hadn't been part of that at all). But then he remembered returning a chart at the front desk and seeing Abby, Kerry, and Mark in the lounge. All three were obviously tense; Kerry and Mark were leafing through a chart and talking, while Abby stared at the table.
Had she made a mistake? No, he'd have heard about that; the nurses took a savage pleasure in the med students' fuck-ups.
"Uh, yeah," she said. "It's -- I'm probably upset over nothing, though."
"It's not nothing."
They were quiet as an express train rattled past, and the wind whipped the platform behind it. "Um." She sniffled. "I don't know if you heard about what happened today."
"Not really. I had a difficult patient to deal with this afternoon."
"I'm not sure if it's okay for me to tell you."
"If it makes you feel any better, I'll probably hear about it at the attendings' meeting anyway. Or I can just say I heard it from the nurses, not you."
She made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a hiccup. "I guess that's true."
The wind was picking up again. She was clearly upset and needed to talk to someone. That was excuse enough on its own, but that night, he would have done anything, anything, to avoid going back to a silent hotel room with lukewarm takeout. He stood up. "Do you want to get something to eat? My treat."
She shook her head. "You're probably tired and want to go home. I didn't mean to hold you up."
"I had a pretty bad day," he said, with painful honesty. "Maybe we both need to talk to someone."
He offered his hand, and after a moment, she took it.
His first instinct was to head back down the stairs and go to Doc Magoo's, but she demurred; she didn't want to go anywhere that County employees were likely to frequent. He offered a nearby bar; she hesitated, and then suggested a diner a few blocks away. His curiosity rose as she picked a shabby booth in the most distant corner. Whatever had happened, she really didn't want to be overheard. It was still a relief to be somewhere warm and quiet.
They ordered sandwiches and coffee. Strangely, Abby was the first to break the silence, though not with a subject he particularly wanted to discuss. “I heard you had a fight with Dr. Benton.”
“I did.”
“What was it about?” When he paused, she said hastily, “It's okay if you don't want to talk about it. I didn't mean to pry.”
“No, it's okay. We just, uh." How could he put this? "We had a disagreement over triage."
“At the shooting?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you have patients who were equally urgent?”
Luka was aware that, as an attending discussing the case with a med student, he was professionally obligated to acknowledge that he broke protocol. He was reasonably sure that Because fuck the gunman, that's why wasn't an answer that would get her through the USMLE. “Not exactly. I wanted to take the boy with the gunshot wound in the chopper, and he wanted to take the gunman. I already had my patient loaded and thought it would be better for all of us to get moving rather than spend time transferring them."
“I heard the gunman didn't make it.”
“He didn't. They went to Mercy in the ambulance. He coded on the way and they couldn't get him back.”
“Oh.” She furrowed her brow. “But I thought your kid was in pretty bad shape? Didn't the bullet end up in his heart? I guess -- I don't get why Dr. Benton would be upset about that.”
“The bullet was probably still migrating while I assessed him. He had a pulseless leg and I didn't like how he looked, but he wasn't in immediate danger. You have hours to revascularize, and he wouldn't have lost it. Probably not, anyway." He sipped his coffee, which was much better than he'd expected it to be. "Benton was right. The gunman was more critical.”
She looked at him, clearly trying to decide how to respond. But -- nice person that she was -- she was still giving him an out. “Maybe the boy was more critical at that moment?”
“No. It was the wrong choice medically." He leaned forward and glared at her with mock ferocity. "And your preceptors will flunk you if you ever do what I did, so don't."
She was amused, at least. "So why'd you do it?"
“County's the closest pediatric trauma center, and the kid was bad enough that no one was going to second-guess a medevac. But the real reason was I just didn't want to take the son of a bitch who shot up a school."
To his relief, she smiled. “Well, yeah. I'm not sure I'd want to tell his parents that we lost their kid, but saved the guy who shot him."
“Exactly. But don't ever write that on a test, yeah? I'm not supposed to say that to you. I'm supposed to set a good example.”
"I don't know about that. One of the nurses told me you impersonated a priest once.”
He suppressed a groan. “It was Haleh, wasn't it?”
“No, but I wouldn't tell you anyway.”
“You're not a nurse anymore. You don't have to do that … that, what do you call it? That rule of silence thing, that solidarity with the nurses.”
“Code of silence. And I never said I wasn't a nurse anymore.” She leaned back, grinning. "I still am."
“Well, you better get ready to switch,” he said, enjoying this. “Whose side are you on, Doctor Lockhart?”
Her smile grew. He hadn't seen her smile much (not that there was much to smile about in an overcrowded inner-city ED), but it was like seeing the sun break through the clouds. God, she was pretty.
And married, he reminded himself. (Carol had told him.)
And also a med student.
Twice over a vastly inappropriate subject for his affections.
Don't think.
Their sandwiches arrived: A meatball sub for him and a turkey club for her. Like the coffee, the food was surprisingly good. She told him that she'd come to the diner on occasion with med school classmates. He'd wondered why she'd been willing to walk so far on a cold night.
As they ate, she told him about the rugby player she'd seen while shadowing Mark that afternoon. They'd assumed the bluish discoloration on his chest was dye from his new jersey, and probably most of it was, but realized almost too late that there was an additional, less innocent cause.
"I just wish he'd said something. But I think he felt like it wouldn't be manly to complain about a sports injury."
"Some patients are like that. It varies a lot by cultural background too. You always have to be careful with self-reported pain assessment."
"Dr. Weaver told me once if I ever get an older guy who says 'It's probably nothing, but my wife made me come in,' I should automatically assume he's dying."
"She's right. It's why married men live longer; their wives nag them into going to the doctor."
She side-eyed him as she chased a stray tomato around her plate. "Unmarried women live longer than married ones."
"I like to think we make it worth your while."
"Sometimes I wonder."
This was getting dangerously close to flirting with a married woman, so he changed the subject. "I had a case a little bit like that once," he said, spearing a meatball that had fallen out of his sandwich. "Your rugby player, I mean. A mom brought in her toddler; he was covered with this weird purple rash all over his chest and the bottom of his face. It didn't look like anything I'd ever seen. I was going crazy, you know, getting all the derm textbooks out to try to figure out what it was, and then when I lifted him onto the exam table, the 'rash' came off on my hands."
"What was it?"
"Some kind of dye on a new toy he'd just gotten. He'd fallen asleep with it." He pantomimed hugging a stuffed animal. "And when he woke up it was all over him. So his mom freaked out, and then he freaked out, and then Luka Kovač freaked out. But in the end I prescribed a bath."
Abby was giggling. "Oh, God, I shouldn't laugh. That poor mom."
"She was embarrassed. She shouldn't have been, though. After you've seen child neglect cases come in, it's hard to get annoyed with a parent who cares."
"Hopefully it's easier for her to laugh about now." She paused. "Did you know Malucci had a guy who put a screw in his leg today?"
"Like ... a medical screw? In Malucci or the patient?"
"A wood screw, and it was the patient. He was working with a power drill and, well, you know. He wouldn't take any pain meds either. Malucci had to go at him with a screwdriver to get it out."
"A perfect patient for Malucci. I always thought he should've gone into ortho."
She clearly knew the stereotype and was giggling again. Still, they'd come here for a reason, and it wasn't to talk about Malucci's day. Luka was also pretty sure she hadn't been crying on the El platform over the rugby player.
“Abby,” he said carefully. “If you don't mind my asking, what were you upset about earlier? Is everything okay?"
She looked away, suddenly subdued. "I actually don't know if things are okay or not. I just ... I know you were out earlier with the shooting, and then you had the stabbing on top of whoever else you were handling. I'm not sure how much you heard."
“Today was busy. And I'm not really up to speed on County gossip.” He was reliably hours, or sometimes even days, behind everyone else on the rumor mill. It shouldn't hurt, but it did. A little, anyway. Maybe it was a good thing that nobody thought of him as a gossip hound, but sometimes it felt like there was an invisible barrier between him and everyone else, and he didn't know what to do about it. "Was a patient mean to you?"
She paused. “It wasn't actually a patient.”
“A staffer? One of the nurses?”
“It was Dr. Carter.”
What? “Carter? What happened? What did he say?"
"I, um ... I caught him injecting fentanyl."
He stared at her. "Fentanyl?"
"Yeah."
"In the lock-up?"
"No. It was after we'd dealt with an MVA." She took a deep breath. "The patient came in with a posterior hip dislocation. Dr. Carter and Dr. Weaver were trying to teach me how to stabilize his pelvis, but something went wrong. When Carter was moving his leg into position, the patient kicked him onto the floor. He, uh, he landed pretty hard. We got it done on the next try, but when we went to move the patient up to Radiology, we left the chart in the room. I went back to get it, and saw Carter by the sink, and ... " She fidgeted with her coffee spoon. "He had his back to me, but I knew what he was doing."
"You're sure it was fentanyl?"
"Positive."
A light bulb went off in his head. "Was the patient sedated before you tried reducing the hip?"
"Yes, but apparently not enough."
"Who gave him the fentanyl?"
She met his eyes. "Dr. Carter."
"So the patient didn't get all of it."
"That's what I thought might have happened, but I wasn't sure. But it was my fault anyway," she said miserably. "I was supposed to be holding him down. Dr. Carter wasn't happy with me."
The little prick. "Abby, fixing a dislocated hip is incredibly painful for a patient, and it's basically impossible anyway if they're fighting you. He should have been out before you even tried, and that was Carter's responsibility, not yours. I'm twice your size and I couldn't hold down a patient like that if he were still awake."
"Really?"
"Really. Not your fault."
She smiled a little, though it didn't reach her eyes. "Um. Anyway, I didn't know for sure if it was a problem, because I figured Dr. Carter's probably still on pain meds after ... you know, after what happened with the psych patient and L-Lucy, but it just, it bugged me. And it kept bugging me, because he was trying so hard to hide it. If it were something he'd been prescribed, he could have done it at the front desk and nobody would have cared."
"Did you tell someone?"
"I told Dr. Greene about it later, but then it just ... it blew up." She looked up at him helplessly. "I don't know if it was the right thing to do. Maybe I just made a bad situation worse."
The events that had played out in the background of his own struggles that day were beginning to make sense: Mark's sudden absences, Kerry's distraction, and Carter being pulled off patient care. Then there was Jing-mei, who was obviously rattled by something that night, and the discussion he'd caught a glimpse of in the lounge. Something had even been off about Benton, who'd showed up in street clothes toward the end of the day and stalked to the lounge, pointedly ignoring him. Not that he expected Benton to be on friendly terms again anytime soon, but Benton had no reason to be in the ER at that hour. Luka had given him a wide berth to avoid the possibility of another fight.
Carter's erratic behavior over the last few weeks was beginning to come into clearer focus too. He thought: They're trying to figure out what to do about this. Probably trying to hide it from Romano too. But that wasn't his business right now, whereas the person in front of him very much was. "You did the right thing, Abby. You had to say something."
“I feel like shit.”
“I know. But fentanyl's a controlled substance. We can't mess around with that stuff.”
“Dr. Weaver said that too.”
Kerry would say that. “I know you feel bad," he said gently. "That's okay, because Carter's had a tough time, but your highest duty as a doctor is to your patients. And a doctor abusing pain meds isn't good for anyone." She didn't look entirely convinced, but he wasn't sure there was a way to reason her out of it; any empathetic person would have felt bad in her place. "Is that why I saw you and Kerry and Mark in the lounge?"
She nodded. "Dr. Greene had me tell Dr. Weaver about it. She remembered the patient, obviously, and then she sent a runner for the chart so she could look over what they'd ordered. She thought the same thing you did, that Dr. Carter took some of the fentanyl for himself. Then they talked to him, to get his side of the story."
"You shouldn't have been there for that."
"It was actually an accident. He walked in for coffee while Dr. Weaver and Dr. Greene were still talking. They started asking him about it, and he said he hadn't done it, but they kept pressing him. He got more and more upset, and then he accused me of shooting up." There was something in her expression that Luka couldn't quite place. "It didn't end well. He was pretty angry with me when he walked away."
"Mark and Kerry believed you, though."
"I think so. That was the first thing Dr. Weaver said after he left, that he was lying. Dr. Greene knew it too. I don't know, though." She shifted uncomfortably. "Dr. Greene told me they would handle it and not to worry, that they were glad I told them, but ... I don't know. It was my word against his."
He wanted so badly to reach across the table and take her hand, but stopped himself. "Abby, there's a reason they believed you. They didn't say it to make you feel better, they said it because -- " He stopped. Maybe he shouldn't be telling her this, but fuck it. Something in him just wanted to bite back at the assholes of the world after today. Still, he wasn't sure that airing the hospital's dirty laundry in front of a med student was the best idea. County had enough problems as it was. He said carefully, "Carter has been having some issues lately. The attendings, we all figured he was trying to adjust after what happened. But now it's more than that."
"So it didn't come out of nowhere."
"No. And I don't know if anyone's told you this, but you're one of the best students we've had here. When you say something about a patient, we listen. I promise you, Mark and Kerry didn't just move on this because they were already worried about Carter; they moved on it because they trust your judgment."
She exhaled. "I take it you don't remember the pelvic patient I discharged."
He'd heard about that, but didn't think she'd benefit from revisiting the experience. Fucking Malucci. "You're a student. We don't expect you to be perfect; we just expect you to try."
"I thought I knew a lot more than I did."
"We expect that too. Trust me, you're not the worst offender. Our residents think God put them on earth to be right about everything."
He was rewarded with another smile. "Thank you. And no, nobody told me. That's -- I guess it's always easier to focus on all the mistakes I'm making."
"It's always easier to focus on the bad, but try to remember the good," he said, wondering if a bolt of lightning was going to descend from the heavens to fry him for the breathtaking hypocrisy. "You are a good nurse, Abby. But you could be a great doctor. You just need a little confidence."
Her eyes were very bright as she looked back at him. With sudden clarity, he realized that he'd said exactly the right thing at the right time to a person who needed to hear it. That was rare enough on its own, but particularly rare for him, especially in English. He had so few moments of genuine connection with people now that he'd almost forgotten how lovely it felt. He just wished he could have them with people who were likely to be in his life long-term, and not just with a med student who'd rotate out and disappear. Though Abby might try to match at County, given that she'd already worked there. He wondered what specialty she'd pick -- OB again, maybe.
The moment vanished almost as quickly as it had happened. She dropped her gaze and seemed embarrassed. "So is that your way of buttering me up so I don't tell anyone about this?" she said lightly.
"Yes. You caught me."
"I won't say anything. I know it'll be hard on Dr. Carter to come back from this."
That inscrutable look was back again. He'd give anything to know what was behind it, but didn't want to upset the fragile trust they had with each other. "I know you won't, but yeah. People know something's off with Carter, but I don't think the fentanyl thing's gotten out yet." He knew it would eventually, but with any luck, it'd be related to whatever decision the ER leadership made, and Abby wouldn't be dragged into it. "I hope you didn't have to work with him after that."
"I didn't. I was shadowing Dr. Greene this afternoon. I did try to apologize to Dr. Carter later, but it didn't go well."
"Did he say something to you?"
"Sort of. It was more how he said it. He asked me if I felt better after apologizing, and then basically told me to fuck off. I mean, more politely than that, but still."
If Carter hadn't earned a trip to the disciplinary committee, he had certainly earned a visit from a big, angry Croat. For the moment, Luka decided to be diplomatic. "He was mad because you caught him."
"That's what I figured. But it wasn't just me. He had a tiff with Dr. Greene after that."
So that's what Yosh and Lily had been whispering about. "What happened?"
"That was when we found out our rugby player had a tension pneumo. Carter saved him, but then Dr. Greene came and basically pushed him away. Carter wasn't happy about that either." She looked pensive. "I really hope he's not going to be the person who writes my clinical evaluation."
He'd forgotten about that. Abby had had every reason in the world today not to rock the boat, but she'd still done the right thing. "He is definitely not going to be the person to write that, I promise you."
"I hope it's not Dr. Malucci either."
"Not a problem. I don't think Malucci can read."
She laughed -- really laughed -- and he joined her, feeling pleased with himself. A flicker of memory came to him unbidden -- a 16-year old Danijela laughing at a funny story he'd told her about his grandfather's farm -- and he shook it off. Don't think about that. But Abby's husband was a lucky man.
"Abby," he said. "Can you promise me something?"
"Sure."
"If someone is ever mean or abusive to you in the ER -- it doesn't matter who it is, if it's a patient or a nurse or doctor or whoever. You don't have to put up with that. If it's something that you're worried about handling on your own, you come get me, yeah? And I'll take care of it." He knew, even as he was saying it, that it was ridiculous, that he couldn't do that, that it was deeply inappropriate to show that kind of favoritism to a med student. There was also no realistic way to keep her from getting the abuse they all got on the job, and it was worse for the women. He knew it was dumb. In that moment, he didn't care.
He suspected she knew it too, but still recognized the gesture for what it was. "I don't know, Dr. Kovač. I'd be coming to get you a lot."
"It's Luka. And I don't mind." When he got back, he'd ask Kerry to assign Abby to him, Mark, Cleo, or Jing-mei. She didn't have much longer on her rotation, and she shouldn't have to spend it dealing with lazy residents, grouchy attendings, or getting pushed around by the nurses. He could do that much for her, at least.
She took a long, shuddering breath. "So anyway. You said you had a bad day too. Was it just the shooting, or something else?"
"Mostly something else. My stabbing patient was, uh ... not the best experience."
"Did she not make it?"
"She made it just fine. Her baby, not so much so."
"She was pregnant?"
"Yeah." He'd thought this would be one of those cases that spread along the ER's gossip chain like wildfire, but apparently not. Whatever was going on with Carter had sucked up all the oxygen on the floor.
She was silent for a moment. "How far along was she?"
"Eight months."
"So ... viable."
"Yeah." He dragged his fork through leftover tomato sauce on his plate, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "The knife missed the baby but hit the placenta. She had an abruption but wouldn't consent to a C-section. She practically threw me out of the room when I suggested it, and things didn't get better from there." Another example of poor practice on his part. This was a conversation he'd really wanted to have with his fellow attendings in order to decompress, but he still made an effort to be honest with her. "I probably shouldn't have pushed as hard as I did. I just couldn't ... I couldn't understand it. I should have let Cleo handle it and just supervised. And I don't think I made myself popular with Coburn or Deraad, either."
Abby paused. "Dr. Coburn can be kind of a hard-ass, but she's a good doctor. I can't speak for her, obviously, but I've worked with her for a long time. She would definitely understand why you were upset. I can't say that stuff like that happened all the time on the OB floor, because most of the time -- I mean, for most parents their kids' birth is the happiest day of their lives. They'd do anything for their children. But that wasn't the case for everyone, and Dr. Coburn was always angry when she thought someone was making a selfish decision at the expense of their baby. She said some people never grow into thinking of themselves as parents."
This was getting uncomfortably close to home for Luka, for whom Jasna and Marko's births had indeed been the happiest days of his life. Did Abby know about his background? "Yeah. I just -- I don't get it."
"I don't either. I guess -- I mean, I don't know. It's not fair for me to judge, because I don't have children. But I can't imagine carrying a baby for that long and then refusing to save their life at the end of it." She went quiet again, dawdling with her coffee spoon. "I hope they caught the guy who attacked her, at least."
"I'm not sure there was one."
"You think she might have stabbed herself?"
He shrugged. "I don't know for sure. She came in insisting she wasn't pregnant, even though it was incredibly obvious. The angle was lower than I would have expected from an outside attacker, and she didn't have much to say to the police officer who came in. Just vague stuff. But I don't know." He shook his head. "Something about it felt wrong. It still does. I tried to get a court order so we could do the C-section, but the judge had already left for the day, and nobody got back to us."
"So the baby died."
"Yeah. We delivered a stillborn. A little boy. She didn't even want to see him."
"Are you okay?"
He looked up, surprised; she was watching him intently. He honestly hadn't expected anyone to ask him that. This felt like the kind of day designed to remind him that he didn't have anyone to talk to anymore. Carol had come close, but on some level he'd always known that her heart wasn't in it. He'd still allowed himself to hope, and for far too long. "Yeah. Yeah."
She knew better. "I think anyone would have been upset by that, Luka. I know I would have been." She looked down. "I mean, I know I haven't seen anywhere near as much as you have, but losing a baby in OB ... those were always the worst days. We always talked about it when it happened, because it wasn't good to deal with it alone. It's okay not to be okay, you know?"
"Yeah." He cleared his throat, and decided to return to the mentoring approach as quickly as possible. "Cases like that are definitely among the worst stuff you see in the ER. They don't happen often, but kids are always hard."
She started to say something, and then changed her mind. Luka had the lurking feeling that she did, in fact, know perfectly well what happened to him before he came to Chicago, and he didn't have to guess how she knew. Still a nurse. Her voice was determinedly neutral. "I haven't seen too many pediatrics cases yet. Do you think I should shadow Dr. Finch more?"
"Maybe, though fortunately most of the peds cases we get aren't really emergencies. We see a lot of runny noses, sore throats, fevers, tummy aches, and minor injuries."
"From what I can tell, that's mostly what you see in adults too."
He feigned huge offense. "Are you suggesting that most of emergency medicine is telling people to take Tylenol?"
"No." She propped her chin in her hand and looked at him, all wide-eyed innocence. "I'm pretty much saying it."
"Keep it up, and I'll give your clinical eval to Kerry after she's pulled a double."
"Oh, God. I think I'd rather have Malucci."
"Only if your program accepts evals written in crayon."
They were still laughing when he drained his coffee and finally checked his watch. He practically jolted. They'd been talking for almost two hours. "Jesus. I'm sorry, Abby. I didn't mean to keep you this long."
"It's okay. I had fun, and you were right," she admitted. "I think we both needed to talk."
"Still. Your husband's probably wondering where the hell you are right now."
She looked at him oddly. “My husband?”
“I thought – someone told me you were married?”
“I – I was. I mean, I guess I technically still am, but my divorce will be final in July. So not yet, but yeah.”
“I'm sorry.” Though he wasn't. The bolt of lightning he'd somehow escaped earlier felt like it had just hit. He was madly curious to know what had happened, but knew this was absolutely the wrong time and place to ask.
“Don't be. I'm not.”
Don't hit on her, don't hit on her, don't hit on her. She was still a med student and he was an attending, and it was the last thing she needed after the day she'd had anyway. "So Lockhart -- is that your name or his?"
"It's his, but I'm keeping it, because it's the only good thing I got out of the whole mess."
"Why? What was your name before?"
She grinned. "Wyczenski."
"Right." He knew the struggle of having an "ethnic" name all too well. "Lockhart is better."
"I definitely don't have to spend so much time spelling it on the phone." She finished her coffee. "You're not wrong though; it's getting late, and I have to be back at 8:00 tomorrow morning. Are you on?"
"No, but that might change. I think there's a good chance that Carter will be off the schedule, so we'll need someone to cover."
She shrugged into her coat, looking troubled. "Do you think -- is there anything I should do when I get back? Do I need to talk to anyone else? About Dr. Carter?"
"At this point, I don't think there's anything you can do. Mark and Kerry will take care of it. I don't know how, exactly, but we'll find out." He slid cash onto their bill. "And Abby -- whatever happens to Carter, that's not your fault, yeah? You did the right thing."
She was quiet. "I hope so."
"I know so. And remember, you can always come get me if someone's giving you a hard time."
"Thank you. And thank you again for dinner. And the company."
He held the door open for her as they left the diner, and they re-emerged into the cold and the wind.