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Carter's not surprised in the slightest that it's ended up like this.
Sniffling up the last of the tears he's let fall while in public, he glances down at his watch. He was supposed to be scrubbing in for his first appendectomy with Benton around now. Instead, he's waiting for the next L train to take him home — although, he's always been hesitant to call his crappy apartment home.
With nothing but time to kill now, he thinks back on what had happened only half an hour ago.
“Stop!”
His sudden shout surprised the three occupants in the room.
Doug Ross, paediatrician and an Alpha, stood closest to the door Carter just burst through. Sat on the bed before the older man was a young woman — in her early twenties if Carter had to guess — and a young boy. The young boy.
He can't really remember how Sarah looked — so he couldn't say if the woman before him looks similar — but the boy does look like he did when he was a child. Brown, unruly hair, with big, doe eyes and cheeks still chubby with baby fat.
‘He's just a baby,’ John thought sadly.
The similarities to his own experience were increasingly mounting. The ages, the same scenario — an early presentation and no company besides a trusted member of the help. He felt sick to his stomach just looking at the pair. Not wanting to throw up, he clenched his mouth shut and struggled to take even breaths through his nose.
‘I need to stop this, right now,' he thought in a panic, realising he didn't really plan how exactly he was going to go about this.
“Carter! What are you doing? Did you not see the sign on the door?!” Doug yelled, striding towards the petrified med student and pushing him back towards the doorway that was left ajar. “This is a private room, you cannot be here right now.”
Sensing Doug's plan of kicking him out, Carter snapped back into himself — shooting a hand out to grab the edge of the doorway to stop him from completely being forced out of the room.
“Doug, I need to speak to you. Now, please,” the younger man demanded and begged all at once, eyes wide and desperately hoping the urgency of the situation was being conveyed to his coworker.
Apparently not though as Doug just rolled his eyes and tried again to shut the door on him.
“Whatever it is, Carter, I'm sure it can wait. I'm almost done here, you can wait for me outside.” He dismissed while shooting a quick “sorry, excuse me one moment,” behind his shoulder to the confused pair that were still sat on the bed.
“No, it really can't wait,” Carter said as he used the momentum of Doug trying to push him through the door against the older man, grabbing the lapels of the doctors white coat and pulling him past the threshold of the door and then quickly shutting it behind them.
“What the hell kid!” Doug yelled, eyes flashing in indignation.
“You cannot let him leave with her” the young man stated matter-of-factly, not wanting an argument but knowing he'd get one anyways. Other than the fact that Carter was massively outranked, it's Doug Ross he was hoping to boss about. There was absolutely no chance in hell the older man would listen to anything anyone else said without a damn good reason.
“Why not? Do you know her or something?” The doctor asked, leaning in closer in anticipation of Carter spilling a secret. Although only knowing him a few months, Carter's already well acquainted with Doug's appetite for gossip.
No such luck though. Carter only has one juicy secret, and there's no way he'd spill it.
“No, but I… I can't really explain it right now, but if you'd just listen to me —” Carter started but was interrupted.
“I am trying to listen to you but you're not making any sense. Unless you can give me a clear reason why he can't go with his nanny — someone who he's known for years and who he seems pretty comfortable with — then I have to let them leave.”
'Fuck, fuck, fuck,' thought Carter, sweat building on his brow and coating his palms.
“Well…it's just, it's…” the young man stammered, trying to come up with a reason compelling enough to stop this from happening. He couldn't tell him about himself and Sarah — there's no way he could — but he needs to tell him something.
“Spit it out, Carter. Either you have a reason or you don't.” Doug says, getting more impatient by the second.
Silence. Carter couldn't do it, he couldn't think of anything to say to get the man to listen to him. Head dropping in defeat, Carter studied his shoes.
‘Think, think, THINK!’
Shaking his head in disbelief at the weird turn of events, Doug turned to go back into the room.
“That kid... he's in heat, right?” Carter spoke softly into the space between them without lifting his head.
“Yeah,” Doug confirmed with a sigh in the same breath. "He's had an early presentation due to stress and you bursting in to his private room couldn't have helped. He needs to get home where he can relax and ride this thing out.”
That got Carter's heart rate skyrocketing again — that's exactly what he's trying to avoid! Stepping back towards the door (and therefore closer to Doug as well), Carter put a long arm out and laid his palm flat against it, forcing it to stay shut.
“Is she an Alpha?” The med student questioned, eyes boring as he stared intently at his coworker.
“What?” The older man blurted out, confused at this line of questioning, “What does that matter?”
“Is she?” Carter asked more forcibly, stepping even closer to the shorter man and towering over him. "Is she an Alpha?”
Doug, not intimated by the taller man in the slightest, stepped toward him — making the two men be chest to chest — and stared him down.
“Yes, she is.” The doctor answered truthfully.
“That's your reason then. You can't let her take him away, not when he's in heat.”
It was calm for a moment, then the charged energy between them exploded. Carter blinked and then suddenly it was his turn to have his lab coat bunched up in the other man's fists. His arm, the one he had pressed against the door, shot down to grasp at the other man's wrists as he found himself lifted up onto his tiptoes.
“Are you being serious?! Are you honestly implying what I think you're implying? ‘Cus if that's the case you can fuck right off.” Doug hissed while shaking the student back and forth in anger.
“Doug,” Carter tried to defend but was cut off.
“Do you seriously think that that kid's in danger because she's an Alpha?! Because newsflash, asshole, so am I! So is Carol! Do you think she'd do anything like what you're implying just because someone is in heat, hmm? Do you think she doesn't have any morals, huh? Any restraint? How about the woman in that room, huh?! You think she's planning on raping that little boy, a boy she's helped raise and who she said she sees as a son?” The older man ranted, so angry his nostrils were flared and a vein on his forehead was prominent.
Still — even after seeing how incensed his coworker had become — Carter didn't back down.
“But Doug, please just,” Carter attempted again but to no avail.
“No! No, Carter. It's Dr. Ross, not Doug. I'm not one of your little trust fund besties, I'm one of your bosses. If I tell you to go, you go. And that’s exactly what I'm doing right now before I punch you,” the doctor commanded, pushing the student away from him.
"Dr. Ross..."
Putting a hand up to stop any more interjections, Doug took a moment to compose himself — closing his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose, and taking a deep breathe — and then levelled the young man across from him with a look of disgust so strong it made Carter's heart drop into his stomach.
“You know, Mark and Carol told me about your behaviour recently, about your issues with secondaries, and I honestly couldn't picture it. You just seemed too nice, too sweet. But it looks like they were right. You're nothing but a stuck-up, Beta rich kid who doesn't know when to shut the fuck up.”
And that was it.
The final nail in John Carter's coffin.
He'd been told a lot of harmful things in his life. Too many, really. But for some reason being told to shut up has always been the worst one to him. No matter who said it or how they said it —even if it was used in jest — it only ever made him picture his father with his trusty leather belt and the pain that would follow.
“Just leave, Carter. I'll let Mark know that I told you to go. Leave.”
And he did.
10 minutes later and the L train is pulling up. Carter has the very fleeting but very appealing idea of throwing himself in front of it.
It'd be so easy, to just step out right in front of it. Sure, it'd hurt like hell — he's seen a few jumpers since working at the ER and the lists of injuries are always extensive and excruciating — but it's an almost guaranteed way for everything to just end.
To end just like his ER rotation at County. To end like his dreams of becoming a doctor.
He knows he's stupid — his father's told him that his whole life and Benton looks at him like the man is surprised Carter's made it as far as he has — but he's not stupid enough to believe that he'll be able to keep his spot at County after what happened today.
No, he knows how it will go. Doug has most likely already told Mark, who's told Morgenstern, who's now planning on booting him out before he can screw up anymore. And Benton was already mad at him this morning for not being done with his case notes from yesterday and, now that he's missed scrubbing in for an operation he had begged to be included in, the older man will be doubly pissed. There's no way that, even if Mark and Morgenstern let him stay on, Benton would keep him as his student.
But, in spite of all of that, he doesn't jump. Mainly, because he's a wimp who's terrified of pain, and also because — knowing his luck — he'd be one of the poor sods who survived the initial collision only to die later in hospital after many agonising hours.
So, instead he allows himself to imagine the scenario a bit more as he boards the now stopped train.
The train is pretty empty — probably since it's a weekday so most people are at work or school — so he's able to get a seat. But, as he's sitting down, he gets a sudden, sharp pain in his stomach.
Wincing, he curls in on himself and wraps his arms around his stomach. The pain quickly subsided, leaving behind no lingering aches, but it takes him a few moments to breathe through the initial shock.
Once he's completely recovered he slumps back into the hard seat behind him.
‘That was weird,’ he thinks, taking stock of himself. He has been understandably quite stressed the past few weeks, maybe he's coming down with something. Yeah, he does actually feel a bit ill, noticing how hot and rundown he feels.
‘Just my luck,’ he muses miserably, letting his warm head rest against the cool window of the train as it pulls out of the station.
‘Just my luck.’