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Carter, Doug, and Mark are in the locker room, all of them “de-doctoring” themselves as Doug likes to call it — taking off scrub tops, hanging up their white coats, and putting on their jackets — when Mark sees them.
Carter's locker is nestled into a corner of the room, whereas the other two men have theirs right in the middle of the main row of lockers. This means that the young man's back is to his senior colleagues as he separates his loose scrub top from his fitted, long-sleeved undershirt and takes it off — grabbing the neckline of it and pulling it up and over his shoulders.
Doug is too busy digging through his locker and bragging about a date he had last weekend with a model (“A hand model, sure, but she was pretty enough to do the real thing.”) but Mark is already done changing so he's leaning against his locker and looking Carter's way. This gives him a front-row seat as a portion of the med students' back is revealed when the action of removing the scrub top also forces the shirt underneath to rise up a bit as well.
The sliver of exposed skin is as pale as the rest of the man. Well, pale except for the multitude of pink/white lines that span Carter's lower back and seem to splay out and around his hips.
The scars are thin but appear to be raised, the sign of a deep wound. Hypertrophic scarring, the doctor in Mark thinks, while the more emotional, human part of him is thinking that must have been painful.
The sight is gone almost as quickly as it was revealed, but for Mark it seemed like time had slowed in that one minute.
Mark knows he should leave it alone — knows not to bring up people's scars out of the blue, especially ones seen by accident — but he can't help himself.
“How'd you get those scars, Carter?” The tall man blurts out, only aware he's asking after the fact. Doug, because he got interrupted and because he's nosy, leans out of his locker to get a look but is too late to see what Mark has.
The abrupt question startles the young man, who quickly spins around to look at Mark.
“Huh?” He says eloquently, hands pulling the hem of his newly donned sweater way down past the waistband of his scrub bottoms, stretching out the knit. Mark notices how the students' shoulders minutely rise and curl inwards towards his ears.
He definitely heard what I asked — he's defensive about them, Mark thinks, realising he needs to be a bit more careful with how he goes about this.
“On your back? There's a good number of scars there; it looks like you lost a fight with a tiger or something.” Mark clarifies, trying to inject some humour into his tone so it doesn't seem like an interrogation.
Doug — picking up on the now weirdly charged energy in the room — stays quiet and watches the exchange like a tennis match, eyes darting between the other two men.
Carter chuckles nervously at the joke as he pulls on his coat and slings his leather messenger bag on.
“Haha, yeah, ummm, there was this mean stray cat that lived in our stables. Guess I picked it up one too many times.” he says quickly, eyes flickering between Mark, Doug, and the door.
And the cat clawed his back up? Mark and Doug think at the same time, the two friends making eye contact. Something’s not right here, and they both know it.
“Ouch, cat scratches are no laughing matter.” Doug says, inhaling through his teeth in imagined pain, “I had a cat once — wanted a dog but Mom's allergic — and that damn thing tore my arm up real bad. Mom was so mad when she saw what happened, she got rid of him right after,” he shares with a small laugh that Mark echoes.
“Yeah, they can be menaces,” Carter agrees, smiling awkwardly. He grabs a small stack of books from his locker and then shuts it. “Anyways, I’ve got to go. See you tomorrow.”
After that sad attempt at deflection, he speed-walks past the two older men and makes to leave but is stopped when someone new enters the room. Carter ends up being hit by the door as it opens and falls back onto his butt with a winded “oof", his handful of books dropping to the floor as well and scattering.
Standing in the open doorway is Peter Benton — surgical resident and Carter's main mentor.
“Carter,” Benton says dryly, peering down at his student who's once again ended up on the floor.
“Dr.Benton! Sorry, I was just leaving," he rushes out without looking up at his teacher — now on his hands and knees trying to quickly grab his fallen books.
Before Carter could attempt another escape, Doug pipes up.
“You sure you don't want to go with us to Doc's, Carter? Susan's saving us a booth and the new Hawaiian burger is to die for. Literally. I had to give the Heimlich to this guy there last week, he choked on the pineapple slice!”
Benton and Mark chuckle at the story, but their charge doesn't. The med student is fully sweating now, face pasty apart from a blush sitting high on his cheeks, brown eyes wide and shifty.
“No,” he blurts, shocking even himself with how loud it came out and how panicked he sounds. Clearing his throat, he tries again.
“Sorry, no thanks. Ummm, not tonight. I need to write up my uhhh…my case notes for Mr.Llewellyn. Maybe next time though.” Carter says, clearly making up an excuse on the spot.
“More case notes on Mr.Llewellyn? Carol told me you've already handed them in.” Benton says, catching on to the lie and the tense atmosphere in the room. He's still not moved from in front of the door, effectively blocking Carter from leaving.
“Yeah. Yeah, that's right. But, I think I made a mistake on them so I'm just going to go over them again, you know? Make sure it all checks out.” Carter claims, standing up now but keeping his gaze fixed on the spot of the floor where he just was.
No one speaks for a minute. The three doctors exchange eye contact with each other over the top of the med students' unruly mop of brown hair, telepathically trying to communicate about the situation.
It doesn't work.
“Okay, what the hell is happening here?” Benton questions bluntly, hating not knowing about something — being left out of the loop.
“Mark saw scars on the kid's back and he's being all weird and defensive about them.” Doug admits plainly, not sugarcoating anything.
“Doug!” Mark hisses, glaring at his friend.
“I am not!” Carter defends, looking up to also glare at the paediatrician, who puts his hands up in mock surrender.
“Scars?” Benton asks confused, eyes scanning Carter as if he could see them through the young man's layers of clothes.
“On his back,” Mark confirms, deciding to go along with Doug's plan of just coming straight out with it all instead of beating around the bush. “I saw them when he lifted his shirt. There are a lot of them.”
Scars on the Golden Boy? This is news to Benton. Hearing this, the surgeon quirks an eyebrow at his student, his expression alone probing for more details.
“Oh my god, can you guys let it go! They're all old and healed anyway; it's fine.” Carter huffs out in exasperation.
“If it's so fine then just tell us how you really got them,” Doug challenges, never someone who could let sleeping dogs lie. If it were just Mark or Benton, they might have let it go after a quick offer of help if needed — everyone is entitled to their secrets after all — but not Doug.
But it seems like Carter realises this too as he bites out:
“Oh, so you get to deflect when anyone asks about your dad, but now I'm just supposed to spill my secrets? How is that fair?!”
Now it's Doug's turn to lift his eyebrows, surprised that the young man — who's usually quite timid and polite — had the tenacity to bring up someone else's issues so callously. That just shows how affected he really is by this, the doctor thinks a bit smugly, pleased that he's right about this being a bigger issue than Carter is trying to make it out to be.
“Life ain't fair, kid. Now spill.” Doug all but demands, ignoring the comment about him and his dad.
Carter rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest petulantly, stack of books acting like a shield.
“Aren't paediatricians supposed to be tactful? Are you this intrusive and persistent with your patients?”
Carter's retaliation has Doug scoffing in annoyance. Why can't he just listen like he's supposed to and tell us? The man thinks, irritated now.
“I didn't think this was a situation I needed to handle with tact — you said it was fine, remember? And my patients are better behaved than you're being right now and they're usually half your age so just think about that.” Doug retaliates a bit childishly.
The mild insult makes the med student flinch. Not a massive, jolting flinch, but a flinch nonetheless.
“Carter?” Mark asks quietly, voice tinged with concern. The insult was really tame in comparison to some of the other things Mark has heard his friend say, but for some reason it seems to have really affected Carter, whose knees buckle a bit.
He wants to put a hand on the young man's arm to help steady him but is worried it'd do more harm than good. Instead, he lets his arms hover in mid-air between them.
“Can you just drop it? Please?” Carter whispers, body tense and eyes once again downturned.
“Carter, kid,” Benton says softly before trailing off, unsure of what to say.
No one moves. No one speaks. There's relative silence for a minute — only the sound of soft breathing from all four of them.
Knowing he's lost, Carter shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath in through his nose. Opening his eyes, he sees Doug and Mark paying rapt attention to him, Benton still in the room but behind Carter's back.
“I wasn't the best listener, growing up. Hell, I'm hardly any better now,” he starts, chuckling to himself mirthlessly, “but I was really bad as a kid — a big troublemaker. Not doing my work, talking too much in school. My parents were already dealing with Bobby's death, and… and sometimes, I would misbehave too much and had to be… taught… to do better.”
“Taught?” Mark questions, dreading the answer already.
“Disciplined,” Carter clarifies, eyes taking on a faraway look. Hearing this and seeing Carter's dissociative state, Doug's jaw clenches and his expression darkens.
“It's not what you're thinking, though!” The med student rushes to say, becoming alert again. “It's not their fault, honestly. I just scar really easily,” he defends after feeling the anger radiating off the room’s other occupants.
“Discipline shouldn't leave scars, Carter. No matter how easily done.” Doug states as calmly as he can — internally fuming but not wanting to make the student think it's aimed at him.
“You don't know how bad I was. I needed to be taught a lesson.” Carter says resolutely, brown eyes teary but still conveying conviction.
Noticing this, Mark's heart drops. He truly believes he deserved being abused.
“Which they could have done a hundred other ways,” Benton cuts in, moving to stand by Doug and Mark so he can be in front of his student. The softness in his usually cold and exacting mentor's eyes makes Carter feel faint.
“But —” Carter starts to protest but is cut off by Doug, who takes a step towards the young man and rests a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Children learn nothing from fear other than fear. Children make mistakes and misbehave all the time — it's kind of what they're meant to do. Your parents were adults, Carter, they should've known better. You didn't deserve it.”
The med student’s lower lip starts to quiver and more tears flood his eyes, but he quickly steels himself.
“No, you don't know what you're talking about, I —” Carter starts angrily — trying to fight against the older man's grip — but is stopped again by Doug, who grabs onto both shoulders now to keep the young man from pulling away from him.
“I do. Trust me, Carter, I know exactly what I'm talking about which is how I know that it was wrong. What happened to you shouldn't have happened.”
Carter stares unblinkingly ahead for about a minute, mouth partially agape, before the floodgates open.
The tears that have been building up in Carter's big, brown eyes for the last few minutes finally escape. They stream down his cheeks, still plump with some baby fat — showcasing just how young he is. He doesn't crumple to the floor in a dramatic heap, but his knees do drop a fraction more under the weight of it all.
The memories, the pain, the guilt.
Luckily he has his coworkers friends there to help hold him up.
Benton carefully pries the stack of books from the cradle of Carter's arms while the other two men gently guide him over to the beat-up sofa.
Doug pushes Carter to sit down and then plops down next to him, one hand still on the taller man's shoulder. Mark elects to perch himself across from them on the low-set coffee table, and Benton — somewhat uncomfortable with the display of emotion but not wanting to leave — stays standing by the sofa's armrest.
“I'm sorry,” Carter wails pitifully, curling in on himself fully now that the books are out of the way, fingers clawing at his biceps for purchase. “I'm so sorry.”
Without communicating, Mark rests his right hand against Carter's knee — cupping it comfortingly — at the same time that Benton hesitantly puts his left hand on Carter's free shoulder. Now each of the doctors has a point of contact on their crying student.
“You're okay, Carter,” Benton assures while lifting his hand to give his student's shoulder a grounding pat.
“You're gonna be okay,” Mark agrees, brushing his thumb back and forth over the young man's kneecap in a soothing motion.
“It's okay.”