Work Text:
In Passing
On the El, heading to work, Susan tries out baby names--girls' names, mostly.
But every time she finds one she likes, she can't put it together with a last
name without the sound of it suddenly turning ridiculous in her ears.
Watch out, that's the little Martin kid you've got there.
It's Lewis until she says different, but isn't it a little sad to be
passing on your maiden name that way? Just an indication that maybe she isn't
ready, despite what those years with Suzie may have taught her. Just a whiff of
desperation in the air. Just a hint this isn't what she wants, no matter what
she insists on telling herself when she wakes up in the middle of the night,
Chuck sawing logs beside her. His breath hitches every minute or two in a random
pattern of sleep apnea that drives her crazy, because she knows that someday
he's not going to take that next breath, and presto, she'll be calling a code
right in her own bedroom.
She tells Abby that she's happy, that this is going well, that even drunken Las
Vegas weddings cum divorces cum shotgun common-law parenthood
can turn out okay. She winces a little inside every time it looks like Chuck's
about to propose, because she's worried she'll blurt out something stupid before
she can, sensibly, say yes.
She's not known for blurting out the sensible.
In the middle of the day it seems perfectly natural to marry Chuck, to make with
the nuclear family and let him call the kid Martin if he wants to. It's his kid,
fifty-fifty as the genes go, no doubt there (she hasn't been with another man
for a year); but damn it, if she's the one with the bigger gametes, shouldn't
she have the bigger say? And in the middle of the night, when her back aches and
she can't sleep because her bed is so strangely filled, it's not Chuck's smile
when she told him he was going to be a dad that she's thinking of.
It's someone else's smile. It's--
Crazy. But then, that's what her life has been, ever since she moved back to
Michigan. Arizona moves at a slower pace, and things make a kind of sense in
Phoenix that they can't in Chicago. Maybe it's the weather--all those freak
blizzards and the wind-whipped detritus echoing the soap opera storms she's
surrounded by at work. Maybe it's the people, the changes she could never have
guessed at when she left, the way that someone else is smiling at her
these days when before it was just--
Crazy.
Weaver is showing off baby pictures of Henry when Susan stomps into the lounge,
knocking muddy sleet off her boots and shrugging out from under the woolen
weight of her scarf. Randi and Chuny are oohing and ahhing
with appropriate vigor. Abby stands back a bit, arms folded, Styrofoam coffee
cup in one hand, and her smirk is almost a smile. Susan stuffs bag and coat and
newspaper and lunch and boots into her locker, exhausted before her shift even
starts. She yanks out her lab coat and tries not to groan as she squeezes into
it.
"Hey, Dr. Lewis, you gotta see these pictures," Chuny says. "You wanna see what
you're looking forward to."
"We're practically starting our own nursery," Randi adds. "With Carter and you
and Dr. Weaver all being parents at once. Maybe it's something in the water
around here, eh?"
"Yeah," Abby says, mostly to herself, "and maybe all the screwing in this place
finally caught up with everybody." Susan rolls her eyes and Weaver seems to
think the remark was quiet enough to ignore--or else, Susan thinks, she figures
it's hardly applicable to her.
With a painful smile, Susan waddles to the table and sits down next to Weaver,
trying to admire the pictures and put on her work shoes at the same time. Four
or five photos of Henry in his NICU crib, round face scrunched and purple, tiny
arms flailing at the camera. One Polaroid of him with Weaver, Sandy, and Abby,
celebrating. In the next, Sandy is cuddling him, but her bright-eyed laughter is
entirely for whoever's working the camera...three guesses who, and the first two
don't count. The last shows Henry in Weaver's arms, staring at her with baby
fascination. And Weaver, looking down at him, one pinky trapped in a chubby
fist, has that shy, tender smile on her face...
That smile that turns her from Weaver to Kerry.
That smile she's giving Susan right now.
Susan finds herself smiling back--it's really impossible not to, when suddenly
she finds herself looking at Kerry the human being, Kerry the woman
with a family and emotions that go beyond "if you mess up I will roast your
balls on a stick".
"He's beautiful," Susan says, with husky sincerity, and Kerry nods.
There's a moment of silence, then Randi and Chuny start the shuffling of people
who realize they should have been elsewhere about ten minutes ago. Susan drops
her eyes from Kerry's face and finishes tying her shoes. Abby dumps the last of
her coffee down the sink and clears her throat, mutters something about too many
cigarettes. Then they're all leaving, Chuny and Randi back to Admit, Abby out to
track down Pratt to present her patients, and Kerry...Kerry opens her locker and
tapes the picture of Sandy holding Henry to the inside of the door.
"Heading out?" Susan asks, though she knows. She's here to relieve her, after
all.
Another nod. Kerry's looking down, aside, anywhere but at Susan sitting at the
break-room table. Susan wonders if it's for the same reason she's finding it so
difficult to go out there and start her shift. "Sandy's coming to pick me up,"
Kerry says at last, gently, the way she talks to sick kids.
It's Susan's turn to nod. She heaves herself up from her chair, puts a hand to
(the little Martin kid) her stomach, and heads for the door. Halfway out,
she turns around, and says, "Hey, Kerry?"
"Yes?"
"You--with Henry, and Sandy--it looks like you're doing great. I hope I'm as
lucky as you."
Kerry gives one last hint of that tiny smile. "You will be."
"Yeah, well--" But Susan's not about to get into it. Turns out she can stop the
blurting when she needs to. She tilts her head a little, a kind of so-so
gesture, and there's really nothing else to say. "Looks like they need an
Attending out there. It's a war zone."
And she's out, into another one of those Chicago-blizzard days. When she gets
home, Chuck meets her at the door wearing a Kiss The Cook apron and she
does just that. She tells him about her day and laughs and snuggles next to him
when they go to bed.
And she stays awake all night, thinking up baby names, and not a single one
fits.