Part Three
As the sun hit her face, Kim stirred and opened her eyes a crack, feeling the slight puffiness. 'Well that's what happens when you spend half the night crying, idiot', she thought as she slowly woke up. Quite why she'd cried she didn't know. It wasn't sadness, exactly. At least not for Kerry. Not really melancholy. She'd done melancholy last year, knew how it felt. And this wasn't it. What then?
Still thinking, she sat up, somehow avoiding looking at the debris that surrounded her from the previous evening. Finally she dragged herself off the sofa and out of the den, toward the shower and the cleansing water that awaited her. Quickly stripping off her shirt and pants, she climbed under the warm jets.
She stood there for long minutes, not even noticing that the water was going colder. She'd nearly realised what the tears had been for, but it had eluded her in the same way that a total peace had eluded her for almost a year. Then she slammed her fist into the shower wall, and it hit her.
She was angry. Not at Kerry. Never at Kerry. But at herself, for being so stupid as to walk out on the best thing she'd ever had. 'You always do it, don't you. You fool. You want the perfect job, the perfect love story, the perfect life. But it doesn't happen, does it? And as soon as that becomes clear, as soon as you can't control what's going wrong, you leave. You left the perfect residency when you could have been chief. You left Kerry, because you couldn't control her comfort level. She gave you the best she had, but it wasn't perfect so you ended up here. Well I know you, and I know her. She would never have left you, Kim... Never...' Kim's inner conscience taunted her as she realised how cold she was. Shutting off the shower, she grabbed her robe and walked through to her bedroom.
And still the voice raged inside of her. 'She loved you, Kim. You saw it every time she looked at you. She would have done anything for you, but you just wouldn't let her. It wasn't the perfection you sought, so you left'
"I loved her." Kim heard her real voice scream out as the tears returned in great gulping sobs in a desperate attempt to silence the battle that raged. She knew that both sides held truth. She'd loved Kerry more than anything, ever, and that had scared the hell out of her. It hadn't been perfect, but she'd never known you could feel like this about anyone, ever, and hadn't had a clue what to do. Everything had always had to be perfect, and this hadn't been, but in some way it had been enough. She'd felt like her world was falling apart, because all she'd been able to think about had been Kerry. Nothing else had mattered.
And when she'd told Kerry to go back to her life, she'd felt her world collapse. The one thing that had held it up was gone. As that elevator had shut, she'd felt an almost physical punch to her stomach, and had found it hard to breath for several minutes. She'd gone home, and drunk more than she'd ever done before in her life. She'd wandered around the house in a daze for a few days...she still wasn't sure how many. For weeks she'd hurt, an actual physical ache, as if half of her had been ripped away.
Which it had. Kerry had completed her in a way she never knew possible, had filled holes she hadn't known she had. So when she'd lost her, the holes were even more obvious, and hurt even more.
She'd tried so many different things to stop the pain. Alcohol, her old favorite, left her feeling dry-mouthed, sick and worse than ever. Work had just made it glaringly obvious that a square-shaped peg would never fit into a round hole. Sex, the great healer, had almost worked. Until that April morning when one sheet of paper had sent her into freefall all over again.
She could still see the lilac paper, the delicate writing, the pain and longing etched into the ink. But Kim had been unable to read it, knowing that if she had, she would have flown down to the ER and whisked the Chief away, and fallen right back in, all over again.
So she'd sprouted some 'sentiment' line, seeing the pain flash across Kerry's face and not caring. She'd let the ice princess take over, and had imagined herself impervious to anything, especially a certain snack-sized redhead. And it had worked. She'd kept up the front, even when Romano had called and offered her her job back. She'd said no, that she was moving away and no longer had any interest in working for Cook County General.
And she'd walked away. And ended up here, surrounded by memories, surrounded by the past she thought she'd left far, far away in an old Chicago brownstone.
Slowly, she got up and walked into the den, her eyes falling on a folded lilac sheet.
Unable to stop herself, she walked over and picked up the letter, finally daring to really read it.
But something stopped her. All she could see was the last few lines, just above the signature, the 'Kerry', with a flourish on the 'y', just the way Kim remembered it.
"And so, if you can ever find it in your heart to give me another chance, to let me get it right, then you know where I am. Until then, I remain ever yours,
Love,
Kerry"
Kim really had thought she'd got rid of this remarkable woman, but as she looked around her once more, she knew she didn't need the physical evidence. Kerry had never really left her, and now there was only one thought on the beautiful blonde's mind.
Chicago.
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