"Cause it's the only thing you've got in your life, you Nazi dyke..."
As Kerry opened her front door and stepped into the hallway, Malucci's words still echoed around her head. She dropped her bag onto the floor and slammed the door shut, closing off the outside world and reclaiming the space asher own.
Still numb, she shifted into autopilot. Walking into the den, she headed straight for the drinks cabinet, pulled out a bottle of vodka, and set it down on the table. But she refrained from actually pouring a glass. This was too serious for drink.
Suddenly spurred into action, Kerry moved briskly around the den, switching lights on and drawing the curtains, shutting out the chilly Chicago night. And then she sat down, alone.
It had been two months she wouldn't wish on anyone, even Romano. After having come out, an event surprising even to Kerry herself, she'd taken three weeks of vacation, needing time to recuperate and to assess a crazy year, one in which her entire world had literally been turned on it's head. The truth of her statement to Robert was not in question. That was one thing Kerry was sure of, and the one thing she seemed totally unable to grasp hold of. As those words had left her mouth, she'd felt a piece of her puzzle drop into place, but rather than completing her, it only served to make all the other pieces that made up her life seem all the more out of sync.
At first, she'd headed to Nairobi, taking the first flight she could get. However, she'd found her old haunt too full of ghosts and the past to bear, so from there she'd gone on to London, somewhere that held no history and no connections for her. She'd spent a pleasant two weeks in the British capital, just loosing herself in the anonymity that being a tourist blessed her with.
Eventually, though, she’d known it was time to go home. On her return to Chicago, two things awaited her. One, an answer phone message from Romano, ordering her to report to his office the instant she received this message. She erased it. The second was a letter with her name written on it in that firm hand she knew so well: K. Weaver. In it, Kim told her that despite Romano having offered her her job back for reasons that remained unclear, she had refused. The letter wished Kerry the best for the future, but gave the redhead no clue as to what Kim was doing, where she was going. Kerry remembered the bitter tears she had shed upon realising that this was the blonde's way of cutting Kerry out of her life.
After that, Kerry had laid low for a few days, not answering the phone or the door, just drifting in a numb void. But she soon realised that she had to return to work. And that she was scared. Scared was not something Kerry Weaver was used to, but then since Kim had walked into her life, nothing had gone as expected.
Being gay in itself had not been a huge problem for Kerry, objectively speaking, but being as open and out as Kim was definitely not on Kerry's agenda. She saw no reason to create another problem for herself. She remembered how...alienated she had felt the first time she had gone out with her crutch twelve years ago. The stares. The comments. She had hated it, and what it had done to her. It had led her to build walls around herself, in order to deflect the thoughtless cruelty so many people exhibited.
And then had come Kim. Kim who had blasted Kerry's defences to dust with one kiss to leave her totally vulnerable and exposed.
So, on her return to work, Kerry had done what she always did, built the walls up even higher and stepped into her role as Alpha Bitch Attending, pushing all her personal issues right to the back of her mind. Trouble was, these walls hadn't been perfected over years, so stuff had found its way out. Her conversations with Romano and Luka on her first day, her attempt to make Mark understand her frustration at having literally no one to turn to, nowhere to go but round in the same old circles.
And then Malucci had, in one bitter, bad-tempered exchange, put his finger on exactly what was making her so miserable. As Kerry sat curled up on her couch, staring into the fire, watching the flames do their ever-changing dance, the truth of those words came back to her...
"You're a sad, cold-hearted bitch....nobody here likes you....it's the only thing you've got in your life..."
That had hurt, and as Kerry had walked slowly away the weight of these words had fallen onto her shoulders, weighing her every movement down as she collected her things, signed out, drove home. And remembered how different it had been...
"Kerry, time to get up, my sweet"
"Wha....?"
"Y'now, get out of bed, get in the shower, get dressed...if we weren't going out, I'd tell you to skip that bit.."
Kerry reached behind her, extracted a pillow and tossed it at the disgustingly awake blonde, before rolling out of bed and hitting the floor with a distinctly undignified thunk.
A half hour later she and Kim had made it to the nearby coffee bar, and had shared the morning paper and a bagel, just enjoying being near each other, sharing the perfect Sunday morning.
Kerry remembered how she had reached over to tuck an errant blonde curl behind an ear, and the deep feeling of peace that had enveloped her. She remembered thinking that nothing, nothing, could touch her now, that her life was complete for the first time in so long. At that moment Kerry had felt her life make sense, in a way that had seemed untouchable.
The day after, Shannon Wallace had been brought into the ER. And the unthinkable had happened.
Kerry reached a hand up to her cheek, and found no tears to brush away. Instead of the bitter sobs that usually racked her body whenever she thought of her betrayal of, and subsequent separation from, Kim, she felt empty. Like a shell of Kerry Weaver, M.D. She realised that over the past few weeks, she'd reverted to being solely Dr. Weaver, like she had done for the ten years she’d been able to put MD behind her name, until Kim walked had into her life. She'd tried to push everything out except her work, her profession. Taking double shifts, she'd become a one-dimensional stick figure, the queen bitch of the ER, concerned only with doing her job and getting the best out of her staff, and damn the consequences. Until now. Malucci's words had cut though the cast-iron professional shell, and forced her to see that her ER had indeed become her life. And that it was no way to live.
EPILOGUE.
As the first weak rays of sunshine pushed though the curtains, Kerry realised that she'd been sitting there all night, and that the fire had become little more than ashes as the memories and reflections had swirled around her brain. Out of it had come one incontrovertible truth: it was time to move on and start again.
Move on from Kim, and move on from herself. Move on from the scared Kerry Weaver, who had lived and nearly died by her fear of being open, of letting herself be seen with all the contradictions and foibles that made her such a beautiful and mesmerising person.
She leaned back into the couch, feeling a weight lift off of her shoulders. It was as if the walls no longer existed, as if they'd been taken down brick by brick as Kerry had sat there all night. Walls that had defined her for so long had just fallen away, leaving her with a clean slate, a chance to see and take life as it was, with all it's contradictions, wonders and beauty, rather than as something to be tackled and beaten down.
And here it was. The dawn, offering her a new life, a second chance, and this time she was ready for it. No more hiding, no more messing about. This time, life was for living.
A small smile tugged at the corners of Kerry's lips as she got up and headed for the kitchen, ready for the start of a new day.