Miles To Nowhere
Disclaimer ~ Don’t own them. Never
have done. Never will do. Okay?
Author’s Notes ~ This began as a
random, very late night wandering into the ER fandom, but I ended up quite enjoying
myself (hence the length extending to seven chapters), mainly thanks to the wonderful
people who gave me feedback for this. The story goes out to them as well as to Catherine,
who has kindly written a companion piece to this from Carter’s POV, called ‘The
Road Less Travelled’ – find it at http://www.geocities.com/button_mush.
Chapter One
The road stretches out in front of us, an
endless ribbon of grey tarmac reaching far, far into the distance. It
disappears into eternity and that’s where we’ll follow it.
I
automatically lean over to turn up the car’s air-conditioning, desperate for
some respite from the scalding heat. But the dial is already turned to the max.
Sweat is dripping down me in rivulets and the air smothers me like an electric
blanket, and yet this is as cool as it gets. I feel uncomfortable in my skin,
like the humidity has somehow sloughed it loose. I want to crawl out of it,
leave this body, leave this life and all its incumbent crap behind.
I
long desperately for a cigarette, yearn for that first hit of nicotine in my
blood, calming my nerves, occupying my idle hands that should be working,
should be busy all the time, should be focusing on other people’s problems. But
I finished the pack over an hour ago, and there isn’t another gas station for
miles. In fact there isn’t another anything for miles, not even a tiny
spec of life glimmering in the middle of the vast desert. We are all alone out
here, truly in the middle of nowhere.
I
begin to wonder how good an idea this trip was after all.
Twelve
hours ago it had seemed a fantastic idea. A road trip. Let my hair down. Speed
along lonely roads shrieking into the wind, all just for the Hell of it. It had
been so long since I’d done anything so carefree, so plainly selfish, that I
couldn’t wait to set off, to drive without a destination, to speed away from
responsibility and duty, to escape the ties that bind my life so securely. To
say fuck it. Fuck them. Fuck them all.
I
had been drunk then. Drunk and stupid.
And
now I’m paying for it. Paying for my total lack of judgement with a body that
aches for more alcohol – its long dormant addiction now awakened. Paying with
the loss of a relationship with a man that I care deeply about and the
ruination of a friendship with a man I might very possibly love. Or was our
friendship ruined already? Spoilt because of my fear, my abject terror of
letting somebody get too close, of dropping the barriers that surround my heart
and actually needing somebody else for a change, instead of them just needing
me.
I try not to think
about yesterday, but I can’t exactly help it. I can’t stop the memories
slipping into my mind, can’t stop my head pounding with the ache of the
hangover. Can’t turn away from the steely features of John Carter in the
driving seat of the rental car, staring straight ahead at the road in front of
us, not having spoken a word for the last twenty miles.
Perhaps he’s regretting
this too.
Last night everything
was fine. Well, when I say fine, I mean normal. I’d worked an average day at
the hospital – been puked on, cursed at, bitten by a hyperactive five year old,
had a beautiful young woman with flowing blonde curls (just the kind I’ve
always admired, but would never admit to secretly wanting) come in with fatal
injuries from a car crash. We pumped on her chest and spattered blood all over
her flawless complexion, until her heart was just a squishy mess in my hands
and Dr Benton calmly pronounced her dead. In other words it was just another
sucky day in my generally crappy life, but at least I had control over it.
Then I got that phone
call. The phone call, the one I’ve been dreading ever since Mom left
Chicago, insisting that everything was okay and that she was better now. This
was going to be the time she would make it in the world. Forget her thirty
years of failing to take meds and careening from bouts of crushing depression
to the giddy heights of mania. Forget the three failed suicide attempts and the
arrests and the endless discussions with child and family services over whether
she was fit to take care of her own children. Forget the times when I sat by
her, helpless as she stared out into space, rocking mindlessly back and forth
on her heels. Forget the day when I was eight and she left me and my brother
playing on the sidewalk outside a bar, whilst she went inside and picked up
men. Forget the entire history of her illness. She was better now and if I
couldn’t give her that second (thousandth) chance, if I couldn’t trust her
now…then I was the one with the problem, not her.
I had my doubts when
Mom left, disappeared with a cheery smile to stay with a friend whose name I
couldn’t even remember. I always had that feeling in the pit of my stomach that
it wasn’t the end, that conclusions didn’t come about that easily, answers that
didn’t exist couldn’t be simply found.
I gained no pleasure in being proved right.
The calm authoritative
voice on the other end asked for Mrs Lockhart. I ignored the ‘Mrs’, a title I
hated during my marriage and now have no desire to use following my divorce,
and said, yes, speaking. The voice went on to tell me about my mother. To
inform me it was very sorry for my loss, that they’d tried everything they
could, worked on her for a long time, used all the appropriate drugs and
medical recourses. She just couldn’t be saved.
Couldn’t be saved. They got that right,
anyway.
I thanked whoever it
was and hung up, totally composed, emotionless. I wasn’t thinking about Maggie
(about my Mom who let us paint the walls and giggled like a schoolgirl and told
me stories of wild adventures I was never entirely sure she just imagined…).
Instead I wondered how many times I’d been the one bearing the bad news. How
I’d doled out the meaningless lines of condolences, thrown in a few technical
terms to impress, to make them think we accomplished more than we had, that it
was God who took away their mother (or father or child or sibling or spouse),
not just a cruel twist of fate or the limits of modern medicine. Then I’d hung
up the phone and walked away, forgotten about the other person’s pain and just
gotten on with my life, because that’s the only possible way I could have
coped.
I couldn’t walk away
from this, though. My mother killed herself. Not in the traditional suicidal
way, though. She got drunk then decided to go swimming. The twenty-year-old
college students she was with pulled her out of the water when they realised
she’d been under during a dive too long. They performed mouth-to-mouth and
called 911, but it was too late. Always too late.
Luka had gaped at me
with a concerned face and eyes that had seen too much death already. “What is
it?” He asked, but I think he already knew.
“It’s my fault,” I had
muttered, feeling intensely the truth of the words, as I still do now. I had
the chance to help, but I threw it away. I knew this was going to happen, I
knew it in my bones and in my heart and yet I still let her walk away from me.
She was my responsibility, but I was tired of looking after her, so I gave up.
I killed her as surely as if I held her head under the water myself, or held
the bottle of vodka to her lips and forced her to drink. My fault.
“No, no, it’s not,”
Luka insisted. “There was nothing you could have done.”
I turned on him, three
decades of pain colouring my voice. “I could have wanted her. She was my mother
and I wished she wasn’t.”
“Abby…” he reached out
for me and I pulled away.
“No! Don’t touch me. I
don’t want you here right now, I want to be alone.”
“It’s going to be
okay,” he insisted. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“How can you say that?”
I yelled, my tightly held control slipping away from me. I was beginning to
sound like her – please God, I don’t want to turn into her. Spare me that
indignity at least. “How can you say it’s okay when my mother just died?”
“I understand,” he
fixed me with an intense stare, the stare that drew me to the relationship in
the first place, the one that radiates pain and distance. It screams ‘keep away
from me’ and I liked that, I liked the idea of someone I couldn’t connect with
completely, someone to be around but not with, someone whose wounds were
even deeper than mine. “I know how you feel right now. It hurts like you want
to die, but that passes, it never totally goes away, but it gets better then
you can move on.”
“No, you don’t
understand,” I snapped back at him. “When I heard she was dead – you know what
the first thing I felt was? Relief. I was glad it was over. Glad she wouldn’t
be around to put me through Hell anymore.”
Luka said nothing, just
kept staring and staring, eyes black as coal, the emotions behind them
unfathomable.
“Please will you
leave,” I begged in a whisper and he did.
It didn’t take me long
to head out to the nearest bar, to surrender all resistance to the ever-present
urge to drown every single one of my sorrows. Five scotches on rocks later, I
was feeling a little better. In fact I was beyond better, I was (and I am well
aware of the irony here) bordering on manic. A sudden urge to do something
crazy, to enjoy my newfound freedom, overwhelmed me and I picked up the
payphone in the bar. I dialled Carter’s number, something I hadn’t done for
weeks, not since he told be he didn’t want to be my friend anymore, that it
wasn’t fair on him. I had deliberately missed his meaning then, but that night
in the bar it became much clearer.
“John,” I greeted him
in a husky voice tinged with giggles. “I don’t think we should be friends any
longer either.”
“Abby?” He replied with
some confusion. “Is that you?”
“Yup. Who else would it
be?”
“Where are you?” He
asked and I remember thinking that it meant he cared. Wherever I was, he wanted
to find me there, only I wasn’t sure whether he could.
“I’m in a bar,
downtown.”
“You’re in a bar? What
the Hell are you doing? You’re an alcoholic!”
“Come have a drink with
me, John,” I slurred and he muttered some extra curses then insisted he was
coming to pick me up.
True to his word he was
there twenty minutes later, during which time I had consumed three more drinks
and was feeling the buzz very nicely, thank you very much. When he arrived I
grabbed his hand and tried to make him drink, to get him to unwind. He in turn
tried to drag me out of there. He wanted to take me home, put me in the shower,
a concept I found absolutely hilarious, until a better idea struck me.
“I want to go on a
trip.”
“A trip?” He echoed
doubtfully.
“Yep. I want to leave
everything behind and forget about it. I never did that before, I always stuck
things out, knuckled down and played good little Abby. I want to be bad for
once. I want to not give a shit…”
“And if I take you
away, you promise not to have another drink?” He interrupted.
I contemplated the deal for a while. I
would just be swapping one form of escapism for another. “I promise.”
So, we went home and
packed a bag and he took me to the airport. Two plane tickets appeared like
magic and suddenly Chicago was a mass of pretty little lights far down below me
and the alcohol was beginning to wear off.
I slumped back in my
seat, tears beginning to prick at my eyes as reality, no longer veiled by drugs
or shock, began to sink in. She was dead. My mother is dead.
John touched my hand
tentatively, like he’s almost afraid to. “What happened, Abby?” He asked
softly. “What made you do this?”
I collapsed over into
his lap, crumpling like a paper doll. “It’s over,” I gasped through my sobs.
“She finally did it.”
“Maggie,” He muttered,
knowing exactly what I meant. We are so similar really, we both bottle things
up inside, pretend they don’t exist until we can deal with them no longer and
we self-destruct. I couldn’t have broken down like this in front of Luka, he
wouldn’t have understood with his stoic European ways and his quiet pain. He
doesn’t get how in some people hurt explodes suddenly and annihilates
everything in its wake.
“I’m sorry,” John
added. “I’m sorry.” And then he wrapped his arms around my shaking form,
staying like that until the seat belt signs lit up again and I had to sit up
with red, puffy eyes, looking like absolute Hell while the plane landed in
Arizona.
Outside the airport he
asked me what I wanted to do next. I said head to the nearest bar, so he
decided for me. We hired a car and started driving and we haven’t stopped
since.
~~~
John pulls over to the edge of the road,
bringing the car to an abrupt halt under the burning midday sun. We sit in
silence for a while, suddenly out of things to say to one another.
“Where to now?” He
finally asks.
“I thought we were just
following the road.”
“Ah, but where does it
lead?”
I sigh heavily, longing
once again for a cigarette or a drink. “I’m not sure we’ll ever know answer to
that – or if I even want to.”
“I know I don’t,” John
returns with a wry smile. The silence stretches long again, but this time it
doesn’t seem to bother me as much.
“Are you really going
to leave County?” I ask, trying to sound disinterested and failing.
“I don’t know,” John
shrugs. “Sometimes you just have to give up and move on.”
“And sometimes you have
to work at things, dig your heels in and put in the effort,” I return with
unexpected vehemence.
“Give me one reason why
I should stay,” he turns and looks me straight in the face.
I hesitate for an
instant, before giving in to my reckless streak. “Because I want you to.”
“So you can have a
friend to sort out problems between you and Luka?” He enquires with no small
amount of bitterness.
I shake my head. “No,
so I can have someone to call at midnight from a bar because my life is falling
apart and I know he’ll be there to stop me from ruining things completely. So
we can drive all night then get stuck in awkward morning after phase.”
“Morning after phase?”
He laughs. “Don’t we have to sleep together to get that?”
“Apparently not.”
“Then I think I’m
missing out on the best part of the deal here,” he jokes.
“Just drive,” I mutter,
trying to suppress my amusement.
“But we haven’t decided
where we’re going yet.”
“Does it really
matter?”
He starts the engine.
“No, I don’t suppose it does.”