"The Difference Between Life and Death" - ER
Begins within and immediately follows last night's episode, "Skin," the ending of which was a cheat.
Title: The Difference Between Life and Death
Author: Nia
Rating: PG
Show: ER
Characters: Abby, with an Abby/Susan feel.
Spoilers: "Skin," episode 11.10, aired 1-13-2005.
Summary: "It does not start to get really scary until they pull off the road and into the trees. That is when they are all alone, and nobody is there to help her."
The Difference Between Life and Death
It all starts when she walks away from Susan.
It is like it is Susan's fault, because Susan was the one who picked a fight. But really it is her own fault for walking away. She never should have walked away.
The car pulls up and she thinks it's just like any other car pulling up. Someone shot his brother. Someone needs help. She walks away from the ambulance bay doors and Susan behind her and climbs into the car to see.
They pull her in by her hair and by her clothes.
*
At first she thinks she can reason with them. Or not at first, but early, because at first she is just confused and angry and they are still holding her by the hair, and she says "help" a few times, like someone is going to hear her, and then the gun comes out. And she's quiet.
But still, she thinks they're just confused. They're young. They're confused.
Of course they'll want to go back to the hospital, when they understand.
*
This kid is not going to make it. This kid is not going to make it because his friends will not listen.
It is sad.
*
It does not start to get really scary until they pull off the road and into the trees. That is when they are all alone, and nobody is there to help her.
She thought it would be smart to say she needed a bathroom, like she thought they would pull over at a gas station and let her walk around with bloody scrubs and let her walk around with all those witnesses. She thought.
They pull into the trees and make her get out of the car. Fast. They make her pull down her pants. And that's slow. They're watching--flashlight and everything--they're looking at her. They could do anything to her.
This is maybe the worst thing ever.
*
And then it gets a bit little better. They have comic books. They let her have a cigarette. They talk. It is almost a little bit like camping. Like they are all friends. Until one of them dies.
*
Abby does CPR until her hands are numb and she can't breathe. Her lungs are burning. She can't breathe. And then she does CPR some more.
When it's over, Little C goes off to cry.
Abby does not cry in front of people. It is embarrassing. It makes people look at you like you are not normal. It makes people look at you like you are sick. So when Abby cries, she cries alone in the bathroom, with the door shut and the water running, which she knows is a kind of sickness in itself, which makes her want to cry, which makes her want to run to the bathroom and shut the door and turn on the water and try to hide the sound of her sobs. Except it occurs to her that she cannot be embarrassed now, that nobody is going to look at her like she is not normal, that nobody is going to look at her like she is sick. That nobody is going to look at her ever. Ever again. Ever.
Abby does not cry in front of people, but Abby is going to die.
So she cries.
*
They make her lie down in the back. She watches the top of Chicago go by, upside-down and curved at the edges of the window, and she thinks that this is the last thing she will ever see: black sky, orange lights. She does not want to see it.
She wants to see home, and she asks for that. She just wants to see home. She wants to see scuffed linoleum, and the bills on her kitchen table, and Neela sleeping on the couch, and dead plants. She wants to see the alarm clock, and see it blinking while it's buzzing, and see the shower and the mildew, and the inside of the el, and the ambulance bay doors. And the desk. And the patients. And Susan.
This is what she sees when she comes home at night, and this is what she sees every morning. This is, she realizes, what she lives for.
"Please," she says, "I just want to go home."
*
Upside-down and curving, she sees the el tracks overhead.
She is beginning to get used to the view: things going by unrecognized, curving, shadowed, spinning when they take corners, and beneath her there is the rocking of the car, and around her there is the bassline of the music, and she is so, so tired.
And this is death: exhausted, thumping, looking at a world you don't recognize. Two kids in the front seat, and ugly scrubs stained with someone else's blood. And not a single friend. And what a difference it would make if she had just a single friend.
She imagines lying here, taking corners, the top of Chicago over her head, and instead of alone she is with someone--who? Neela? Luka? Susan? Susan. She owes Susan an apology, for storming out on her, because it was stupid, stupid to storm outside and stupid to stand there smoking and stupid to get in the car, stupid, so stupid, but it was Susan's fault, but it was stupid, and what she wouldn't give to have turned around right then and there and gone back inside to get a gurney, and to have seen the ambulance bay doors, and the desk, and the patients, and Susan.
She imagines lying here with Susan, taking corners, the top of Chicago over their heads, and their hands clasped together in the cold darkness, because she doesn't want to die alone.
She is going to die alone.
*
It is bizarre to get out of the car, and see the world right-side-up again. El tracks out of sight, and a wall, and cinderblocks with red paint.
Wait.
She recognizes that wall, and the red paint, and the light on the concrete and the sound of the el.
Yes, please, here. They'll find me if you do it here. They'll find me.
More than anything, she wants to be found. She is going to die, and then she wants to be found. She wants to not be forgotten. She wants them to know what she has been through. That is the next best thing to an apology. That is the next best thing to goodbye.
Please, please, let them find me.
*
"Thank you."
She does not really know what is happening. They are talking to her like nothing has happened, and then they are leaving.
She is cold, and when she is cold she goes inside, so she is going inside now. She is walking. The ambulance bay doors. She is running. The desk. The patients.
Please, please, someone find me.
"Oh my God," says Susan, "what happened to you?"
*
Abby does not cry in front of people, but all the time that they are putting her on a gurney and pushing her into Trauma One she is thinking about crying. Her nose is running from the cold before and from the crying before, her nose is running snot and her eyes are all wet, but she is not crying.
Luka and Carter are the ones she sees bent over her. Of course. Luka and Carter. Neela is somewhere in the background. Susan is nowhere to be found. They are cutting off her scrubs, and her shirt under her scrubs--she is embarrassed about her white cotton bra--and her pants--oh God, not this again, she reaches for the ties of her pants, this is the first she has been able to move since she walked in the door, she does not want to have her pants pulled down in front of them all over again, but Carter is holding her hand down. "We need to make sure you're okay." There is blood everywhere, and they don't know it's not hers.
She did not die alone, but she feels like she did. She is not crying. She is not clothed. She is a body, and she is all alone.
She wants them to know what she has been through.
*
Then Susan is there out of nowhere, and she is the one who tells them to leave the pants on.
They all go about their business. Neela smiles down at her, but Neela is bad with patients, Abby remembers that. Neela is good with procedures, but Abby doesn't need any procedures. Neela leaves. Luka is good with patients, but now he is in the doorway with Haleh. Carter's hands are on her belly, and he is asking her whether it hurts. None of them know what has happened to her yet, because she has not told them, because they have not asked. She doesn't blame them. She doesn't ask either, when she's the doctor.
There is a bruise on her hip and she tries to roll away when Carter touches it. She knows it is from taking a sharp corner, she knows she slid against the back of a seat. But he doesn't know. "Some tenderness at the pelvis," he reports. She is just a body. She is just tenderness and bones. He reaches under the waist of her pants again, and again she tries to keep him away.
"It's okay," Susan says, touching Abby's forehead with a latex glove. It's really disgusting. "We're just going to check your hip."
Susan is doing nothing except standing at Abby's side. She has one hand on Abby's forehead and one hand on Abby's pants, fingers looped in the drawstring so Carter can only roll one side down a little, so Abby won't feel like she is being unclothed. Abby turns her head beneath Susan's latex-glove palm--the slide of it against her face is sickening--and sees doors, and the gurney, and Susan's own curving hip, everything upside-down and sideways again, and black tiles, and yellow lights. Abby wraps her hand around Susan's.
"What happened?" Susan asks, as Carter's fingers walk the edges of her bruise.
"They didn't hurt me," Abby says. "They said they needed a doctor..."
*
At home, Susan's voice is on her machine. Twice. Once she is angry, and once she is angry and then worried. And then sorry. And nobody else has called.
Abby gets into bed and sits upright. She does not like lying down, seeing things sideways. The light coming into her room is orange. The darkness is black. She turns on a lamp.
She falls asleep sitting up, but not for long. She sits up until dawn begins, purple-bruise-blue, and turns off the lamp. She closes her eyes.
She can hear Neela's breathing in the living room, and she wishes it were Susan. She wishes to God she had never left Susan.
Title: The Difference Between Life and Death
Author: Nia
Rating: PG
Show: ER
Characters: Abby, with an Abby/Susan feel.
Spoilers: "Skin," episode 11.10, aired 1-13-2005.
Summary: "It does not start to get really scary until they pull off the road and into the trees. That is when they are all alone, and nobody is there to help her."
The Difference Between Life and Death
It all starts when she walks away from Susan.
It is like it is Susan's fault, because Susan was the one who picked a fight. But really it is her own fault for walking away. She never should have walked away.
The car pulls up and she thinks it's just like any other car pulling up. Someone shot his brother. Someone needs help. She walks away from the ambulance bay doors and Susan behind her and climbs into the car to see.
They pull her in by her hair and by her clothes.
*
At first she thinks she can reason with them. Or not at first, but early, because at first she is just confused and angry and they are still holding her by the hair, and she says "help" a few times, like someone is going to hear her, and then the gun comes out. And she's quiet.
But still, she thinks they're just confused. They're young. They're confused.
Of course they'll want to go back to the hospital, when they understand.
*
This kid is not going to make it. This kid is not going to make it because his friends will not listen.
It is sad.
*
It does not start to get really scary until they pull off the road and into the trees. That is when they are all alone, and nobody is there to help her.
She thought it would be smart to say she needed a bathroom, like she thought they would pull over at a gas station and let her walk around with bloody scrubs and let her walk around with all those witnesses. She thought.
They pull into the trees and make her get out of the car. Fast. They make her pull down her pants. And that's slow. They're watching--flashlight and everything--they're looking at her. They could do anything to her.
This is maybe the worst thing ever.
*
And then it gets a bit little better. They have comic books. They let her have a cigarette. They talk. It is almost a little bit like camping. Like they are all friends. Until one of them dies.
*
Abby does CPR until her hands are numb and she can't breathe. Her lungs are burning. She can't breathe. And then she does CPR some more.
When it's over, Little C goes off to cry.
Abby does not cry in front of people. It is embarrassing. It makes people look at you like you are not normal. It makes people look at you like you are sick. So when Abby cries, she cries alone in the bathroom, with the door shut and the water running, which she knows is a kind of sickness in itself, which makes her want to cry, which makes her want to run to the bathroom and shut the door and turn on the water and try to hide the sound of her sobs. Except it occurs to her that she cannot be embarrassed now, that nobody is going to look at her like she is not normal, that nobody is going to look at her like she is sick. That nobody is going to look at her ever. Ever again. Ever.
Abby does not cry in front of people, but Abby is going to die.
So she cries.
*
They make her lie down in the back. She watches the top of Chicago go by, upside-down and curved at the edges of the window, and she thinks that this is the last thing she will ever see: black sky, orange lights. She does not want to see it.
She wants to see home, and she asks for that. She just wants to see home. She wants to see scuffed linoleum, and the bills on her kitchen table, and Neela sleeping on the couch, and dead plants. She wants to see the alarm clock, and see it blinking while it's buzzing, and see the shower and the mildew, and the inside of the el, and the ambulance bay doors. And the desk. And the patients. And Susan.
This is what she sees when she comes home at night, and this is what she sees every morning. This is, she realizes, what she lives for.
"Please," she says, "I just want to go home."
*
Upside-down and curving, she sees the el tracks overhead.
She is beginning to get used to the view: things going by unrecognized, curving, shadowed, spinning when they take corners, and beneath her there is the rocking of the car, and around her there is the bassline of the music, and she is so, so tired.
And this is death: exhausted, thumping, looking at a world you don't recognize. Two kids in the front seat, and ugly scrubs stained with someone else's blood. And not a single friend. And what a difference it would make if she had just a single friend.
She imagines lying here, taking corners, the top of Chicago over her head, and instead of alone she is with someone--who? Neela? Luka? Susan? Susan. She owes Susan an apology, for storming out on her, because it was stupid, stupid to storm outside and stupid to stand there smoking and stupid to get in the car, stupid, so stupid, but it was Susan's fault, but it was stupid, and what she wouldn't give to have turned around right then and there and gone back inside to get a gurney, and to have seen the ambulance bay doors, and the desk, and the patients, and Susan.
She imagines lying here with Susan, taking corners, the top of Chicago over their heads, and their hands clasped together in the cold darkness, because she doesn't want to die alone.
She is going to die alone.
*
It is bizarre to get out of the car, and see the world right-side-up again. El tracks out of sight, and a wall, and cinderblocks with red paint.
Wait.
She recognizes that wall, and the red paint, and the light on the concrete and the sound of the el.
Yes, please, here. They'll find me if you do it here. They'll find me.
More than anything, she wants to be found. She is going to die, and then she wants to be found. She wants to not be forgotten. She wants them to know what she has been through. That is the next best thing to an apology. That is the next best thing to goodbye.
Please, please, let them find me.
*
"Thank you."
She does not really know what is happening. They are talking to her like nothing has happened, and then they are leaving.
She is cold, and when she is cold she goes inside, so she is going inside now. She is walking. The ambulance bay doors. She is running. The desk. The patients.
Please, please, someone find me.
"Oh my God," says Susan, "what happened to you?"
*
Abby does not cry in front of people, but all the time that they are putting her on a gurney and pushing her into Trauma One she is thinking about crying. Her nose is running from the cold before and from the crying before, her nose is running snot and her eyes are all wet, but she is not crying.
Luka and Carter are the ones she sees bent over her. Of course. Luka and Carter. Neela is somewhere in the background. Susan is nowhere to be found. They are cutting off her scrubs, and her shirt under her scrubs--she is embarrassed about her white cotton bra--and her pants--oh God, not this again, she reaches for the ties of her pants, this is the first she has been able to move since she walked in the door, she does not want to have her pants pulled down in front of them all over again, but Carter is holding her hand down. "We need to make sure you're okay." There is blood everywhere, and they don't know it's not hers.
She did not die alone, but she feels like she did. She is not crying. She is not clothed. She is a body, and she is all alone.
She wants them to know what she has been through.
*
Then Susan is there out of nowhere, and she is the one who tells them to leave the pants on.
They all go about their business. Neela smiles down at her, but Neela is bad with patients, Abby remembers that. Neela is good with procedures, but Abby doesn't need any procedures. Neela leaves. Luka is good with patients, but now he is in the doorway with Haleh. Carter's hands are on her belly, and he is asking her whether it hurts. None of them know what has happened to her yet, because she has not told them, because they have not asked. She doesn't blame them. She doesn't ask either, when she's the doctor.
There is a bruise on her hip and she tries to roll away when Carter touches it. She knows it is from taking a sharp corner, she knows she slid against the back of a seat. But he doesn't know. "Some tenderness at the pelvis," he reports. She is just a body. She is just tenderness and bones. He reaches under the waist of her pants again, and again she tries to keep him away.
"It's okay," Susan says, touching Abby's forehead with a latex glove. It's really disgusting. "We're just going to check your hip."
Susan is doing nothing except standing at Abby's side. She has one hand on Abby's forehead and one hand on Abby's pants, fingers looped in the drawstring so Carter can only roll one side down a little, so Abby won't feel like she is being unclothed. Abby turns her head beneath Susan's latex-glove palm--the slide of it against her face is sickening--and sees doors, and the gurney, and Susan's own curving hip, everything upside-down and sideways again, and black tiles, and yellow lights. Abby wraps her hand around Susan's.
"What happened?" Susan asks, as Carter's fingers walk the edges of her bruise.
"They didn't hurt me," Abby says. "They said they needed a doctor..."
*
At home, Susan's voice is on her machine. Twice. Once she is angry, and once she is angry and then worried. And then sorry. And nobody else has called.
Abby gets into bed and sits upright. She does not like lying down, seeing things sideways. The light coming into her room is orange. The darkness is black. She turns on a lamp.
She falls asleep sitting up, but not for long. She sits up until dawn begins, purple-bruise-blue, and turns off the lamp. She closes her eyes.
She can hear Neela's breathing in the living room, and she wishes it were Susan. She wishes to God she had never left Susan.