walk across the fire
Here's another for you, set during Freefall as I just watched that episode and I swear it's one of my favorites of the entire series, if not the singular favorite. And yes, I did take the title for this fic from Melissa Ethridge. :)
Title: Walk Across the Fire
Author: chanter
Series: ER
Rating: PG13
Characters/pairings: Neela-Abby, Neela-Susan, Neela-Sam (all one-sided), Susan-chuck and slight Sam-Luka
Summary: Her conscious mind was on fast speed. Neela’s thoughts during Freefall.
675 words
It’s clinical, everything she says and does that day, everything held, touched, breathed in--it’s natural. It’s second nature, second skin and first calling, done without conscious thought, tacit actions intertwining with the patches in the lives she’s helped to make whole again. It’s instinctual.
Until.
Until that patient on the roof, the helicopter and the wary one-armed surgeon, a smoothe ride up and another down, order descending into the controlled chaos that is her ground-level temporary home. And then several minor explosions of the verbal kind all centered around a poison-tongued Romano, Pratt the wanker that he is getting more than even he deserves, Morris passing by wearing the scent of something incense-strong and quite illegal, and then between breath in and momentary hold spinning-smoking-burning and a fiery explosion that obliterates all trace of the argument flaring between Samantha and Luka, heated words lost on the breath out, forgotten with the first swing of the door.
And even after.
Her hands know exactly what they’re doing, fingers in perfect rhythm, muscles triggering bones triggering faultless reactions and all brought about by a cascade of tacit knowledge from brain to body to instruments and lives saved, lives lost.
This is why she can hear herself.
The entire time, she’s thinking.
She’s able to step outside herself, disassociate herself from her surroundings while her professional skill takes completely over, words spoken with the slightest attention paid, hinting at a cool detachment she could easily have classified as a harmless psychological fugue and all the while her conscious mind is running on fast speed. It comes to her in flashes, amid the consuming jumble of names and vitals and reports of injury, casualty, turmoil and fiery trial. It visits her in fragments, piece by piece forming a patchwork of realization, phantoms and ideas not carefully examined until the space between breaths allows them to surface. Breathe in, smoke. Breathe out, another terse segment of conversation. But in between... a name.
Abby. Sometimes nurse, sometimes doctor, brilliant in practice and so scarily real it can hurt just to be in the same room with her for fear of a brush of intangible contact with all the drama. Or for want of the same, and so much more. Abby, the singular cause of electric thrills and delicious, driving warmth in places that ache with the radiating need for a nurse-chameleon’s fingers. Abby, her someday maybe practical tutor--doesn’t she wish.
Susan. Blunt but elegant, everyone’s older sister and best friend, as much corduroy as she is pristine scrubs and possessed of a boldness that sparks envy along with the score of butterflies air-dancing in her stomach with every sight. Susan, trained professional and shameless human, bending over a battered flight nurse with unguarded love-born desperation written in every line, a posture striking enough to provoke a sudden irrational wish to trade places with the man on the gurney.
Samantha. Street-savvy, unwavering and harshly true to herself, rough but brilliant where she herself can only quaver. She’s always thought of her as Samantha, even after the slightly younger woman’s plain-spoken insistence that her name was Sam. The length of it can fill a well-concealed breath in, a blissful thought linked with the scent of shampoo and faint perfume, fitting perfectly to the rough-edged image she retains in silent fantasies, an image that combines nurse with mother with partner so flawlessly that she’s often hard-pressed not to voice her single-word daydream on the breath out.
And the breath out.
And again.
It’s only after the chaos has cleared and wavering order is for the most part restored that she dares say anything beyond the boundaries of her professional duty. Fully herself again in the reigning quiet lingering in the aftermath, she half fears her first words might be a name, an admission, a plea for solace from one or another of the women standing nearby. Abby, Susan, Samantha--Sam, one of them. All of them. Someone. Anyone.
Doesn’t she wish.
So is it any wonder her voice is shaking?
“Is it over?”
Title: Walk Across the Fire
Author: chanter
Series: ER
Rating: PG13
Characters/pairings: Neela-Abby, Neela-Susan, Neela-Sam (all one-sided), Susan-chuck and slight Sam-Luka
Summary: Her conscious mind was on fast speed. Neela’s thoughts during Freefall.
675 words
It’s clinical, everything she says and does that day, everything held, touched, breathed in--it’s natural. It’s second nature, second skin and first calling, done without conscious thought, tacit actions intertwining with the patches in the lives she’s helped to make whole again. It’s instinctual.
Until.
Until that patient on the roof, the helicopter and the wary one-armed surgeon, a smoothe ride up and another down, order descending into the controlled chaos that is her ground-level temporary home. And then several minor explosions of the verbal kind all centered around a poison-tongued Romano, Pratt the wanker that he is getting more than even he deserves, Morris passing by wearing the scent of something incense-strong and quite illegal, and then between breath in and momentary hold spinning-smoking-burning and a fiery explosion that obliterates all trace of the argument flaring between Samantha and Luka, heated words lost on the breath out, forgotten with the first swing of the door.
And even after.
Her hands know exactly what they’re doing, fingers in perfect rhythm, muscles triggering bones triggering faultless reactions and all brought about by a cascade of tacit knowledge from brain to body to instruments and lives saved, lives lost.
This is why she can hear herself.
The entire time, she’s thinking.
She’s able to step outside herself, disassociate herself from her surroundings while her professional skill takes completely over, words spoken with the slightest attention paid, hinting at a cool detachment she could easily have classified as a harmless psychological fugue and all the while her conscious mind is running on fast speed. It comes to her in flashes, amid the consuming jumble of names and vitals and reports of injury, casualty, turmoil and fiery trial. It visits her in fragments, piece by piece forming a patchwork of realization, phantoms and ideas not carefully examined until the space between breaths allows them to surface. Breathe in, smoke. Breathe out, another terse segment of conversation. But in between... a name.
Abby. Sometimes nurse, sometimes doctor, brilliant in practice and so scarily real it can hurt just to be in the same room with her for fear of a brush of intangible contact with all the drama. Or for want of the same, and so much more. Abby, the singular cause of electric thrills and delicious, driving warmth in places that ache with the radiating need for a nurse-chameleon’s fingers. Abby, her someday maybe practical tutor--doesn’t she wish.
Susan. Blunt but elegant, everyone’s older sister and best friend, as much corduroy as she is pristine scrubs and possessed of a boldness that sparks envy along with the score of butterflies air-dancing in her stomach with every sight. Susan, trained professional and shameless human, bending over a battered flight nurse with unguarded love-born desperation written in every line, a posture striking enough to provoke a sudden irrational wish to trade places with the man on the gurney.
Samantha. Street-savvy, unwavering and harshly true to herself, rough but brilliant where she herself can only quaver. She’s always thought of her as Samantha, even after the slightly younger woman’s plain-spoken insistence that her name was Sam. The length of it can fill a well-concealed breath in, a blissful thought linked with the scent of shampoo and faint perfume, fitting perfectly to the rough-edged image she retains in silent fantasies, an image that combines nurse with mother with partner so flawlessly that she’s often hard-pressed not to voice her single-word daydream on the breath out.
And the breath out.
And again.
It’s only after the chaos has cleared and wavering order is for the most part restored that she dares say anything beyond the boundaries of her professional duty. Fully herself again in the reigning quiet lingering in the aftermath, she half fears her first words might be a name, an admission, a plea for solace from one or another of the women standing nearby. Abby, Susan, Samantha--Sam, one of them. All of them. Someone. Anyone.
Doesn’t she wish.
So is it any wonder her voice is shaking?
“Is it over?”