Old Fic: Still Around the Morning After (ER, Kerry/Susan) part 2 of 3
Title: Still Around the Morning After
Fandom: ER
Pairing: Kerry/Susan plus some canon het
Rating: NC-17
For complete headers, see part one.
Kerry's first words when she went on shift were, "Would someone get maintenance down here and clean this up already?" The puddle in front of the lounge had become a small pond. She looked up as a fat drop fell from the ceiling to add itself to the puddle. "And fix the fucking leak?"
"I've called twice already," Randi said.
"Call again."
"Romano's looking for you."
"Good for him," Kerry said, trying to navigate around the puddle, into the lounge.
"He's been down here looking for you six times this morning," Randi said. "Or seven. I stopped counting."
"Did he say I should go up to his office when I came in?"
"Not in those words."
"Then he can wait a little longer."
"Who can wait a little longer?" Kerry could have sworn that Romano had one of those teleporter things from Star Trek. And complicated surveillance equipment.
"Oh, sorry, Robert. Randi was just telling me that you were looking for me."
"Can we talk?"
"Sure, just let me run to my locker."
"It would've been nice if you'd told me you wouldn't be in till one."
"I was short on sleep. Carter covered for me." She edged around the puddle. The lounge door swung open just as she reached it.
"Jesus Christ," said Carter, in the lounge doorway. "Hasn't maintenance cleaned that up yet?"
"Apparently not," Kerry said.
"See you tomorrow," Carter said, splashing through the puddle.
"Oh, Kerry, I told maintenance not to respond to any calls from the ER until you got here," Romano said.
Kerry slammed the lounge door. She took a clean lab coat from her locker and put it on. Then, considering the situation, she fixed her hair, checked her lipstick, and dripped some Visine in her eyes. She knew how to play this game.
When she came out of the lounge, a custodian was mopping the floor, and two repairmen were waiting with a ladder. "Shall we continue this in my office?" said Romano.
"Okay," Kerry said, trying not to make it sound more like, "I hate you." Romano talked in the corridor and on the elevator, but Kerry had long since learned how to tune Romano out. It was the only way she could keep from decking him, sometimes.
Romano shut the office door behind him. "A while ago, Kerry," he said, "we agreed that one of the best ways to screw yourself as an administrator is to let your personal life interfere."
Says the man who upset a day's surgery schedule so he could operate on his dog, she said to herself. "I still think that's true."
"Well, showing up to a trauma call with your girlfriend isn't exactly the best way to uphold that policy. Especially when she's wearing your shirt."
"Poll the patients we treated last night," Kerry said. "I can promise you that not one of them noticed."
"Kerry, you know that's not what I'm concerned about."
"The staff's known for months, Robert."
"And whose fault is that?"
"We were careful," said Kerry. "They figured it out anyway."
"Sure, you were careful. You were careful like you wanted to get caught."
"And do you know what happened when we did get caught? Nothing. People talked for a couple of weeks, and then they moved on to Mark being sick and Yosh's new boyfriend and whatever the hell else."
"You got lucky."
"I know my staff," said Kerry.
"You know this is going to ruin your chances for career advancement."
"Maybe," she said evenly, "every once in a while, I think about something other than my career."
"Well, then, she'd better be a fucking racehorse in bed, Kerry, because--"
"Oh, come on, Robert, you know that's not what--"
"Isn't it? Honestly?"
"No! It absolutely isn't! It's--"
"Yeah, right, you fell in love. Whatever. Go have ten million of her babies, Kerry, if you can figure out how."
"So I break it off, or you're going to do what? I haven't done anything that goes against hospital policy, much less anything you can fire me for. Staff here frequently date their colleagues. Your associate chief of surgery married one of hers."
"It's not the same, and you know it."
"If you try anything, Robert, I can show a pattern of discrimination that will cost County millions in legal fees and bad publicity. Your problem is that you can't get rid of me, and you know it."
"Watch me."
She leaned on her crutch. "I'm waiting."
"I had such high hopes for you, Kerry," Romano said, shaking his head.
"For what?"
"I had you hand-picked," he said. "You were going to fix things up. Run things the right way. I was so relieved to find someone in this place who thought like I did."
"I don't think remotely like you do," Kerry said.
"I have since realized that."
"Well, good, because--"
"I have spent my career in a closet," Romano said. "A fairly small one, as a matter of fact. And now, I am coming out of it to you."
"Robert, please-- please don't play this game with me."
"This isn't a game," he said. "I want you to know where I stand."
"And did you think for a second that I might not want to know this?"
"Too late now."
"So what am I supposed to do with this?"
"Kerry, go and have your little love affair. As long as you keep running the ER like you have been, and as long as you don't do anything incredibly stupid, there's nothing I can do to stop you. If and when the trustees pick up on you and go ballistic, I will back you up and protect you to the best of my ability."
"Thank you," Kerry said softly.
Romano just cleared his throat.
"So-- so I'll assume that-- our conversation stays in this room."
"Do what you want," Romano said, opening the office door for her. "It's not like I can get rid of you."
*****
Mark was having a good day. Some days, lately, the tumor would affect his mood, Elizabeth explained as they waited for him to get ready. He'd get disoriented and compulsive, brush his teeth a dozen times before coming to bed. Or he'd be irritable and pick fights with everyone. One evening, Elizabeth had come home to find him shouting at the baby. And of course, his language came and went. He'd perseverate over words suddenly vanished from his vocabulary; he confused things like verb tenses and prepositions, "this" and "that," "I" and "you." He still seemed to understand everything that was said to him, and it upset him when he couldn't respond. Elizabeth told Susan all of this clinically, icily. "Just so you'll know what to expect."
But today was a good day. Mark had gotten out of bed without resistance, Elizabeth reported, and insisted on getting dressed and shaving on his own. His motor skills were still intact, and on the good days, he refused to be anything but independent. He'd been humming all morning, even, although Elizabeth couldn't for the life of her figure out what the tune was. "He's excited about the ballgame," Elizabeth said, then added, "He's excited about seeing you."
"All done," Mark announced, grinning, as he marched into the kitchen.
"Then let's go," Susan said. He took her hand, which surprised her, but she didn't resist. Elizabeth was fighting for a smile.
Susan didn't want to bother with parking at Wrigley Field, fun as it was to spend $15 to leave your car in a Taco Bell parking lot, so Elizabeth dropped them off at the El stop in downtown Evanston. "Ring me on the way back, when you get to where you have to switch lines," Elizabeth instructed them.
The El train was still empty enough that it was easy to find seats. Susan told Mark about a few of the more colorful recent patients-- the elderly diabetic whose prosthesis had disappeared for an hour, the gaggle of prep school girls with poison oak from their smoking hideout. She told him about the new staff, and the ways Carter and Chuny had found to fuck with their heads. She told him about Yosh's new paramedic boyfriend and the sniping contest between Abby and Luka.
He laughed. "Nothing changes," he said.
She took the risk of telling him about the gift she'd bought for Kerry's birthday: a Mapplethorpe photograph of twin lilies.
"Still dating... her?"
"You know I am."
"Bitch."
"Please," Susan said, and she laughed because it hurt.
Their seats were over third base, a little high up, but with a good view. Mark had some trouble reading the scoreboard, but other than that, Susan barely had to help him follow the game. Sosa hit a home run, igniting the ballpark in cheers, but the Rangers ended up winning. "I never turned into a Diamondbacks fan," she told him on the way back to the El. "I think I like having my heart broken."
"Chicago girl," said Mark.
"Mark, what the hell was I doing in the desert?"
"Baking?"
She laughed and hugged him right there in the middle of the sidewalk on Clark Street. He hugged her back so tightly that she thought he might be terrified of letting go. "You always gave the best hugs," she said.
"B-b-better than Kerry?"
"I just said."
"Good."
On the El, he started to get restless. "We should be home already," he kept saying. He said it quietly enough not to attract attention, but it distressed Susan. It was as if there was another person, someone who wasn't Mark at all, trying to take him over. Trying to erase this person that she loved.
He fell asleep in Elizabeth's minivan, his head on the empty carseat. "If you need any help," said Susan, "let me know."
"I don't need anything," Elizabeth said.
"You don't need anything, or you don't need anything from me?"
"I don't need anything," Elizabeth repeated.
"I never slept with him," Susan said.
"I never said you did."
"But you thought we did."
"I assumed, yes, from the way he talked about you..."
"We didn't. Not even close," Susan said. "We spent years looking at each other, waiting for the other one to make the first move... and neither of us ever did."
"It shouldn't make a difference," Elizabeth said.
"It shouldn't. But it does, doesn't it?"
"Yes. It does." Elizabeth leaned suddenly into the horn. "Asshole! People turn right on red in this country!" The car ahead of her made a tentative right turn.
Mark stirred. "We're not home?"
"Not yet," said Elizabeth.
*****
Kerry knew that something was going on, and that the staff weren't going to tell her what it was. Nurses gathered in small clusters, not giggling, but conducting serious conspiratorial discussions. Kerry thought she saw Kovac dash into the lounge, but he was gone before she could even find out whether it was him. It seemed like people kept trying to steer her away from the waiting area. But Kerry was used to being left out of these things until she had to put a stop to them or clean them up, so she didn't bother to ask.
Abby stopped her in the hallway at ten minutes to midnight. "Carter's throwing you a birthday party," Abby said. "At the admit desk. In about ten minutes."
"Oh, is that what it is?" Up until now, she'd made a point of not telling anyone when her birthday was. Apparently, the information had leaked.
"I thought you'd be less likely to kill him if you knew in advance."
Carter wasn't the one she was about ready to kill. Kerry smiled. "I'll act surprised."
She made sure to happen by the admit desk ten minutes later. Everyone on shift had crowded behind the desk, and they greeted her with an out-of-tune chorus of "Happy Birthday." She smiled wryly and took it.
Carter offered her a white Chinese takeout box. "It's the real thing," he said.
When she opened the box, she knew what he meant. "You went all the way to Oak Park for shrimp fried rice?"
"Luka picked it up after he finished his shift."
It had been one of the unspoken rules that develops when people live in the same house: if one of them got takeout on the way home from work, they had to get enough for the other person. There was a little Chinese place called Jade Dragon a few blocks from where Kerry had lived, and Carter had bought his dinner there at least once a week. Always the same things: shrimp fried rice, kung pao chicken, sweet and sour pork, egg rolls, and almond cookies. He'd leave it on the kitchen table, because he was afraid to put anything in her fridge. "You got... everything?" she said.
"The usual stuff," said Carter. "Even the almond cookies."
"There's cake, too," Lily said. "Haleh left it, since she got off at four."
"No candles?" said Kerry.
"We thought you'd yell at us for lighting fires so close to all the charts," Yosh said.
"Besides," said Lily, "no one knows how old you are."
"Come on," Carter said. "I've got to show you your present."
"You-- you got me something?" Kerry said.
"Yeah, well, we all chipped in."
"Really," Kerry said, "you didn't need to do all this."
"Yes, we did." He led her towards the waiting area. "How many birthdays did you have that nobody even knew about?"
"I-- I never expected anything."
"Maybe you should have," Carter said.
There was a TV in the waiting area. A real TV. Presumably one that worked. "I've been trying to get a TV here for a year," she said.
"I know," said Carter.
County was the only major trauma center in greater Chicago with no TV in the waiting area. There had been one once, years earlier, but it had been vandalized and never replaced. Kerry had brought it up at meetings a few times, but Romano had sniffed that there weren't even enough funds for basic needs. He didn't spend nearly enough time in the ER to understand that pacifying the people in chairs was a basic need.
"The cabinet locks up all the controls, so the patients can't play around with the buttons until they destroy it," Carter explained. "It's got a VCR and, believe it or not, a DVD player." He handed her a key. "Open it up."
She unlocked the cabinet. Inside lay a small stack of DVD cases. "You guys got me Muppet movies?"
"And 'The Best of The Muppet Show.'"
"How did you..."
"The hospital paid for three quarters of the TV. We collected for the rest, and for the takeout. We ended up with money left over, so we got you the, um, Muppets."
"You got the hospital to pay? I couldn't get them to pay."
"A bunch of us went up to Romano's office and threatened to stage a sit-in."
"A sit-in?"
"You should have seen the look on Romano's face," said Carter.
"Who did this?"
"Everyone who was on shift." He ticked off the names on his fingers. "Abby, Chuny, Malik, Yosh, Lydia, a couple of med students, one of the maintenance guys, Shobha the pedes resident, Jose, Susan--"
"Susan was in on this?"
"Everyone was in on this."
"But she didn't--"
"This was all my idea," Carter said. "I promise."
"Please tell me you didn't leave the ER abandoned."
"I think we left Linh, the new attending, down there, with Amira and that new nurse whose name I can never remember. In case something really bad happened. But it was a slow day."
"Do you have any idea how lucky you were?"
"Romano caved in twenty minutes."
"Twenty?"
"'I am Henry the Eighth I am, Henry the Eighth I am I am,'" Carter sang.
"And he gave you money rather than firing you."
"This was after the list of well-considered reasons why a TV would reduce mishaps caused by restless patients awaiting treatment, and the accumulated evidence that the board tends to withhold needed funds from emergency services in order to pad the higher-revenue departments of the hospital, to the detriment of patients. And the thinly veiled suggestion that if he didn't get the board to allocate some discretionary ER funds, we might as well not be there, for all the good we can do without systems upkeep."
She looked down at the DVDs in her hand. "I can't believe you got me all these Muppet movies."
"Only the first three. They're not so great after 'The Muppets Take Manhattan.'"
"How did you even know I liked The Muppets?"
Carter grinned enigmatically. "Lucky guess."
The ER stayed slow that night. Unless they had something better to do, which wasn't often, Kerry let the staff sit in chairs, eating takeout and watching The Muppets.
*****
It hadn't occurred to Kerry to give Susan the night shift, too, so they could nap together in the afternoon on Kerry's birthday. These were not the things that had gone through her head when she had sat down with Carter and Haleh the previous Wednesday to make a schedule that would at least keep the staff from rioting. If there wasn't a note somewhere-- saying that somebody needed a Monday morning to go to the dentist or a Thursday evening for those symphony tickets they'd had forever-- not even a thought crossed the schedulers' minds. Susan had told Kerry to make sure that they were both off by five, and the note for the pertinent day read, in its entirety, "KW-- SL-- off 5P." Kerry was sure that she wasn't the first person in the history of shift scheduling to forget her own birthday.
The coldness and the vastness of her own bed surprised Kerry. They seemed to do that a lot lately, when Susan wasn't around. Kerry fell asleep with her glasses on, reading the Tribune.
Susan woke Kerry with a kiss. "What time is it?" Kerry yawned.
Susan checked her watch. "5:30."
"You just got here?"
"Mmm-hmm." Susan sat down on the edge of the bed. "Did you sleep all day?"
"I guess so." Kerry realized that she must have awakened at some point, briefly, because her glasses were on the nightstand, and she'd folded the paper on the empty pillow on the far side of the bed.
"You slept through your whole birthday," Susan said.
"I saw the first seven hours of it." Kerry knew she was smiling. "Was there any cake left by the time you got there?"
"Yeah. Carter hid a piece in the back of the fridge."
"I'm sorry-- sorry you had to miss the party."
"Fried rice and Muppet movies? No, I think I showed up for the good part."
"And what would that be?" Kerry asked, even though she could tell from the look in Susan's eyes that she was going to get eaten out very soon.
"The part where I make you scream so loud your neighbors complain to the condo association."
Kerry pulled Susan onto the bed and kissed her. "I like that part," she said.
Kerry was just in a little satin nightgown, and she wasn't in it for long. She'd been shy about her body at first with Susan, hiding her leg especially, but also the compensatory muscles in her right shoulder and arm, and the rough, thick skin on the heel of her hand. She'd had one boyfriend who had inadvertently ended their relationship when he'd mentioned that he'd been eager to get her naked so he could see what was wrong with her leg. Susan was the only lover Kerry had ever had whose relative disinterest in Kerry's disability was genuine: Susan knew its nature and origin, had seen Kerry snap on her brace on the bad days when her knee wanted to turn inward. But Susan didn't explore the situation beyond that knowledge, just seemed to accept it as part of Kerry's body and move on from there. She held Kerry's left hip now, crossed Kerry's body, dug her teeth into the curve of Kerry's deltoids. She would leave deep purple marks that Kerry would have to hide under a turtleneck the next day.
Kerry caressed the gap of bare skin that had emerged as Susan's shirt rode up. Susan's belly was a tender spot, and Kerry could feel Susan's breath quicken against her own neck. Susan fretted about the extra fat that had settled around her stomach and hips; she'd stand naked in front of the mirror and complain that all the yoga in the world wasn't getting rid of it. Kerry couldn't make Susan believe that she loved that softness. Kim had been all bones and hard angles. Susan, she could hold close, sink into.
Kerry threw them both off balance trying to wrestle Susan out of her shirt, and they were rolling around on the bed, laughing, because once Susan lit up with giggles, it was impossible not to follow. Susan was wearing a bra that hooked in the front, which meant that she'd been gearing up for this all day. Kerry ran her tongue under the edge of the lace, then undid the clasp with her teeth, which made Susan laugh harder. That became a gasp when Kerry took one of Susan's nipples into her mouth. Kerry ran her hands down Susan's sides, towards the waistband of her chinos, but when Kerry started unbuttoning, Susan whispered, "No. You're the birthday girl."
Susan kept her lips at Kerry's ear; she sucked on Kerry's earlobe, then swirled her tongue inside with a fervor usually reserved for other openings. Susan was good at that: she could fixate on a finger or the inside of Kerry's knee, and it was like she could draw all of Kerry's nerves to that point. She had good timing, too, dotting kisses along Kerry's jawline, then nipping a trail down one of the tendons in Kerry's neck. Tomorrow would definitely have to be a turtleneck day. Susan circled her tongue in the hollow of Kerry's throat, and she brushed Kerry's clavicle languidly with the tip of her tongue. Kerry felt hot and impatient, but at the same time content to close her eyes and find out where Susan's mouth would go next.
Susan began just where Kerry's breasts started to rise from her chest, drawing a spiral with the blade of her tongue. When she reached Kerry's areola, she made little flicks with her tongue that grew sharper and sharper. Kerry arched her back up towards Susan's mouth, sighs rising from deep in her throat. Susan did the same thing to Kerry's other breast, and this time it felt like slow motion, like she'd never reach the center. When she did, she stopped much sooner, then pressed a hard kiss into Kerry's sternum. She continued the hard, wet kisses down Kerry's belly, stopping for a brief, almost joking, lick around her navel. Finally, Susan started teasing Kerry's clitoris with the tip of her tongue, and even the soft graze of front teeth on the hood. It hardly took anything to get Kerry off at this point, and Kerry was moaning maybe not loud enough to wake the neighbors, but a hell of a lot louder than she usually let herself go. Susan could keep Kerry going for a long time, with her soft lips on Kerry's clit and that thing she did with the flat of her tongue that Kerry didn't even understand, and the ripples of orgasm kept coming until Kerry was dizzy and white with sweat, and Susan buried her head in Kerry's stomach. Kerry was pretty sure she was never going to move again, and she was completely sure that she didn't mind.
*****
4. We cling to this
and claim the best
if this is what you're offering
I'll take the rain
*****
Susan made the trip up to Evanston a few times a week. At first, Elizabeth had bristled at Susan's visits, but eventually she'd come to accept that Susan cheered him up. "He's lost his sight completely now," Elizabeth said when she'd let Susan in. "He failed the light test with his right eye yesterday, and again this morning."
"Shit," said Susan.
"It's what we knew would happen."
"Doesn't make it any easier, though, does it?"
"I suppose not," Elizabeth said coolly.
"Is-- is he awake?"
"The pain keeps him from sleeping soundly. He'll probably wake up when you come in."
The strange thing was that Mark didn't look all that sick. He'd refused chemo and radiation when the cancer had come back, saying that he'd rather die comfortably than suffer side effects for a few extra months. He was still eating on his own, and Elizabeth was reluctant to place him on a morphine drip until absolutely necessary. It must give her some comfort, Susan thought, to give him the medication herself. He lay in his own bed, head propped up on a few pillows, apparently dozing.
"Hi, Mark," she said. "It's Susan." He probably couldn't understand her, but he still seemed to recognize familiar voices. She took his hand, and he stirred. She'd brought The Hobbit to read to him-- it made a strange sort of sense to bring a book that he'd loved as a child-- but she'd gotten into the habit of talking to him for a while first. She'd open the book when she ran out of things to say.
"We got five transsexual prostitutes with syphilis today," she said. "A couple of them were really, you know, convincing. One of the med students didn't realize, and he practically ran out of the exam room screaming. So I had to take over. When I was examining one of them, she asked me if I was family. At first, I didn't know what she meant, but she said something about always being able to tell these things. And the sad thing is, the first thought that crossed my mind was that she was a plant. Like, the hospital was trying to entrap me and get me fired. Which was stupid, but you know... So I told her I was. And she said that meant she was in good hands. The whole thing was-- I don't know, I fell in love with this person, and all of a sudden I'm part of this secret society. But it was sweet. It was sweet of her. Some days it's good just to have a patient who's not yelling at you.
"Kerry and I are going to the Taste tomorrow. She forgets her own birthday, but she manages to get us both Wednesday afternoon off so we can go when the crowds aren't so bad. I wish-- I wish you could have understood what I-- what I see when I look at her. And it hurts me that you won't. It hurts me to know that you set her up over and over because it was so easy to break her, and I hope to hell that her side of the story is skewed, because if you enjoyed it, then-- then you're not the person I want to think you are. I always thought you were better than that, Mark. She's not that strong, Mark, and when you cut her until it bled, it hurt her, and it wasn't funny, and it wasn't fair... I hope that if I could hear it from you, I'd feel differently, because I'm sure as fuck not impressed with you now. And I want to be. Maybe I had some idealized picture of you in my mind that you never lived up to in the first place, and maybe I still have that, because the worst thing about this is the fact that I can't stay mad at you."
She kissed his forehead, and he whimpered a little. "Motherfucker," she said. She sat down, and she opened the book she'd brought. "'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit hole, and that means comfort.'"
*****
It was one of the more liberal trustees who called Kerry first. He managed to call while Susan was at work and Kerry wasn't, which was lucky, considering how little time Susan had been spending in Edison Park lately. Bob McCormack was concerned. He drew out the word "concerned" like it was the word of the day on Sesame Street. He was concerned about some of the trustees' attitudes towards her openness about her sexuality. He was concerned about press and community reactions to a lesbian ER chief. He was concerned about how she'd hold up if there was a strong reaction. He wanted her to know that he supported her. He thought she'd done good things for the emergency department and for the reputation of the hospital.
"Are you trying to get me to resign?" she said.
"Of course not," he said. "I just want you to know what the situation is here. There are voices on the board who aren't comfortable with--"
"So I ought to just learn to be sensitive to their intolerance?"
"Well, of course not."
"I'm sorry-- I-- of course it's not your fault that--" She took a deep breath. "It seems sort of ridiculous that my personal life is even an issue here."
"I agree with you," McCormack said. "On the other hand, you've made a rather controversial choice."
"It's who I am," she said.
"I'm sorry. That was a poor choice of words."
"Yes, it was."
"I'm just worried that you might not be handling this as discreetly as possible."
"I think I'm better off being open with my colleagues than lying to them," she said.
"What about dating them?"
"Oh, for Christ's sake--"
"Some of the trustees might have an easier time... accepting this if you weren't romantically involved with one of your attending physicians. That's all I'm saying."
"I see," she said through gritted teeth.
"You might want to distance yourself from Susan Lewis."
"I'm not sure-- I'm not sure I'm prepared to do that."
"It's something to think about."
"I'll... give it some thought. Thank you." She hung up before she could act on the urge to find Bob McCormack in the phone book, drive over to his house, and bludgeon him with her crutch. She took one of the throw pillows from the couch and hurled it at the window that faced the lake. For a moment, before the pillow bounced off the shatter-resistant glass, it looked like it might sail over the crowded beach and land gently in the water.
There were ways around this. If it became that much of a problem, she could help Susan find another job. Kerry still had some friends at Rush-Northwestern, and Evanston had to be hiring, what with the renovations. Or they could move out to Vermont or up to Madison, somewhere no one cared who you slept with. There were options. There were options other than breaking up. Kerry would never have imagined herself in a position where she would sooner move to Wisconsin than end a relationship to save her career. If it got to that point, she rationalized, there wouldn't be much to save.
And it wouldn't get to that point. There was no way the trustees could justify it. She had too much seniority, and while her record wasn't unimpeachable, there was nothing bad enough to hurt her. One suspension for defying Romano on moral grounds; one investigation for a medical error determined to be the residents' fault. Sure, they might be able to dig up Jing-Mei Chen, but Chen flew off the handle even more readily than Kerry did. Besides, Romano had said he would back her up, and he'd given her enough rope to hang him if he went against that. Carter and Kovac would support her: strangely enough, with Mark gone, she seemed to have good rapport with all of the attendings. And Susan-- Susan would tell them where they could stick it, and with such charm that they'd think she was complimenting their ties.
The torture lay in the waiting. The paramedics had just phoned in: incoming multiple trauma.
*****
"He's asleep," Elizabeth growled when she found Susan at the door.
"I can come back later," Susan said.
"He'll still be asleep," said Elizabeth. "Who am I kidding-- if he did wake up, how would anyone be able to tell?" She sighed. "You can sit with him for a while, if you want."
"Thanks," Susan said. By now, she knew the way to his bedroom. He looked gaunt and peaceful. She couldn't stand talking to him anymore, so she just sat, stroking his hand, watching his slow breaths. If he didn't die of a stroke, he'd gradually overdose on morphine, but he didn't seem to be ready for either of those yet. His heart beat. His lungs rose. He hung on. The home-hospice nurse noted, eerily, that he might make it to August.
When Susan had had as much as she could take, she tried to slip out quietly. Today didn't seem to be a good day to disturb Elizabeth. But when she came down the stairs, she found Elizabeth tucked in a corner of the living room couch, crying softly. "Are you all right?" Susan said perfunctorily.
"I'm fine," Elizabeth sniffled.
"All right, then, I guess... I'll see you in a couple of days."
"I'm not 'fine' at all," said Elizabeth.
"Oh-- um--"
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything."
"Do you-- do you need something? Because I could get you something to eat, or--"
"It's all right," Elizabeth said. "Go home."
"Are you sure?"
"Oh, I don't know."
"I'll-- I'll get you some takeout or something."
"You really don't have to."
"I'll be back in ten minutes," Susan said. She spent the next fifteen lost in residential Evanston. Finally, she found a barbeque place, a dim, yellow-painted counter operation that made her feel like the whitest person ever born. It smelled of grease and heaven.
"I-- I got all this chicken," Susan said when Elizabeth let her back in.
"Let me see," Elizabeth said. She cracked a smile when she saw the full brown-paper grocery bag. "That's a lot of chicken."
"Well, I thought-- for Rachel."
"She won't eat it. She's a vegetarian."
"You're kidding."
"I'm afraid not."
"I got potatoes," Susan said. "And cole slaw. Maybe she'll have that. Oh, and there's biscuits..."
Elizabeth took the lid off of a Styrofoam container. "Is this macaroni and cheese?"
"Um, maybe the nurse is hungry?"
"What about you?"
"Oh, I should get home, I--"
"Are-- are you sure?"
"Do you not want me to go?" Susan said.
"No, it's-- Peter's taken Ella for the day, Rachel's gone off somewhere... It isn't right for me to lay all of this on you." Elizabeth's eyes were welling again.
"I guess I can stay for a while," Susan said. "I mean, if you--"
"I'll be fine."
"Should we eat here, or in the kitchen?"
"I'll-- I'll go get some plates," Elizabeth sobbed, but she seemed to be laughing at the same time, like everything was so complicated that she couldn't settle on an emotion. "These paper ones that they gave you will soak right through."
Elizabeth ate like she hadn't had anything all day, although it might have been just comfort and relief. They didn't say much at first. The only thing they had in common was Mark.
"He'd always brighten up when he heard it was you on the line," Elizabeth said, apropos of nothing.
"Hmm?" Susan said through a mouthful of chicken.
"He'd drop whatever he was doing," Elizabeth said, "and dash for the phone, yelling, 'Tell her I'm coming! Tell her I'm coming!' Like you'd hang up in disgust if he didn't pick up immediately."
"Still?"
"Tell me there's not some sort of story behind this."
"When we were both in med school, he once left me on the phone with his roommate for half an hour. Turned out he forgot about me and went to the laundromat."
"And you stayed on the line?"
"It was important."
"I'd imagine so."
"The funny thing is," said Susan, "I can't remember what it was I was calling about."
"He probably would," Elizabeth said.
"You're right. He probably would."
They were both staring weepily into space when Rachel came in, reeking of cigarette smoke. She filled a plate with potatoes and macaroni and disappeared wordlessly into her bedroom. The faint throb of her music leaked into the living room.
"He was so in love with you," Susan said.
"Oh?"
"I remember the first time he told me about you. He said, 'There's this gorgeous new surgical fellow from England. I'm pretty sure she hates me.'"
"We probably hadn't spoken more than a few words to each other."
"He was like that," Susan said. "If he thought someone was attractive, he immediately assumed that she'd hate him."
"Isn't everyone like that?" said Elizabeth.
"Well, except for the people who totally aren't. The guys who try to pick you up while you're examining them."
Elizabeth smiled weakly. "Right."
"Elizabeth-- are-- are you all right by yourself? I really-- I hadn't planned to stay this long. I've got a seven o'clock shift tomorrow..."
"I understand," Elizabeth said.
"Are you sure you'll be okay? Do you want me to do the dishes or anything?"
"You've done plenty," Elizabeth said. "And Peter and Cleo should be here any minute."
"You can-- you can give me a call if you need anything," Susan said. "Ever."
"Thanks," Elizabeth said softly.
Susan saw herself out. She was already in Rogers Park by the time she realized that, rather than heading west towards her house, she was winding southward on Sheridan Road, towards Kerry's building. There were a million places to take a right turn-- she could grab Touhy or Devon without having lost much time-- but she watched herself ignore all those traffic signals and keep hugging the lake.
The attendants in the parking garage of Kerry's building knew Susan's face, and tonight Pedro didn't bother with the formality of asking who she was coming to see. Kerry had given her a key to the security door, and another to the apartment itself. A man stepped into the elevator with her, and he greeted her like she lived there.
Kerry, on the other hand, wasn't expecting her. "Oh," she said, when Susan let herself in. "I didn't-- I didn't think you were coming over tonight."
"I don't know," said Susan. "I guess... I didn't really want to be alone."
"I'm sorry. I've got a meeting with the department heads tomorrow and I've-- I've got to make sure I don't bite anyone's head off."
"I can go," Susan said.
"No," Kerry said, getting up. "You don't have to go." She held Susan's hips and kissed her mouth gently. "You don't ever have to go."
*****
It was high noon, and the ER was mobbed. Even for late July, it was ridiculously hot. Children and the elderly were passing out from heat stroke. Two hours earlier, an eight-year-old had drowned in a municipal pool during his day camp swimming lesson, after another child had held him under; Kerry had restored him, painstakingly, to a permanent vegetative state. There had been three non-fatal gunshot wounds since sunrise, one of which had probably robbed its teenage victim of the use of her legs. And then there was the woman who delivered in the hallway, the bleeding parasailor, and the Jehovah's Witness who had passed the time by handing out pamphlets to the other patients. The day was turning into a parody of itself.
"We need to talk," Susan said, dragging Kerry into the drug lockup.
"Now?"
"I got an interesting phone call this morning," Susan said.
"Can we talk about this later?" said Kerry.
"You're on your lunch break," said Susan. "I told Conni and Frank to tell everyone else that you're not allowed near any patients till one."
"Do me a favor and never do that to me again."
"Quit keeping things from me, and I won't have to."
"I-- I-- I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, you do too."
"No, actually, I don't."
"Then why am I getting phone calls from lawyers, asking if you've sexually harassed me?"
"What?"
"Is there some kind of investigation going on?" Susan said.
"I-- Some of the trustees aren't thrilled that I came out. I had no idea it had gone this far, I--"
"You could have told me."
"I didn't-- I didn't want you to worry."
"You didn't think I would have worried anyway?"
"I don't know," Kerry said. "I thought-- on top of everything else--"
"Mark?"
"Mmm-hmm."
"Kerry," Susan said. "I can handle it." She kissed Kerry's forehead.
"So what did you tell him?"
"Who?"
"The lawyer."
"The truth," Susan said. "That I came on to you. That I couldn't resist you."
"Oh, you did not."
"I did," Susan said. "I yelled at him. I gave him this whole lecture on privacy."
"Sometimes you amaze me. You know that?"
"Yeah, I get that impression."
"It's-- it's nothing," Kerry said. "The business with the trustees. It'll... blow over. I'm sure."
"You're sure?"
"I... think it will."
"Kerry," Susan said, "what if it doesn't?"
"Then we'll work something out."
"What does that mean?"
"It means-- it means we'll work something out. The two of us."
"Good," Susan said, fingering Kerry's hair. "That's what I hoped it meant." She kissed Kerry gently. Kerry kissed her back. The kisses escalated, like they were fighting for the last word, until Susan had Kerry pushed back against the shelves, and the bottles of medicine were rattling in their boxes. For about half a moment, Kerry considered using the rest of her "lunch hour" for a cafeteria run.
*****
The MVA came in at midnight. An SUV full of drunken teenagers versus the guardrails of the Edens, plus a BMW that had plowed into the SUV's rear, and a bonus fender-bender, the result of rubbernecking. Susan was trying to set the broken leg of one of the teenagers. "We're almost done," Susan kept saying. "We're almost done."
"Bullshit," said the girl.
Susan's pager buzzed. It was probably Chloe, forgetting the time difference again. She popped the girl's shin back into place. One of the first-year residents was assisting, and Susan told him to put a cast on the girl. "I'll be back in a minute," she said, yanking her pager from her belt loop.
It was a text message. "MARK GONE," it said. Just like that. She had to give Elizabeth credit for economy of words. She ran down the hallway to the bathroom; nurses and residents called out demands, but they sounded like a foreign language, like white noise. She locked herself in the handicapped stall of the ladies' room and wept into her hands. She checked her watch: it was 12:23 AM. He'd seen twenty-three minutes of August.
Concluded in part three.
Fandom: ER
Pairing: Kerry/Susan plus some canon het
Rating: NC-17
For complete headers, see part one.
Kerry's first words when she went on shift were, "Would someone get maintenance down here and clean this up already?" The puddle in front of the lounge had become a small pond. She looked up as a fat drop fell from the ceiling to add itself to the puddle. "And fix the fucking leak?"
"I've called twice already," Randi said.
"Call again."
"Romano's looking for you."
"Good for him," Kerry said, trying to navigate around the puddle, into the lounge.
"He's been down here looking for you six times this morning," Randi said. "Or seven. I stopped counting."
"Did he say I should go up to his office when I came in?"
"Not in those words."
"Then he can wait a little longer."
"Who can wait a little longer?" Kerry could have sworn that Romano had one of those teleporter things from Star Trek. And complicated surveillance equipment.
"Oh, sorry, Robert. Randi was just telling me that you were looking for me."
"Can we talk?"
"Sure, just let me run to my locker."
"It would've been nice if you'd told me you wouldn't be in till one."
"I was short on sleep. Carter covered for me." She edged around the puddle. The lounge door swung open just as she reached it.
"Jesus Christ," said Carter, in the lounge doorway. "Hasn't maintenance cleaned that up yet?"
"Apparently not," Kerry said.
"See you tomorrow," Carter said, splashing through the puddle.
"Oh, Kerry, I told maintenance not to respond to any calls from the ER until you got here," Romano said.
Kerry slammed the lounge door. She took a clean lab coat from her locker and put it on. Then, considering the situation, she fixed her hair, checked her lipstick, and dripped some Visine in her eyes. She knew how to play this game.
When she came out of the lounge, a custodian was mopping the floor, and two repairmen were waiting with a ladder. "Shall we continue this in my office?" said Romano.
"Okay," Kerry said, trying not to make it sound more like, "I hate you." Romano talked in the corridor and on the elevator, but Kerry had long since learned how to tune Romano out. It was the only way she could keep from decking him, sometimes.
Romano shut the office door behind him. "A while ago, Kerry," he said, "we agreed that one of the best ways to screw yourself as an administrator is to let your personal life interfere."
Says the man who upset a day's surgery schedule so he could operate on his dog, she said to herself. "I still think that's true."
"Well, showing up to a trauma call with your girlfriend isn't exactly the best way to uphold that policy. Especially when she's wearing your shirt."
"Poll the patients we treated last night," Kerry said. "I can promise you that not one of them noticed."
"Kerry, you know that's not what I'm concerned about."
"The staff's known for months, Robert."
"And whose fault is that?"
"We were careful," said Kerry. "They figured it out anyway."
"Sure, you were careful. You were careful like you wanted to get caught."
"And do you know what happened when we did get caught? Nothing. People talked for a couple of weeks, and then they moved on to Mark being sick and Yosh's new boyfriend and whatever the hell else."
"You got lucky."
"I know my staff," said Kerry.
"You know this is going to ruin your chances for career advancement."
"Maybe," she said evenly, "every once in a while, I think about something other than my career."
"Well, then, she'd better be a fucking racehorse in bed, Kerry, because--"
"Oh, come on, Robert, you know that's not what--"
"Isn't it? Honestly?"
"No! It absolutely isn't! It's--"
"Yeah, right, you fell in love. Whatever. Go have ten million of her babies, Kerry, if you can figure out how."
"So I break it off, or you're going to do what? I haven't done anything that goes against hospital policy, much less anything you can fire me for. Staff here frequently date their colleagues. Your associate chief of surgery married one of hers."
"It's not the same, and you know it."
"If you try anything, Robert, I can show a pattern of discrimination that will cost County millions in legal fees and bad publicity. Your problem is that you can't get rid of me, and you know it."
"Watch me."
She leaned on her crutch. "I'm waiting."
"I had such high hopes for you, Kerry," Romano said, shaking his head.
"For what?"
"I had you hand-picked," he said. "You were going to fix things up. Run things the right way. I was so relieved to find someone in this place who thought like I did."
"I don't think remotely like you do," Kerry said.
"I have since realized that."
"Well, good, because--"
"I have spent my career in a closet," Romano said. "A fairly small one, as a matter of fact. And now, I am coming out of it to you."
"Robert, please-- please don't play this game with me."
"This isn't a game," he said. "I want you to know where I stand."
"And did you think for a second that I might not want to know this?"
"Too late now."
"So what am I supposed to do with this?"
"Kerry, go and have your little love affair. As long as you keep running the ER like you have been, and as long as you don't do anything incredibly stupid, there's nothing I can do to stop you. If and when the trustees pick up on you and go ballistic, I will back you up and protect you to the best of my ability."
"Thank you," Kerry said softly.
Romano just cleared his throat.
"So-- so I'll assume that-- our conversation stays in this room."
"Do what you want," Romano said, opening the office door for her. "It's not like I can get rid of you."
*****
Mark was having a good day. Some days, lately, the tumor would affect his mood, Elizabeth explained as they waited for him to get ready. He'd get disoriented and compulsive, brush his teeth a dozen times before coming to bed. Or he'd be irritable and pick fights with everyone. One evening, Elizabeth had come home to find him shouting at the baby. And of course, his language came and went. He'd perseverate over words suddenly vanished from his vocabulary; he confused things like verb tenses and prepositions, "this" and "that," "I" and "you." He still seemed to understand everything that was said to him, and it upset him when he couldn't respond. Elizabeth told Susan all of this clinically, icily. "Just so you'll know what to expect."
But today was a good day. Mark had gotten out of bed without resistance, Elizabeth reported, and insisted on getting dressed and shaving on his own. His motor skills were still intact, and on the good days, he refused to be anything but independent. He'd been humming all morning, even, although Elizabeth couldn't for the life of her figure out what the tune was. "He's excited about the ballgame," Elizabeth said, then added, "He's excited about seeing you."
"All done," Mark announced, grinning, as he marched into the kitchen.
"Then let's go," Susan said. He took her hand, which surprised her, but she didn't resist. Elizabeth was fighting for a smile.
Susan didn't want to bother with parking at Wrigley Field, fun as it was to spend $15 to leave your car in a Taco Bell parking lot, so Elizabeth dropped them off at the El stop in downtown Evanston. "Ring me on the way back, when you get to where you have to switch lines," Elizabeth instructed them.
The El train was still empty enough that it was easy to find seats. Susan told Mark about a few of the more colorful recent patients-- the elderly diabetic whose prosthesis had disappeared for an hour, the gaggle of prep school girls with poison oak from their smoking hideout. She told him about the new staff, and the ways Carter and Chuny had found to fuck with their heads. She told him about Yosh's new paramedic boyfriend and the sniping contest between Abby and Luka.
He laughed. "Nothing changes," he said.
She took the risk of telling him about the gift she'd bought for Kerry's birthday: a Mapplethorpe photograph of twin lilies.
"Still dating... her?"
"You know I am."
"Bitch."
"Please," Susan said, and she laughed because it hurt.
Their seats were over third base, a little high up, but with a good view. Mark had some trouble reading the scoreboard, but other than that, Susan barely had to help him follow the game. Sosa hit a home run, igniting the ballpark in cheers, but the Rangers ended up winning. "I never turned into a Diamondbacks fan," she told him on the way back to the El. "I think I like having my heart broken."
"Chicago girl," said Mark.
"Mark, what the hell was I doing in the desert?"
"Baking?"
She laughed and hugged him right there in the middle of the sidewalk on Clark Street. He hugged her back so tightly that she thought he might be terrified of letting go. "You always gave the best hugs," she said.
"B-b-better than Kerry?"
"I just said."
"Good."
On the El, he started to get restless. "We should be home already," he kept saying. He said it quietly enough not to attract attention, but it distressed Susan. It was as if there was another person, someone who wasn't Mark at all, trying to take him over. Trying to erase this person that she loved.
He fell asleep in Elizabeth's minivan, his head on the empty carseat. "If you need any help," said Susan, "let me know."
"I don't need anything," Elizabeth said.
"You don't need anything, or you don't need anything from me?"
"I don't need anything," Elizabeth repeated.
"I never slept with him," Susan said.
"I never said you did."
"But you thought we did."
"I assumed, yes, from the way he talked about you..."
"We didn't. Not even close," Susan said. "We spent years looking at each other, waiting for the other one to make the first move... and neither of us ever did."
"It shouldn't make a difference," Elizabeth said.
"It shouldn't. But it does, doesn't it?"
"Yes. It does." Elizabeth leaned suddenly into the horn. "Asshole! People turn right on red in this country!" The car ahead of her made a tentative right turn.
Mark stirred. "We're not home?"
"Not yet," said Elizabeth.
*****
Kerry knew that something was going on, and that the staff weren't going to tell her what it was. Nurses gathered in small clusters, not giggling, but conducting serious conspiratorial discussions. Kerry thought she saw Kovac dash into the lounge, but he was gone before she could even find out whether it was him. It seemed like people kept trying to steer her away from the waiting area. But Kerry was used to being left out of these things until she had to put a stop to them or clean them up, so she didn't bother to ask.
Abby stopped her in the hallway at ten minutes to midnight. "Carter's throwing you a birthday party," Abby said. "At the admit desk. In about ten minutes."
"Oh, is that what it is?" Up until now, she'd made a point of not telling anyone when her birthday was. Apparently, the information had leaked.
"I thought you'd be less likely to kill him if you knew in advance."
Carter wasn't the one she was about ready to kill. Kerry smiled. "I'll act surprised."
She made sure to happen by the admit desk ten minutes later. Everyone on shift had crowded behind the desk, and they greeted her with an out-of-tune chorus of "Happy Birthday." She smiled wryly and took it.
Carter offered her a white Chinese takeout box. "It's the real thing," he said.
When she opened the box, she knew what he meant. "You went all the way to Oak Park for shrimp fried rice?"
"Luka picked it up after he finished his shift."
It had been one of the unspoken rules that develops when people live in the same house: if one of them got takeout on the way home from work, they had to get enough for the other person. There was a little Chinese place called Jade Dragon a few blocks from where Kerry had lived, and Carter had bought his dinner there at least once a week. Always the same things: shrimp fried rice, kung pao chicken, sweet and sour pork, egg rolls, and almond cookies. He'd leave it on the kitchen table, because he was afraid to put anything in her fridge. "You got... everything?" she said.
"The usual stuff," said Carter. "Even the almond cookies."
"There's cake, too," Lily said. "Haleh left it, since she got off at four."
"No candles?" said Kerry.
"We thought you'd yell at us for lighting fires so close to all the charts," Yosh said.
"Besides," said Lily, "no one knows how old you are."
"Come on," Carter said. "I've got to show you your present."
"You-- you got me something?" Kerry said.
"Yeah, well, we all chipped in."
"Really," Kerry said, "you didn't need to do all this."
"Yes, we did." He led her towards the waiting area. "How many birthdays did you have that nobody even knew about?"
"I-- I never expected anything."
"Maybe you should have," Carter said.
There was a TV in the waiting area. A real TV. Presumably one that worked. "I've been trying to get a TV here for a year," she said.
"I know," said Carter.
County was the only major trauma center in greater Chicago with no TV in the waiting area. There had been one once, years earlier, but it had been vandalized and never replaced. Kerry had brought it up at meetings a few times, but Romano had sniffed that there weren't even enough funds for basic needs. He didn't spend nearly enough time in the ER to understand that pacifying the people in chairs was a basic need.
"The cabinet locks up all the controls, so the patients can't play around with the buttons until they destroy it," Carter explained. "It's got a VCR and, believe it or not, a DVD player." He handed her a key. "Open it up."
She unlocked the cabinet. Inside lay a small stack of DVD cases. "You guys got me Muppet movies?"
"And 'The Best of The Muppet Show.'"
"How did you..."
"The hospital paid for three quarters of the TV. We collected for the rest, and for the takeout. We ended up with money left over, so we got you the, um, Muppets."
"You got the hospital to pay? I couldn't get them to pay."
"A bunch of us went up to Romano's office and threatened to stage a sit-in."
"A sit-in?"
"You should have seen the look on Romano's face," said Carter.
"Who did this?"
"Everyone who was on shift." He ticked off the names on his fingers. "Abby, Chuny, Malik, Yosh, Lydia, a couple of med students, one of the maintenance guys, Shobha the pedes resident, Jose, Susan--"
"Susan was in on this?"
"Everyone was in on this."
"But she didn't--"
"This was all my idea," Carter said. "I promise."
"Please tell me you didn't leave the ER abandoned."
"I think we left Linh, the new attending, down there, with Amira and that new nurse whose name I can never remember. In case something really bad happened. But it was a slow day."
"Do you have any idea how lucky you were?"
"Romano caved in twenty minutes."
"Twenty?"
"'I am Henry the Eighth I am, Henry the Eighth I am I am,'" Carter sang.
"And he gave you money rather than firing you."
"This was after the list of well-considered reasons why a TV would reduce mishaps caused by restless patients awaiting treatment, and the accumulated evidence that the board tends to withhold needed funds from emergency services in order to pad the higher-revenue departments of the hospital, to the detriment of patients. And the thinly veiled suggestion that if he didn't get the board to allocate some discretionary ER funds, we might as well not be there, for all the good we can do without systems upkeep."
She looked down at the DVDs in her hand. "I can't believe you got me all these Muppet movies."
"Only the first three. They're not so great after 'The Muppets Take Manhattan.'"
"How did you even know I liked The Muppets?"
Carter grinned enigmatically. "Lucky guess."
The ER stayed slow that night. Unless they had something better to do, which wasn't often, Kerry let the staff sit in chairs, eating takeout and watching The Muppets.
*****
It hadn't occurred to Kerry to give Susan the night shift, too, so they could nap together in the afternoon on Kerry's birthday. These were not the things that had gone through her head when she had sat down with Carter and Haleh the previous Wednesday to make a schedule that would at least keep the staff from rioting. If there wasn't a note somewhere-- saying that somebody needed a Monday morning to go to the dentist or a Thursday evening for those symphony tickets they'd had forever-- not even a thought crossed the schedulers' minds. Susan had told Kerry to make sure that they were both off by five, and the note for the pertinent day read, in its entirety, "KW-- SL-- off 5P." Kerry was sure that she wasn't the first person in the history of shift scheduling to forget her own birthday.
The coldness and the vastness of her own bed surprised Kerry. They seemed to do that a lot lately, when Susan wasn't around. Kerry fell asleep with her glasses on, reading the Tribune.
Susan woke Kerry with a kiss. "What time is it?" Kerry yawned.
Susan checked her watch. "5:30."
"You just got here?"
"Mmm-hmm." Susan sat down on the edge of the bed. "Did you sleep all day?"
"I guess so." Kerry realized that she must have awakened at some point, briefly, because her glasses were on the nightstand, and she'd folded the paper on the empty pillow on the far side of the bed.
"You slept through your whole birthday," Susan said.
"I saw the first seven hours of it." Kerry knew she was smiling. "Was there any cake left by the time you got there?"
"Yeah. Carter hid a piece in the back of the fridge."
"I'm sorry-- sorry you had to miss the party."
"Fried rice and Muppet movies? No, I think I showed up for the good part."
"And what would that be?" Kerry asked, even though she could tell from the look in Susan's eyes that she was going to get eaten out very soon.
"The part where I make you scream so loud your neighbors complain to the condo association."
Kerry pulled Susan onto the bed and kissed her. "I like that part," she said.
Kerry was just in a little satin nightgown, and she wasn't in it for long. She'd been shy about her body at first with Susan, hiding her leg especially, but also the compensatory muscles in her right shoulder and arm, and the rough, thick skin on the heel of her hand. She'd had one boyfriend who had inadvertently ended their relationship when he'd mentioned that he'd been eager to get her naked so he could see what was wrong with her leg. Susan was the only lover Kerry had ever had whose relative disinterest in Kerry's disability was genuine: Susan knew its nature and origin, had seen Kerry snap on her brace on the bad days when her knee wanted to turn inward. But Susan didn't explore the situation beyond that knowledge, just seemed to accept it as part of Kerry's body and move on from there. She held Kerry's left hip now, crossed Kerry's body, dug her teeth into the curve of Kerry's deltoids. She would leave deep purple marks that Kerry would have to hide under a turtleneck the next day.
Kerry caressed the gap of bare skin that had emerged as Susan's shirt rode up. Susan's belly was a tender spot, and Kerry could feel Susan's breath quicken against her own neck. Susan fretted about the extra fat that had settled around her stomach and hips; she'd stand naked in front of the mirror and complain that all the yoga in the world wasn't getting rid of it. Kerry couldn't make Susan believe that she loved that softness. Kim had been all bones and hard angles. Susan, she could hold close, sink into.
Kerry threw them both off balance trying to wrestle Susan out of her shirt, and they were rolling around on the bed, laughing, because once Susan lit up with giggles, it was impossible not to follow. Susan was wearing a bra that hooked in the front, which meant that she'd been gearing up for this all day. Kerry ran her tongue under the edge of the lace, then undid the clasp with her teeth, which made Susan laugh harder. That became a gasp when Kerry took one of Susan's nipples into her mouth. Kerry ran her hands down Susan's sides, towards the waistband of her chinos, but when Kerry started unbuttoning, Susan whispered, "No. You're the birthday girl."
Susan kept her lips at Kerry's ear; she sucked on Kerry's earlobe, then swirled her tongue inside with a fervor usually reserved for other openings. Susan was good at that: she could fixate on a finger or the inside of Kerry's knee, and it was like she could draw all of Kerry's nerves to that point. She had good timing, too, dotting kisses along Kerry's jawline, then nipping a trail down one of the tendons in Kerry's neck. Tomorrow would definitely have to be a turtleneck day. Susan circled her tongue in the hollow of Kerry's throat, and she brushed Kerry's clavicle languidly with the tip of her tongue. Kerry felt hot and impatient, but at the same time content to close her eyes and find out where Susan's mouth would go next.
Susan began just where Kerry's breasts started to rise from her chest, drawing a spiral with the blade of her tongue. When she reached Kerry's areola, she made little flicks with her tongue that grew sharper and sharper. Kerry arched her back up towards Susan's mouth, sighs rising from deep in her throat. Susan did the same thing to Kerry's other breast, and this time it felt like slow motion, like she'd never reach the center. When she did, she stopped much sooner, then pressed a hard kiss into Kerry's sternum. She continued the hard, wet kisses down Kerry's belly, stopping for a brief, almost joking, lick around her navel. Finally, Susan started teasing Kerry's clitoris with the tip of her tongue, and even the soft graze of front teeth on the hood. It hardly took anything to get Kerry off at this point, and Kerry was moaning maybe not loud enough to wake the neighbors, but a hell of a lot louder than she usually let herself go. Susan could keep Kerry going for a long time, with her soft lips on Kerry's clit and that thing she did with the flat of her tongue that Kerry didn't even understand, and the ripples of orgasm kept coming until Kerry was dizzy and white with sweat, and Susan buried her head in Kerry's stomach. Kerry was pretty sure she was never going to move again, and she was completely sure that she didn't mind.
*****
4. We cling to this
and claim the best
if this is what you're offering
I'll take the rain
*****
Susan made the trip up to Evanston a few times a week. At first, Elizabeth had bristled at Susan's visits, but eventually she'd come to accept that Susan cheered him up. "He's lost his sight completely now," Elizabeth said when she'd let Susan in. "He failed the light test with his right eye yesterday, and again this morning."
"Shit," said Susan.
"It's what we knew would happen."
"Doesn't make it any easier, though, does it?"
"I suppose not," Elizabeth said coolly.
"Is-- is he awake?"
"The pain keeps him from sleeping soundly. He'll probably wake up when you come in."
The strange thing was that Mark didn't look all that sick. He'd refused chemo and radiation when the cancer had come back, saying that he'd rather die comfortably than suffer side effects for a few extra months. He was still eating on his own, and Elizabeth was reluctant to place him on a morphine drip until absolutely necessary. It must give her some comfort, Susan thought, to give him the medication herself. He lay in his own bed, head propped up on a few pillows, apparently dozing.
"Hi, Mark," she said. "It's Susan." He probably couldn't understand her, but he still seemed to recognize familiar voices. She took his hand, and he stirred. She'd brought The Hobbit to read to him-- it made a strange sort of sense to bring a book that he'd loved as a child-- but she'd gotten into the habit of talking to him for a while first. She'd open the book when she ran out of things to say.
"We got five transsexual prostitutes with syphilis today," she said. "A couple of them were really, you know, convincing. One of the med students didn't realize, and he practically ran out of the exam room screaming. So I had to take over. When I was examining one of them, she asked me if I was family. At first, I didn't know what she meant, but she said something about always being able to tell these things. And the sad thing is, the first thought that crossed my mind was that she was a plant. Like, the hospital was trying to entrap me and get me fired. Which was stupid, but you know... So I told her I was. And she said that meant she was in good hands. The whole thing was-- I don't know, I fell in love with this person, and all of a sudden I'm part of this secret society. But it was sweet. It was sweet of her. Some days it's good just to have a patient who's not yelling at you.
"Kerry and I are going to the Taste tomorrow. She forgets her own birthday, but she manages to get us both Wednesday afternoon off so we can go when the crowds aren't so bad. I wish-- I wish you could have understood what I-- what I see when I look at her. And it hurts me that you won't. It hurts me to know that you set her up over and over because it was so easy to break her, and I hope to hell that her side of the story is skewed, because if you enjoyed it, then-- then you're not the person I want to think you are. I always thought you were better than that, Mark. She's not that strong, Mark, and when you cut her until it bled, it hurt her, and it wasn't funny, and it wasn't fair... I hope that if I could hear it from you, I'd feel differently, because I'm sure as fuck not impressed with you now. And I want to be. Maybe I had some idealized picture of you in my mind that you never lived up to in the first place, and maybe I still have that, because the worst thing about this is the fact that I can't stay mad at you."
She kissed his forehead, and he whimpered a little. "Motherfucker," she said. She sat down, and she opened the book she'd brought. "'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit hole, and that means comfort.'"
*****
It was one of the more liberal trustees who called Kerry first. He managed to call while Susan was at work and Kerry wasn't, which was lucky, considering how little time Susan had been spending in Edison Park lately. Bob McCormack was concerned. He drew out the word "concerned" like it was the word of the day on Sesame Street. He was concerned about some of the trustees' attitudes towards her openness about her sexuality. He was concerned about press and community reactions to a lesbian ER chief. He was concerned about how she'd hold up if there was a strong reaction. He wanted her to know that he supported her. He thought she'd done good things for the emergency department and for the reputation of the hospital.
"Are you trying to get me to resign?" she said.
"Of course not," he said. "I just want you to know what the situation is here. There are voices on the board who aren't comfortable with--"
"So I ought to just learn to be sensitive to their intolerance?"
"Well, of course not."
"I'm sorry-- I-- of course it's not your fault that--" She took a deep breath. "It seems sort of ridiculous that my personal life is even an issue here."
"I agree with you," McCormack said. "On the other hand, you've made a rather controversial choice."
"It's who I am," she said.
"I'm sorry. That was a poor choice of words."
"Yes, it was."
"I'm just worried that you might not be handling this as discreetly as possible."
"I think I'm better off being open with my colleagues than lying to them," she said.
"What about dating them?"
"Oh, for Christ's sake--"
"Some of the trustees might have an easier time... accepting this if you weren't romantically involved with one of your attending physicians. That's all I'm saying."
"I see," she said through gritted teeth.
"You might want to distance yourself from Susan Lewis."
"I'm not sure-- I'm not sure I'm prepared to do that."
"It's something to think about."
"I'll... give it some thought. Thank you." She hung up before she could act on the urge to find Bob McCormack in the phone book, drive over to his house, and bludgeon him with her crutch. She took one of the throw pillows from the couch and hurled it at the window that faced the lake. For a moment, before the pillow bounced off the shatter-resistant glass, it looked like it might sail over the crowded beach and land gently in the water.
There were ways around this. If it became that much of a problem, she could help Susan find another job. Kerry still had some friends at Rush-Northwestern, and Evanston had to be hiring, what with the renovations. Or they could move out to Vermont or up to Madison, somewhere no one cared who you slept with. There were options. There were options other than breaking up. Kerry would never have imagined herself in a position where she would sooner move to Wisconsin than end a relationship to save her career. If it got to that point, she rationalized, there wouldn't be much to save.
And it wouldn't get to that point. There was no way the trustees could justify it. She had too much seniority, and while her record wasn't unimpeachable, there was nothing bad enough to hurt her. One suspension for defying Romano on moral grounds; one investigation for a medical error determined to be the residents' fault. Sure, they might be able to dig up Jing-Mei Chen, but Chen flew off the handle even more readily than Kerry did. Besides, Romano had said he would back her up, and he'd given her enough rope to hang him if he went against that. Carter and Kovac would support her: strangely enough, with Mark gone, she seemed to have good rapport with all of the attendings. And Susan-- Susan would tell them where they could stick it, and with such charm that they'd think she was complimenting their ties.
The torture lay in the waiting. The paramedics had just phoned in: incoming multiple trauma.
*****
"He's asleep," Elizabeth growled when she found Susan at the door.
"I can come back later," Susan said.
"He'll still be asleep," said Elizabeth. "Who am I kidding-- if he did wake up, how would anyone be able to tell?" She sighed. "You can sit with him for a while, if you want."
"Thanks," Susan said. By now, she knew the way to his bedroom. He looked gaunt and peaceful. She couldn't stand talking to him anymore, so she just sat, stroking his hand, watching his slow breaths. If he didn't die of a stroke, he'd gradually overdose on morphine, but he didn't seem to be ready for either of those yet. His heart beat. His lungs rose. He hung on. The home-hospice nurse noted, eerily, that he might make it to August.
When Susan had had as much as she could take, she tried to slip out quietly. Today didn't seem to be a good day to disturb Elizabeth. But when she came down the stairs, she found Elizabeth tucked in a corner of the living room couch, crying softly. "Are you all right?" Susan said perfunctorily.
"I'm fine," Elizabeth sniffled.
"All right, then, I guess... I'll see you in a couple of days."
"I'm not 'fine' at all," said Elizabeth.
"Oh-- um--"
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything."
"Do you-- do you need something? Because I could get you something to eat, or--"
"It's all right," Elizabeth said. "Go home."
"Are you sure?"
"Oh, I don't know."
"I'll-- I'll get you some takeout or something."
"You really don't have to."
"I'll be back in ten minutes," Susan said. She spent the next fifteen lost in residential Evanston. Finally, she found a barbeque place, a dim, yellow-painted counter operation that made her feel like the whitest person ever born. It smelled of grease and heaven.
"I-- I got all this chicken," Susan said when Elizabeth let her back in.
"Let me see," Elizabeth said. She cracked a smile when she saw the full brown-paper grocery bag. "That's a lot of chicken."
"Well, I thought-- for Rachel."
"She won't eat it. She's a vegetarian."
"You're kidding."
"I'm afraid not."
"I got potatoes," Susan said. "And cole slaw. Maybe she'll have that. Oh, and there's biscuits..."
Elizabeth took the lid off of a Styrofoam container. "Is this macaroni and cheese?"
"Um, maybe the nurse is hungry?"
"What about you?"
"Oh, I should get home, I--"
"Are-- are you sure?"
"Do you not want me to go?" Susan said.
"No, it's-- Peter's taken Ella for the day, Rachel's gone off somewhere... It isn't right for me to lay all of this on you." Elizabeth's eyes were welling again.
"I guess I can stay for a while," Susan said. "I mean, if you--"
"I'll be fine."
"Should we eat here, or in the kitchen?"
"I'll-- I'll go get some plates," Elizabeth sobbed, but she seemed to be laughing at the same time, like everything was so complicated that she couldn't settle on an emotion. "These paper ones that they gave you will soak right through."
Elizabeth ate like she hadn't had anything all day, although it might have been just comfort and relief. They didn't say much at first. The only thing they had in common was Mark.
"He'd always brighten up when he heard it was you on the line," Elizabeth said, apropos of nothing.
"Hmm?" Susan said through a mouthful of chicken.
"He'd drop whatever he was doing," Elizabeth said, "and dash for the phone, yelling, 'Tell her I'm coming! Tell her I'm coming!' Like you'd hang up in disgust if he didn't pick up immediately."
"Still?"
"Tell me there's not some sort of story behind this."
"When we were both in med school, he once left me on the phone with his roommate for half an hour. Turned out he forgot about me and went to the laundromat."
"And you stayed on the line?"
"It was important."
"I'd imagine so."
"The funny thing is," said Susan, "I can't remember what it was I was calling about."
"He probably would," Elizabeth said.
"You're right. He probably would."
They were both staring weepily into space when Rachel came in, reeking of cigarette smoke. She filled a plate with potatoes and macaroni and disappeared wordlessly into her bedroom. The faint throb of her music leaked into the living room.
"He was so in love with you," Susan said.
"Oh?"
"I remember the first time he told me about you. He said, 'There's this gorgeous new surgical fellow from England. I'm pretty sure she hates me.'"
"We probably hadn't spoken more than a few words to each other."
"He was like that," Susan said. "If he thought someone was attractive, he immediately assumed that she'd hate him."
"Isn't everyone like that?" said Elizabeth.
"Well, except for the people who totally aren't. The guys who try to pick you up while you're examining them."
Elizabeth smiled weakly. "Right."
"Elizabeth-- are-- are you all right by yourself? I really-- I hadn't planned to stay this long. I've got a seven o'clock shift tomorrow..."
"I understand," Elizabeth said.
"Are you sure you'll be okay? Do you want me to do the dishes or anything?"
"You've done plenty," Elizabeth said. "And Peter and Cleo should be here any minute."
"You can-- you can give me a call if you need anything," Susan said. "Ever."
"Thanks," Elizabeth said softly.
Susan saw herself out. She was already in Rogers Park by the time she realized that, rather than heading west towards her house, she was winding southward on Sheridan Road, towards Kerry's building. There were a million places to take a right turn-- she could grab Touhy or Devon without having lost much time-- but she watched herself ignore all those traffic signals and keep hugging the lake.
The attendants in the parking garage of Kerry's building knew Susan's face, and tonight Pedro didn't bother with the formality of asking who she was coming to see. Kerry had given her a key to the security door, and another to the apartment itself. A man stepped into the elevator with her, and he greeted her like she lived there.
Kerry, on the other hand, wasn't expecting her. "Oh," she said, when Susan let herself in. "I didn't-- I didn't think you were coming over tonight."
"I don't know," said Susan. "I guess... I didn't really want to be alone."
"I'm sorry. I've got a meeting with the department heads tomorrow and I've-- I've got to make sure I don't bite anyone's head off."
"I can go," Susan said.
"No," Kerry said, getting up. "You don't have to go." She held Susan's hips and kissed her mouth gently. "You don't ever have to go."
*****
It was high noon, and the ER was mobbed. Even for late July, it was ridiculously hot. Children and the elderly were passing out from heat stroke. Two hours earlier, an eight-year-old had drowned in a municipal pool during his day camp swimming lesson, after another child had held him under; Kerry had restored him, painstakingly, to a permanent vegetative state. There had been three non-fatal gunshot wounds since sunrise, one of which had probably robbed its teenage victim of the use of her legs. And then there was the woman who delivered in the hallway, the bleeding parasailor, and the Jehovah's Witness who had passed the time by handing out pamphlets to the other patients. The day was turning into a parody of itself.
"We need to talk," Susan said, dragging Kerry into the drug lockup.
"Now?"
"I got an interesting phone call this morning," Susan said.
"Can we talk about this later?" said Kerry.
"You're on your lunch break," said Susan. "I told Conni and Frank to tell everyone else that you're not allowed near any patients till one."
"Do me a favor and never do that to me again."
"Quit keeping things from me, and I won't have to."
"I-- I-- I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, you do too."
"No, actually, I don't."
"Then why am I getting phone calls from lawyers, asking if you've sexually harassed me?"
"What?"
"Is there some kind of investigation going on?" Susan said.
"I-- Some of the trustees aren't thrilled that I came out. I had no idea it had gone this far, I--"
"You could have told me."
"I didn't-- I didn't want you to worry."
"You didn't think I would have worried anyway?"
"I don't know," Kerry said. "I thought-- on top of everything else--"
"Mark?"
"Mmm-hmm."
"Kerry," Susan said. "I can handle it." She kissed Kerry's forehead.
"So what did you tell him?"
"Who?"
"The lawyer."
"The truth," Susan said. "That I came on to you. That I couldn't resist you."
"Oh, you did not."
"I did," Susan said. "I yelled at him. I gave him this whole lecture on privacy."
"Sometimes you amaze me. You know that?"
"Yeah, I get that impression."
"It's-- it's nothing," Kerry said. "The business with the trustees. It'll... blow over. I'm sure."
"You're sure?"
"I... think it will."
"Kerry," Susan said, "what if it doesn't?"
"Then we'll work something out."
"What does that mean?"
"It means-- it means we'll work something out. The two of us."
"Good," Susan said, fingering Kerry's hair. "That's what I hoped it meant." She kissed Kerry gently. Kerry kissed her back. The kisses escalated, like they were fighting for the last word, until Susan had Kerry pushed back against the shelves, and the bottles of medicine were rattling in their boxes. For about half a moment, Kerry considered using the rest of her "lunch hour" for a cafeteria run.
*****
The MVA came in at midnight. An SUV full of drunken teenagers versus the guardrails of the Edens, plus a BMW that had plowed into the SUV's rear, and a bonus fender-bender, the result of rubbernecking. Susan was trying to set the broken leg of one of the teenagers. "We're almost done," Susan kept saying. "We're almost done."
"Bullshit," said the girl.
Susan's pager buzzed. It was probably Chloe, forgetting the time difference again. She popped the girl's shin back into place. One of the first-year residents was assisting, and Susan told him to put a cast on the girl. "I'll be back in a minute," she said, yanking her pager from her belt loop.
It was a text message. "MARK GONE," it said. Just like that. She had to give Elizabeth credit for economy of words. She ran down the hallway to the bathroom; nurses and residents called out demands, but they sounded like a foreign language, like white noise. She locked herself in the handicapped stall of the ladies' room and wept into her hands. She checked her watch: it was 12:23 AM. He'd seen twenty-three minutes of August.
Concluded in part three.