Stand By Me

Author’s Notes:

* This one is a follow-up to my last piece, Hearts And Bones. If you’ve missed this story, and would like to catch up, you can find all my other work at Ruth’s site… www.oocities.org/TelevisionCity/Studio/5437/

* These aren’t my characters. They belong to Constant-C, Warner Brothers etc… I do this only for fun and gain no money from it.

* The song featured is ‘Protection’ by Massive Attack featuring Tracey Thorn from Everything But The Girl. It’s taken from their album of the same name. If you’ve never heard this single, I urge you to find some way of listening to it. It is a masterpiece of musical proportions!

* Thanks as always go to my editors. Leslie, Cari, Emily and Amanda, your help is invaluable and I couldn’t do this quite so well without you, ladies.

* To all my readers: Thank you for your time, comments and feedback. It really makes the difference and always means a lot to me to hear from you.

Stand By Me
By Jo 
dynamojo26@hotmail.com 

And when he opened his eyes, she looked up to him and saw a pain so great it cast a shadow over his face. They stared at each other, like two strangers across a divide, unmoving. He stretched his hand out and pressed it gently onto her cheek. And when he spoke, though his voice was soft and tender, she could hear the resonance of grief echo around the room, "Where’s my girl gone?"

****

This girl I know needs some shelter

She don’t believe anyone can help her

She’s doing so much harm, doing so much damage

But you don’t want to get involved

You tell her she can manage

And you can’t change the way she feels

But you could put your arms around her

****

Think of an answer. Quick, think of something to say, her brain screamed. Their eyes were still frozen on one another. His were steady, unmoving, and she knew he had her cornered. Held to ransom. She dropped her head a little, looked at the sheets. When she looked back up, he hadn’t moved, his gaze still focused directly upon her. Oh, God.

She seemed small, he thought. Scared like a rabbit in headlights, as if she were facing something so terrible and shocking in its substance that it darkened her very core. He tilted his head slightly, trying to see beyond the blank expression, into the face that not so long ago had seemed clear and fearless. She looked away from him, nervous and unsure, then back up at him, her eyes wide like saucers, panic in their pupils.

She couldn’t look at him any longer. Sidling off the bed, she stood up, feeling herself sway so precariously that for a moment she thought she might fall. She steadied herself and fumblingly made her way to the bathroom. Doug watched her flick on the light and disappear from sight for a moment. When she returned, she was clutching a small metallic package, filled about two-thirds full of small, white tablets. "Carol… what are you doing?" he stared at her, hardly able to believe what he was seeing.

"I’m going to take a sleeping pill. I’m going to go to sleep." She said the words with a calm dislocation, and Doug rose at once from the bed. He took her firmly by the shoulders and pressed her towards the bed.

"No, you’re not." He was shocked that he’d summoned the courage to get the words out in one go. Never once had he raised his voice to her, and staring at her pale, distorted face, it felt like he was instructing a child. Her eyes jumped to his at the tone in his statement. "Sit down."

She sat. He stood above her, gently reached out and took the sheet of tablets away from her. With a quick flick of his wrist, he sent them spinning towards the waste bin. She stared as they arched across the room and landed in among the pizza crusts, dirty tissues and old newspapers. "Carol…" His voice was softer now, slightly distorted. "What’s going on? Tell me, or I’ll… walk out that door… Do you want that?" She swallowed, staring at him with large, frightened eyes, as if facing her nadir. Studying her troubled expression, he prompted, "Tell me…"

For a moment, like a flower in the glare of sunshine, she visibly wilted, then, as if summoned by a weakness too great to banish, tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Angered and humiliated by her loss of control, Carol furiously wiped the tears away, but as fast as she wiped them, more poured from her eyes. "Why should I tell you? You are so smug, Doug Ross… thinking that you can understand. What’re you gonna do that’s any different? Sit there and hold my hand and tell me everything’s okay?" She spat the last two words with a venom Doug had never seen in her before. Across the room, a car swung into the parking lot, throwing an angle of white light in through the flimsy curtains. He blinked, staggered by her assault.

"Carol…"

"This is nothing, Doug… that’s what everyone keeps telling me, so Hell, why shouldn’t I believe it? Huh? Why should I be any different? I should just be like everyone else and bury it so deep that it can’t touch me. So that’s what I’m doing…" She glared at him, her eyes flashing olive with rage. He swallowed, feeling resentment building at the way she was speaking to him.

"Carol… bury what? What are you saying?"

"I told you, it doesn’t matter…"

"Is this about your Mom?"

She stood up and wrestled herself into the t-shirt she’d been wearing all day. "It’s about a lot of things, Doug… A lot of things you don’t need to know, and a lot of things you won’t understand." Finally, his indignation boiled over and conveyed by bitterness, he stabbed out,

"I won’t understand?! How can I not understand, Carol… My Dad is dead too. Just remember that… And I haven’t seen my Mom for three years… she lives on the other side of the country. I don’t have brothers or sisters to help me out if I need them…" He paused briefly, then continued. "You think you’ve been through so much, but there’s a lot of people out there who’ve been through it too. And one of them is standing right in front of you. If you can’t talk to me about this… whatever it is… then you’re not gonna be able to talk to anyone about it. Now, sit down and talk…"

He’d touched a nerve, of that he was certain. Carol instinctively railed against opposition, it was in her nature, and he took a step back, anticipating a defiant barrage of hostility. But it did not come. Instead, she stayed very, very still, staring at him across the room, her brow puckering like he were almost out of sight, rather than standing just a few feet away. As she stared at him, doubt flooded him, making his heart race. Impassively, she came slowly around the bed and sat down on the edge immediately in front of him. For a moment, she sat perfectly motionless, as if searching for comprehension, then her mouth opened, "My Dad was…"

Trailing off, her voice became so quiet he had to strain to hear her, and a solitary tear stole from her right eye and slipped along her cheek. He stayed standing above her. "He was a drunk…" Her shoulders were slumped, and he felt his pity reach out for her. "He started… he started when Mom was pregnant with me… He binged on it…" She emitted a chest-racking sigh. "He got fired… from two different jobs… cos he was drunk, and, and then he wasn’t even bringing in enough for the family. Mom supported him. She got a job with a dressmaker, but then he got arrested and she had to bail him out." The words were pouring out now, as if the cork had been pulled and the resulting flow was unstoppable. She gave a little resigned shake of her head. "Ma is so proud, Doug… She’s always trying to give off the best impression… and she had to go to the police station, with everyone watching, and bail him out with her savings. It was in the paper and everything… There was a big fight and then…"

She stopped suddenly and Doug stared at her, knowing how she idolised her father’s memory. How she believed him a saint. The reputation had overshadowed the man, he thought. Funny how familiar that sounded.

"They divorced, and Dad just went from bad to worse…" Her eyes fell to the floor. "That’s why she was always telling us those things. About not trusting men… how they’ll always let you down, they’ll always hurt you and you’ll be left to pick up the pieces when they’ve had their fill." She looked at him dartingly, and then back down at her feet. He twitched uncertainly, trying not to read too much into her statement. "She was just trying to protect me, Doug, and look what I did to her… I was unbearable to her… and all she was doing was watching over me."

"But that’s what mothers are supposed to do, Carol… it’s not your fault you couldn’t see that. Nobody sees it at fourteen. Everyone hates their Mom when they’re growing up… It’s part of life…"

"I know, but I didn’t grow out of it, like everyone else. I kept on doing it… I was still doing it last year…" Closing her eyes, she put her hand out and distractedly fingered the edge of the duvet cover. "Every time… every time I thought of him, I thought about how much I hated her. How she’d ruined everything… ruined the family. She’d caused the divorce, she’d driven him to depression. When she was blaming him for everything, I was blaming her… I didn’t even think… And she just took it all…"

"Carol… she’ll understand…"

"But will she? After all I did? Even if she wasn’t still unconscious in hospital, how could she? I…" she paused, swallowing and shaking her head. "I can’t even understand myself… I yelled at Javier. I just lost it, Doug. In the middle of the ICU, I was screaming and all I could think about was how could she move on and love someone else when she never even loved my Dad…? And she did, Doug. She loved him more than anything else… he just let her down too many times." She looked up at him with reddened eyes.

He came and sat down next to her, reaching for her hand to cradle it in his own. "She’ll understand… She’s your mother, Carol… Mother’s aren’t in the habit of disowning their daughters…" He tried an encouraging smile.

"I just can’t…"

"Hey," He caught her gaze and continued, "Your Mom’s stuck by you for thirty years, Carol… she’s not gonna walk away now…"

Carol was silent, her brows twitching almost indiscernibly. "There are things you need to tell her… Things you need to talk about, get out in the open… But once you’ve done that, things won’t seem so bad…" He cocked his head on one side. "It’s good to talk…"

"You sound like a shrink…" she noted with a weak, wry smile. He gave a little shrug.

"Yeah, well, I’ve had some experience in that field…" She nodded, curiously feeling more comfortable with the feel of his hand on hers. "C’mere…" Tugging her soothingly into an embrace, he held her tightly, rubbing her hair. And when he kissed her head, she snuggled closer to him.

"Will you stay?" she asked in a voice muffled by his skin.

Doug sighed, remembering his hollow threat to walk away, and answered her emphatically, "I’ll stay…"

****

I know you want to live yourself

But could you forgive yourself

If you left her

Just the way you found her

****

With daylight just around the corner, he tucks her into bed, and settles in behind her, reaching to loop an arm around her. His breath tickles her neck, raising goose-bumps on her skin, but she feels at ease this time. In the time it takes him to fall asleep, she learns that this time they are in for the complete ride. This time, there will be no stopping at second base. She loosens his arms from around her body and with a gentle push, he rolls in his sleep onto his back. Staring across at him, she sees his handsome face and studies him for a moment. Sometimes, she wonders what has brought him back to her. What keeps him with her. After all that has happened between them, it would be been so easy for him to just turn his back on her. When there are so many other, more appealing options, why does he keep coming back for more?

Tonight, she was stunned by his readiness to help her. Other men would have left the moment she began to scream. But he’d stayed.

This time, he’d stayed and held out his hand to her. He’d stuck his foot in the gear cogs. He’d stopped her freefalling. She thought of the marriage vows, love, cherish and protect and smiled to herself. When she’d needed him, he’d been there for her. Just like he’d always promised. Just like the night she lost Tatiana. What would she do without him now?

In this sudden awareness of the strength of her feelings, she reaches out and lays a hand on his arm and he twitches at her touch. For long moments, she watches him sleep, absorbed by his presence in her life, and the effects he has on her every move, her every thought. And when she finally closes her eyes and feels herself dropping to sleep, she no longer feels anxious. For now, with him by her side, everything’s not lost.

****

I stand in front of you

I’ll take the force of the blow

Protection

I stand in front of you

I’ll take the force of the blow

Protection

****

Carol’s father, in the striped shirt he wears to work, his black hair now a salt and pepper grey, uncut and blowing all around his temples, is calling her from the window of his apartment, looking down at her with his generous smile and his giant hands clasping the sill. He cups those hands up to that mouth and shouts, but the wind chases his words away and she does not hear him…

****

Carol woke sharply to the sound of a garbage truck pulling into the parking lot, its automatic parking control bleeping in an electronic frenzy. She blinked a few times, trying to clear the mind that was foggy from relentless and undefined dreams. Beside her, Doug was still sleeping, lying loose and peaceful on his side, one arm flung towards her. She turned over so she could look at him, and stayed that way, studying his peaceful expression. It was strange, she thought, how even the strongest of people became so childlike and innocent when caressed by the touch of sleep.

She remained that way for a long while, listening to the comings and goings beyond the window and in the hallway, until he opened his eyes slowly and met her gaze. She smiled at him. "What’re you doing?"

"Looking at you…"

He smiled back and tugged her into an embrace. "C’mere…" She gladly wriggled into his arms, nestling her head into the crook of his elbow, taking a deep breath of the familiar smell that lay there. "Did you sleep okay?" he asked in a hushed, slightly croaky voice.

"I was dreaming…"

He smoothed her hair with his hand, seeing the tiredness beyond her eyes. "Doug… about last night…" She swallowed. "I’m sorry… that was really awful… those things I said…" He waited, letting her sigh, wanting her to say everything she had to before he came in. "I didn’t mean them, and I’m sorry… I just… I got upset." He smiled,

"You scared me for a while there…" His hand slipped down her back and traced gently up her spine.

She sighed, "I know…"

"I thought it was something I’d done… but then, I realised I hadn’t even been here to screw things up, so…" She smiled weakly.

"Things haven’t been simple… I can’t really put my finger on it…"

"Why did you think I wouldn’t understand?"

"Nobody else ever has…" It was a simple statement and she saw immediately how wrong she’d been to think that he would ever misunderstand. "If I’ve ever had questions or problems, they’ve always been brushed off… you know, I’m too sensitive, I’m too selfish… I’m over-reacting… I’m messed up… That somehow I’m less of a person because I don’t see things the way everyone else does…" Shrugging her shoulders, she continued, "And, I dunno, Doug, maybe they were all right… Maybe I am just messed up…"

"Hey, no…" He pulled her closer. "Don’t think that… You are not messed up." He smiled his warm and genuine crooked little smile. "I think you are a very beautiful, very special person… you’re ‘you’, Carol… and that’s what makes you special…"

She took a deep, thoughtful breath, pulled back a little and looked into his eyes. "This feels so weird…"

"It’ll be okay, kiddo…" She paused for a moment, thinking that though they were the words she’d thought could never comfort her, somehow, when he spoke them, they took on a significance that soothed her to the core. Snuggling into him, she nuzzled his neck, so glad he was here with her.

"You’re good for me, you know…" A kiss landed on her lips as answer.

"Were you dreaming about your Dad?" She nodded, closing her eyes in vague, distracted anguish. Silent for a few moments, she appeared to be gathering strength to ask another question, so he stayed quiet, simply holding her, giving her the time.

"When you went to your shrink… did you talk about Ray?"

"We talked about a lot of things, Carol… But, yeah, my Dad was one of them."

"Do you forgive him?"

He appeared to contemplate her question, a shadow passing momentarily over his face. "Yeah…" Carol waited. "I forgive him… but it wasn’t something that happened straight away…" He looked at her thoughtfully. "You’ve got to forgive yourself before you can forgive them."

"Forgive myself?"

"Make sense of yourself… understand your own thoughts… All the things you’ve said and done as responses," He smiled encouragingly. "You have to see the wood before you can see the trees."

She gave a little ironic chuckle. "That’s pretty philosophical, Doug…"

"Ah, I’m not just a pretty face, you know…" Grinning widely, she leaned away from his enveloping arms.

"Who said you had a pretty face?"

"Karen… Lucy… Linda…" She scowled at him teasingly. "Carol…"

"Oh, I did, hmm?"

"You did…" He kissed her, his hand reaching up to run his fingers through her hair, his lids heavy and sensual.

"A pretty face…?"

"Mmm…" Carol gazed at him, sighed and cradled that face. "I’ve seen prettier ones though…"

"You have…?" His smile sent shivers running through her. He was toying with her hair, his fingers gently caressing along her cheekbone.

"Right here…"

Feeling suddenly very warm, Carol smiled, kissing him, and tightened her arms around him.

****

He walked with her into the hospital, his presence bringing nods of recognition from members of staff and a squeal of delight from Elizabeth. "Hey, whoa…" he teased as she rushed up to him and enveloped him in a pair of crushingly enthusiastic arms. He hugged her back then held her away from him. "Mark didn’t tell me about this…" he grinned, looking at her softly swelling belly.

Elizabeth blushed and girlishly tucked her hair behind her ears. "It’s something we wanted to keep to ourselves for a while…" she explained.

"I don’t think there’s much hope of keeping it to yourself now…"

She shook her head at him. "It’s so lovely to see you, Doug… How’re you doing up there? We’ve hardly heard anything about you…" Doug grinned.

"That was something I wanted to keep to myself…" Elizabeth glanced at Carol.

"You’re having another one?" she asked, a little surprised, then realised that he was teasing her and gently batted him in the arm.

"Oh, you…" she said. "Mark will be so pleased you’re here…" Doug nodded.

"How is Helen doing? Have you seen her recently?"

"I looked in on her yesterday evening, but she’s still partially sedated. The last time I spoke to Dr. Wing, she was talking about a complete withdrawal from the sedation today or tomorrow…" She started walking down the corridor, heading for the ICU. "Her latest scans look promising. They did an MRI on Friday afternoon and there was some clear improvement… the swelling has gone down significantly."

Doug nodded. "And what about function?"

"Well, she’s been making purposeful movements, but obviously it’s too soon to tell. Of course, she’ll have to go through some therapy, but that’s nothing compared to what she’s made it through already…"

Elizabeth pushed open the door to the ICU and led them inside. "Good morning, Helen," she greeted her patient. Helen’s eyes were closed, but flickered at the sound of her voice. It was clear from the pinkish tint of skin and the slightly blood-stained dressing that though she was now breathing of her own accord, the tracheotomy tube had only been removed recently.

"When did the tube come out?"

"Last night," Elizabeth picked up the chart from the end of the bed and handed it over to Doug, who took it and studied it for a moment.

"Looks good…" he noted.

"Yes… I can’t see why she shouldn’t make a complete recovery."

Carol was standing a little to the side of Doug, barely listening to the exchange of words. Her mother’s hand was twitching and she walked slowly around the bed and picked it up, stilling the quiver with her own hands. Doug stopped talking and glanced to her. "You okay?" he asked in a low voice. She nodded.

Helen’s hand felt different to before. There was no greater heat in it, but it somehow felt less limp, like perhaps it was more a part of her body than it had been. The once violently purple bruise on her cheekbone had faded to a dull, yellowy smudge and the bandages on her arm had been removed and all that betrayed the deep gashes that had been covered up were thin pink scar lines. Everything about her now indicated a patient on the mend, and though Carol felt she should be gladdened by such obvious and symptomatic improvement, she found she felt more trepidation than joy.

In the background, she could hear Doug and Elizabeth still conversing, though their words were but a murmur to her. She wondered how she would broach the subject of her father. Helen had never been eager to discuss him before. Even in the days running up to her wedding to Tag, the issue of who would escort her down the aisle had been glossed over a million times, and in the end was mentioned only when Helen had thought of the perfect solution. Any time she had ever tried to ask questions, the subject had been changed, or she’d been on the receiving end of a curt reply and a Russian reprimand about harmful curiosity.

A slow run of saliva trickled from Helen’s mouth and Carol drew her hand up to wipe it away. Thanks to Gina’s tireless efforts, her mother looked surprisingly good for someone who had been lying in a hospital bed for four weeks. When she’d eventually arrived from New York, the first thing Gina had done had been to tie what remained of Helen’s hair into a tight braid, rub some expensive moisturising cream into her face and hands and apply witch hazel lotion to her bruises. Granted, Carol thought, the bruises had faded significantly, but she still scorned Gina for her observance of such small vanities, perhaps mostly because she had never thought to act upon them herself.

A hand gently came to rest on her shoulder and she glanced up to see Doug standing above her. "Elizabeth’s gonna take me to see Dr. Wing… see about getting this sedation withdrawn before lunchtime… will you be okay?"

"Yeah…" she answered vaguely. Only a few hours, she thought, to prepare a speech, some questions and some answers. He gave her neck a little squeeze and she smiled at him as he turned and wandered out of the door with Elizabeth.

The unit fell to quiet and she glanced quickly around. A young redhead nurse she’d come to know well, Louisa, was moving between the beds, changing the urine bags on the patients. "Hey, Carol," she greeted with a friendly smile. "How are you doing?"

"I’m fine… thanks…"

Louisa finished up with a change of bags and then crossed over to stand beside Helen’s bed. "You know… she’s definitely looking much better…"

"You think?"

"Absolutely…" she went quickly to the urine bag and replaced it with a fresh one. "For one thing, she’s putting out more fluid," She held up the full bag and grinned. "And her heart-rate’s good… Yesterday, it shot all the way up to ninety in just a couple of hours." Carol glanced at the monitor, seeing that Louisa was right and the display read ninety-five, flicking to ninety-six as she watched. "And, I tell you something… I swear she can really hear you now. I was talking to her when I was bathing her last night, like I do, and she was rolling her eyes at me." She looked down and gamely spoke, "Hey, Helen, it’s lovely weather out today… all sunny and bright…" On cue, Helen’s eyes rolled slowly and purposefully. Carol blinked in surprise and stared at her mother. Methodically sealing the urine bag, Louisa started to walk away. "You should talk to her…" she encouraged over her shoulder as she left.

After a moment, Carol realised that Louisa’s absence had left the ICU empty. She glanced around, checking, and then turned back to Helen. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she pulled a chair up to the edge of the bed and sat down. In the paralysis of the sedation, Helen’s muscles had wasted, despite her receiving physiotherapy. Her face looked sunken and Carol could tell she’d lost weight by the way the wrinkled skin hung from her upper arms. Taking a hand, she started to perform some simple physiotherapy exercises she’d overseen, gently manipulating the fingers and thumb, squeezing the loose muscles.

It was oddly intimate, she found herself thinking. Not since she was a small child and her mother had shared a bath with her had she felt that she knew this body so well. It was like retrieving something from memory that had been banished for so long that it was like a revelation. Carol sighed, gently flexing the wrist joint, then the elbow, seeing small freckles she had never known existed. Even after four weeks away from the moisturiser, her mother’s skin was so soft, so smooth, and she found her reluctance to touch gone. She slowly turned the arm over and studied the line of veins running under the paper-thin skin of the inner forearm, converging in a delta of blue at the wrist. As she worked, she found her thoughts collecting and when it was time to move around to the other side, she stopped and stared, feeling the words she sought bubbling slowly forth. "Ma… I’m sorry…" In her sleep, Helen’s eyes moved briefly, then fell motionless again. "You never deserved the way I treated you, I know… I, I was… Javier was talking and he told me…" She glanced briefly at Helen, then back down at the sheets, unable to look at her closed eyes in their serene detachment. "He told me about Reg Martinez… and Dad and… the things he did…" She let out a long breath. "I know… Doug says you’ll understand… but I don’t know… I just want to say I’m sorry, Ma… I never knew…"

Behind her, the doors to the ICU swooshed open and she turned, clamming up immediately, not wanting anyone to overhear her confessions. It was Doug, Elizabeth and a petite Oriental woman with a glossy bob and a little too much blusher. "Hey, how y’doin?" Doug said, scooting up and sitting down on the low chair beside her. She fidgeted briefly.

"Okay…" She twisted and looked up at the new doctor. "Are you Doctor Wing?"

"Yes," she smiled. "I’m Su-Li… and you’re Carol… Doctor Corday told me…" Carol nodded.

"Are you going to withdraw the sedation?"

"I’m doing it right away… I just have to make a few checks…" She smiled again and then gave Helen a quick examination, looking into her pupils, making mental notes of her heart-rate, oxygen saturation and blood pressure. "She’s responded well…" she added with a slight head tilt. "I think she’s definitely ready for us to taper off the sedation."

Doug put his arm around Carol’s shoulders and gave her a little squeeze. "How long will this take?" she asked Su-Li.

"It’ll be gradual recovery of lucidity over a few hours…" Carol nodded, watching her mother’s eyes twitch.

"Do you wanna catch some lunch?" Doug asked quietly, observing her detachment. "We could come back later, when things are more definite… Call your sisters and Javier…"

Su-Li agreed, "That sounds like a good idea. There won’t be much to see…"

"But what if she wakes up and we’re not here?"

"Don’t worry," Su-Li smiled. "She won’t…"

Carol considered this information in a moment of indecision. Climbing to his feet, Doug reached out his hand to her. "C’mon, let’s get out of here for now…" He smiled. She slowly took his hand and let him pull her up.

****

He took her down the street to the bakery, placed her at a table by the window and then went to the counter to pick up some food. When he returned a moment later with two fresh baguettes laid out with salad and coleslaw on big oval plates, a jug of coffee and two chocolate brownies, she was staring absently out of the window, at the people passing in the street. "I got you brie and grape…" he informed her, setting down one sandwich in front of her. "Or we can share…? I’ve got roast ham and salad…"

"We’ll share…" she said. He nodded. She’d been surprisingly monosyllabic since they left the hospital, and he had done most of the talking on the walk down to the bakery, telling her what Doctor Wing had said, what the scans were revealing and what Elizabeth had told him about Mark’s surgery. It had been tough to keep the conversation going for the ten minute walk and he realised that he didn’t like this new need to fill the silences, but lacking the courage to ask her what had dampened her spirit, he steered clear of any questions. He wondered if she was having second thoughts. Amid the bustling lunchtime traffic rushing in and out of the bakery grabbing their fresh baguettes, bagels, doughnuts and pitta breads, she looked out of place in her quietness, as if somehow she had been let in on a terrible secret to which everyone else remained oblivious. He poured the coffee out and pushed a mug towards her.

"You okay?" he asked finally, watching her distracted gaze as she cut each baguette in half and swapped them over. She glanced up briefly.

"I’m okay…" There was a short silence, while she picked at the lettuce overflowing from the sandwich. "I was talking to her," she told him in a low voice. Doug looked up, and studied her. "The nurse told me I should…" He waited, judging that she needed a little more time to conclude. "I told her I was sorry."

"Good… that’s… great, Carol." He smiled. "Now you just need to do it when she’s awake."

She shook her head doubtfully. "I don’t know if I will…" He stared.

"You have to, Carol…"

"Why? She doesn’t need to know… I can… I can just change things without telling her…"

He sighed. "You can… but that won’t work…"

"Why not?"

"You have to…" Trying to summon some sort of intelligible explanation, he thought of the words his shrink had indoctrinated in him, stirring them from memory and pausing for a moment to apply them to her situation. "My shrink used to say that the mind is like a trash can. When you want to start again…" He stopped, swallowed, and then began again, "When you keep stuff inside, it starts to go bad. It rots." He looked at her, to see if she were comprehending. Her eyes were flighty again, as they had been last night, and he worried that maybe they’d tried to do too much at once. Maybe she just wasn’t ready to deal with it all yet. "You have to throw the garbage out, get rid of it before it starts to rot. You have to tell your Mom about this, otherwise it’ll never get thrown out, Carol, and it’ll rot away until it just becomes… until it just becomes anger. You don’t want that, do you?"

She stared at him. "How do you know that?"

"Cos that’s what happened to me…" Her expression didn’t change. "All the stuff that happened with my Dad… all the stuff he did… to me and my Mom…" He squinted almost indiscernibly. "When you don’t understand something, the only way you can deal with it is to put it into some other part of your head. Somewhere where it can’t get out. Where you think it’s gone away. Only it’s still there, and it rots and then it gets into all the other parts of your head and before you know it… it’s out of control.. and so are you." He looked at her worried face. "How long have you been thinking about your Mom and Dad?"

She thought, "A week…"

"A week?" he said incredulously, feeling shocked and hurt that she hadn’t told him earlier. "Carol, why didn’t you call me?"

"I didn’t want you to come rushing out here…" She looked up at him and he read the confusion in her eyes. "And, I didn’t know what you’d think if I…" He reached out and took her hand in his own.

"Carol… I would never think less of you… Ever…"

"No, no… I don’t mean that… I didn’t want to tell you…" She cleared her throat nervously and looked down. "I was scared you’d be like everyone else." He stared at her for a moment, then saw what she meant.

"How much do you really think about them, Carol?"

"Now or then?"

"Both."

She sighed, almost unwilling to tell him that his stupid trash can metaphor had been so startlingly accurate. "It’s been in the background… pretty much all the time…" She looked down. "When I was… after the… when I was seeing a shrink before… He asked me about all of this. And we talked about it, but I guess not as much as we should’ve done. I never realised it was… this… big…" Gesturing hopelessly, Carol reached for her coffee and tasted it.

"Do you think you should go back and see him?"

"Go back?" she asked, surprised.

"Yeah… you know… to sort it out… Get a professional opinion…" Doug gazed at her expression, seeing consideration bubbling through the doubt. "I mean, maybe you should see this guy you’re Mom’s been seeing… what was his name? Martinez?"

"Reg Martinez,"

Doug nodded. "Maybe that would help…" She blinked a couple of times, thinking. "He’s obviously helped your Mom."

"You really think that’s a good idea?"

"I don’t know… what else…" He gave her an encouraging smile, knowing she was leaning on him more than she ever had before. "Carol… if it might help then you should do it." She nodded slowly, her eyes absorbing his honesty.

"Thank you…"

"For what?"

She shook her head at the simplicity of it all. "For understanding…" He smiled and reached for her hand, interlocking her fingers with his own.

"Hey… no problem… we’re in this together, remember?"

****

She’s a girl and you’re a boy

Sometimes she looks so small

You’ve got a baby of your own

When you’re baby’s gone

She’ll be the woman

To catch you when you fall

****

By the time they returned to the hospital, it was mid-afternoon, and raining. Doug held his coat up over their heads and Carol huddled underneath it, clinging to him, as they ran across the street and in through the ambulance bay doors. "It’s been a while since I came through these doors," he grinned at her as he shook the excess water from his coat.

"You okay with being here again?" she asked him. He shrugged his shoulders.

"Sure, why wouldn’t I be?" He took a brief glance around. "I wouldn’t come back here."

She nodded, agreeing. "Things have changed…"

"They have," He slung his arm around her waist again and they walked through the main doors, dodging an unheeding Rocket Romano as he sped along the corridor. Doug took a step back as Romano wheeled around in acknowledgment and greeted,

"Ah, Doctor Ross… come back for a visit have we?" Doug nodded,

"Yeah, I missed you…" Romano paused, his unwavering eyes and predatory smile showing an appreciation for Doug’s remark. He nodded his head, tucking the chart he was holding under his arm and replied,

"Good, good… I’m glad… well, I have a patient to see now, Doctor Ross… Thank you for dropping in… Hope you managed to throw the lawyers off your scent before you arrived." He smiled sardonically, then turned and headed off again. Doug shook his head.

"Then again, some things never change…" Carol chuckled under her breath.

"You know, I’d forgotten what an asshole he could be…"

They continued on through admin, Doug glancing around as he did so. "Hey, I just wanna stop off… talk to Mark for a while, is that okay?" He halted outside the elevator. Frowning almost indiscernibly, she answered,

"Sure…"

"You’ll be okay?"

"I’ll find Elizabeth…" The elevator doors opened and she kissed him quickly. "I’ll be fine… Go…" He nodded, smiling, and watched as she stepped inside and the doors closed on her.

Though the ER appeared to be moderately busy, there were no evident traumas. Doug glanced around at the moving people, remembering with vaguely bitter recognition how he’d loved and hated the place equally. He wandered the corridors a moment, then rising from Exam Five, he heard Mark’s voice, loud and authoritative, ordering a patient to sit still. He smiled at the familiarity of it, and headed in the direction of the sound.

He pushed the door open slightly, took a look at what was happening and then stepped inside. Mark and a nurse he didn’t know were struggling with an ultrasound on a fidgeting elderly man. Saying nothing, he waited until Mark felt his presence and turned around. "Hey, what are you doing here?" he grinned, stepping away from the patient.

"What a way to greet me…" Doug reproved. "Just thought I’d… drop by… see how you were doing…"

Mark tapped his head. "Oh, you mean the hole in my head…" He smiled. "I’m fine… I’m… not dead…"

"That’s good, I s’pose…" Mark pushed him jokingly out of the door and they headed for the quiet of the lounge.

Once inside, Mark offered coffee, though Doug refused, and then collapsed into the sofa. "Uh…" he moaned, rubbing his temples briefly.

"Long day?" Mark nodded.

"You?"

"Not so bad…" Doug walked to the other side of the room and leaned against the counter, taking a quick affirmative glance around, nodding his head. It seemed like a lifetime ago that they were friends, and Doug found himself feeling a little uncomfortable, not really knowing what to say or ask, as if somehow all the connections had been severed and they no longer had anything in common. "So… how’s things with Elizabeth?" he ventured after a moment of silence.

"Good,"

"Good?" Doug grinned. "Sounds like more than good. Carol said you got a house together…?"

Mark looked down, and Doug sensed a little unease on his behalf. "Yeah. Nice place…" He gave a little shrug and met Doug’s gaze again. "I had to raise my standards, but then I’ve been living the bachelor life for far too long." Chuckling, Doug added,

"Standards aren’t the only thing you’ve been raising, huh? I didn’t know the two of you were trying for a baby?" Mark gave a small smile and Doug had to look twice to be sure he’d realised he was only teasing.

"Well, we weren’t… it just sorta happened…"

"And that’s good…?"

"Yeah," Mark emphasised. They stared at each other for a moment, conversation forthcoming from neither. "Is Carol’s Mom okay?" he asked finally.

"She’s doing fine…" He stopped, unwilling to divulge anything more, uncertain that Carol would want her problems shared with anyone else. "Anyway, I better get up there. They’re waiting for me…" He stepped towards the door, then on a sudden impulse, turned back and said earnestly, "You know, buddy, if there’s anything you need… then give me a call, okay?" Mark nodded,

"Same for you, Doug…" Doug smiled. "See you around…"

****

Doug took the stairs to the ICU, trying not to think how colourless his exchange with Mark had been. He knew it was foolish of him to expect that things wouldn’t have changed. After all, Mark had forged a new life just as much as he had, that much was evident. But, that didn’t stop him feeling disappointed. He’d been friends with Mark for such a long time, sharing each others’ troubles and difficulties through the years that he’d hoped that even after a year and a half, they could still talk to one another. Make something a little more than small talk, particularly in the light of recent events. When he was truly honest with himself, he’d have forsaken all of that just to hear Mark tell him everything was okay.

Heading into the ICU, he set eyes upon Carol, Gina, Annie and Javier gathered around Helen’s hospital bed, all looking on the figure that lay still and unmoving beneath the sheets. Carol and her two sisters were standing beside their mother’s bed, with Su-Li Wing just a pace behind them, while Javier was seated, holding Helen’s hand. He waited a moment, wondering whether his presence was necessary, but then saw Carol wince ever so slightly and immediately entered. "Hey, everyone…" he greeted. Annie turned and smiled at him, Gina cast him a suspicious stare and Helen fluttered her eyelids open and looked to him, a faint smile appearing momentarily on her lips. "How’d it go?" he asked.

"Well…" Su-Li informed him. "She’s almost totally withdrawn, though obviously, it’ll take a good twelve hours or so for the residual traces to work through her system. But other than that, she’s lucid and orientated." Doug pulled her out of earshot and whispered,

"Have you done a conscious assessment?"

"Yes, and you can relax. There’s some weakness on the right side, but nothing that isn’t normally expected and correctable with therapy." She smiled encouragingly. "I really don’t think there’s anything to worry about." She said the last line with a raised voice, so Annie, Gina and Carol could hear her, then stepped back to the bed, making a blind check on her chart. "But, I’m sure you’re all tired and hungry, so I think it would be best if you all went home… let your mother rest…"

Gina looked up critically. "Home?" she said. "You just said she was fully awake…"

"Gina, I think the doctor knows what’s best…" Annie said, taking her sister by the arm. "Carol, are you coming back with us, or going with Doug?" Carol turned and replied shortly,

"I’m staying… you go home…"

"Fine," Annie went to Helen and pressed a kiss onto her forehead. "Bye, Ma, we’re going home now. We’ll see you in the morning."

Helen tried to nod her head, but the movement was only slight, so Javier interjected, "Sleep well, girls," as they turned and left.

Once Annie and Gina had disappeared down the corridor, Javier gently placed Helen’s hand back down and tucked it under the sheets. "I think I’m going to go now, too," he told them all, glancing down to Helen. He picked up his coat and scarf from the back of the chair and started to pull them on. "It’s been a long day…"

"Yes, it has…" Doug agreed, coming to stand beside Carol. He gave her arm a nudge, pushing her to ask the question they had discussed earlier, and, clearing her throat nervously, she spoke up,

"Javier…?"

"Carol?" he responded, turning back to face them. Carol looked down, licking her lips in an attempt to alleviate their dryness.

"I’ve been… I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, about my Dad… and Ma…" She glanced over at her mother, whose eyes had closed again. "And… I thought, maybe… Can you give me the number of the shrink Mom spoke to? I, I’m gonna give him a call…" Javier blinked, faintly surprised, but immediately recovered.

"Of course I can… I can give it you now, if you like?"

"You know it off by heart?" Javier smiled,

"He’s a friend… and, well, your mother saw him for quite a long while… You pick these things up…" he explained as he reached into his coat pocket and produced a ballpoint pen and a slightly crumpled receipt. "Here…" He scribbled the number down on the back of the receipt, then folded the thin paper in half and handed it to her. Carol took it and pocketed it quickly.

Turning to go, Javier added in a confidential voice, "Reg is a busy man, Carol… but if you mention my name, and I’m sure he’ll be able to help you." He lent and kissed Helen on the cheek. "Bye, sweet-pea… Good luck, Carol… Doug…" With a smile, he turned and departed, leaving Carol silently encouraged.

"Hey…" Doug said, slowly putting his arm around her. "Well done."

She looked up to him and nodded, returning his embrace with thankful arms.

****

There was a rubber plant in the corner. And a couple of those grey and white metal filing cabinets pushed up against the far wall. The glass-fronted bookcase was spilling over with hardback books and copies of a glossy magazine, and the desk was the picture of neatness, an orange Apple Mac sitting atop its leather bound surface. Reg Martinez sat in his high-backed chair by the window, throwing the crusts of his cheese and pickle sandwich out of the window and onto the roof of the adjacent, lower-levelled building. "So… Carol…" he paused and glanced up, taking a bite of his sandwich, chewing slowly and then swallowing. "How do you think I can help you?"

Carol picked at her nails in the sofa-chair on the other side of the desk, and looked up with tense eyes. "You helped my mother," she responded slowly, choosing her words carefully. "And I figured you could help me."

"Help you with what?" Reg turned briefly back to the window, throwing another crust into the mob of pigeons now squabbling on the rooftop beneath.

"I found some things out about my Mom and Dad and I want to sort them out in my head," she said shortly, disliking the interrogation.

"And that’s all?"

Carol squinted slightly. "I think so…"

"You think so?" Reg spun his chair around and slid it across the wooden floor, coming to face her directly. "Now… before we start… I want to make something very clear to you, because it is a focal point of how I work with my patients." He stood up and paced over to the coffee machine that sat atop his filing cabinets. "Coffee?"

Carol nodded. "’Think’ is a very important word, Carol," he began, slowly filling a mug with black coffee, then handing it to her. "Milk?"

"Yes, please…"

"Think implies thoughts… implies that at some point, somewhere, sometime, you thought about this. Maybe it wasn’t specific enough for you to recall it as memorable, but often it is these thoughts that bubble beneath the surface of a psychiatric patient." Carol bit her lip, resenting his indirect description of her. "What I want to do here… no doubt what you also want to do… is extract those thoughts and put them into their correct context, analyse them, and understand them. Do you agree?"

Looking down at her cup, Carol nodded. "You seem unsure…" Reg added in a precise voice.

"A little," she admitted.

"That’s perfectly understandable. Many people are." He looked at her oddly for a moment. "You have your mother’s disposition…" Carol looked up immediately at the mention of her mother. "But, enough of that… let’s begin, shall we?" He came back to his desk. "And as we’re on the subject, let’s talk about your mother…"

****

"Hey… how’d it go?"

Carol climbed into the rental car, strapped herself in, then turned slowly to him. "I don’t wanna talk about it." Doug nodded, understanding, conceding that she was probably feeling a little shell-shocked.

"Okay…" He studied her for a moment, the troubled expression upon her face and the distance in her eyes. "Cindy’s waiting back at the motel. She said we should go out, take the kids for dinner somewhere…" he suggested. Carol took a slow breath, then replied,

"I don’t really want to go out. I just want to have a bath and go to sleep…" He looked at her in concern.

"You haven’t seen the girls all day, Carol," he reminded her.

"I know…" she glanced quickly over to him, then away. Doug paused, not quite knowing what to do. Dealing with Carol was at best a risky process, and he often felt backed into a corner. He listened to her breathing, adjudging just how far he could push her.

"And are you sure that’s a good idea?" He laid the cards out on the table slowly. "You shouldn’t neglect them, Carol."

"Neglect them?" she snapped around, piqued by his comment. "I’m not neglecting them. Is it too much to ask you to look after them for one night on your own?" Doug frowned,

"No, no, I just…" He looked at her pointedly. "Think that maybe you should see them…" She shook her head in mild irritation.

"Fine, okay. We’ll go out."

"Carol, don’t say it like that…" Doug said with a sigh. "We don’t have to go out."

"You just said we did."

"No," he said in as patient a voice as he could summon. "I said you should spend the evening with Tess and Kate." She stared at him. Refusing to meet her stare, he started the engine and found the bite, flicking his turn signal on and looking over his shoulder to see the traffic.

They drove in silence, Doug tuning the radio into the local rock station while Carol stared out of the window, trying desperately to think of something to say to alleviate the tension. Finally, she relented, and as they pulled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, whispered, "Doug, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to blow up like that…" He turned to look at her, tugging the handbrake on and switching the engine off. "I… I was a bit stressed after that session and… I’m sorry…"

He stared at her for a moment, as if weighing up her apology. "Carol… I know how stressful it can be, I’ve done it myself, but you can’t just…" Pausing, knowing his words were coming out all wrong, he sighed stiffly. "The girls need you. And I need you…" A tentative smile crossed his face. "We can help you, Carol… if you let us…"

For a moment, her expression didn’t change, then she gradually smiled. "Okay…" He nodded, relieved, and opened the car door, jogging around to offer her his hand, pulling her up.

"Let’s go and see our girls… and then we have all night to talk if you want to…"

"Yeah…" He slung his arm around her waist and patted her bottom, bending to kiss her forehead.

They walked up to Cindy’s room and Doug knocked on the door, shouting out, "It’s us…" From inside, her voice called out, and he pushed the door open, stepping inside to greet a room turned upside down. "Woah, what happened here?" he asked. "There isn’t any filing to do here, you know…"

Cindy shot him a half smile, then dropped to her knees again. "Robbie lost his Micro-Machine…" she informed him with a roll of her eyes. "And anyway, don’t count your chickens, Doug… Brian Moro just called…"

"What does he want?" She knelt up and looked over to him.

"There’s some sort of conference going on the day after tomorrow, at the university. He was supposed to attend, but it’s his wife’s birthday and he arranged some sort of river cruise and forgot about the conference. He wants us to go in his place…" She made a sarcastic face. "Seeing as we’re in town…"

"You could’ve told him we were too busy…"

"I tried that tactic," she explained with an exasperated sigh. "But it worked for about ten seconds, and then he started pleading… and you know how I can’t resist a man who begs…" Doug grunted, his eyes on Carol as she picked Tess and Kate up from the floor and rested them on her hips, talking to them in a hushed voice. Cindy noted his distraction, "Everything okay?" she asked.

"Tough session…"

"Oh, right…" she nodded knowingly, then continued in a low voice. "So, I guess we’re not going out for dinner then…"

"I don’t think so." He took a step closer to her and whispered back, "It’s a bit like walking on eggshells at the moment… I think it’s probably best if we just take the girls and get an early night."

"No problem… I think we’ll still go out, though. The kids are geared up for it, and well, I promised them… If that’s okay?" She threw her head in Hannah and Robbie’s direction.

"You don’t have to ask my permission," he teased, then reached to take Kate from Carol. "Hey, Mischief…" he greeted her, rubbing noses with her. "See you tomorrow, then… Have a good time…"

They left Cindy’s room and walked the few paces along to their room, unlocking the door and entering. Carol immediately went to the bed, sat Tess down and then stretched out, groaning to herself. "Ohhh… my back hurts…"

"Your back? I thought it’d be your head…" She slowly shook her head.

"I think I was sitting funny… I was nervous…" He nodded.

"I’m gonna feed them… do you wanna order some food?" He went to the baby bag and dug out a couple of the little glass jars of baby food she carried around with her and looked over to the girls. "How’s this sound… Country Casserole… and… Chicken and Sweet Potato Dinner…?"

She rolled her head towards him. "It sounds tasty. It’s what it looks like that counts."

"Hey, we don’t have to eat this," he chuckled. "We can get pizza or Chinese or something…"

"Please, Doug, no more take-out food… I think I’ve had enough additives this week to last a lifetime…" He chuckled, looking at her lying out on the bed, one arm above her head, the other laid softly on her flat stomach.

"I could go get some cheese and crackers…?" he suggested. "That supermarket’s still open down the street…" She smiled her grateful agreement.

"Go on, then… and I’ll feed these two…" she cast her eye over to her daughters. "I might jump in the tub, too…" she called as he headed for the door. Turning back, Doug replied,

"Cheese and crackers and a bubble bath… sounds… tasty…"

****

He bought three different kinds of crackers, Cheddar, Jarlsberg and Blue Stilton, a bag of grapes, some sparkling spring water and on a whim, a quarter of a pound of ham off the bone. Walking leisurely back to the motel with the paper bag under his arm, knowing she would probably take a while feeding the girls, he started thinking about his first therapy session. Trying to remember what had happened so that he could maybe empathize more exactly. It had been difficult, that part was easy to recall. His shrink had gently pressed, and he’d baulked, almost throwing the towel in after the first session, thinking that he could never gain anything useful from her help. She’d asked him about his work, about where he lived and what he liked to do… and he’d given her answers, well prepared answers, but she’d acted as if he were only offering her morsels. Of course, he’d recognised it later, saw how they had been only scratching the surface, but at the time, her simple probing had been virtually intolerable.

Then had come the fear, the frightening, hideous reality of all the anger and resentment and demons he’d pushed to the back of his mind and tried so valiantly to bury out of sight. The feeling of losing control. Of not knowing who he was anymore. Of standing on the edge of a cliff and knowing he couldn’t turn back, knowing the only way was over the edge… and what then?

As he approached the motel, he realised how much of his experience he’d forgotten, or at least, packed off into the far reaches of his mind. Perhaps that was why he was finding this all so difficult. Why her reactions seemed so incomprehensible. After all this time, was it possible that he’d finally had his closure? Was that why she found his responses so frustrating? He recalled the words his shrink had told him on his third visit, when he’d demanded that this time, they did something concrete, rather than talk about the weather, or his job: ‘Doug, you can’t build a castle on sand… it will crumble… But you can build one on rock.’

He climbed the two small steps up to the hotel door, blessed, he thought, with a fresher perspective on the situation. No-one had been there to be his rock, but he was damned if he was going to let her do it that way. Opening the door, he stepped inside and saw that she’d put the girls in their playpen. Dressed in their bedtime romper suits, Kate and Tess were drooling saliva and Country Casserole over their toys, seemingly content and quiet. "Hey, sweethearts…" he smiled at them and they grinned toothily back. "Did you have a good dinner?" Kate let out a burbling squeal, clapping her hands together and he chuckled. "Really? It was that good was it…?" He dropped the paper bag of food on the dresser and then knelt down so he was almost face to face with his daughters. "Squeal about it like that and you’re gonna make Daddy wanna try some…" Kate giggled to herself, Tess scooting along on her bottom so she was nearer to the conversation. "Where’s Mommy?" Doug asked his oldest, and Tess smiled enigmatically. "Is she in the bathroom?" He pushed a finger through the bars of the playpen and gave Tess’s round stomach a gentle poke. "Is she, huh? Let’s see…"

Slowly, Doug rolled onto his side and with an outstretched hand, gave the door a push and waited for it to swing open. "Is that Mommy in there?" he asked the girls.

A quiet grunt came from the bathroom and he wriggled along on the carpet and peered around the door. "What’re you doing on the floor?" came her voice, laughingly from the tub. He glanced up and saw her, her hair wrapped in a turban and a white cream mask on her face.

"Hey, girls, there’s a clown escaped from the circus in here… wanna come look?" Carol rolled her eyes and threw a ball of bubbles at him. Doug chuckled, then steadily crawled to his feet and went to the toilet, where he dropped the seat and sat down, leaning forward.

"You look… divine…" he murmured.

"Oh, get out of here…"

They were quiet for a few moments, Carol doing her best not to grin, and Doug looking down, refusing to look at her covered face. "I was stressed… this is de-stressing me…" she explained after a second.

"I’ve always preferred sex, myself," he said contemplatively. Carol grinned,

"Wanna come in?" He matched her grin with one of equal brilliance.

"Sure…"

He tugged his sweater and t-shirt off in one go, swiftly unzipped his jeans, kicked his shoes off and then took his shorts off. "Hold on…" he grinned and swung a leg over the edge of the tub. Easing himself down into the hot water, he slipped behind her and pulled her back to him, taking the towel off her hair and smoothing it down over her shoulder. She turned her head back for a kiss and he met her lips. "How you feeling?" he asked as he caught her gaze. She flicked her head and made a small sound, reaching for the facecloth to wipe the mask away.

"Okay…"

"Only okay?" he enquired, picking up her hand from the water and intertwining his fingers with hers.

"I’d forgotten how tough it can be," she sighed and added in a pointed voice. "It’s like being in the ring with a prize-fighter… you come out with bruises in places you didn’t even know you had…"

He chuckled lightly at her attempt at humour, but could tell from the look in her eyes that it was only masking something deeper. "Wanna talk?" he offered. She shook her head.

"Not really… … Yes…" She smiled despite herself. "I don’t know…" He waited for her, watched as she stared vaguely at the foam and bubbles, hoping he was doing enough, not wanting to do too much. "I feel guilty…" She bit her lip, and her eyes flickered with some kind of emotion. "Apparently my cause and effect cycle is confused…" she said bitterly. "And my guilt is my own creation."

It was just what he’d recalled and he had stop himself being pleased at his own accuracy. "I don’t know if this guy is going to work for me, Doug… He’s just too pushy…"

"Maybe that’s what’s best."

"Maybe…" she allowed. "But he’s so brusque… so… damn right…"

"That’s what shrinks are supposed to be." She said nothing. "So, what did you talk about with him?"

"My mother… mostly…"

"What did he say?" Carol shifted positions, crossing her legs over one another.

"It was just talk, talk, talk…" she started, then cleared her throat and began again. "He talked about blame… how I blamed my Mom and the reasons for that… He said… he said it was human nature to ascribe blame… because it’s how we rationalise things…" She stopped, fingering his hand delicately. "He said blame was about not having an explanation. That I was trying to rationalise what happened, and the only way I could do that was to blame Ma. If I hadn’t blamed someone, then I’d have just gone around in circles forever, and finally just destroyed myself. He said in the long run I was just being self-protective…"

"You are…"

"What?" she turned around in his arms, surprised by his utterance. He gazed at her for a moment, taking in the confusion in her face, wondering whether he’d made the right move.

"You’re self-protective. You always make sure you’re safe…"

Carol thought about this for a second. "Why do you think that…?" she asked slowly, frowning. So quiet, Doug sighed, then flicked his head.

"Carol… you’re always testing the water… you do it all the time, without even thinking sometimes. You’ll check out all the angles before you commit to anything." He smiled compassionately. "Just look at us…" Lowering her head, she acknowledged his candour.

"That’s what Ma taught us… Don’t trust anybody until you’re sure you know them."

"Good advice…"

"I dunno… it’s done its damage often enough." She looked at him closely. "I love you, you know that?"

"I know that."

"This water’s getting cold…"

"I know that, too…" he chuckled.

He helped her out of the tub and wrapped her in one of the white courtesy bathrobes, tying the belt tightly around her waist. She waited while he towelled himself off, then walked through to the bedroom. "Aw…" she cooed. In the corner of the playpen, Tess was sleeping, curled into a tiny ball with her favourite blanket. "My baby’s tired…"

"Yes, she is…" Doug leaned over the side of the playpen, gently picked his daughter up and laid her down in her travel crib, tucking her blanket around her. Carol did the same to a tired and irritable Kate, setting her down in the other crib. "Sleep tight and don’t let the bugs don’t bite…"

Carol smiled, pushing him towards their bed. "I wish you wouldn’t say that to them… you’ll give them nightmares…" He shook his head, taking the collar of her robe and pulling her into a warm kiss. "Mmm…" she murmured and he pulled away, slipping naked between the sheets and inviting her in with a broad grin. "Doug… what’re you doing?" she protested mildly.

"Come and find out…" he challenged. Standing still at the end of the bed, she stared him out for a moment, then slowly wandered around the edge, shedding her robe as she went, and crawled in beside him.

He took her in his arms and ran his fingers through her still damp hair, taming the tight ringlets. He breathed out slowly. Studying him she murmured, "Something wrong?" He made a small sound in his throat,

"No, nothing wrong… nothing wrong at all…" He smiled mysteriously, his hand creeping along her belly and surprisingly settling on her core. She closed her eyes as his thumb found her and a soft sigh spilled from her lips. "You know," he whispered in her ear, his hand continuing its slow motion. "The most beautiful thing about you is that you don’t know how you make me feel…"

Carol heard his voice and reached out to him, throwing her arms around him and pulling his body toward her, wanting to return his words with actions, wanting to overwhelm him with her love.

****

Two hot, soft lips stirred her the next morning, tender hands and touching fingertips on her skin. Still so sleepy, but smiling at the surprise, she kept her eyes closed, feeling his fingers skimming her stomach, up to her breasts. "Mmm…"

"You like that, huh?" he probed, his tongue finding her nipple and rolling around it. It hardened in his mouth and he grinned. "I guess you do…"

"Doug… c’mere…" She reached for his head, tugging it upwards, then kissed him. He pressed his tongue around her lips, pushing for entrance into her mouth, and then she gave it to him, opening up and devouring him. "This is a surprise…" she said huskily as he pulled away and slipped down to her breasts again.

"What do you want?" he asked her, leaning slightly away from her, allowing cold air in through the gap between their bodies. She tried to pull him down, but he resisted. "Tell me what you want, Carol…" he demanded softly. She moaned.

"You…"

"You want me…" He kissed her elusively, teasing her. Her eyes still closed, she searched blindly for his mouth, her hands on his upper arms, feeling the muscles there pressing against his skin.

"I want you…" she whispered hoarsely. He hovered above her.

"Okay…" With slow precision, he brushed against her soft opening, and then pressed inside, feeling the tightness envelope him. A low moan escaped his mouth and she grinned up at him.

"Like that, huh?" she mirrored his words, smiling up at him. Using all the strength she could muster, she pushed him over onto his back, adjusting her position.

"I like this…" he murmured. "I didn’t know you could be so assertive in the morning…" She grinned and let her weight fall forward, bending at the waist, so she could kiss him. His hips had set up a gentle motion, and for a moment, she let him do the work, leisurely exploring his mouth, her hands behind the back of his head, cradling it. Then, becoming more passionate, needing to feel him fill her, she sat back, resting her weight on his hips. Looking down at him, she saw his face infuse with desire, his eyelids flicker briefly. Arching her back, she ground into him, seeking to please him. "Carol… I…" His eyes were open now, gazing up at her, and with the next turn of her hips, she felt a flood of heat inside her and beneath her he quivered, his head rolling into the pillow and pleasure washing over his face.

Before she had even a chance to collect herself, he had eased himself out of her and was moving down between her legs, his mouth reaching up to caress her clitoris. "I love you…" he murmured into her, his tongue chasing patterns in the sensitised skin, tasting his own saltiness running from her. She let out a long, almost pained sigh, her thighs flexed and her head fell backwards and then he felt her against his mouth, tightening and pulsing as her climax shuddered through her.

Afterwards, they settled down together, neither wanting to get out to feel the cold air above the sheets. "You’ve got that conference today, haven’t you?" she asked in a hushed voice. He grunted,

"Yeah… One of those things you can’t get out of…"

"A necessary evil…" she added.

"Mm-hmm… I’ll try not to let it drag on."

Quiet for a moment, she gazed at him, then finally murmured in as casual a voice as she could muster, "I booked another session…" His eyebrow rose faintly.

"For when?"

"Tonight… five thirty…" She rolled away from him, onto her back and turned her head. "I want to get on with this…"

"You can’t rush these things, Carol…" he advised her. She shook her head,

"I know, but we can’t stay here forever. I mean, staying in this place must be costing you a fortune…" He looked at her, seeing how she was trying to change the subject.

"It is… but if that’s what has to be…" He stopped, considering how to say the words, "Take your time."

She stared at him for a moment. "What time do you have to be out?"

"The lecture starts at twelve… Carol…?" She glanced away, answering in a nonchalant voice,

"Yeah?" He caught her gaze and reached out, running the back of his hand along her jaw line.

"I want you to know that it’s more important than any damn conference or motel bill that you get to talk with your Mom. So stop thinking about me… think about yourself and… take your time…"

****

Sometimes you look so small, need some shelter

Just running round and round, helter skelter

And I’ve leaned on you for years

Now you can lean on me

And that’s more than love, that’s the way it should be

Now I can’t change the way you feel

But I can put my arms around you

That’s just part of the deal

That’s the way I feel

I’ll put my arms around you

****

Cindy and Doug slipped into the back row and sat down just as the lights were dimming and the words ‘Forward Thinking In Paediatric Management’ appeared on the overhead projector screen at the front of the lecture theatre. A colourful series of flash-frame pictures began, as the speakers were tested by two workmen who clearly thought themselves the root of all comedy. "Shut up…" Cindy threatened under her breath. Doug glanced over at her unusual display of temper. Cindy was one of the most placid people he’d ever encountered, and when something phased her, it was never without due cause. He stared at her for a moment, studying her set face and the stress lines around her eyes and mouth.

"You okay?"

"Sure, I’m fine…" She crossed her legs, then uncrossed them and crossed them again. "Three hours of sleep is enough for anyone… What am I complaining about? Tch…" She tugged her folder out of her satchel aggressively and slapped it onto her knees, bending again to search for a pen.

"You didn’t sleep?"

"Sleep?!" she wailed. "My son was throwing his guts up in numerous inappropriate places last night… do you think I got much sleep? I mean, assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups I know, but I kinda hoped that the $15 pizza, cheesy garlic bread and three scoops of peanut brittle ice-cream would have stayed in his stomach. Anchovies aren’t very pleasant second time around, especially on someone else’s carpet.’

Doug tried not to smile. "You should have woken me. I’d have taken over for a while…" he said softly. Cindy rolled her eyes,

"I didn’t want to wake Carol…"

"It wouldn’t have mattered."

She made a quick slicing motion through the air. "Forget it. That’s kids for you. And let’s put it this way, if I was getting broody again, last night has put me off that idea 100%. Roll on adulthood is what I say…" She grinned at him. "I left them both in the day care centre, so if he’s sick again, it’s their problem." Doug nodded, not completely certain the matter was closed, but knowing better than to argue with her. "Will called last night, by the way… from London. He wanted to know how things were."

"What did you tell him?"

"That everything was okay. He was really sweet about it all…" A faintly embarrassed look crossed her face. "He’s got some vacation time and he wants to fly over to see us all again."

"Oh… I see…" Doug replied, understanding.

"Yeah," Cindy chuckled. On the stage, the flash-frames stopped and the podium was flooded with bright white light. A tall, leggy woman in a black skirt suit and impossibly high heels wiggled her way onto the stage with a microphone and introduced herself as Donna Bennett. Cindy screwed her face up resentfully, "She’s got good legs…"

Doug looked round. "Yeah, I guess she has…" He paused. "But so have you…"

"Oh, thanks, Doug…" she said sarcastically. "Mine are about two feet shorter than hers, and I haven’t looked that good in a black mini-skirt since I was nineteen." He chuckled. "So, what are we here for? Did you call Moro back?"

"He wants us to be here. Apparently it’s unmissable."

Cindy cast a critical glance around the lecture theatre and sneered, "Yeah… looks like it… Look at that guy over there… His mouth’s open and he’s asleep already…"

"He’s not asleep…"

"What’s he got his mouth open for then?"

"I dunno… but his assistant has a very guilty look on her face." Cindy squeaked as she stifled her giggle, drawing the attention of the people in the row in front of them. "Shut up…" Doug hissed as she clamped her hand over her mouth. They were silent for a moment, listening to Donna Bennett talk and the scratch of pencils on notepads all around them.

"Do you think she’s got room in her body for lungs?" Cindy pondered aloud. "Cos if she has, they must be teeny tiny…"

"I guess that would have to be it, then," he said, refusing to get drawn into her favourite game. She twisted in her seat and gave him a questioning look.

"You’re not playing, Doug?" she asked with a sly smile.

"Not today, no…"

"Oh," Cindy nodded, hiding her disappointment badly. "How’s Carol doing?"

"I dropped her off with the girls in the park. They were gonna go for a walk." He glanced down and rubbed his thighs. "She booked another session with the shrink tonight."

"Is it working?"

"I think so…" he said hopefully. "I… remember what it was like before… when I saw someone… You forget how much it takes it out of you." He looked down uneasily. "She’s tired, and kinda down, but then that’s normal."

"And Helen?"

"Helen’s doing really well. They moved her out of the ICU last night, and she’s making progress. Though I don’t know how long it’ll be before she’s up and about."

"Is she seeing a physiotherapist?"

Doug nodded. "And a speech therapist. We gave the hospital a call this morning and the latest is they’re already hard at work with her. It’ll take time… but for Carol’s sake, that’s a good thing."

"Probably," Cindy agreed. She paused for a moment. "Poor girl…" Doug turned, surprised, and studied her.

"What do you mean?"

"Well," she said, looking off into the distance. "She’s got enough on her plate at the moment… without all this as well." Doug stared. "You know, before you got back, we were talking, after the kids had gone to bed, and she was…" Swallowing, Cindy briefly doubted whether she should share with him.

" ‘She was’, what?"

"Talking about when you left…" She looked over to see his stunned expression. "Telling me about what happened… You know… I hadn’t ever heard it from her perspective." Doug was silent, looking down now, feeling uncomfortable.

"What did she say?" he hazarded eventually.

"That you hurt her. When you left, she thought it was because you didn’t love her…" Doug’s face took on a look of dismay.

"Oh, Cin, you know that’s not true…"

"I know," she said softly. "But I was thinking the other day, after you told me about her father and…" She paused. "I thought that maybe it was all the same thing. I mean, her parents divorced… her Dad left… and then years ago, you left her… and then again, last year." Doug looked down. "Have you ever thought that maybe why she’s having such a tough time facing up to her Mom is because she’s worried she might lose her too… that maybe she’ll stop loving her…" He nodded, her words sinking in, taken aback by how accurate they seemed.

****

It was a cold but bright day, and children and their mothers filled the park, catching the last rays of warm sunshine before winter set in for good. The trees were shedding their leaves in floating falls of red, gold and brown, and the kids were kicking through them, diving into the stacks collected by the groundskeepers, unheeding of their mothers’ protestations. Carol wandered slowly along one of the concreted pathways, pushing Kate and Tess in their twin stroller. She’d wrapped them up warm in their snowsuits and the little red and white snowflake bonnets her mother had knitted for them, and they were sucking lustily on their thumbs, their eyes taking in the new sights all around. "Do you want to see the ducks?" she asked them, leaning forwards. Tess looked at her expectantly, and Carol smiled. "You do, huh? Let’s go then…"

She headed off in the direction of the pond, remembering the route well from the many troubled walks she had taken through this park. Walking on her own had always been a way of gathering thoughts for Carol, even as a young girl, and she found herself doing just that, even though she was trying to keep a clear mind.

Although many memories of her childhood were misty at best, the night her father had died had remained clear in Carol’s mind for decades. It was early February, the depths of winter for Chicago, and the city was hibernating beneath a blanket of frozen snow and ice. Her mother had lit the fire and stoked the Aga in the kitchen before bed, but even beneath her duvet and thermal sheets, Carol had been so cold she’d been unable to sleep.

Shaking beneath her blankets, she’d heard the telephone ring shortly after nine, and then her mother speaking hurried words with the neighbour, begging her to stay and watch the children while she went to the hospital. Carol had heard it all, and crawled from her bed to peer through the curtains, to watch as her mother drove off into the darkness.

For years, she had wondered whether her inability to sleep that night had been because of the cold, or because of a more sinister premonition. When, after her suicide attempt, she’d happened to mention this to her therapist, he’d nearly erupted with excitement. Thrilled, he’d informed her with an assured tone that this was the route of all her problems. She was always envisioning the worst case scenario; that at any point, the people she loved and trusted would leave her on her own. When she’d needed them most, whenever she’d needed support, love or merely compassion, people left her alone. Her father. Her mother on the night of her father’s death. Doug. From this he projected that she believed it better to muddle through on her own, independent of others, than rely on the help or compassion of those close to her. The fact that many people had left her at vital points in her life and Carol had continued on regardless didn’t seem to bother him.

Publicly, Carol had pretended to embrace this theory. Privately, she had doubted it with every molecule. But, if her father’s death, as Carol had actually believed, had no connection with her depression, its effect on almost everything else in her life was immeasurable.

Within a month of the funeral, Helen Hathaway had packed up the contents of her ex-husband’s apartment and entered everything into a house auction. She’d not asked any of her daughters if they wanted to keep anything, she’d simply sold it all. Even the budgerigar Tom had kept in a cage in his living room had been given to a woman down the street Carol barely even knew. And from that moment on, with every tangible memory of her husband buried or gone away, Helen changed beyond recognition and Carol began greenly contemplating how unwise it was to love, for those you loved the most either left you or became hardened strangers.

For a brief period, eighteen months ago, while preparing to have Doug’s baby, she had been content. Seeing in her mind’s eye, for the first time in her life, a happy family, she saw hope where before there had been none. An end to the endless journey. But it had merely been a rest-stop along the route and before she had time to fully embrace it, that hope had been extinguished.

Now, as she approached the pond, she found herself considering the truth in her psychiatrist’s words. Was it even possible, she thought, that her anxiety and fear at the thought of telling her mother what she had discovered and what she now knew was rooted in the same deep-seated terror? Was she afraid that when it came to speaking, her words would bring about another abandonment? It was all so frustrating, like she were stretching for the final solution but it was just out of reach.

The girls started to squeal and kick their legs as they caught sight of the mallards gliding across the water and Carol was jolted from her thoughts by their noise. She realised that they had reached the edge of pond and stopped, walking around to automatically lift one of her daughters out of the stroller.

On the pathway, a little to her right, a young woman was arguing with an older woman. They were talking in loud, agitated voices while watching a boy toddler who was playing near the water’s edge and Carol found herself listening in: "Mom, you’re so old-fashioned…"

"Why are you doing this, Lisa?"

"Why do you think? Cos I’ve spent five years doing nothing and I want to finally do something with my life. Is that such a crime?"

"It is when you’re leaving your baby behind…"

"I’m not leaving my baby behind."

"Then what are you doing? I don’t understand you… you have so much in your life… What are you still searching for?"

Carol stared at the arguing mother and daughter for a moment, then looked back to her own children. What was she still searching for? Nothing. She had failed many times in her life, in many different things, and often felt like she was misunderstanding some vital component of life. Then, two months ago, in a brave flight across the country to Seattle, she’d found the resolution she’d sought. Dealing with all her fears and inadequacies had taken time, courage and more faith than she ever knew she possessed, but she’d done it, and she could do it now. It wasn’t about psychiatrists and dredging up forgotten memories, it was simply about putting them in their rightful place. Annie had been right all along. The past no longer mattered. It might hurt, and it might rear its ugly head from time to time, but it was past, and that was all that mattered.

Taking Kate to the bank, listening to her happy giggles as the ducks swam around beneath her in excited circles, expecting food, she was flooded with an unexpected, newborn calm. There was so much in her life right now, so much she could take happiness from, and here she was, languishing in a depression that not six weeks ago had been all but a memory from her distant past.

In the stroller, Tess was grumbling, angry that she had been left out of the fun and Carol turned around to pick her up too. "It’s okay, sweetheart… I can hold you up too…" Tess tilted her head and Carol was reminded of Doug. "You know how much you look like your Daddy when you do that?" she said in a charmed voice. She picked Tess up and using all her strength, lifted her up too, smiling as she saw the delight glow on her daughter’s face.

****

I stand in front of you

I’ll take the force of the blow

Protection

****

The conference finished late and Cindy and Doug made as quick a getaway as possible, avoiding all the promotional stands and sales reps in the foyer and speeding out of the university. "We’re late…" Doug sighed in exasperation as they joined the line of traffic trying to get onto the expressway.

"Well, we wouldn’t have been if that man from Glaxo-Wellcome hadn’t rambled on so pointlessly for so long. I never thought it was possible for a person to talk for that long without taking a breath…" Cindy moaned, rubbing the back of her neck. "At one point I swear he turned blue…"

Doug cast her an amused smile. "So I guess you don’t want to listen to the promotional tape?" She raised one eyebrow.

"You’ve got a promotional tape?" she asked incredulously. He nodded,

"Mm-hmm…"

"What a fantastic idea… after that glorious waste of time, there’s nothing I’d like more than a breath of hot air…" Doug chuckled. "Are we supposed to be meeting Carol?"

"Yeah… I said I’d pick her up at the room, and then we’d drive up to the hospital."

"Great," Cindy added, throwing her head back to Hannah and Robbie, sitting in the rear seats. "That means I can get these two back before Robbie… you know…" She smiled back at her son.

"I think he’ll have gotten rid of everything in his stomach by now…"

"Doug, I don’t wanna risk it… do you have any idea how hard it is to get vomit out of car upholstery?"

"Okay, I’m driving…" he chuckled.

They pulled into the parking lot thirty minutes later and Cindy hurried Robbie into their room, instructing him to lie down on the bed. Doug locked the car up and headed for the motel room. He tried the door and was surprised to find it still locked. "It’s shut…"

"Then open it…" Cindy teased.

"No, I mean, it’s locked…" he went around to the window and squinted through the net curtains. "I don’t think she’s in there." Cindy came up and took a look herself.

"Do you think she left already?" Doug shrugged, taking the car keys out of his pocket again.

"Maybe." He glanced at his watch as he went back to the car. "Maybe cos we were late…" Cindy nodded.

"Yeah, maybe…" He climbed into the driver’s seat. "Well… I guess I’ll see you later then," he said as he started the engine and put the car into reverse.

"Drive carefully…" she called, waving as he headed out onto the road again.

****

He drove to the four storey building where Reg Martinez had his office and parked the car in the street outside, quickly locking it and then jogging up to the main door. He ran up the four flights of stairs and through the door marked ‘Waiting Room’. "Hello, can I help you?" the receptionist asked as he glanced around the empty chairs.

"Er, yeah… has Carol Hathaway been here yet?"

The receptionist looked down at her books, then shook her head. "No… she has an appointment in fifty minutes, but she hasn’t arrived yet, no…" Doug nodded, slightly perplexed. He stared blankly for a moment. The only other place he could think that she would go would be the hospital. "Do you want to use the telephone?" the receptionist asked helpfully.

"No, thanks…" He smiled at her, opening the door again and starting back down the stairs.

****

She crosses the street and moves briskly, snaking through the crowds. She picks up her pace, heading for the entrance. Inside she moves toward the elevator. Once the doors have closed, she adjusts the weight of her daughters in her arms. Her breath is coming quickly in her chest, and she is filled with a warm feeling she can’t begin to explain. The elevator ascends slowly, jolting through the floors before emptying her out on the correct one.

Here there are fewer people. Doctors and nurses abound, and she smiles at them, recognising a few faces among the many. She pushes open the door to Room 11N and walks toward the person sitting upright, staring out of the window. "Hi…" she greets, and the person in the bed turns towards her and smiles a gentle, delicate smile. "I brought the girls to see you…"

****

In the elevator, Doug was impatient, his eyes moving all around while it made its slow climb. He glanced at his watch. It was twenty minutes before her appointment, and he began to worry that he might have missed her, that she would have left and he’d have to turn back once again. Approaching the private room where Helen was now a resident, he caught sight, through the internal window, of a familiar gathering.

Carol sat on her usual padded low seat, with a twin on each knee. As he walked in, she looked up at him and shot him a smile as broad as he had ever seen on her face. "Hey… you found us…" she said, and in her voice he heard a striking softness.

"Yeah… I thought you might be here…" he replied. He looked to Helen, who was smiling at him.

"Doug… how are you?" He noted that her voice was a little uncertain, that she appeared to be concentrating on each word, careful not to make a mistake.

"I’m fine, thank you…" Casting a quick glance to Carol, Doug saw that her smile had not retreated. "What’re you doing here?" he asked her, confused. She looked down, apparently embarrassed, and he narrowed his eyes slightly, reminding her, "You’ve got that appointment in ten minutes…"

"I know…" she said lightly, looking back up at him. "I’m not going."

He stared at her, his irritation mounting. "Carol…" he began, but she cut him off,

"I don’t need to go…" The smile returned. "Look…" Balancing Tess carefully, she stretched out her hand and took her mother’s hand in her own. He saw that Helen was smiling.

"Silly girl…" she said purposefully and Carol’s cheeks flushed pink. It took Doug a few seconds to realise, and then he voiced his comprehension,

"You told her…" Carol nodded.

"Yeah…" She was smiling still. "Everything’s okay…"

Doug was flooded with a feeling that could only be relief. He grinned at them all. "Great… that’s… great…" He came behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, squeezing them gently, then bent and kissed her forehead as it tilted backwards. She closed her eyes in release.

"It wasn’t that bad…" she affirmed, and he shook his head gently at her. "Annie was right, the past isn’t important anymore…" Helen smiled again and Doug looked closely at her. For a moment, he was silent, then he nodded his head and said,

"Thank you, Helen…"

She nodded. Carol passed Tess to him and then stood up with Kate on her hip. "C’mon… say goodnight to Grandma, and let’s go home." She went to her mother and kissed her on the cheek. "Love you, Ma…" she said in a low voice.

****

So come on now, come on now, child

You’re here just a while

Come on now, come on now, child

You’re here just a while

You’re here just a while

Beth Orton, lyrics taken from ‘Pass In Time’ –

****

"What made you bite the bullet, then?" he asked as he filled her Styrofoam mug with the champagne given to him in London. The lights were turned down low and the sheets folded back.

"I don’t know… I was in the park, thinking, and I can’t really explain it, but suddenly, I wondered what I was doing." She glanced up at him. "And when I started thinking about it, I realised something."

"What?"

"That all this… therapy…" She looked around the room. "All it was doing was making me more depressed and more angry. And what good is that? What’s the point of existing in a sad after-life when there’s so much to live for…" Taking a sip of the champagne, she made an appreciative face and then told him about the mother and daughter arguing. "Life goes on…" she concluded quietly.

"Yes it does… Nurse Hathaway, you always surprise me…" he murmured. A tentative grin crossed her face.

"What does that mean?"

"I think I’ve got you pinned down… and then there’s something new, something I haven’t ever noticed before…" He reached out and held her cheek in his palm. She chuckled, faintly embarrassed by the baldness of his emotions.

"There’s Something About Carol…"

"Yeah…"

He put their mugs on the night-table and then knelt up and kissed her, slow and sweet. She moaned against him, letting him continue for a moment, and then pulled back slowly, holding him by the upper arms. "I was thinking about something else too, and I want you to say yes to it." Looking expectantly at him, she added, "Will you say yes?"

He smiled at her, tilting his head. "I don’t know what it is yet…"

"That’s kind of the idea," She stared at him, her eyes intense on him, and he watched them, seeing the flecks of green in them shine up and capture him. "Say yes…" she prompted.

"Yes," He held her gaze. "Now are you gonna tell me what I’ve agreed to do? If it’s a bungee jump… I might just have to forfeit…" She didn’t move.

"I want to get married now…"

He looked shocked. "What? Now, this minute?"

"Almost," she chuckled, taking his left hand in her own, letting him locate her engagement ring and rub his finger around it. "I want to do it here. In Chicago. So Ma can come… She’d hate to miss it, and I want her to be there. And I love you and I want to do this for me, and you and Tess and Kate…" Suddenly, she was deadly serious, and he could barely believe the words coming from her mouth. After so long, waiting, giving her the time she asked for, never pressing her, always being patient, it was almost too much to comprehend. "I want us to really be a family. Will you give me that…?"

He was lost for words. He lowered her down on the bed and covered her with his body, his face smiling, his eyes shining and his mouth murmuring, "Yes, yes… yes…"

She met his gaze and was amazed by the love she saw burning there. Taking his face in her hands, she took him into her…

****

Sunshine floods Carol’s memory and for the first time she can see his face clearly. It is a strong face, full of character, his smile inherited through generations, a softness in between an angular, clean-shaven jaw and high, defined cheekbones. It is a feature he has come to wear well as a parent, and one that Carol sees reflected in herself. His eyes are the impassive grey of steel, but his gaze is softened by a crinkling of the skin around the corners that comes to life when he smiles. His skin is gently tanned.

He looks down at her from his window, hands still gripping the sill, and smiles and she smiles up at him. She waits a few moments, then, casting a wave up at him, she walks on by…

The End.