Summary ~ Elizabeth deals with the sudden disappearance of her young daughter.
Genre ~ Mark/Elizabeth
Disclaimer ~ The characters portrayed in this story are in no way mine, and I will return them to their original positions once I am done messing with their lives. The characters of Maura, Matthew, or anyone else you have not seen waltz across your TV on a Thursday night are purely of my own imagination.
Need to Know ~ The last episode that applies to this story is April Showers. Everything up to that point happened, but nothing after it did. Which includes the return of Susan Lewis. Mark has had no recurrences of his brain tumor and is going to be fine. Also, Abby and Luka broke up some time around July of 2001.
Feedback ~ As always, feedback is more then welcomed. Please feel free to email me, or Bridget, with comments (good or bad) on this story, another story, or just the site in general to greeneblob707@yahoo.com. If you could please put the title of the story you wish to make comments on in the subject box that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks and enjoy!
It was April 22nd, and Elizabeth had to go back to work in two days. She wasn’t dreading it, she needed to get out. She needed to be back in the swing of things. She hated just hanging around the house for so long. She needed to emerge herself in something she loved. Something to take her mind off of everything.
But as much as she was looking forward to going back, she was also dreading it. Oh, not for the reasons most would think. She didn’t want everyone pitying her. If there was one thing Elizabeth hated it was when people pitied her. She didn’t want everyone coming up to her and asking her how she was doing. She didn’t want to answer the same questions a million times. And she most definitely didn’t want to face Romano. She just wanted County to be somewhat of a shelter. Somewhere she could go and not think about everything that was going on in her personal life. But as much as she wanted that, she knew that would not happen.
No one had called about Maura. And Elizabeth was beginning to doubt they ever would. It had been almost two weeks since they set the stupid thing up and all it had recorded was telemarketers and Kerry Weaver. It was beginning to become annoying, but Elizabeth left it there if for no other reason but to make her feel better.
Elizabeth spent that Saturday before she returned to work cleaning. She dusted and vacuumed. Mopped, swept, and scrubbed. Matthew imitated his mother by running around the house with a dustpan, sweeping up odds and ends. That morning was somewhat easier for Elizabeth. She could still feel her daughter’s absence looming in the air, but that day seemed different. She seemed more optimistic about the whole predicament. She seemed more relaxed.
Elizabeth was on her hands and knees in the bathroom. She had a toilet brush in her hands and she was rapidly moving it around the bowl, fercily scrubbing. Her knees hurt from being pressed against the tile, and her arms ached from working. But she always did this once a month. She always got sore, and she was beginning to become tolerant of that.
Mark walked down the hallway and peeked his head into the bathroom. Elizabeth was emerged in her cleaning. She was humming a song to herself as she scrubbed. Her loose curls in disarray. He stood there for several minutes. She didn’t seem to notice him. Finally he walked over and tapped her on the shoulder. She quickly turned around and smiled at him.
"What?" she smiled. "I’m a little busy right now, so a massage will have to wait."
"Damn, I kinda wanted that now." he smiled.
"You could help, you know. Make it go a little faster."
"No way, I don’t clean!" he said teasing her. Elizabeth dropped her mouth in shock then smiled, ear to ear. She dipped gloved hand into the blue toilet water then flicked a small cascade of water at an unsuspecting Mark.
"You most certainly will clean!" she laughed as the water flew onto Mark’s clean shirt. "You will clean that!" Mark stood back, his arms out to the side in shock. After a few moments he looked up and a small smile began to form. He then shook his head at her and turned to walk out.
"Yes well, I will get you back Dr. Corday. I know where you live!" He then turned down the hallway towards their bedroom. Elizabeth smiled then sighed as she went back to her cleaning.
"One, two, three…four, five! I won! I beat you mommy!" Matthew squealed. He jumped up and pointed his finger to the bored.
"Oh, you did! Darn! I guess you are getting much better at this than I am!" she said humoring him.
Matthew smiled and said, "Yep, I’m much better then you mommy! You stink!"
Elizabeth pretended to be very insulted by that comment. "Uh, well that’s mean Matthew! You don’t have to rub it in!"
He grinned and said, "I know, but I always beat you now!" he then picked up his game piece and threw it in the box.
"All done?" Elizabeth asked. They had played 3 games because Matthew loved it so much. She was shocked he would want to end it. She was usually the one to put a stop to the bored games.
"Yep, all done!" he declared. He put the bored in the box then walked out of the room to his bedroom. Elizabeth smiled and began cleaning up the rest of the game pieces that were scattered about.
The rest of the day was fairly routine. Matthew took his nap, Mark prepared dinner, and Elizabeth did some paper work for the hospital. She had a lot of paper work to catch up on, since she was out for so long. She knew that it was best to just get it over and done with. The phone rang at about four that afternoon. And like every other time before, Elizabeth got up and pressed the record button by the phone, not acctually expecting anything to come of it. She answered the phone with an unenthusiastic "Hello." After she spoke those words she was silent, her face became stern. "Mother…" her voice trailed off.
"Elizabeth! I thought I would never get a chance to call you back!" Elizabeth was quiet; she didn’t know what to say. She really didn’t want to have to tell her mother, but she knew that eventually she would have too. "I’m sorry I didn’t call you back, but I have been swamped. And whenever I do have a free moment to ring you it would be in the middle of the night Chicago time. And I didn’t think you would like that!"
"Yes, I suppose not." Elizabeth answered, trying to hide the nervousness in her voice.
"But I felt so bad about not calling. From what I was told it sounded very urgent."
"No mother, not really. See…" she couldn’t finish her sentence. Her mother cut her off.
"Oh Elizabeth, before I forget, now, I know Maura’s birthday is coming up in a few weeks, and I was curious as to what she was into now. I know last year it was those artsy things, but children are so fickle, I wouldn’t be surprised if she hated that stuff now!" her mother said with a chuckle. Elizabeth’s mind went blank. She had no idea what to say. As soon as her mother said that she felt like she was going back to square one. She had improved her outlook so much over the past two weeks, and as soon as her mothers words registered in her head she felt like she had just lost Maura all over again.
Elizabeth must have been silent for a while because her mother began to question her. "Elizabeth, Elizabeth are you all right?" she asked.
After a few moments she answered, "Yes, mother I am fine." She lied. She wasn’t fine anymore. She took a deep breath and prepared herself for what she was about to say. "Mother something happened." She finally choked out.
"What happened, is everything alright?"
"No, everything isn’t alright," she was quiet once more. She then continued by saying, "Mother, Maura is missing."
When Elizabeth crawled into bed that night, she felt like she had just run a marathon. She had no energy. She kept herself extremely busy that night. She never sat still. She wanted to try and distract herself. It worked for a while, but now she was forced to slow down. She snuggled between the covers and sighed as she rolled over onto her side.
Mark was lying next to her, like he always was; his nose in some book about emergency medicine. His reading lamp was the only light in the room. It poured over the pages and made a line of light right up to Elizabeth’s fingertips. After Mark finished his chapter he closed the book, and along with his glasses, placed them softly on the nightstand. He then turned his head and looked at Elizabeth. She was staring up at him, like a child who about to tell her mother she broke her favorite vase. He smiled at her but she didn’t smile back.
"Mother called today," she said rather bluntly. "She asked what Maura wanted for her birthday." She then patiently waited for Mark’s response. It was a while before he spoke.
"What did you tell her?" he asked
"Exactly what I have been telling everyone for the last two weeks. No more, no less."
"Is she staying out there?"
"Yes." She said without hesitation. "She couldn’t come out. She said she wanted to but that she had ‘pressing matters’ to attend to. She wants me to call her if anything new happens. She said she would come out if things turned for the worse." Elizabeth heard her mother’s voice in her head as she told Mark that. Elizabeth always assumed she wouldn’t come to Chicago, but in her heart she hoped she would.
"That sounds like your mom." He said with a smile. Elizabeth didn’t smile back.
"I don’t know why I wanted her to come so badly Mark. I have never really wanted to be with her desperately before, but now I feel like if she was here, things would be a little easier." Her voice trailed off as the words left her lips. She sunk into her covers and pulled them closer to her chest.
"I think you’re just scared." Mark said with sympathy in his voice.
"Yeah I know, and I hate it."
"I know, I hate it too, but everything will be okay. You just have to be optimistic. If you keep dwelling on everything bad that might happen you are just going to be miserable, and no one wants you to be miserable. Especially me, okay?" he said kissing her gently on the lips.
"Yeah okay." She said, returning the kiss. Elizabeth sighed and Mark turned off the light.
She lay for a while. Her mother’s words kept echoing in her head. "I will fly out if things take a turn for the worse." A turn for the worse? As in dead? Elizabeth had never really thought about that. She knew that Maura was in serious danger but she never really thought about the fact that she might be dead. Her daughter could be dead and there is nothing she could do about it. Even worse, she had no idea if she was dead or alive, and not knowing killed her. She hated the feeling deep in her gut. She hated thinking like that. But she couldn’t get her mind off of all the horrible things that could happen. It was several hours before she could calm herself down enough to get some sleep. At about one that morning, she drifted off into a not so peaceful sleep.