Countdown
Part Ten
By Scott J. Welles
scottjwelles@yahoo.com

DISCLAIMERS: Okay, here we are again. First, the usual jazz. Sing along if you know the words...

ER and all related characters are the property of Warner Bros., ConstantC Productions, and Amblin Entertainment Television, a bunch of really swell, understanding guys who won't sue me if I mention that the aforementioned characters and institutions are being used without their permission, but only for entertainment purposes, and that no form of profit is being made on this work, especially if I remind them that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Yeah, they'll buy that...

Rate this one PG-13 for subject material.

(9:52 p.m., December 31st, 1999...)

Two hours and eight minutes before the end of the world, Dr. Maggie Doyle was in a curtained area with a spiky-haired young man with several metal studs in his ears, nose, and other sensitive areas. She said, "I understand you have a persistent ringing in your ears?"

"YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT!!"

"And, ah, how long have you had this?"

"LIKE, ABOUT SINCE THE CONCERT ENDED!!"

"Which concert is this?"

"THE FLAMING ZOMBIES CONCERT, MAN!! LAST ONE'A THE CENTURY!!"

"You had front row seats, by the amplifiers, right?"

"COOL, MAN, LIKE, HOW'D YOU KNOW?!!"

"Just a hunch..."

Maggie assured the young man his ears would be fine in a day or so and sent him on his way. It was beginning to look to her like the rest of the night was going to pass uneventfully, at least as far as traumas were concerned.

Removing the Flaming Zombies fan's name from the board, she commented, "If this is the worst thing we see tonight, I may fall asleep before midnight."

Haleh overheard her and said, "If you're bored, you want to check on the MVA patient in Trauma Two?"

"Sure. Got nothing better to do." She took the patient's chart - still a 'John Doe' - and went into the trauma room. She took in the young man's vitals with a practiced eye, barely glancing at the tube down his throat. The respirator had shown no signs of misfunctioning since Weaver and Kovac had intubated him earlier.

Maggie made the appropriate notations on his chart, but then her eyes returned to the man's face. She looked closer.

"Aw, God, no..."

(9:57 p.m., December 31st, 1999...)

The chorus line's new bus had arrived, and the troupe of women was filing out the door, waving gratefully and blowing farewell kisses to the ER staff. Jerry, Luka, Lucy, Lydia, Yosh, Conni, and Malik waved back, enjoying the novelty.

Randi was idly watching them file past, glancing from one bustier to another, and muttering, "Real, not real, not real, real, not real, real, real, not real, one of each, real..."

"One of EACH?!" Malik exclaimed, keeping score on a notepad.

"Shut up, I'm counting. Real, not real..."

When the last of the dancers was out the door, everyone gathered around as Malik added up the totals and tore off the top slip. He passed it to Jerry, who checked the number against the chart he'd written. "And the winner is..." he muttered.

Everyone craned an ear.

He let out a groan and placed a wad of bills in the palm of the slim hand that was poking through the crowd.

"Thank you, Jerry," Lydia declared with an unbearably smug grin, "and Happy New Year, suckers."

The group dispersed with the usual grumblings, but Jerry stood up and said, "Randi, can you watch things for a sec while I run to the men's room?"

"Gee, Jerry, I don't know if I can handle the pressure..." She waved him off, absently. Then she noticed he was lifting something. "You're taking your raft with you?"

"Sure." He tucked the life raft under his arm. "These things are worth a lot of money, you know."

"What, you're afraid I'm gonna steal it?" she retorted, indignantly, still sensitive about the issue of the wallet she'd lifted earlier.

"No, of course not," he said, less than convincingly, "But I'm taking no chances tonight. You know how weird people can get on New Year's." He walked away.

"Right. Like taking a life raft to the bathroom with you is real normal," she muttered to herself.

(10:11 p.m., December 31st, 1999...)

"Dr. Weaver!"

Kerry turned at the sound of her name. "Oh, Mr. Henshaw," she said. She had been wrestling with conflicting impulses, to talk to him and to avoid him. "You're on your way home?"

"Yes, my nephew's picking me up, but I wanted to thank you for your help," he said, shaking her hand politely.

"You're very welcome," she assured him, "I hope the rest of your holiday goes well."

"Oh, it's gone just fine so far," he said, "This afternoon, I was with Eliza Pembrook. We were having dinner along with our great-grandchildren." The old man wore a smile at the memory.

"How long have you been married?" Kerry asked him.

The smile abated somewhat. "I haven't seen Eliza since we were in the third grade together," he said, "but today I saw the way we might have been..."

Another day, Kerry might have been puzzled at the contradiction, but now she knew exactly what he meant. "Have you been seeing other things like that today?" she asked, quietly. Part of her wasn't certain she wanted to hear the answer.

"Oh, I've seen these things many other times," Henshaw told her, calmly, "Many other situations, people I haven't seen since the Great War, some I never actually knew, but I guess I might have if things had been different. But tonight, especially, they're very clear." He looked at her and smiled. "I suppose normally you'd think I was just being foolish for saying this."

Kerry debated for a moment, then took the plunge.

"No, I've been seeing things, too," she said. There was a strange relief in saying it out loud. "Things that I know can't be real..."

"They are real," said the old man, simply but factually.

She had no reply. All her scientific training told her to disregard the old man's words, but deep down, she knew she couldn't.

"If you've seen them, and heard and felt and smelt them, then you know full well the difference between the other ways and a dream," he went on. "Those other ways are real, too. They're as real to them as you are to you."

"What...what are they?" Kerry asked him, "Where do they come from?"

"They don't 'come from' anywhere," he explained simply, with no impatience or condescension, "They have always been there, just out of our sight. You see, anything that can happen DOES happen, just not on the roads we've taken. We make choices, or choices are made for us, or around us, and we only see their result. That doesn't mean the other choices disappear, they just go somewhere else."

Kerry recognized the concept, though it had always been the province of science fiction. It was entertaining enough on 'Star Trek' or 'The Twilight Zone', but she had always had the luxury of being able to turn it off and return to the solid grounding of everyday reality. It was disturbing to think that such things were real. "You're talking about parallel timelines, aren't you?" she said, "Alternate realities?"

"Oh, I don't know the science words for it, or nothing," Henshaw shrugged, "I just know what I know. And what you and I and others are seeing is as real as real can be. And you know it too, don't you?"

"What others?"

"Well, as I understand it, maybe one in a million can see them, now and then, just for a second. Mostly, those people are called mad."

Great. "Why am I seeing them?"

"I can't say for certain. It takes a certain sensitivity that most don't have. In a way, you're lucky, if you've never been troubled by it before. Some people just can't accept it, and they...well, they don't end up so well."

Kerry swallowed and took a deep breath. "I've never seen these things before," she said.

"And maybe never will again. The walls between the ways are thin tonight. And they'll get thinner before they get thicker."

"Why toni...you mean, because of the Millennium?"

"I think so."

"But that's just a date on a calendar! It's all arbitrary!" she exploded. "It's not even the real Millennium until next year!"

"Calm down, now, no need to shout."

"I'm sorry," she said, calming, "but I find that timing to be...look, historians can't even confirm when Christ was supposedly born. Midnight tonight is virtually nothing more than an measurement of how much time has passed since an arbitrary fixed point in recorded history. Two thousand years sounds impressive because it's a round number, but so what? The Chinese have a different calendar, and plenty of people don't even follow Christianity. Tonight doesn't have any cosmic significance!"

"It does if enough people believe it does," Henshaw assured her.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she snapped in frustration.

"Can't you feel the excitement in the air tonight? Everyone's looking forward to the big moment. Even those who don't usually believe in Christ are expecting something to happen, just because it's been built up so much. It's like a, what-do-you-call-it? A self-fulfilling prophesy." He gestured around him, taking in the world in general. "Faith is a powerful thing, in its own right. That much energy, that much will, all focused on one moment in time, can't help but have a powerful effect on the world."

It was exactly the kind of fuzzy, unsupported pseudo-science nonsense Kerry had always dismissed. But, coming from this simple, elderly man, she found herself being convinced. How else could she explain her visions?

"What am I supposed to learn from this?" she asked, plaintively. The whole thing still scared her.

Henshaw raised his eyebrows. "Well, that's for you to say, isn't it? This isn't happening all for your benefit, like Ebeneezer Scrooge's ghosts, come to teach us a lesson, oh no. It's just happening, like the rain falling."

She nodded, still uncertain.

He patted her hand with a gentle smile. "Now, don't you worry none about this. It'll all be over in the morning. Don't fret about what you see. It's just the way things are, somewhere else, is all." With that, the old man turned to shuffle back to the front doors.

"Mr. Henshaw?"

He turned back.

"How do you know all this?"

"I've lived a long time, Dr. Weaver, and seen a lot of things I don't know the reasons for. I've just kind of figured it out as I went along, I guess." He smiled. "Happy New Year, Doctor."

She watched him go.

(10:22 p.m., December 31st, 1999...)

Kerry wandered the halls of the emergency department aimlessly, considering the old man's words. Something she had once read about the difference between facts and truths was clear in her memory. She had always been very, very good at accumulating the former. Yet the latter always seemed to be beyond her reach.

Another thing she was contemplating, by necessity on a hypothetical basis, was the effect of faith upon the nature of the universe. Mr. Henshaw had been right about one thing, at least: tonight, perhaps more than any other night in history, everyone's expectations would be focused on the tick of a clock. What would happen then? Henshaw seemed confident that everything would be all right, but did that make it so?

Kerry thought of several patients she'd treated a few years ago, who had gathered on an the balcony of a condominium during a celebration. There were a few dozen people, all clapping and stomping their feet to music, and the balcony they stood on had collapsed under them. Apparently none of them realized that the impact of all their feet, in unison, acted like a single, cumulative hammer blow, weakening the balcony's structure. It was the same reason that armies were instructed not to march in tandem when they crossed a bridge, for fear of the same thing happening.

What if the same thing could happen to the world? Could the collective unconscious of the human race somehow inadvertently bring about the end of the world at midnight tonight? Particularly if the barriers between realities were as thin as Mr. Henshaw had claimed? If they were shattered altogether, like the balcony's supports, wouldn't that constitute the opening of the floodgates of chaos?

Kerry was pondering this so hard that she nearly walked into Malik, who was standing just outside the restroom doors with his back to her. "Malik, what's-?"

"Oh, uh, Dr. Weaver..." The nurse threw a nervous look at the men's room. "We've, uh, we've got kind of an unusual problem here..."

"What is it?"

"Well, uh..." Malik scratched his head, trying to figure out how to put it.

Impatiently, Kerry pushed open the men's room door and went inside. Everything looked normal...except for the big orange mass crammed into one of the stalls. With visions of 'The Blob' in mind, she said, "What the hell is that?"

"Dr. Weaver...?" came a familiar voice from the rubbery mass.

"Jerry?"

"Yeah, uh, could...could you help me get out of here? This is embarrassing, but...I'm kinda stuck..."

"I told him not to mess with that thing," Malik put in.

"I don't know how it got inflated, it just kinda..." Kerry could hear Jerry squirming awkwardly around behind the raft, which had inflated at a bizarre angle, folding itself between Jerry and the stall door. The hinges had bent under the pressure, and there was no way to open the door inward.

"You want me to call maintenance?" Malik asked.

Ignoring him, Kerry stared, wordlessly, at the clerk's predicament.

Then, without a sound, her expression unchanging, she turned and walked out.

She went to the nearest trauma room, her pace unchanging, and selected the largest, sharpest blade she could find.

She retraced her steps to the men's room.

She stepped into the next stall over, and stood carefully on the toilet.

Jerry looked up at her looming above him.

She raised the blade above her head.

"Dr. Weaver, wait! Nooo - !!"

She stabbed the blade down, like Anthony Perkins slaying Janet Leigh in "Psycho". Jerry wailed as she brought it down three times, four, five, six, then...

BLOOSH!! The air gushed out as she finally managed to create a rent in the tough material. Kerry watched as the orange mass lost its shape, collapsing like a dying beast, sinking down like a falling soufflé until it draped over Jerry like a blanket.

There was a moment of silence.

Kerry stepped carefully down and held out the blade. "Malik, have this sterilized and returned to Trauma One," she instructed, tonelessly. "Jerry, get this mess cleaned up and get back to work."

"Yes, Dr. Weaver."

"Yes, ma'am."

Kerry left them silently, went next door, into the ladies' room, and made sure she was alone.

Only then did she relax enough to laugh her head off.

When Conni found her, minutes later, her shoulders were still heaving, and she was wiping away tears, but her face was bright with purest pleasure.

"Bef-before you ask if I'm all right, Conni," she managed to gasp out, "I'm great, take my word for it. That's the best laugh I've had all ye-he-hear..." Then she was off again, at Conni's expression, clutching her sides.

Conni raised her hands in a 'whatever' expression, and left her alone.

"Thanks," Kerry whispered to the ceiling, once she'd calmed somewhat, "I needed that."

If the world had to end tonight, it was damn near worth it to see that first!

(10:34 p.m., December 31st, 1999...)