TITLE: HEARSAY, part III of III
AUTHOR: Scott J. Welles
ARCHIVE: Yes, but please write and tell me where.
CATEGORY: f/f Slash
SPOILERS: Yep.  Big ones for end of Season 7.  Takes place just after
"Rampage".
RATING: NC-17
SUMMARY:  Strange bedfellows indeed....
DISCLAIMER: All "ER" characters and institutions are the property of Warner
Bros., ConstantC Productions and Amblin Television.  This is written
strictly for entertainment value, no infringement of copyright or ownership
is intended, and nobody is making a profit on this piece.  As always, any
errors in continuity, characterization, or common sense are entirely my own
fault.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
SEND ALL COMMENTS (positive or negative) to scottjwelles@yahoo.com



Hearsay, by Scott J. Welles


Part Three...

Christie stared at Kerry as though she'd claimed the sky wasn't blue.  Then
she shook her head and reached for her underwear.  "Okay, fuck it, you're
right," she said.  "I am wasting my time here."

Kerry sighed.  "Christie, don't..."

"You just stay here with your head in the sand like an ostrich, I'm gonna go
out and be with people who are honest about themselves."

"Christie, wait," Kerry said, sitting forward and catching her arm before
she could get up from the bed.  She wasn't angry with Christie anymore, but
she didn't like the thought of Christie leaving in a bitter funk.  There was
still an issue to be resolved here, she felt; more than that, she found she
still wanted the other woman present for more...physical reasons.  "Just
wait."

Christie settled in place with an air of impatience.  "What?" she snapped.

Kerry leaned forward and put her arms around Christie's shoulders from
behind, kissing the back of her neck just below the hairline.  Her breasts
melded warmly against Christie's back, and the other woman began to relax
just a little, responding almost imperceptibly.  "Why did you try to kill
yourself?" Kerry whispered.

Christie stiffened momentarily, and Kerry thought she would pull away.  But
she didn't.  "I felt like I was alone," she replied.

Like that girl Kim talked to... "Did you really want to die?"

"No, I...I wanted someone to come hold me and tell me it was all right to be
gay."  Christie might have added, 'like I came here to do for you, Kerry,'
but she didn't.  Kerry had to give her credit for a moment's tact.

She slid her hands over Christie's soft skin, one forearm covering her
breasts, the other her warm abdomen.  The musky taste of her skin tantalized
Kerry's lips.  "It's good to be alive, isn't it?"

"Yeah..."  Christie yielded to Kerry's touch, settling back and rolling over
to lie face down on the bed.

Kerry knelt beside her, smoothly stroking the soft, warm planes of her back,
the shapely fullness of her buttocks and thighs.  "You can feel it," she
said.  "The blood flowing freely through your veins.  The rich breath
filling your lungs.  The miracle of design that is your heart, beating
steadily."  Her palms tingled as they glided over Christie's body.

"Uh-huh..."

Kerry leaned over her, straddling her hips.  "Imagine you're strolling in
the sun on a warm spring day," she whispered.  "You've slept well in the
arms of the woman who loves you.  You'll meet her again for dinner and make
love all night."

"Mmmm..."  Christie sighed contentedly.

"But for now, the afternoon is yours.  You feel clean, refreshed, and happy.
Life is a good thing."

The other woman shifted languidly and began to roll over...

POW!!  Just as her eyes opened, Kerry suddenly leaned forward and slammed
her palms together bare millimeters in front of Christie's face.  As she
flinched from the unexpected sound and impact, Kerry fell upon her, pinning
her wrists down hard.  "Now imagine it's all suddenly gone away," she
snapped out, her words harsh and crisp.

"What the fuck are you--?!"

"Pay attention!" Kerry commanded.  "What's happened?  Was there an accident?
Were you caught in a drive-by shooting?  Are you having a heart attack?
Does it matter?"

Christie struggled to rise beneath her, but Kerry held her down with a
strength she seldom showed.  "Get off me!"

"Or what?  You can't do anything!  Your arms don't work.  You can't feel
your legs.  Someone's squeezing your heart, your ribs are grating together
like shards of broken glass, you can feel the sharp fractures running
through your skull, and every breath you try to take is like a red-hot knife
through your chest.  What are you going to do now?  Answer me!"

"Get...off...!" Christie almost managed to sit up before Kerry forced her
back down.

"What are you thinking now?" Kerry demanded, her face right up against
Christie's.  "How proud you are that you're 'out'?  Is that what's most
important while you can feel your blood oozing away through a tear in your
mangled flesh?  When the life you thought had years left is measured in
seconds now?"

Christie grunted, almost a sob, and turned her face away.  "I hate you..."
she snarled.

Kerry kept at her, giving her no time to answer the questions.  "Your
girlfriend can't help you now, or Kim, or the woman on that card.  Only the
people around you on the street.  Do you care if they're gay or straight?
Male or female?"  She let go of Christie's wrist and grabbed her jaw,
forcing her to look Kerry in the eye.  "What about the paramedics around you
now?  Does their sexuality matter to you?  If one of them is a homophobe,
will he do his job with less diligence now?"

"That's not fair...!"

Kerry slapped her.  Just hard enough to shock her.  "LIFE'S not fair, little
girl!" she yelled.  "Get used to it!"

The other woman's eyes were riveted on hers, and she was crying, still with
an edge of defiance.  She wasn't trying to get up anymore; Kerry had felt
her body surrender.  The Alpha Bitch strikes again.

She let go of Christie, still leaning over her on hands and knees.  "Now
imagine there are doctors and nurses around you, above you, working to keep
you alive," Kerry went on, her delivery slower and more stable.  "All the
King's horses and all the King's men are trying to put you together again.
Which of them is homosexual?  You tell me.  Will you refuse treatment if
there isn't a lesbian among them?  Is surgery still an option without an
openly gay anesthesiologist?  Does it matter to you now, Christie?"

There was no reply.

Kerry sat back, drawing her hands slowly down the front of Christie's body,
admiring her attractiveness even in the midst of her tirade.  "It doesn't
matter, where we work," she stated, "and it shouldn't matter, as long as we
can help our patients.  In our job, there's more important things than
gender politics.  Even more important things than pride."

Christie looked away, but didn't move where she lay, flushed and vulnerable.

"That's not just true of the trauma doctors and the surgeons.  The same
rationale applies to the psychologists and the radiology techs and the
people who clean up the goddamn cafeteria.  I forgot that during Romano's
witch-hunt, because I was afraid.  And the price of that fear was Kim's
love."

Christie looked up at her again.

"But I learn from my failures, Christie.  I won't tolerate discrimination in
my hospital, ever again.  It has nothing to do with me being a lesbian; I'll
do the same thing for any staff member who's treated unfairly.  Even Robert
Romano, if it comes to that."

She sat forward and gently caressed Christie's face where the slap had
landed.  "You're right to be proud of who you are, and to encourage that in
others," she assured the younger woman.  "But we're not lawyers or sales
executives or advertising consultants.  We're doctors.  When people are
dying, even the people who've resented me in the past don't hesitate to call
on my help, because the alternative is too tragic to accept.  They don't
like me, and some of them never will.  But they trust me in a crisis.  That
won't change because I'm a lesbian.  The stakes are too high."

There was a brief flash of something that might have been shame in
Christie's eye before she composed her face again.

"I'm sorry I hit you," Kerry told her.

"Didn't really hurt," Christie allowed.  "Just surprised me."

Kerry left her hand against Christie's cheek.  It had been a stage slap,
something she learned from a drama student and budding actor who once lived
in her basement; cup the palm as you swing, without really putting your arm
into it, and the result is more sound than real impact.  But she still felt
bad about it.  She didn't like raising a hand in anger, especially not while
feeling a strange empathy for Christie.  Though she'd never admit it, there
was something underneath that sharp, critical surface that reminded Kerry of
herself.  Younger, less weathered, perhaps, but just as afraid and just as
determined to hide it.  She could almost see Christie through Kim's eyes,
the same eyes that had seen Kerry in the same light.

Christie covered the hand on her cheek with her own hand, not to move it but
to feel its warmth.  There was a silent request in the gesture.  A plea that
would never be put in words.

Kerry let her the pad of her thumb brush over Christie's lips, as Christie's
hand slid up over her wrist, along her arm to her shoulder, drawing her
gently closer.  She settled her modest weight against Christie, soaking up
the body heat beneath her, and kissed her stomach, feeling the pulse jumping
beneath the skin.  Christie's hands flowed up over her head, fingers sliding
through her hair, and easing her downwards.

She felt the woman's thighs parting, rubbing against her own breasts and
ribs, and breathed in Christie's private scent.  Kim had been here, she
thought again, and this time it inspired a strange new dimension of
intimacy, rather than jealousy.  How odd that her perception of Christie
should be changed by seeing her as she truly was, and yet how natural.
Kerry had a brief moment of knowing what it was like to be Kim, not merely
as Christie's lover, but as a therapist, exploring the hidden depths of her
patients' hearts and minds as expertly as Kerry reviewed their bodies.

Her lips brushed against Christie's labia without conscious thought, nipping
lightly at the delicate, sensitive skin and eliciting deep, sighing moans of
approval in the process.  This was not at all how Kerry would have predicted
her evening might go, but she found she no longer cared.

The soft, swollen lips parted under her fingers as she ran her tongue up
along and between them, bottom to top, then down again, then up once more,
prompting Christie's hips to rise and fall in reaction, like an ocean tide.
She slid her fingers in deeper, finding the spots she knew Kim loved
touched, the same ones that Kim had found within her.  Christie's reaction
was no different, tensing and relaxing involuntarily, drawing in ragged,
trembling breaths and letting them out with beautific exclamations.

Kerry moved her lips to the clitoris, rising up from its hood, and wrapped
them around it, sucking gently at first, then harder.  She flicked her
tongue across its tip, setting off detonations of pleasure in the other
woman.  Smooth legs clutched her body between themselves, bare feet stroking
her back and hips, heels digging into her buttocks.  Christie clutched at
her hair, urgently pulling her closer, demanding more.  Kerry gave it to her
without hesitation.

I am making love to a woman, she thought with sudden clarity.  She'd never
had such a thought with Kim.  Sex with Kim wasn't about woman-on-woman to
Kerry, it was something that transcended sexual orientation, it was
just...Kim.  As simple and as beautiful as she could imagine, the name said
it all.  Kim.

With Christie, there was no ignoring it: I am a woman giving sexual pleasure
to another woman.  There was no pretending that Kim was a fluke, or the
exception that proves the rule.  Kerry was performing oral sex on a woman
and enjoying it completely.  The capacity to love women seemed to open like
a new dimension within her.  One that had always existed, but was only now
accessible.  One that was integrated into the whole of her self without
invalidating any other.  This is part of me.

The concept reverberated wonderfully within her, bringing her to a state of
bliss that was echoed by Christie's wordless cries of rapture, and she
delved deeper within Christie's sex, seeking validation for them both in one
act of affirmation.

"Kerry..." Christie gasped, moments before she went rigid and cried out in
orgasm.  Kerry felt the climax burst through her like a bolt of lightning,
and she came as well, in sympathy.  That had never happened before...

"Ohhh, god..."  She wasn't sure which of them whispered it.  Possibly both.

The exotic taste of Christie's sex lingered on her lips as she drew in
fresh, clear breaths, and she felt the woman's perspiration against her
cheek as she rested her head on her abdomen.  Gentle fingers smoothed her
hair.  Had she felt anything like this in her relationships with men?
Maybe.  She couldn't be certain.  She didn't regret any of them...except
possibly one.  But this was different.  Not better-or-worse different, maybe
not even exactly apples-and-oranges different.  Just...different.  Vive le
difference, she thought.  I love this.

Gathering strength, she crawled slowly up Christie's body, kissing a trail
of acceptance as she rose.  Pausing to kiss one breast, tongue flicking
against the swollen nipple, suckling at it for a moment, then detouring to
place a deliberate kiss directly over the beating heart.  Continuing on up
the tender throat, paying homage with her lips to the pulsing arteries,
moving up over her chin.

Their eyes met at the same moment as their lips, and Kerry allowed herself
to see exactly what she'd been looking at the whole time.  This woman was a
reflection of herself, a divergent-path incarnation of her own life.  The
Ghost of What Might Have Been.  Frankly, Kerry thought she'd gotten the
better of the deal.

They both knew, then, as their bodies melded together, eyes clear, that this
was it for them.  They weren't going to be lovers, and probably not even
friends.  There was an undeniable connection of the moment, but it was based
on an unpleasant recognition of similarities.  Each saw in the other what
she didn't want to see in herself.

Kerry rolled off of Christie and lay on her back.  They lay side by side,
not touching, looking away from each other.  There seemed to be nothing left
to say.

After a while, Christie sat up again, dressing quietly, and walked
downstairs.  Kerry heard her voice distantly, sounding like one half of a
phone conversation.

She lay alone on her bed, feeling herself coming back to herself, free of
fear or anxiety.  The existential crisis she'd suffered earlier was
vanquished, sent scuttling off to the far borders of her psychological realm
once more.  Kerry felt herself whole again, beneath the glow of recent
lovemaking, her leg's infirmity a sad reality, but no less valid than any
other aspect of herself.

Questions about herself had been answered today, she realized.  Answers that
she could not have found alone, nor could they have been provided by even
the closest friends.  Perhaps not even Kim could have done so.

But Christie, her nemesis...

Kerry reached for her robe and wrapped it around herself, then made her way
downstairs.

Christie was hovering in the kitchen doorway, looking oddly guilty.  "I
called a cab," she said by way of explanation.  "Should be here soon."

"Okay."

"I'll wait outside if you want."

"No, that's all right."

Christie crossed her arms, self-consciously.

"Not exactly how you thought this would go, is it?" Kerry asked her.

"Not even close."  She snickered.  "I don't know what I was thinking, coming
here, Kerry."

Kerry shrugged.  The whole evening had been unpredictable.

"But look..." Christie added, diffidently, "whatever you think of me, my
offer still stands.  I'll be happy to talk if you want, or introduce you
around to some of the girls."  She nodded to the refrigerator.  "I left my
number on your fridge."

Kerry nodded.  "I appreciate the offer."

"They're good people," Christie assured her, earnestly.  "The best.   You
couldn't ask for better family."

"Maybe," Kerry allowed.  I already have a family, she added to herself,
thinking of Mark and Elizabeth, Carter and Chen and Malucci, Lydia, Haleh,
Malik, Peter and Cleo, Abby and Luka, and many others.  Even Romano, in his
way.  My family.  Dysfunctional, perhaps, bitter and angry and unstable, but
they're my family.

"Believe it or not, Kerry, they're not all angry bitches with chips on their
shoulders.  Not like me."

Or me, Kerry thought.  Out loud, she said, "Well...nobody's perfect."   She
allowed the faintest hint of a smile as she said it.

"Yeah, nobody's perfect."  Christie had to smile in spite of herself.
"Except, maybe..."

"...Kim," they finished together, and burst involuntarily into laughter.   It
was the closest they'd come to being friendly.  Sex notwithstanding.

The moment faded along with their giggles, settling into sober reality.
Kerry needed a cup of coffee, but didn't want to move, for some reason.
They regarded each other silently, unsmiling.

I don't like you, Kerry thought.  Perhaps I never will.  But I'm so glad you
didn't kill yourself.  I'm glad that you are alive.  I hope you will find
someone who loves you and helps you to love yourself.

It was something she had often wished for her own behalf.

The honking of a car horn was heard outside.

"That's me," Christie said, pushing away from the doorjamb where she'd been
leaning.

"Mmm-hmm," Kerry said, walking her to the front door.  "Is this how
one-night stands usually feel?" she asked, suddenly.

"Dunno," Christie replied tersely.  "My first one."

Oh.  "Mine, too."

The horn honked again as they reached the door and opened it.  A wave of
night air washed in, feeling fresh and clean.  Christie waved
'just-a-second' to the taxi.

Kerry steadied herself against the doorjamb with her left hand and slipped
her right out of the crutch, leaning it against the nearby wall.
"Christie?"

"Hmmm?"  The other woman glanced at her.

She held the hand out formally.  "Thanks."

Christie looked at her in puzzlement, but took her hand.  "What for?"

"You've given me a lot to think about."

They held the look, and the handshake, for a long, meaningful moment.

"Same here," Christie said quietly.

HONK!

"Awright, keep your pantyhose on!" Christie yelled at the cab, then looked
at Kerry one more time.  "Bye, Kerry," she whispered.

"Bye."

Christie turned and trotted to the cab where a dreadlocked guy in his
fifties waited impatiently behind the wheel.  Kerry watched her go and then
closed the door, locking it.

Alone again, yet not quite lonely, she leaned her back against the wall by
the front door, feeling the solidity of her house and its physical
connection to the earth.  It was a monument to the life she'd built for
herself, a testament to what a self-defined individual could be.  Capable of
solitude, yet with room for company.  The mystery of her origins did nothing
to weaken its structure, and neither did the uncertain new road opening
ahead of her.

Yes, I am a lesbian, she thought, and the thought was a beautiful one.  But
more than that, and perhaps more beautiful, I am still the same person I was
before.  I am a doctor; warrior and healer, leader or lover, as need be.

I am still Kerry Weaver.  I am still Me.

It was a good thing to be.