Reception
By Scott J. Welles
scottjwelles@yahoo.com

DISCLAIMER: All "ER" characters and institutions are the property of Warner Bros., ConstantC Productions and Amblin Television, and nobody is making a profit on this piece. This story contains references to some of my earlier fics, but it should still work if you haven't read them.

Last episode seen was "All in the Family" - contains SPOILERS for that episode.



I know this place.

I have been here before.

Why have I returned?

The snow falls consistently around the front of the emergency room, but it is of no concern to me. I passed beyond physical considerations such as temperature some time ago. Since then, I have traveled far and wide, and seen things beyond the description of mortal words. And yet, to my own surprise, the steps which carry me with the speed of thought and the ease of an afternoon stroll have borne me on many occasions to the mundane, living world. And now they have returned me to the hospital where I died, perhaps a year ago.

Why?

As if in answer to my question, the door open, and a woman emerges. I know her, too. Dr. Kerry Weaver, who made valiant, if misguided, efforts to prevent my passing. Although I knew her only briefly, my heart is warmed at the sight of a familiar face. Of course, this warming of the heart is a merely a manner of speaking.

I am momentarily concerned. She is not dressed for this temperature, and there is a disconnected quality about her expression. She appears to be lost inside.

Then, turning to a garbage bin near the doors, she is physically ill. Her stomach voids its contents into the refuse against her volition. She collects herself, attempting to spit the vile taste from her mouth, then returns, resolute, to the shelter of the hospital's interior.

I have seen reactions like hers before. It is not a sign of a medical ailment. Something has shaken her deeply, beyond her ability to cope. Yet she has surely seen human bodies mangled beyond repair or recognition many times. What could breach her defenses and assail her inner fortitude?

Once, immediately following my passing, I felt a strange connection with Dr. Weaver. Is it for her sake that I have returned? Perhaps she is in further need of my unseen support.

Very well.

I walk inside. Doors and walls have no meaning to those in my state of being.

I see Dr. Weaver, and a tall, balding man with spectacles - his name is Mark, I recall - and many others whose names and faces are unknown to me. Something terrible has happened, even by the standards of this place.

When I was last within these walls, I could hear the words of those around me. Now, while I can distinguish individual voices, their words are meaningless sounds to me. Even Dr. Weaver's voice has no more coherence than the mewling of an infant. It seems that either I have grown apart from the need for mortal speech, or I have no need to hear their words on this occasion.

Dr. Weaver appears to carry a huge, unseen burden on her shoulders, yet she will not let it show. Not in front of her colleagues. She forges on, struggling to bring order to chaos. I follow her, assuming it is she who needs my aid.

But my footsteps do not follow hers. She walks in one direction, and I in another. It seems I am needed elsewhere.

I have learned to trust my steps, even when their destination and their determination are unknown to me.

I am elsewhere now, still within the hospital. I do not recognize this room, but it is similar to the one in which I last drew breath. It is inhabited by men and women clad in blue, their faces masked like highwaymen. They fight to revive a young woman on a table. Her torso has been opened, as though for evisceration. Chemicals, electricity, and human hands vie for the privilege of restoring life.

The young blonde woman stands before me, newly separated from flesh. She does not see me, having eyes only for the people who seek vainly to reverse her fate. She watches them with the same mix of detached curiosity and bewildered awe that I recall experiencing in her place.

"Let me go," I hear her whisper. "Please..."

I touch her shoulder. The sensation is a memory of skin on skin, rather than the reality of it, but illusory or not, she feels my touch. She turns to me, seeing me for the first time, and there is such sadness in her eyes that I cannot speak.

She accepts my embrace, and we hold each other like family members in mutual pain.

One of the women, tall with a soft English voice, speaks to the man. She calls him Robert, and her tone calms his exertions. The man, shorter, with the coiled energy of a bulldog, removes his hands from the young woman's body and his presence deflates. They have accepted the inevitable. He snaps instructions, his brusque manner masking his grief.

The young woman eases out of my arms and faces her physical self. Even to the crude eyes of the living, her form is vacant. The soul has departed, leaving only a cold emptiness.

"Well, that's just great," she says, surprising me with her ironic tone. "I feel like my car just broke down. And I don't even have a car!"

"I am sorry," I reply.

"Hey, don't feel sorry for me. My troubles are over, right?" She shakes her head, gazing now at the people who have labored over her. "It's them I feel bad for. They tried so hard."

"They cared about you. I can see it in them."

"Most people think Romano doesn't care about anyone," she says, motioning to the compact man. "He comes off as such a butthead all the time, but I'd begun to think maybe he's okay. Like it's not all his fault that he doesn't know how to act around people. Maybe nobody ever taught him when he was young."

Indeed, I can see his spirit has a stunted quality about it. I am learning to see such things.

"Dr. Corday..." The young woman looks now at the taller woman. "I think she was nicer to me than anyone here. I always liked working with her."

"And she, you."

"Yeah." My new companion looks away, uncomfortable. "Look, can we get out of here? I don't... I don't want to hang around here any longer than I have to."

"All right." Ah, the impatience of youth.

As if noticing me for the first time, she suddenly resorts to the social reflexes of the living. "I'm Lucy, by the way." She offers her hand awkwardly for the shaking.

I take it gently. I have had no use for a name for some time, but I reply, "A pleasure, dear. My name is Frances."

"Hi."

We turn and walk out of the room. Her steps are uncertain, like a newborn foal's.

"So what's the deal?" she asks.

"I'm sorry, I don't follow."

"What happens after you die? I mean, isn't that what you're here to tell me?"

I smile. "I don't know why I am here, Lucy. When my time came, I had no one to greet me."

"Really?" Lucy appears confused. "So how come I get special treatment?"

I do not know the answer, and I begin to say as much. "Because my passing was a part of the natural order of things, unlike yours," I hear myself say instead. I realize the truth of these words even as they come to me. "I was ready, you were not."

"That's for damn sure." She looks abashed. "Can I say... 'damn' ...here?"

"Apparently so." I pat her hand. "It seems I am here to help you. Your passing was very abrupt, was it not?"

"Yeah. It was because of...him." It is clear to whom she is referring. Our steps have carried us, unbidden, into another room. The doctor named Mark, and a few other people, are gathered around a confused, unshaven man in bed. "Paul Sobricki."

"Your killer?"

Lucy gives no reply, and none is needed. Her attention is focused upon the man who took her life.

His face holds no guilt, or even awareness of his crime. He shows only torment and fear.

"I don't feel anything about him," Lucy says, more to herself than me. "He's like a neighbor who I only know by sight. I thought I would hate him or something."

"You're past that now," I tell her.

She nods, and we walk away.

"Why were you ready?" Lucy asks me, abruptly. "Were you suicidal? Or sick?"

"I was old."

She stops and faces me. "Frances, you look younger than I do."

"Don't confuse the age of the body with the age of the spirit, Lucy. When my time came, I was three times your age."

"Huh."

We have left the hospital now, and stand within a small nearby diner. Two men and a handful of women sit together, a table and chairs moved to join a booth. Nervous laughter fills the air.

"Wow," Lucy says, "I don't know if things have really, really changed in the last year, or stayed exactly the same."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, the nurses are the same, but these guys in the booth are all new," she says, gesturing. "Malucchi and Kovac and Chen and...hell, I forget Abby's last name. If this had happened a year ago, they'd be gone, and it'd maybe be Jerry and Jeannie and Doug sitting there, but they'd be doing the exact same thing. Laughing and trading stories..."

"Can you hear their words?" I still cannot.

"Yeah." She smiles, her cheeks coloring. "Lydia and Haleh are telling them all these stories about how dumb I was, all the times I screwed up."

Indeed? "A strange way to show sympathy. Did they dislike you, Lucy?"

"Nah, it's okay. We do this sort of thing whenever someone we work with dies."

I find it a peculiar custom. "Have you attended many such...gatherings?"

"Well, not really. Just one, for Dr. Weaver, one time when we thought she was dead. I'm not sure if that counts, since this guy from LA found her, and...never mind, it's a long story."

And a confusing one, I gather. "I am sure they mean no disrespect..."

"No, really, Frances, it's okay," Lucy assures me. "Truth is, I'd rather see them like this. I mean, this group is the future of County's ER. It's good to see them bonding...oh, no."

"What's wrong?"

Lucy's face has fallen at the sight of a newcomer. The Latino woman's face is grave as she enters the diner and receives everyone's attention.

"Don't," Lucy commands, her voice falling on deaf ears.

The new arrival speaks only a few words, Lucy's name among them. Everyone knows now what has happened. Their eyes, and spirits, fall.

"DON'T!!" Lucy shouts at them, leaning over their table. Again, there is no effect.

I reach for her. "Lucy..."

She repels me. "Dammit, I told you, I don't want to see anyone cry for me!" That is not precisely what she told me, but I understood her nonetheless.

"Lucy, we are not here of my choosing," I explain patiently. "If anyone brought us here, it is you."

"Why would I want to see this?" Her anger is collapsing into misery.

"Perhaps to know that you mattered to them."

Her tears begin, and this time she lets me hold her. "I barely knew most of them..." she whispers.

When next we look, our surroundings have changed, and we are once again in the hospital's entry area. People move about, going on with their business. The only one who remains still is Dr. Weaver, wearing green, pajama-like garments and sitting in a chair by the main desk. Her face is...

"Oh my God, I've never seen her look like that," Lucy says.

Nor have I. Kerry Weaver cried for me, once, but this hurt is deeper by far. A failure and a loss for which there are no words.

"I didn't think anything could penetrate her armor."

I stroke Lucy's hair and say nothing. Kerry's wounds are beyond my ability to heal, this time. Just as mine were beyond hers.

Kerry forces herself into movement, moving away. Such a noble one, I find myself reflecting. I pray she will find someone with whom she can share the burden of her pain. No one should be forced to shoulder it alone forever.

Lucy looks at the hospital around her. "I'm going to miss this place," she says.

I nod. "Are you ready?"

"Where are we going?"

"I am going where I will," I reply. "You are going where you will."

"Uh, okay." She squares her shoulders. "Can I go see my mother?"

"You may go wherever you wish, Lucy. Personally, I would recommend everywhere. It makes for an interesting journey."

Lucy nods. "Okay."

"Here. I shall start you off on the right foot." I take her hand, and we begin walking. We have not gone far before I realize she seems to be holding back. "Don't be afraid, Lucy."

"It's not that," she tells me. "I think...there's someone else here I have to see first."

Ah, good. She begins to accept the guidance of her steps. "Very well. Lead on."

Like a child on her first bicycle, she hesitates, then chooses her direction. Or, more accurately, her direction chooses her.

I follow, and we are soon in a new room. There are two men, the standing one of African descent, the one in bed of European.

"Dr. Benton," I say aloud.

"You know him?"

"Briefly." I see Dr. Benton speaking quietly with the younger, injured man. I once thought him cold and unfeeling, but now he seems to regard his patient as a fallen brother. "Have you come to see him?"

"No, the other one. John Carter." Lucy's voice softens at his name. "He was my teacher, and Benton used to be his. I always suspected they had a real Love/Hate thing going on. Kinda like Carter and me. I guess it's the nature of the beast."

Dr. Benton departs, leaving John Carter alone with the rhythmic peep of his machines.

Lucy stands at the head of the bed, regarding her teacher. "I think I know what it must have been like for them back then. I mean, they work well together now, but... God, Carter used to piss me off. It's like I couldn't do anything right around him. Like we brought out the worst in each other. I could never understand that."

She is not speaking to me.

"I wanted so bad for us to get along, and it just couldn't seem to happen. Then, sometimes, we'd suddenly click, and feel so close...and then the next day, we're back at each other's throats."

She sniffles. It is a reflex, a holdover from the memory of the body.

"I sometimes used to think he really hated me, and wonder what I'd done, but now I guess it's just...we just didn't...hell, I don't know.

"I mean, today, he was such an ass to me again, but then...when I heard him coming into the room, I tried to warn him, and I...my voice was gone. Sobricki took it away.

"And then he was down on the floor, and I saw him...and he saw me...and it was like the first time we ever really saw each other, you know? That's when I really knew he didn't hate me at all..."

I look closely at John Carter's handsome face. There is such pain and grief, it is almost a mirror of Kerry Weaver's. I wonder if they could help each other.

"He must have known he could be dying," Lucy says, "but he wasn't thinking about himself. He was thinking about me."

He is thinking of her now. We can both see it.

Leaning close to him, Lucy whispers, "Please don't blame yourself, John. I didn't let you break me, so don't let me break you."

He stirs, ever so faintly. Perhaps, deep down, he hears her.

She kisses his brow, like a mother's love. "Goodbye, Carter."

His eyes close and he sleeps.

Lucy turns to me. "I'm ready now."

I take her hand again. We walk.

She looks uncertain. "Where did you go at first, Frances?"

"Ever outward, like ripples on a pond."

Her brow wrinkles. "Then how did you end up back here?"

"Ripples are also circles, Lucy."

She smiles. "That so?"

The hospital and its surroundings are behind us now. Lucy releases my hand, ready to walk alone. "Will I see you again, Frances?"

"I do not know," I tell her, truthfully.

"Okay then." Her steps are confident now. "Second star to the right, I guess, and straight on 'til morning."

"As good a course as any."



"I don't know how to thank you guys!"
--- Fozzie Bear, 'The Muppet Movie'
"I don't know WHY to thank you guys..."
--- Kermit the Frog, Ibid