Consequences
Part Three
By Céindreadh
ceindreadh@eircom.net

Kerry followed Dave across the threshold. 

“Make yourself comfortable,” he said as he headed for the kitchen. “I’ll just get the coffee ready.”

She made her way to the large couch that dominated the room and took in her surroundings. The furnishings were solid, if a little shabby, which didn’t surprise her. (Residents dwellings were rarely the most luxurious of accommodations.) What did surprise her was how well kept the place was. That, and the amount of books on the shelves that lined the wall. She left her seat to look at Dave’s reading material. It was a varied selection, ranging from medical textbooks to thrillers to science fiction.   Some were even in Spanish.

Her eye was caught by a selection of framed photos on one of the shelves. There was one of Dave presumably at his high school graduation looking impossibly young in his cap and gown. She picked up a photo of a middle-aged couple. “Are these your parents?” she asked. Dave looked up and said “Yeah that’s Mum and Dad. How do you take your coffee chief?”

The sudden change in subject was not lost on Kerry. She replaced the photo and joined Dave in the kitchen area. “I think I’d better carry the cups,” she joked. “I’ve had more experience of this than you.”

They sat on the couch in companionable silence drinking their coffee. Finally Kerry decided to be blunt.

“Dave, why were you so eager to leave the hospital?” she said.

Dave sighed and looked away for a moment. Finally he said “It wasn’t that I wanted to leave, it was just..,” he hesitated.   “I didn’t want to be left alone, so I said I wanted to go, just so he’d stay and talk me out of it.”

Kerry looked at him in surprise.

He continued, “Iit’s just that people were coming and going, but I was still on my own for most of the time. And every time I tried to close my eyes and rest, all I could see was the way my arm looked while Haleh was picking gravel out of it. Pretty dumb huh? Here’s me the hot shot ER resident, looking for all the goriest traumas and I can’t look at a skinned arm.” 

“At your skinned arm,” said Kerry. “Injuries always seem worse when they’re your own, or one of your own..” her voice trailed off.

“That’s what I mean,” said Dave. “Carter was in asking how I was. How could I tell him I was upset over something like that, when he had a butcher knife stuck in his back.”

They both fell silent at the recollection. 

“Anyway,” continued Dave. “I was just about to let him persuade me to stay longer, when you walked in.”

“Haleh should have obscured it from you.”

Dave looked guilty. “She tried to, but I insisted on seeing what it looked like.”

“Tell me about it,” said Kerry. Dave looked at her uncertainly. “Tell me exactly what happened and how it looked,” she continued.

“I can show it to you,”

“No, I’ll look at it later and help you change the dressings. But now I want you to describe it to me. From before the accident to when the wound was covered.” Dave looked at Kerry. “Trust me,” she said.

Hesitantly he started to recount the events of the day. Beginning with his encounter with Mark and Elizabeth.

“..I heard Dr Greene yell something after me. I was going round the corner. Guess I took it too fast, and I hit a patch of gravel…”

Dave’s voice faltered several times as he described the various procedures he had undergone, but he kept going. 

Kerry observed him throughout his narration.

He came to the end of his narration and leaned back on the couch.

“Close your eyes,” ordered Kerry. Dave obeyed. 

“How does it make you feel now?”

Dave shuddered and opened his eyes. “Its still there.”

 “What you need to do is tell someone else about it.”

“You mean like a psych guy?” Dave looked as her doubtfully.

“Not necessarily, I mean anyone who’ll listen. The more you talk about this, the more you describe it, the less effect it will have on you. I guarantee you, once you’ve described this a dozen times it won’t bother you half as much.”

“Is this something I should have picked up during my Psych rotation?”

“I think it would have been under the heading ‘a trouble shared’.” They both smiled at that.

Kerry knew that she should go. She had found out what was bothering Dave and put him on the road to healing. But she was enjoying the feeling of camaraderie that Dave was bringing out in her. 

“I just realised,” said Dave. “My bikes still in the lounge. I hope the chief doesn’t find out.”

“Oh I’m sure she’s already made plans for its disposal,” laughed Kerry. “No seriously, I asked Dr. Kovac to get it put away safely. It’ll be waiting for you when you need it.”

“That’s good, I’d hate to have to replace it.”

The exchange between them, though hesitant at first, gradually grew stronger. Their coffee grew cold as the topics ranged from mountain-bikes to Mozart.  

Kerry couldn’t remember the last time she had been able to talk to someone so easily.

Eventually, however the topic came round to Lucy.

“Poor kid,” said Dave. “All I could think while she was in trauma, was that with any other patient I would have been excited to get the case, but when you started with the sternal saw, I couldn’t even look at it.”

“You did fine. It’s just its harder having to work on someone you know, than a complete stranger.”

For some reason this seemed to make Dave more troubled.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” asked Kerry.

“My Mom died a couple of years ago,” he began slowly. “She’d had heart trouble for a while, and one holiday we’d just finished dinner, when she had a heart attack. I had just started med-school, knew CPR and all that. I worked on her until the paramedics got there, but she was DOA.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Kerry. Instinctively she reached for his hand and squeezed it gently.

“That’s partly why I went into Emergency medicine. I felt that if I’d known more, maybe I could have done something differently and she would have survived.”

“You’ve no way of knowing that. I’m sure you did all you could.”

“Yeah. I know that now. I can remember everything I did, and nothing would have made any difference, but still.”

They sat in silence together for a while before Kerry made a move.

“I really should be going,” she said. “But I’ll take a look at your arm before I leave.”

Kerry deftly reapplied the antibiotic ointment and redressed the wound. Although she was as gentle as possible, she could see that the procedure was causing Dave some pain.

“There,” she said as she replaced the bandages. “That’ll keep it for a while.”

“Thanks chief,” said Dave. “I should be able to manage it myself tomorrow.

Kerry hesitated before saying offhandedly “I could always come by after work and do it for you. I mean it is a bit awkward for you to do yourself.”

A part of her hoped he would decline her offer.  Another part of her was hoping to spend another evening with him.

“I’d like that chief,”

“You can call me Kerry when we’re not working.”

“I’d like that Kerry.”

Kerry and Dave had spent a lot of time together since that first evening at Dave’s flat. Some nights they cooked dinner together and listened to music, other nights they sent out for pizza and vegetated in front of the TV. For the first time in a long while Kerry had a regular companion for non-working hours. Dave for his part had always had friends (both male and female) to share a pizza and a video with, but he had lost contact with many of them over the years, and the ones that he kept in contact, well their lives had taken different paths. Most of them were married with kids and whenever Dave spoke to them he was conscious of their different priorities in life.

Their working relationship had not changed dramatically. If anyone noticed that Dr. Weaver’s and Dr. Malucci’s shifts seemed to coincide more often than not, no one said anything to them. Dave continued to flirt with almost every woman in sight, and Kerry continued to run the E.R. in her own inimitable fashion. If he screwed up she reprimanded him as she would any other resident, although most other residents didn't get to eat pizza with her afterwards.

Time passed pleasantly. Kerry broadened Dave’s horizons in terms of music and culture, and Dave helped Kerry to become more light-hearted. One evening soon after he got off his crutch, he turned up at her house on a tandem.

“Want to come for a ride?  The weathers beautiful,” he asked.

“I can’t ride that,” she replied.

“Sure you can, you just use your good leg to peddle and I’ll do the rest of the work.”

“No, I mean I can’t. I never learnt how to ride. I couldn’t, not with this,” she indicated her crutch.

“Hey it's no biggie. All you have to do is steer us in the right direction, and I’ll keep us moving.”

How he talked her into it she never knew, but half-an-hour later they set off. 

Sometimes Kerry wondered what their colleagues would make of their friendship. If they would accuse her of an undue bias towards Dave. She broached the subject with him one evening.

“It’s not as if I’m a candidate for chief resident or anything,” he said to her. “Anyway as long as you keep giving out to me like you did today, nobody’s going to accuse you of favouritism.”

“You had it coming. If you have to be rude about senior staff members, don’t do it while there within earshot. No matter how tempting it may be.”

Dave smiled in that special way he had. “Come on, admit it. You agreed with me. The guy shouldn’t have been interfering in ER business.”

“Maybe, but if I hadn’t chewed you out, he would have. And you couldn’t have got round him with a pizza and a six-pack.”

“You’re more fun anyway.”

And there the issue ended.

Kerry was at work and Dave was away visiting his family, when she got the word that Dr. Gabe Lawrence had died. She finished her shift and went home to a house that seemed emptier than when she had left it that morning. She rang Gabe’s son to find out funeral arrangements, then rescheduled the rosters to allow herself time off to attend it.

All this was done without shedding a tear. She told herself that it was a blessed relief, that he hadn’t wanted to linger with no knowledge of who or what he was.

As she was convincing herself of this she heard the doorbell ring. To her surprise Dave was standing outside.

“Aren’t you in New York?”

“I heard about Dr. Lawrence, so I came to see how you were coping,” he said simply.

Kerry started to reply but to her surprise she burst into floods of tears.

Dave stepped into the house, closed the door behind him and took her in his arms. Kerry made no move to stop him as he gently carried her to the couch and sat down with her.

“Shh, it’s all right,” he said. “I’m here, and I’m going to stay as long as you need me.”

He gently stroked her hair and rubbed her back as the sobs convulsed her body.

“I’m sorry,” sobbed Kerry through her tears. “I shouldn’t be like this.”

“It’s ok,” reassured Dave. “You just let it all out. Take as much time as you need.”

He continued to hold her close to him as she poured out all her grief. As her tears slowed to a trickle, he relaxed his hold on her.

“Don’t let go,” begged Kerry. “I need to feel you close to me.”

“You know I’ll always be here for you,” said Dave. But he continued to hold her close.

For several minutes there was silence, broken only by an occasional sob from Kerry. Eventually she pulled herself together, pulled away from Dave and blew her nose.

“Feeling better?” he asked. 

“I’m sorry Dave. I don’t know what came over me. I thought I was doing fine, organising everything and then I just came apart.”

“Don’t apologize. You needed a shoulder to cry on even if you didn’t realise it until I showed up.”

“How did you know?”

“I phoned the ER to check when I was on again, and to say hi. Carter mentioned it in passing. I knew you’d be upset so I got the first flight back.”

Kerry leaned back against him. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said simply.

They stayed like that for a while, comfortable in the knowledge that they weren’t alone.

Finally Kerry broke the silence. “I don’t know what came over me when I saw you,” she said.

“Well it’s not the usual reaction I get from women,”

Kerry smiled. “I mean even when my parents, my adoptive parents died, I was upset, and I grieved for them, but this was totally unexpected. I suppose it could be that Gabe's last months were such a waste. At the end he didn’t know who he was, or where he was. At least my parents were rational and free of pain up to the end.”

Dave stroked her hair as he replied gently “Maybe it’s because you’ve lost your last safety net.”

Kerry looked at him in surprise.

“I mean,” he continued. “Up till now there’s been someone older than you for you to rely on if you needed to. Now they’re all gone and you have to be in charge.” He paused, “I’m not really explaining this properly.”

“No I understand what you’re saying, and you could be right.”

“It doesn’t really matter why you’re upset, what matters is you’re not alone.” He paused for a moment, “And if you want you don’t have to be at the funeral alone.”

Kerry huddled further into Dave’s arms. “All I want now if for you to hold me for a little while and tell me everything’s going to be all right.”

Kerry woke with a start. Her head ached and her throat felt sore, but she was still feeling better than she had earlier. It was now twilight outside, but she wasn't able to make out the time. With a shock she realised that she had been asleep for almost two hours. She carefully disentangled herself from Dave’s sleeping form.

“Poor guy,” she thought. “He flies all the way here, and then I barely let him in the door before soaking him with tears.”

She gently placed a cushion under his head, and covered him with a blanket. In spite of  her efforts he woke as she was making him comfortable.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“It’s ok.”

“I’m just going to make some tea. Do you want some?”

“Sure, but why are we whispering?”

Kerry smiled in spite of herself. Dave always could be relied upon to cheer her up. She was suddenly relieved that he had offered to come with her to Gabe’s funeral. Knowing he was going to be with her made it seem less of an ordeal than it had been a couple of hours earlier.

A few days later Kerry and Dave were driving back from Gabe’s funeral. Kerry and Dave had been the only representatives from the hospital (at her insistence), but Mark had organised a wreath from the E.R. staff without her knowledge. Seeing it there alongside a picture of Gabe in the whole of his health was the only point she came close to breaking down. But Dave's comforting grip on her hand helped her remain in control. 

Kerry was about to say something to Dave when an impatient driver ran a red light in front of them. There was a screech of brakes, the sound of breaking glass and then silence.