TITLE: Out of Control

AUTHOR: Ellen Hursh

RATING: PG-13

KEYWORDS: KW/LKo romance, angst

LAST EPISODE SEEN: "The Dance We Do"

TIMELINE: Around the time of "Under Control"

DISCLAIMER: "ER" and all of its characters belong to Warner Bros. No infringement of their copyright is intended. This story was written for the enjoyment of "ER" fans everywhere, and may be downloaded for your own pleasure.

CROATIAN: Lud = crazy; Odlazi! = Go away!

SUMMARY/SPOILERS: Carter returns to work, and looks into Chen's suggestion of sky-diving as a new hobby. Spoilers? Uh, no.

PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS: Relative Safety; Off to a Rocky Start; Troubled Water; Comin' Home; Something in the Way; Heart of the Family; The Croatian Patient; It's No Picnic, I Tell Ya

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is a revised version of the story "Up on the Rooftop" that originally appeared on a.t.e.c. waaaay back in March. Many thanks to the ERFFCC folks for input! (The new title was partially inspired by the acronym "ooc", short for "out of character".) The "videotape" to which Kerry refers is - of course - "Pulp Fiction"; the line in question is from Marcellus Wallace, played by none other than Ving "Jackie's Walt" Rhames.

PREVIOUSLY, ON MY ER: Carter was stabbed, and spent a painful month or so recuperating from his injuries; Kerry and Luka still a-gettin' higher, in Chicago you know where that's at; And no-one's gettin' fat 'cept Mama Cas-- oh. (The Author really must quit listening to '60s folk-pop music while writing....)

***The week before***

Luka was looking over the schedule for the week to come, and frowned at what he saw. "Hey, Mark, is this a mistake?" Mark glanced up from the charts he was reviewing, and automatically pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose before he answered.

"Is *what* a mistake?"

"The schedule. Carter's down to start back on Tuesday. That can't be right." Mark shrugged.

"I don't see why not - his doctor cleared him to return to work. Even Peter Benton thinks he's ready."

"Yeah, but physical is physical. He was nearly killed that night - I'm more concerned about his psychological state." Mark sighed. He didn't want to get into it with Kovac right now: the man sometimes tended to start gesturing and getting agitated when he talked, which was very unsettling to someone like Mark, who'd been raised in a sedately middle-class American military family.

"Look, you're also on Tuesday, right? If you're this worried about him, then keep an eye on him, okay?" Luka folded his hands, then nodded.

"That... sounds fair. I really hope I'm concerned for no reason."

"I'm sure you are."

* * *

***That night***

"Kerry, I just don't think it's a good idea." Tonight was her turn to cook, so Luka had been banned from the kitchen. (This had turned out to be the only way to maintain peace, with regard to the kitchen: both of them had such a tendency to micro-manage in the kitchen, that there'd been a few times that they'd nearly come to the point of a heated argument over the "correct" way to do little things like stir sauce or chop onions, so now only one of them was allowed to be in there when food preparation was underway.) He'd already set the table, and was at the desk tackling some paperwork he'd brought home.

"It's been over a month--" she called out. He could hear something being chopped up rather vigorously, and what sounded like the hiss of hot oil.

"It's only been five weeks. He's just recovered from a terrible trauma and two very serious surgeries. Do you know if he's spoken to anybody in the time since the attack?"

"I don't know. But he's physically able to work. Peter Benton and his own doctor, Dr Hansen, seem to agree on that, at least. Have you seen something that should be taken into account? Or could you just be projecting because you happen to be in therapy? You could just be seeing something that isn't there."

"I don't know. I could be. I've called his apartment several times, to see how he's doing, but his roommates said they haven't seen much of him lately. For all I know, he could be screening his calls - or he could really be out, and building his strength back up. What are you cooking? It smells good."

"Tofu Surprise."

"*What*?!?" He was instantly on his feet, and en route to the kitchen to protest, where he ran straight into Kerry. She'd positioned herself so that she'd be in his path, and snagged him by his tie.

"Just kidding. It's just chicken and some veggies, stir-fried." She put her arm around his waist, and kissed him... pretty much the way he would *like* her to kiss him in public. Wow... or maybe it was just as well she *did* reserve those kisses for when they were alone. His voice shook slightly when she ended the kiss, although he could see that she looked a little unsteady, herself.

"V-very funny. You know, you're going to strangle me, one of these days, pulling on my tie like that." She retrieved her arm from his waist and tapped the bridge of his nose playfully, and smiled at him.

"Consider it my way of reminding you to take that thing off when you get home." He eased the tie out of her grip, and loosened the knot enough to slip the tie over his head... then blindly flung the tie away from him as he reached for her.

"And such a *pleasant* reminder. Come here."

"Just let me turn off the stove first."

"Now," he insisted, and began nuzzling her neck.

"Oh. Dinner's going to burn, if I don't," she protested weakly.

"To hell with dinner. We can - mm - order in... later."

"You're incorrigible." He sighed and rolled his eyes, and released her with a tiny pat on the rear.

"True enough. Let's eat now, and build up our strength for later."

"Tease."

* * *

***Tuesday morning***

Luka noted the staff's sympathetic glances as John Carter came back for his first day of work since the stabbing, and watched Carter wobble in on the crutches... wondering, once again, *why* the hell had Benton approved Carter returning to full duty while he was still using *those*? Kerry had enough of a time with her one crutch, with the arm-cuff... and she'd been using it, getting used to it, for years. "You're sure you're all right to work? You wouldn't rather have a light day, just help out with chart review?" Luka tried to be gentle with his questioning, and present the easy load as an *option*, but saw the stubborn set of the other man's face. Oh, for....

"I'm *fine*, Dr Kovac. Really." Just as he had when Luka'd visited him in his hospital room, though, he was saying one thing... and his body was saying another. There wasn't really anything Luka *could* do - Carter'd been medically cleared to return to work, and professed a *desire* to work, and all *he* had was a vague feeling - he'd expressed his concerns to both Mark and Kerry, so there was little more he could do, except keep an eye on Carter and Carter's patients.

"All right. Since you feel-- since you *are* ready to come back, how about you take... Exam One?" He handed Carter the chart, for a man who'd been whacked in the temple with a heavy wrench, and was complaining of double vision and - surprise! - headaches, and got Lily's attention. "Try to keep an eye on him, okay?" She nodded.

"You bet." Lily followed Carter into the exam room. Luka felt a little bad about starting Carter right off on a head injury, but if he refused to take it easy, Luka wasn't going to *give* him easy. Okay, so he didn't intend to give Carter the next patient the paramedics scraped up off the El tracks, but he also wasn't going to force Carter to stick with sutures and chart review. Besides, being thrown in at the deep end *was* sometimes the best way to get back into the work routine.

It was a shame that Abby had moved on to her next rotation last week - Dave had neglected her instruction so much that she'd almost immediately latched onto Carter as a backup before the stabbing (though she'd been working with Jing-Mei a lot during Carter's recuperation), and she could have helped keep an eye on him. Luka thought he'd noticed an attraction between Abby and Carter, though both had denied it when he'd gently tried to feel them out on the subject. No surprise, he supposed, since Carter could get in a lot of trouble for dating a student, but he thought they would make a cute couple.

Throughout the day, he threw some pretty rough cases at Carter, who - according to the nurses, who had all decided to follow Lily's lead and watch Carter like a squadron of pink-clad hawks - kept handling them easily. Luka had almost decided that he might have been wrong about Carter not being ready to return, that he might have simply been projecting after all - Carter seemed to be doing well on his cases. He seemed to be having trouble going into - or even looking at - Curtain Area Three, but that was understandable: he'd been attacked and nearly killed there. Besides, everybody else who'd been on that night had had their own problems with that room... they'd just had to face it a lot sooner than Carter had.

* * *

***Tuesday Afternoon***

Luka sat at the admit desk, trying to catch up on paperwork after a fairly busy morning. There was just enough of a lull in the action that several people were taking advantage of it to take their breaks, so the ER was minimally staffed at the moment. The phone rang just often enough to distract him every few minutes - Andrew had disappeared again (probably back up in Radiology, Luka figured, entertaining the techs with his celebrity impressions, which usually consisted of Christopher Walken, Captain Kirk, or Keanu Reeves), and the ever-irritating Amira was nowhere to be found, as usual - today, unfortunately, was a day off for Randi, who usually ruled the desk with an iron (yet superbly manicured) hand; he really should, he thought, escape to the lounge... as soon as Kerry arrived for her own shift in about forty minutes, he could hand off the board to her and go get something to eat, to tide him over for the last few hours he was on.

Some coffee, too, perhaps - the watery stuff most Americans preferred was far too weak for his tastes, but espresso doppio - while still a little weak for his tastes - came pretty close. A shame the desk clerk Jerry had moved on to another job shortly after Luka's arrival at County - the man's coffee was, Luka had thought, excellent.

Just then, he heard Dave bitching about not being able to find Carter. Dave had been in a foul mood all day, due to Carter getting most of the "interesting" traumas, and seemed to be splitting his irritation between Luka (for giving him mostly minors) and Carter (for *getting* mostly majors). His ire, though, was serving only to convince Luka that the guy needed to learn a lot more patience with the "boring" aspects of emergency medicine. Luka tried to think of the last time he *had* seen Carter... ah. That would be the guy the paramedics had brought in, who'd appeared to be suffering from a simple Benadryl overdose, but had suddenly moved south and died as Carter was arguing with the renal consult about starting dialysis. Luka hadn't even known about the argument until Haleh came and got him to make the pronouncement, at which point he'd had to step in between Carter and Dr Krupp, and try to make peace. That was... hm... about thirty minutes ago.

Lydia swooped in. "You're looking for Carter? He's like a lot of people here, you know - sometimes he goes to the roof, when he wants to be alone." The words shot through him - that was precisely what Samantha Sobriki had said when the police had been looking for her husband - and he clutched at the edge of the desk for a moment, feeling a peculiar wave of vertigo.

* * *

The guilt was still there, his constant companion for the last eight years or so (oh, who was he trying to kid - he knew it down to the year, the month, the day... possibly even the hour and minute), and only grew with every patient he lost. And yet, saving a patient so rarely made the guilt easier to bear - there was always something, some little addition to the load.

Sometimes he felt as though he must go mad... "lose it", as Americans put it, despite his ongoing therapy with Kim. "So he's a little depressed -- it doesn't make him crazy," Mrs. Sobriki's words came to him again - he'd held back a nod then, and not just because those police officers had been in the room. Acknowledging the truth of her words would have been a grim reminder to himself, and seeing Carter wake up on the table like that - jerking and disoriented - had been enough of a reminder, thank you very much. He quietly stood up and headed for the elevator - he really should let somebody know he was leaving, but he feared there might not be time for that.

Sure enough, when he reached the roof he saw Carter, standing on the wrong side of the railing. The man's crutches and labcoat lay abandoned behind him on the tarmac. Luka had learned - pretty much the hard way - about moving silently; now he crept up behind Carter, thankful that the sun was not at his back. It was just what he needed, for his shadow to warn Carter of his approach. He sprang at the last moment, as he saw Carter start to push off.

"You son of a bitch! You are *not* gonna do this to me!" He wasn't aware of yelling as he grabbed the back of Carter's shirt with his left hand, to pull him back, then wrapped his other arm under Carter's arm and around the man's chest, finally grabbing a handful of Carter's shirt. Then he moved his left hand to grab Carter's hair when Carter started to struggle, and gave it a good yank, until Carter cried out and quit squirming. A good thing, too, because Carter's feet had slipped off the ledge in the process of Luka grabbing and securing him. Terrific.

"Just do everybody a favor, Dr Kovac, and let go. I do nothing but cause trouble for everyone I encounter, anyway," Carter moaned. "My first year here, as a third-year student, I drove a man to jump off this roof. Henry - Henrietta - Carleton. I had to be judgmental of how he lived, as a woman, even though my family was doing exactly the same thing to me about being a doctor!"

"You brought him up here, and personally shoved him off?" Despite his natural empathy, or maybe *because* of it, nobody was really sure, Luka had done the worst on his psych rotation. He'd had too much of a tendency to argue with lunatics, perhaps out of some misguided notion that he could *reason* them into being sane. Psych had thrown a party on the last day of his rotation, especially since he'd faced down a coked-up psychotic without waiting for backup - his resident's private opinion of him had been that he was a little "lud" himself.

"I might as well have... just as I might as well have taken that knife and stabbed Lucy myself. I do nothing but cause problems for everyo--"

"Shut up," Luka interrupted coldly. "You think you're the only one who blames himself for deaths? You aren't."

"It was the Ativan," Carter explained sadly, ignoring Luka's words. "I should have known to have Sobriki put in restraints the moment Lucy said she thought he might be schizophrenic! But I had to be the great doctor that day, and pump him full of Ativan. Or if I'd followed Lucy's instincts, and let her back off from the lumbar puncture when he woke up like that, and waited until Sobriki could be sedated *properly*, and the right precautions taken, she might still be alive. And now *I* have to live with hating myself... with everybody's contempt - especially yours - hanging on me. I just can't take the pretending anymore." Luka wondered why Carter thought that *he*, of all people, was in a position to be feeling contempt for anyone.

But he said nothing, merely stood there with his arms occupied with holding Carter back from a very long drop, his leg anchoring him against the railing, gradually realizing that he was tiring... and he didn't have the strength or the leverage to pull Carter back, even to shift his position: Carter was heavier than he looked, especially as dead-weight! How long had they been up here? It felt like hours, but the sun hadn't moved.

He heard the door to the rooftop clank open, heard a startled shout. "Hey!" he yelled, without turning his head. "Get a gurney. Get help. HURRY," he gasped. The door slammed shut again, and it seemed like a few more hours that he stood there - he had closed his eyes, trying to preserve his strength and fearing that his body would give out before help came, afraid that he might, in fact, be forced to let go. His leg burned - it had already been hurting this morning, and he had stressed it badly today, in the course of treating patients, even before coming up here. At least, he thought with dark humor, he hadn't been shot in the *arm* - Carter would really have been fucked then.

At last, he heard the sound of people approaching - felt strong arms wrestling him backwards. He opened his eyes and saw Carter being lifted back over the railing with him, then pried out of his grasp, strapped onto a gurney, then into the elevator. When he was pulled back from the edge, he'd let himself lean against the small wall next to the railing, in an apparently casual pose, and - now that the crowd had vacated the roof - he took a step towards the door. Whoops... big mistake. The pain was unbearable, and knocked him right off his feet. Oh, hell. He tried to concentrate on his breathing, to make himself relax, but the muscles were all spasming.

The pain scared him - reminded him of days when he'd had drastically reduced mobility... when he'd still had enough everyday pain for the hospital to keep him shot up with painkillers. It had felt so *good* then to be so numb, not to be able to hold a thought for more than a few minutes: *all* of his thoughts then had been guilty ones. Gradually, though, his numbness had become something that was part of him, rather than brought on by injections or pills, and it was only very recently that he'd felt ready to begin to let himself feel anything... and in November, of all months.

He slowly became aware that somebody was prodding his shoulder. "Odlazi!" he murmured wearily, unaware and uncaring that he wasn't speaking English.

"Luka!" Who? Oh, Kerry. She must have arrived after Carter had been taken away: he could believe that he hadn't noticed her arrival, as much as his leg hurt - now he would be in trouble for leaving the ER unattended. The English pun prompted a ragged cough of a chuckle from him. "Luka, get up. You're too heavy to lift, and it's supposed to rain soon." Oh, let it rain, he thought momentarily, then looked up at Kerry from his untidy half-sprawl and realized that her leg was giving her problems today, too. He tried to rise, but his leg failed to cooperate, and he went back down.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "I just need to sit here a little while. I'll be all right. Nobody was killed while I was up here?" She pretended to scowl at him, but relented.

"No, lucky for you." But he still felt the need to explain himself.

"I heard Lydia mention the roof," he told Kerry, leaving out his gut reaction to Lydia's words, "and I thought I might not have time to get somebody to cover. I was barely able to catch him, as it was."

"The important thing is that you caught him," Kerry told Luka, stroking his dark hair affectionately and leaning against his back; he reached behind him and wound his arm around her leg, lazily stroking her thigh. His leg hurt far too much for him to even *think* about following up on that, but she did have beautiful legs. "And... you were right. He wasn't ready to return."

"I didn't want to be right, you know. I wanted Carter to be perfectly fine to be back at work, with no problems."

"I know."

"So, what now?"

"A psych hold for 72 hours, looks like. I'm going to call his grandmother, and see what she wants to do after that. Psych'll probably recommend that he start on an anti-depressant, and begin some kind of therapy to deal with the after-effects of the stabbing. With any luck, she'll be able to convince him to move back in, where he can get better supervision than two roommates who are in and out at odd times of the day."

"Good. That's good." He craned his neck to look at her, and smiled. "You know, if I didn't know better, I might start to wonder about you and Carter." She laughed, and patted his head.

"Yeah? Well, you know, the gossips don't know whether to pair you off with Carol, or with Abby." He ignored the gibe about Abby; they both knew he had more sense than to screw around with a student. And even so, neither woman was his type. Not anymore... while Daniela would always have some part of his heart, these days his type ran more towards short, slightly skinny redheads with a comfortable bosom and an attitude the size of Texas.

"I guess we should go back downstairs, before somebody starts to think I'm holding *you* over the railing now." He sighed - he would definitely have enjoyed their time together up here *much* more if his leg didn't feel like something was chewing on it... with big, sharp, *rubber* teeth... ow.

"If they thought *that*, they'd be a lot slower about coming than they were for Carter," Kerry retorted. "You're okay now?"

"No. I am pretty fucking far from 'okay'," he murmured, at which point Kerry wanted to murder Dave - as slowly and painfully as possible - for having given Luka that videotape, back in December. "But I'm a little rested and relaxed, I think I can make it downstairs now, although I *don't* think I'll be able to do anything much more strenuous than sutures and chart review." He felt a little bemused that he was restricting himself to the same light option he'd offered Carter earlier. "Pass me one of Carter's crutches, please?" She crutched over to them, and kicked one to him; he levered himself to his feet carefully as Kerry picked up the other crutch and Carter's labcoat, and noticed with some concern that he was pale, and leaning heavily on the crutch.

"Do you want something for the pain? Some Demerol?"

"No!" Then he realized how that might sound. "No. Thank you." He looked at her, and smiled tensely. "And aren't you the one who believes in 'sucking up' the pain?"

"I guess I'm a hypocrite - I can't stand to see you hurting so much." He touched her cheek reassuringly.

"I'll be... well, *not* fine. But I'll need a clear head to make it through the rest of the day, and as bad as the pain is, I'm completely lucid. I hate the way most of the painkillers make me feel, like my head is full of cotton." Well... he hated it *now*, anyway. He suddenly leaned over, and gave her a hard kiss on the mouth. "To last me until tonight when you get home," he explained. "Now please let me know how much 'trouble' I'm to be in when we get downstairs."

"Hm... well, I was *very* upset with you for leaving the ER, of course. But since you did it to keep a colleague from killing himself, I won't write you up *this* time. At least, not here at County."

"Oh," he chuckled, playing along. "So I'm to be your 'naughty intern' when we get home?" Kerry gasped at his audacity. "I love making you blush, Kerry."

"How about I let you think about what *your* 'punishment' should be?" she retorted, enjoying in turn the color that rose in his cheeks. He pretended to be so outrageous, but she could shock him *so* easily... and he was all hers, to shock as she pleased.

* * *

***Tuesday Evening***

He lay on the couch, with an ice-pack on his left leg and a CD of relaxing music playing on the stereo, and had propped his leg up on a couple of pillows. Kerry had finally "sentenced" him to do some technical reading tonight, so he had a stack of medical journals to go through. It was interesting reading, even the article on the formation of liver tumors in mice, but he wound up falling asleep while reading about the newest studies of the use of DHEA in the treatment of auto-immune patients, and didn't even stir when Kerry got home.

She watched him sleep... as usual, he looked so much younger and more relaxed than he did when he was awake, and she wondered - not for the first time - what he'd been like, years before, back before war had stolen everything from him. Sometimes she thought she could see glimpses of the man he'd once been, when she watched him treating a very young patient, gently teasing the child into not being afraid of the big, bad doctor. She'd also seen him try to hide his hurt when he got the occasional patient who demanded "an *American* doctor, dammit, a *real* doctor!", which seemed to be patient-speak for "a white, American, *male* doctor", since Kerry never seemed to be quite satisfactory for those types of people, either. She'd finally learned to start sending Malucci in to deal with them.