Emergency Room
Part Nine
By Gary Schneeberger
TheSchnays@cs.com

"I know what you're thinking."

Mark peered wearily through the fingers of steam that curlicued from the two coffee cups on the table between him and Anthony Edwards and figured the actor was just blowing a more figurative type of smoke in his direction.

You know what I'm thinking, huh? You probably think I look like this because I just lost a patient in there, right? Because as a doctor, as someone who's dedicated his life to saving other people's lives, every one you lose tears you up inside. Hardly. The smell of death is something you learn to wear like Aqua Velva around here, buddy. The only thing tearing me up inside is that in a few months millions of people who've just finished watching "Friends" and "Frasier" are going to find themselves looking at a movie in which the guy pretending to be me is the guy they remember from-"

" 'Revenge of the Nerds', right?"

What, you think I don't care when one of my patients dies? What kind of callous jerk do you think I am?

"It's all right, really. I get that all the time. That movie has hounded me ever since I made it."

It's not the movie, you dweeb. It's the part you played in it. Do you think I'd have this look on my face if I was sharing a cup of coffee with Ted McGinley?

"It's kind of like what the kids from 'Diff'rent Strokes' went through - except that Wayne Newton never had to bail me out of jail for holding up a video store. It's impossible to find a really good role after they've typecast you."

Whatchyou talkin' 'bout, Anthony?

"Oh, sorry, I didn't mean it like that," Edwards added, moving quickly to erase the extra coating of pain his comment had sprayed across Mark's face. "I didn't mean that playing you isn't a good role. It's just ... uh ..."

I'm not just being played by a nerd, I've just been insulted by one. I hope Carter didn't shoot all the Fentanyl.

"Hey, you do know I was in 'Top Gun,' too, right?"

That's right, you were, Mark thought, his spirits lifting a little.

And you were pretty much a geek in that, too, Mark thought, his spirits falling more than a little.

"I was Tom Cruise's best friend ..."

Gee, wasn't Booger jealous?

"And I was married to Meg Ryan."

Who was still in her fat stage at the time.

"Is any of this making you feel any better?"

No.

"Sure."

"Then why do you still look so ... depressed."

"Oh, it's just ..." Mark motioned in the general direction of Trauma 1. "Losing a patient. Never gets any easier."

"I understand."

Mark wasn't sure how long it was before either of them spoke again, although he was pretty certain the length of the silence could have been measured with a sundial. He tried hard to avoid looking at Edwards, but every few moments their eyes would fleetingly touch, the curlicue fingers of the coffee's steam dissipating with each glance, bringing not only the actor's face -- but his own fears -- more sharply into focus.

He closed his eyes, hoping a short burst of intense internal concentration would send the awful epiphany scurrying back to that hidden place inside that had birthed it, but it wouldn't budge. The truth was staring him in the face, and it was as bald and nebbishy as his own reflection:

He wasn't upset because Anthony Edwards had played a nerd. He was upset because Mark Greene was one.

"So, can I ask you a couple of questions?"

Oh, sure, he'd done a good job since he'd gotten to County covering it up -- so good, in fact, that he'd even managed to fool himself somehow. But he remembered now. How could he have forgotten?  Forgotten all that torment? Forgotten all those taunts? Forgotten all that paste he'd been forced to eat? All the wedgies he'd endured? All the quiet shame he felt because he preferred Kate Jackson, the smart Angel, the one who actually wore a bra, over Jacyln Smith and Farrah Fawcett, the braless ones all the other kids lusted after?

How could he have forgotten he'd only befriended Doug -- who had to be the biggest, most reckless, preening jerk he'd ever met in his life, even before Carol got mixed up with him -- because he wanted to know, just once, how it felt to be in the company of the "in" crowd? Or forgotten how scared he was when he and Elizabeth were first starting out, knowing that she'd dated someone as cool as Peter, someone who had grown up idolizing someone as cool as Shaft?

"Dr. Greene?"

He'd grown up idolizing Carl Sagan. And that had given his dad billions and billions of reasons to erect a wall between them, which in turn had given his mom billions and billions of reasons to coddle him, which in turn had caused his nerdish predisposition to spread like a malignant tumor through his psyche.

He closed his eyes and remembered that time, a few years back, when one of the med students on a psych rotation began to suspect the truth, figuring all the baskets he shot out by the ambulance bay represented a classic case of overcompensation. God, that was scary. The feeling that, at any moment, the colleagues who had come to regard him as a thread of stability in the otherwise insane tapestry they shared would turn on him, chant at him, like those kids had done all through school.

"Marky Greene, Marky Green, such a wuss we've never seen!"

How many nights had he'd laid awake wondering how to keep them from finding out before the idea hit him?

"Are you OK?"

So he did it. He had no choice. It was the only way to keep his secret safe. He paid one of the gang-bangers he had patched up a few weeks before $500 to beat the snot out of him in the E.R. restroom. Not breaking under the strain of that, but bending just enough to appear conflicted and complex, showed them all how tough he was. And it gave him an excuse to start smoking, too. Nothing like a pack-a-day habit to keep you from looking like a doofus.

"Can I get you anything?"

He thought somebody was going to figure it all out in the last couple of months, too, ever since Lucy and Carter got stabbed. But he was lucky. Real lucky. Not one person in the hospital had questioned it. Not one doctor or one nurse, people who'd known him for more than six years, thought it was odd that he was absolutely no help to Carter during his recovery. It never dawned on any of them that it would be completely out of character for him, as someone who was supposed to have been traumatized by his own savage attack inside the hospital, to not be able to empathize with Carter any better than Romano was able to.

"Should I call someone?"

He still could hardly believe it. If John Wells had written a scenario that absurd for "Emergency Room," there'd probably be a cyberspace message board out there jammed with hundreds of threads about how unrealistic it was that Dr. Mike Black wouldn't even mention his own near-death experience once after one of his coworkers took a butcher knife in the back.

"Mahhk?"

The look on Elizabeth's face - she was staring at him like a doctor, not a girlfriend - dragged him, however unwillingly, back to reality.

"Are you all right? Mr. Edwards came running out into the hall, saying you had gone into some sort of trance in here."

He thought, just for a moment, of saying he was, indeed, fine. But then he figured it would be better to show her - and his TV alter ego, too - just in case either one of them had picked up the scent of his secret.

He swept Elizabeth up roughly in his arms, too quickly for her to put up much of an even instinctive fight, and kissed her. Hard. And deep. Harder than deeper than Doug had ever kissed Carol or any of those flight attendants who were always "laying over" at his apartment. Harder and deeper than John Shaft had ever kissed a dozen of his freaky ho's. Harder and deeper than Kerry had kissed Romano's ass when she screwed him out of the E.R. chief's job. Certainly harder and deeper than Carl Sagan had ever kissed anyone or anything, except maybe his telescope. And possibly even harder and deeper than Dana Plato had kissed Wayne Newton after he bailed her out of jail, although given some of the things he'd heard about her on the "E! True Hollywood Story," he wasn't too sure about that one.

"Well, I ... uh ... think I have all I need, Dr. Greene. Glad you're OK."

"Oh, I'm better than OK," he said, wringing whatever lasciviousness he could muster out of his voice to even more forcefully establish his masculinity.  He loosened his grip on Elizabeth just enough to reach his left hand down and goose her. "How could I not be better than OK when I get to nibble on this delectable little English dish every night?"

Stick that in your pocket protector and compute it, nerd, he thought, silently praying that Elizabeth was still too worried about his health to slap him right there and ruin the effect he was after. Thankfully, she was, although the tightness he felt around his ribs as she squeezed him back told him he was probably going to have to explain himself later.

"Right. Ah ... well, we're off to dinner now I guess, so ... uh .. thanks for your time."

"Don't mention it."

Especially not to Wells, Mark added in his mind as Edwards slinked out of the lounge.

He gets wind of just how non-nerdy I am, and you might find yourself replaced by Ted McGinley.



NEXT TIME ON "EMERGENCY ROOM": Michael Michele wakes up just in time to join her cast mates in discussing what they've learned from their day in the E.R.