First Steps
Part One
By Gary Schneeberger
TheSchnays@cs.com

Hi, all. This is my first stab - pun mildly intended - at a fan fiction. It's a Carter story - and does contain spoilers for "May Day," which is the last episode I've seen. I'm not delusional enough to think I own the John Carter character or any other from "E.R." I'm just a fan and would really appreciate it if the Warners Brothers folks who do own the characters won't sue me for this.

Legal stuff: I don't own John Carter or any other "E.R." characters. I couldn't afford to buy them even if I wanted to, which I don't. I'm just a fan who wants to play with them for awhile. Warner Bros., NBC, Noah Wyle - please don't sue me.

It's called "First Steps."

John Carter wasn’t laughing.

And it felt like everyone in the room noticed it.

He knew, in his head, that wasn’t true, of course. It wasn’t like he was the only person in the room who didn’t seem to think the story the big guy in the blue suit was telling from the podium was funny. And none of those who obviously did think it was funny, most of whom he’d never even seen before, were glaring at him or whispering to each other with their eyes darting disapprovingly in his direction. In fact, from where he was sitting in the last row, the only person who could have seen him without turning around for the specific purpose of doing so was the 50-something guy sitting two chairs away, and he was too busy watching the podium and chuckling at what the guy who had introduced himself as Rick was saying.

“So my wife says, ‘I am not going to celebrate my 25th wedding anniversary having to worry all night that the buttons are going to pop off your shirt during dessert and take the waiter’s eye out,” Rick continued, eliciting more laughter. “So if that answers everybody’s questions about the new suit,” he added through his own grin, “can we get started?”

Yeah, Carter thought, get started. Get done. Get the hell out of here. Get away from these people. Get away from this feeling that they’re looking at me. Sizing me up. What the hell kind of people are they, anyway? Sitting around and laughing it up at a -

“Who wants to read ‘How it works’?”

It was Rick, getting started as promised, waving a sheet of paper from the podium. A petite blonde in the front row stood up and took it out of his hand. Rick gave her the kind of full-bodied hug only a guy his size could give a woman her size before lowering the microphone so she could reach it and letting her take his place.

“I’m Nancy,” she began, a wide grin on her pretty face, “and I’m an addict.”

“Hi, Nancy,” the room offered back in sing-songy unison. Or at least sing-songy almost-unison. Carter, and a few of the other patients from the rehab center sprinkled throughout the room, said nothing.

His silence made him feel self-conscious, too. Hell, that’s how he’d felt the moment he walked in the door, even before Rick regaled everyone with his story about how he’d gained 40 pounds since he stopped using two years ago, about how ironic it was that he only picked up a beer belly after he gave up the booze and the coke and the pills.

What am I doing here?, Carter wondered, repeating the question he’d asked himself 20, 30, 40, 100 times in the past 4 ½ days. One day, I’m just sailing along, living my life, doing what I love, actually looking forward to the future for the first time in forever. And the next day some nut buries a butcher knife in my back a couple of times and -- bang! -- three months later I’m on a plane with Benton headed to a rehab center. In Atlanta.

He pulled another cigarette from the pack on the table in front of him, lighting it with the cherry end of the one he was still smoking. At least he could smoke here, one after the other for the entire hour if he wanted. And considering what he’d had to endure since he checked into the center, only getting a pair of 10-minute breaks barely long enough to burn through one or two, that’s exactly what he wanted.

The chance to get out of that place was the only reason he even decided to come to this stupid NA meeting. He’d been too sick, in too much pain, to even think about it Friday and Saturday; and yesterday the counselors said they didn’t think he was ready to leave the center just yet. But when Dr. Grant told him this morning he could go with the rest of the group to this New Life Narcotics Anonymous meeting, he couldn’t say “yes” fast enough. It wasn’t exactly freedom, not by a long shot; everybody piled into the bus at the center, was driven over by a counselor who was sitting by the door to make sure no one made a run for it, and would pile back on when the meeting was over to go straight back to the center. But just getting outside those doors, and away from that regimen, was something. Something different. Someplace where people might stop asking him questions, stop trying to get inside his head. Someplace to relax.

And smoke. Can't forget that. He drew a deep drag, closing his eyes as the smoke filled his lungs. It felt like a balm - an airy, hazy balm blanketing his insides. Like light, little fingers. He let it settle, soothing, numbing those places inside that hurt, those places where the things he didn’t want to talk about, those things they’d been trying to get him to talk about, rested. Sure, he talked about them a little with Benton, but Benton was a friend. Those people were strangers. And you don’t show any weakness to strangers, right? At least that’s what Dad always said.

“ … to turn our will and our lives over to God as we understood him.”

Nancy was still reading, and the way she emphasized that line caught Carter’s attention. He knew a little about programs like AA and NA - you can’t be a doctor, let alone one with an addict for a cousin, and not know. He knew it was a “God” deal, some sort of metaphysical thing where you were supposed to let God take care of all your problems and just live your life the best way you could one day at a time.

But Carter had never thought much about God himself, at least not in a long time. None of the people he worked with went to church, or at least they didn’t talk about it if they did. Hell, they were all too busy playing God to talk about him. That’s what E.R. doctors do. Play God. People live or die based on how you perform. You save one, and you take credit for it. You lose one, and you blame yourself for it. Not a lot of room to fit God into the equation.

"Turned our will and our lives over to God *as we understood him.*" That's the part Nancy had emphasized. What the hell did that mean? What if you didn't, don't understand him at all? Then what do you do? All the pithy little sayings in the NA handbook they'd given him at the rehab center, and all the pithy little signs hung on the wall of this room -- all they do is tell you to trust God. But how do you trust someone or something if you don't know him or it or whatever? God's as much a stranger to me, Carter thought, as all those people at the center, all these people in this room. How can I turn anything over to a stranger?

No one he knew growing up seemed to go to church, either. There was that kid he met at summer camp that one year - when was that, 20 years ago? A poor kid. He prayed every night before he went to bed. He said he did it because if he died in his sleep, then he’d be sure to go to heaven. Carter remembered asking his dad, after he got home, why they didn’t go to church. “It’s not God who goes to work every day to support this family, Johnny,” his dad had said. “It’s me." He remembered wanting to see the kid again at camp the next year, so he could ask him why God let him be poor. But he never went back to camp.

Johnny. Carter had forgotten how much he liked it when his father called him that. Just like he'd tried to forget why he stopped calling him that.

"... so when I come around just take a card and we'll get going."

"Emotions Monday," the 50-something guy sitting two chairs away said.

"Excuse me?"

"Emotions Monday. That's what we're doing today."

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

"You looked confused, when Rick said he was going to walk around and hand out cards. It's for Emotions Monday. We do it every week."

"Emotions Monday?"

"Each card has an emotion written on it -- joy, anger, love, lust -- whatever. Everybody gets one, then shares with the group about their experiences with that emotion -- their struggles with it."

"Oh, great," Carter said, managing a weak smile, but he was thinking anything but. If they think I'm going to go up there, they're out of their minds. He glanced at his watch. 8:15. 45 more minutes to go. He looked around the room -- at least 35 people. If everyone talked for even a minute and a half, there was a chance he wouldn't even be called on. And if he was called on, he'd just say no -- it'd been working OK so far at the center during the group therapy sessions.

Rick was only a row away, slipping past the people Carter knew only by the backs of their heads, smiling and chatting as he offered them the deck of 3 by 5 cards. Emotions Monday. That was the stupidest thing Carter had heard since he'd gotten to Atlanta. Why the hell did he even let Benton convince him to come here?

"OK, your turn," Rick said, fanning the cards in front of him like he was doing one of those "pick a card, any card" magic tricks.

Carter concentrated hard, but not on the cards. He was staring at Rick's beefy fingers, especially the one with the big gold ring emblazoned with the NA logo. "Let go, let God," was etched in its surface.

OK, I'll play along, Carter thought, crushing his cigarette out in the ashtray before reaching into the deck without raising his eyes. He slipped out a card and rested it face down on the table as Rick moved on to the 50-something guy sitting two chairs away.

"Alright," Rick said as he headed back to the podium. "Who wants to get us started?"

Carter lit another cigarette, vaguely sensing that someone on the other side of the room had already gotten up to speak. He laid his free hand on the card in front of him, flipped it over in mid-drag and stared at the word printed in big red Magic- Marker letters:

Guilt.

To be continued....