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

NOTE: I don't own John Carter or any of the other "E.R>" characters herein referenced. I'm just playing with 'em - and having a grand time doing it - so I'd be eternally grateful if their rightful owners took pity on me in consulting with their lawyers. Many thanks.

“Would you . . . ”

Lucy. She looked so pale.

“. . . like some . . . ”

So scared.

“. . . coffee?”

Gone. Her face was gone. Just like that. Just like before. Would I like some --

“What?” Carter asked, his annoyance obvious not just in his tone, but in the sarcastic smile, the cinched cheeks and squint, that accompanied it.

“Coffee,” the 50-something guy sitting two chairs away repeated. “It’s not very good, but it’s free.”

“No ... No ... Really ... That’s OK.”

He focused hard on relaxing his face. Reining in the smile. The aggression in it was obvious -- it’s what gave him away Thursday. Back at the hospital.

“Sure?”

“Yeah ... Yeah ... I’m fine.”

“No you’re not, Johnny.”

The rage started in his stomach, and it raced through his head and out his mouth before he could even think about stifling it.

“What the hell did you say to me?”

The 50-something guy sitting two chairs away, standing now, pointed at the empty Styrofoam cup in his hand and grinned.

“Coffee?”

“No. After that.” Damnit! That came out louder than he wanted. He glanced away quickly to see if anyone but the 50-something guy sitting two chairs away heard him, but whoever wasn’t up at the podium hugging Donna was watching those who were.

“Nothing. Just . . . coffee.”

There was something about his smile, as he passed behind him and patted him on the shoulder, that softened Carter’s rage. He felt it recede back inside him as quickly, as involuntarily, as it had risen and flared.

“OK. Yeah, I’m ... uh ... sorry,” he mumbled, even though he was the only one who could hear it.

Perfect, Carter thought. Now I’m hearing things. Little voices. As if almost losing my life, almost losing my job, wasn’t bad enough -- now I get to worry about losing my mind.

He looked at his watch, just to look at something that wouldn’t look back. 8:30. Emotions Monday was half over. He slipped a finger under the watchband, finding the vein instantly, like he was trained to do. He pressed it hard, until he felt the bruise. If only I could just get a little --

“Hi, I’m Bill, and I’m an addict.”

“Hi, Bill.”

“I picked jealousy,” Bill said from the podium. “Well, I didn’t pick it, exactly. I picked the card that had ‘jealousy’ written on it tonight, but jealousy just sort of picked me my whole life, I think.”

They were laughing again. Carter wasn’t again. But he was suddenly too tired to worry about being noticed for it.

“Miss anything good?”

The 50-something guy sitting two chairs away was back Except he wasn’t the 50-something guy sitting two chairs away anymore. Now he was the 50-something guy sitting one chair away.

“Bill’s talking about jealousy.” Carter hoped the nonchalance of his answer would make the few inches he had slid his chair closer to the wall less conspicuous. That it would take the edge off their earlier exchange.

“Oh, jealousy ... That’s a good one.”

Yeah, Carter thought, closing his eyes and resting his head against the wall, it is.

People had always been jealous of him. Or at least of his money. Even by rich people’s standards, the Carters were rich -- and growing up with money meant growing up with envy. And he liked it, too -- at least for a long time. The way the other kids looked at him when the limo dropped him off at grade school. The way the girls looked at him in high school when he drove up in his Beamer. Their jealousy spent just like his money. What he couldn’t actually buy, they gave him because they just wanted to be close to him, to the life he lived and the things he had.

When did it all change? When did it stop being cool? When was it that he started being the jealous one? Was it after Chase, after Gamma took away the trust fund? When he had to learn how to be *normal*?

He lit his second-to-last cigarette, rationing be damned, hoping it would jumpstart his thoughts. The smoke swirled around his head, like the memories inside it. Hazy. Ethereal. Reach for them too fast, and they slip through your fingers.

The first one to settle was the day he got to County. He remembered being scared, feeling like he was in over his head, but he didn’t let it show. No weakness in front of strangers, right?

But Dad’s money wouldn’t do him any good here. Not with Benton. God, how did Benton get so confident, so controlled? He didn’t grow up with money, yet he was so sure of himself, so in charge. Yeah, a lot of people at County thought Benton was arrogant, a know-it-all, condescending. But he always just seemed so ... together. So what I wasn’t. And I was jealous of that - still am jealous of that.

And not just Benton, either. The way Dr. Ross could always make a kid feel at ease, even through the most painful procedures. Romano. Yeah, he was a prick -- but he was a damn good surgeon, too. And Dr. Weaver -- so focused. How was she able to be such a nag about procedures and policies and still be so good with the patients, so concerned about them? Greene -- everything about him was average, but he was such an above-average doctor.

And then there’s me, Carter thought. Grew up so above-average, and wound up being such an average doctor.

He would have traded places with any of them. Even before the attack, before the pain. Before Atlanta. Just to know what it felt like, for just one day, to be better than you thought you could be, better than what everybody thought you should be.

Better than you were.

He laid his head on the table, mustering just enough strength to snuff out his cigarette on the way down. How much longer before he could just go to bed?

He concentrated on the voice coming from the podium. It was different, a woman’s, so he knew it couldn’t be long now, even if he was too exhausted to look at his watch.

“I guess I have a lot of regrets,” the woman said. “Not just what I did when I was using, but the choices I made, the way I treated people, before I started using. Those were the things, I’ve learned through the program, that got me to start using, that made it so hard for me to stop.”

The scene was as clear in Carter’s head as it was the day it happened. He hadn’t willed his mind to go there -- but it was there just the same. The way it had gone there so many times over the last 10 years, Not now, he thought. Anytime but now.

But the “play” button in his head already had been pushed.

There he was. 17. Trying to explain to his dad why he wanted to be a doctor. To help people. To make a difference. Listening to his dad’s argument: You could make a difference with a business degree, too. Who do you think paid for all the research that led to all those medical breakthroughs doctors used to make their difference, anyway? Family was important. The family business was tradition. And you don’t just turn your back on tradition. You don’t just decide on a whim to abandon your destiny, your family’s legacy.

Carter winced into the table. He knew how the memory ended.

First, Dad’s question: “Why do you think I’ve worked so hard all these years, Johnny?”

Then, his response: “To give yourself an excuse to ignore your family?”

The anger was so intense, so 17 years old. The hurt on his father’s face was intense, too. So obvious, even to a 17-year- old.

God, Carter thought, how many times have I wanted to take that back? How many times have I felt those nine words hang between us? Even when his parents came to visit him in the hospital, after Sobricki, there was that unspoken awkwardness. Something in the voice that said “Take care, John” that was so much less comforting than the one that used to say, “I love you, Johnny.”

His eyes were watering again, the tears running silently onto the 3-by-5 card his cheek rested against.

And this time, Carter knew it wasn’t the smoke in the room that was causing them.

To be continued....