Instant Attraction, Part 13
Bridges
By Miesque
miesque48@hotmail.com

SPOILERS: Well, it would be “Under Control”, but nothing happened in “Under Control”...
STORY SYNOPSIS: Luka and Kerry spend a day ‘on the town’, and he attends his first group therapy session.

DISCLAIMER: The characters of Luka Kovac and Kerry Weaver are the sole property of NBC, Warner Brothers, Amblin, and Constant C.  

SONG: ‘Ring of Fire’, written by June Carter-Cash.  I think Johnny did the best version of the song, anyway (that voice!).
Kerry just does the best she can...

SPECIAL THANKS: To Canada for editing and suggestions (I need to come up with a new expression here-this person makes each chapter work so much better!).



Luka woke up with a headache-a bad sign. He sat up in the pre-dawn darkness and turned on the light, which made his headache even worse, so he turned it off.

He wasn’t due at work until six o’clock that night, but the group session was at four. He wasn’t looking forward to that at all.  He had never told a total stranger about his problems, and he wasn’t sure he could do it. For the hundredth time, he thought about calling Dr. Reed and canceling. But the psychologist had told Luka that he had done far more difficult things in his life-he had to do it.

He shaved in the shower and dropped the razor and cut his toe. “That’ll be hard to explain,” he muttered to himself as he dressed. Padding barefoot upstairs, he wasn’t surprised to see Kerry in the kitchen, already making breakfast.

Pancakes. “Smells good,” he said.

She looked up at him. “I was going to add chocolate chips, but...”

“I’m extremely glad that you didn’t,” he said, smiling at her. “I don’t have a sweet tooth.”

She looked down at his cut toe. “What happened to you?” she asked.

He glanced at his watch. “Wow...that only took about thirty seconds,” he grumbled. “I cut my toe shaving.”

For a moment, she looked like she was going to inquire about that, but instead she stopped herself. “I’ll only get a ridiculous answer, won’t I?”

“Yep.”

She shrugged and went back to her cooking. Luka sat down at the table to read the newspaper. He had nothing to do until four in the afternoon. Which meant that he could either go out and find something to do, or he could stay at the house and be nervous and restless. He was about to ask Kerry what her plans were when she turned around and looked at him.

“I’m not due at work until six tonight. I was thinking of going grocery shopping. Is there anything you  need?”

Luka thought about it a minute. “Well, yes. I suppose. I need something to kill time.”

“You start at six, too, right?”

“Yeah, but I have an appointment at four...” He looked down for a moment. “I’ll go with you, I guess. There’s other errands I need to run.”

“Sure. We’ll eat breakfast, then I’ve got to call County for some follow-ups on patients, then we can go.”

He nodded, and instinctively pulled a chair out for her as she sat down. He took his plate of pancakes and sat opposite her. Kerry watched him eat, noting his excellent table manners yet again. He took small bites, never talked with his mouth full, kept his elbows off the table. He was a gentleman. And wasn’t a gentleman, by simple definition, a person who does everything he can to make the people around him as comfortable as possible? Well, that was Luka. She had never been uncomfortable around him. He seemed to genuinely care that she be at ease.

“Luka...” She cleared her throat before going ahead with her question. “What do you think of Dr. Reed?  Is he...uh...helping any?”

“Yes,” he nodded. He had finished his pancakes already and was relaxing a little, leaning back in his chair, looking at the headlines in the newspaper. “He seems to know what he’s doing.”

“Good.”

She watched him for a moment, and wondered what he was waiting for. “I...I have to confess, Kerry, that I was worried you had spoken with him about me. I know you said you didn’t, but...”

“I didn’t,” she said gently. “I would never do that...betray a confidence like that.”

He nodded. “I have an appointment with him this afternoon at four. That’s what I meant when I said I needed to kill time. It’s...it’s a group session. I’m not sure I can do it, actually. I don’t like speaking in public.”

“It’ll be all right,” Kerry said. “You’ll do fine. The others will be there looking for help, too.”

“Yeah. I’m just...nervous about it, I guess.”

Kerry watched Luka carefully, noting that he seemed restless. “Well, I’m finished,” she said, pushing her plate away. “If you don’t mind washing up, I’ll go change and we’ll go grocery shopping. That’ll get your mind off this afternoon.”

“I hope so,” Luka said tiredly.



Luka certainly didn’t have much of a sweet tooth. He picked out a case of beer, microwaveable popcorn, sliced roast beef, Provolone cheese, and TV dinners. That was it. Kerry looked into her own shopping cart and sighed-she had selected some sodas, cookies and other ‘goodies’ to munch on. The man wasn’t eating well, and no matter how hard she tried to get him to eat a full, healthy meal, he never seemed to gain weight. With anyone else, she would think them very lucky to have such high metabolism, but with Luka that wasn’t necessarily the reason. Finally, she demanded that he put the TV dinners back. He grouched about it-she heard him mumble something in Croatian-but finally gave in.

She went around and picked out two good-looking roasts, a ham and two big free-range chickens, found a bottle of decent red wine, then got more fruits and vegetables-potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, corn, strawberries, grapes and the like, and made her way back toward the front of the store. Luka was leaning against the magazine rack, reading ‘Star’ magazine. He glanced at her and smiled, shaking his head. “So I’m a heathen. Sue me.”

Kerry laughed and got the latest ‘People’ magazine. The check-out girl stared up at Luka in amazement, which only made Kerry roll her eyes. Luka hardly even noticed. He paid for his stuff and sat down on a bench behind the registers, stretching his legs like a big cat. Six feet four inches tall, two hundred pounds, lean and rangy...too lanky to be a leopard, but too large-framed to be a cheetah. Not a lion, like his brother. Too big to be a cerval. What else was there? Suddenly, she knew. A puma. She laughed to herself.   My God, she thought. He’s a human being, not a cat. But if I believed in reincarnation, I’d say he was a big cat of some kind in a previous life.

Luka insisted on loading all of her groceries into the trunk of her car, then put his own stuff in the back seat. She shook her head in amazement-his ‘galant’ manners and natural kindness came shining through all the time. Where did it come from? she wondered. Ah, she laughed to herself. He must have had wonderful parents.



She asked him if he had anything else he needed to do.

“I have some suits to pick up at the dry-cleaner’s. Beyond that, if you have any other errands... you know I need to kill time.”

She nodded. After he collected his dry-cleaning, Kerry decided to drive along the lake, to show Luka the huge mansions. “Beautiful, aren’t they? Have you ever wanted to live in a mansion?”

“Too much cleaning,” Luka shook his head. “Houses like that-my father called them ‘woman killers’. Too much work.”

“Well, if you can afford a house that big, you can probably afford some servants as well,” Kerry said.

He shrugged. “I grew up in a relatively large house,” he admitted. “It's...let me think...more than four hundred years
old.  My family owned it from the eighteenth century onward. Davor owns it now. But my father hated seeing my mother’s daily slog of keeping that place clean and running smoothly. He had his own work to do, and he did try to help, but usually...” Luka grinned. “He only seemed to make more of a mess.”

“Well, it sounds like she had a good husband anyway,” she said. “And that they were good parents.”

Luka nodded, looking away. He rarely felt really homesick, but he did now.

“Don’t you own any of the land back home?” she asked.

“No. Davor only keeps it because it’s family land. It’ll pass to his son, if he ever has one. What’s that called...primogeniture?”

“I think so. But what if he only has daughters?” she smiled.

Luka shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess it would go to the eldest girl...unless...”

“Unless you had another son,” Kerry said softly.

He looked at her for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah.  Doesn’t seem very likely at this point, though...”



She was driving, and despite the fact that she liked to speed a little, he seemed perfectly at ease. He said very little on the way home, but when she started flipping through radio stations, he did look a little alarmed when she stopped for a moment to listen to The Backstreet Boys. “Good God, Kerry, not that!”

She laughed. “I was only kidding. What do you listen to?”

“Rolling Stones, Queen, Robert Palmer, the Beatles, David Bowie...Vivaldi. Anything that doesn’t annoy me. And boy bands annoy me to no end.”

“Teenaged girls love them, though.”

“Well, that’s part of the reason not to like them. If Jasna were alive, she’d be thirteen now and I’m sure she’d be listening to that crap and I’d be yelling at her to turn it down.”

Spoken like a true, old-fashioned Daddy, Kerry thought. Her own father had yelled at her for listening to the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan.

“What’s your favorite song?” she asked.

“Favorite?” He thought of ‘Paint It Black’ for a moment, but decided that wasn’t exactly a favorite. “I don’t know. Hard to
say.”

“Well, I’d have to say my favorite song is ‘Ring of Fire’.”

“Really? I don’t know it. How does it go?”

Kerry stared at him for a moment, then cleared her throat and sang:


Love is a burnin’ thing,
And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by wild desire...
I fell into a ring of fire.

I fell into a burnin’ ring of fire...
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher,
And it burns, burns, burns,
The ring of fire, the ring of fire.

The taste of love is sweet
When hearts like ours meet.
I fell for you like a child...
Oh, but the fire ran wild.

I fell into a burnin’ ring of fire...
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher,
And it burns, burns, burns,
The ring of fire, the ring of fire.

I fell into a burnin’ ring of fire...
I went down, down, down,
And the flames went higher,
And it burns, burns, burns,
The ring of fire, the ring of fire...


He was biting his lip to keep from laughing. Kerry glared at him for a moment. “Well, you told me to sing it. I guess I shouldn’t quit my day job.”

“You have a fine voice,” he said sincerely, smiling. “That song just seems...I don’t know. I think it actually suits you.”

She found herself blushing a little, and the situation was made worse by the fact that they were at a red light. She looked down, trying to find something to look at besides Luka, but it was hopeless.

“I mean... that’s what love is, anyway. A ring of fire,” he said quietly.

Kerry glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and saw that he was looking down at his shoes again. He swallowed and continued. “I guess I should save that for the group session.”

“How did you meet your wife?” she asked him, suddenly curious for more information.

“At a birthday party. I was six, she was four.” He smiled. “She gave me her piece of cake.”

“And it was love at first sight?”

“No. We were friends for the next twelve years. She was always my best friend. Then she turned sixteen and...well, she changed. Went from a plump, shy girl into this... this... well, you know. The town beauty, I guess.” His voice shook a little as he tried to describe his wife.

Kerry could imagine that. Beauty attracts beauty.

“So what were you like then?  At sixteen?”

“Well, I was eighteen when I fell for Tatjana. I had finally finished growing-I was six-two at sixteen-and I was a lot more... what’s the word? Boisterous? I was so much different then. Sometimes, I wonder what happened to the Luka Kovac of twenty years ago.”

Kerry sighed sadly. She wondered the same thing about herself sometimes. Glancing at her watch, she saw it that it was almost two-thirty: time to go home. Luka dozed off, and awakened as she parked in front of the townhouse. “What were you like at eighteen?” he asked her as he grabbed several bags of groceries-handing her the very lightest bags.

“Younger,” she answered.

He laughed. “Come on, Kerry. Give and take here.”

“All right. I was short, I had red hair and a limp. Basically, I was the same person then as I am now.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

“That’s terrible,” Luka said. He took her keys and unlocked the front door. “I can’t imagine being the same person I was twenty years ago. I mean, I’d like to be...happier, but I wouldn’t want to stay the same all my life. I know I’ve changed a lot in twenty years. I mean, if only for the fact that I have an entirely new skin, you know?”

She sighed. “I wish I could say that I’m a lot different from Kerry Weaver of twenty years ago. But I’m not. I’m just the same. Ambitious, hard-driving, determined...”

“Lonely,” Luka said. They were in the house now, and he had to kick the door shut. She turned around and glared at him.

“Lonely? What makes you think I’m lonely?”

“You live alone, don’t you?”

“Well...no...you’re here.”

“But I don’t...I don’t live with you,” he said, backpedaling quickly, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Kerry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

She stared up at him as he stood there, loaded down with grocery bags. He was actually starting to wobble a little, and she grabbed one of the bags. “You know, you really do need to get your strength up. You don’t look healthy at all.” She didn’t mean to sound so harsh, though, and looked up at him, wordlessly apologizing to him.

“I don’t take care of myself, that’s true,” he admitted. “I guess I sort of stopped caring after a while...”

He carried the other bags into the kitchen and began stocking the cabinets and the refrigerator. In a matter of moments, everything was cleared away and Kerry sat down at her table, suddenly feeling so weary. Luka stood by the sink for a moment, not sure what to say. She caught his concerned gaze and tried to feign cheerfulness. “You’ve still got a bit of time before your appointment,” she said. “I’d suggest you take a nap or something.”

Luka only nodded briefly. “Yeah. That’s a good idea.”

He went back out to get his suits, then retreated quickly to the basement, and sat in his room for a long time, wishing he could sleep. But there was no chance of that happening. So he turned on the television. Yeah... “Gilligan’s Island”. That’ll work, he thought.



His head was really hurting now, and he prayed Dr. Reed wouldn’t ask him to say anything. He had sat there through the group session, listening to people talk about their own lives, and Luka felt like he was being pushed toward the edge with every word. All of these people had suffered tragedies of their own-deaths of children and loved ones in horrible, violent situations. A daughter murdered. A husband killed in a fire. One had seen a close friend killed in the Persian Gulf War.

Luka’s hopes were dashed when Dr. Reed looked at him. “Luka, do you have anything you’d like to say?”

He swallowed, licking his lips nervously, glancing at the six other people in the room. They were all watching him with interest. Just walking into a room full of people who had gone through the same sorts of things he’d endured had been bad enough. Trying to talk to them about his problems...

“I just...my wife and children...were killed in the war...in Croatia.” Silence. Six pairs of eyes were on him, and he couldn’t bear it. His voice shook as he tried to continue. “My apartment building was shelled.”

Dr. Reed watched Luka carefully, and finally spoke. “And then what happened, Luka?”

“I...I survived and they didn’t. They were injured and taken to the hospital and then...” He did his best to avoid looking at their faces, not wanting to see the sorrow and pity in their eyes. He didn’t want their sympathy. “Then the hospital was invaded by enemy soldiers and...they were taken...”

“And they were killed,” Dr. Reed said quietly. “What did you do after that?”

Luka almost wanted to lash out. His head was hurting even worse now. His stomach and his chest were hurting just from the agony of telling this story to people he didn’t know. He wondered if he could ever tell it to someone he did know. Only Kerry knew.

“I...I don’t know. I guess I went numb,” Luka said, pushing his anger away.

“That’s what happens,” Dr. Reed explained. “It’s the body and the mind’s way of protecting itself. Like going into shock when you’re in a serious accident. Like anesthesia. It protects you for a while.”

The other members of the group nodded in agreement. Luka glanced up at them, startled. Reed continued. “But then the anesthetic goes away and you start to feel again. Rebecca, you described it as the feeling of when your limbs go to sleep. Then they wake up and it hurts to move them around again. But you have to, right?”

Luka glanced at Rebecca, a fortyish widow whose husband had died in a fire. She looked at Luka, and he saw kindness and sympathy in her eyes. She nodded. “When my husband died, I didn’t think I’d ever feel again. But after the numbness wore off and I started feeling again...I hit a few bumps along the way, had some setbacks, but I’m better. I keep working, I try to keep moving...”

“How?” Luka asked, curious. Dr. Reed noted this immediately. He could see Luka’s nervousness and fear going away-obviously the young man hated speaking in public-and was relieved. He had been worried all day that Luka might cancel coming to this session.

“I don’t really know,” Rebecca said softly. “I live for my husband...for my kids. I look forward to seeing him again one day, but I know Jake wouldn’t want me to go through my life alone, weighed down in...in mourning. What good is that, anyway? I’m still alive. And every day it gets a little better. I find something to do with my time, and it does get easier.  It just takes some effort.”

“But a man shouldn’t outlive his own children,” Luka said.

“I did,” said Richard, another of the group members. “My daughter was murdered. And it’s not fair. It’s not fair at all... especially since the jackal that killed her is still walking the streets somewhere. But if you let yourself get bogged down in grieving, you only become old and bitter. It’s a vicious cycle. You have to forgive yourself or you’ll...you’ll die.”

Reed glanced at the clock. The session was almost over, but he wanted one final response from Luka. “Luka, do you blame yourself for what happened to your family?”

He sat there, not sure if he could answer the question. Of course he blamed himself. If he had not taken them to Vukovar. If he had let them come with him to the market. If he had smuggled them out when the siege began.  If.

“Yes. I do,” he said at last. “If it weren’t for me, they would be alive. I would have happily died in their place... if that had meant they would still be alive. I’d still have a son to carry on my name. I’d still have my daughter...”

“But you wouldn’t be around to see them grow up, Luka,” Dr. Reed reminded him gently.

“I’d prefer they be here,” Luka said emphatically.

“Even if it meant you weren’t with them? Even if it meant you were dead?” Rebecca asked.

Luka stared at her, then examined the faces of the other group members. He struggled to contain his anger, and to cover his tears. No way in hell was he going to let anyone see his tears.

“All of these people have suffered terrible, traumatic losses, Luka. All of them suffer from PTSD, and are at various stages of recovery. It’s a condition that has to be treated per symptom. No one has all the symptoms. Some suffer from the guilt complex. Others have phobias, tics, nightmares, sleeping problems, sexual dysfunction... sometimes all of the symptoms are exhibited in a patient...but each symptom has to be treated individually, and after each symptom is dealt with, the sufferer is basically cured. PTSD isn’t a condition that can be treated as just one condition. That’s what these sessions are about. Understanding what conditions we have and sharing ways to combat them.”

Luka swallowed. He had no idea how to combat whatever he had. All he knew was that he needed help dealing with his life.

“Since our time is nearly up,” Dr. Reed grinned at the group members, who rolled their eyes. They knew what was coming.  “I’m going to give the same little pep talk I always give. Take care of yourselves. Enjoy your families and your friends.”

Luka almost snorted derisively. What family? What friends?

“Treat yourselves to something nice. A porterhouse steak, an entire afternoon at the movies, a box of chocolates. Whatever makes you feel good about yourself. Write in your journals. If you’re so inclined, pray. I know that helps me.”

Reed nodded and everyone stood up, except Luka. He sat still for a moment, his mind carefully sifting through everything he’d heard. Reed watched him, easily recognizing a quick intelligence in the young man. Luka had listened attentively-albeit nervously-to every person as they talked, and Reed had also noticed that Luka was a natural empath. He understood pain and loss as well as any of them, and though he had said nothing to any of the other people until the very end, it was obvious that Luka empathized with them all.

“Luka, I meant that for you, too. Try to be good to yourself...it’s a kind of self-centered Golden Rule. ‘Do unto yourself as you would have done unto you’. I know... rotten English, but I think it gets the point across. You’re kind to everyone around you, but try being kind to yourself sometimes.”

Luka had to smile at that, and stood up slowly, suddenly feeling very old and very tired. His bones had settled and it took a moment of stretching to get everything moving correctly again. “I’m trying,” he said at last. Then he shook Reed’s hand and left.



Rounding the corner toward County, Luka saw Kerry standing with her hand on the building next door to the hospital. He remembered what Reed had said-to treat himself, and to enjoy his friends. He hadn’t thought about it before, but he realized that Kerry was his friend, and he valued that friendship immensely.

“Hey,” he said, nodding to her. “Do you need help holding it up?”

“Very funny,” she said. “This is a very old building. I like to put my hand on it, to feel it’s age seep into my body.”

“Why would you want to do that? I feel old enough just standing here.”

She glared at him, and he put his hand on the wall as well. He honestly couldn’t feel a thing, except hard brick. “How old is this building?”

“It was finished in 1869,” she replied.

“Oh, yeah, that’s old,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You know, there’s a village near my home town that has two bridges. One is called the New Bridge. The other is called the Old Bridge. The New Bridge is called that because it was built in 1479. The Old Bridge is called that because it was built in 1387. This building... it’s barely even a fetus.”

Kerry pretended to threaten to hit him with her cane, and he chuckled and walked past. A few minutes later, they were walking in to take over the shift at County General.



To be continued...