Cowboys and Angels
John Carter - Love Can't Lie
By Triggersaurus
triggersaurus@hotmail.com

Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine, I don’t make any money from this, yadda yadda yadda, you know the deal.

Rating: PG, for what some may find distressing.

Notes: These fics are written to deliberately ignore the ‘events’ of Season 6, primarily because I haven’t yet seen beyond Abby Road, and also because what I want to do with these fics would not happen now. Actually, it is probably wise for me to tell you that these fics are not trying to replicate ER (which is what I normally try to do) but this time they are serving to tell the stories of the characters in a different form. Look, it’s hard to explain without you having read them, okay?! All I can say is that this is all a figment of my imagination, and pure speculation. This immediately follows the previous story, Heaven Sent and Heaven Stole. I really recommend reading that first, otherwise this won’t make too much sense.

Thanks:I want to really thank Lori for her constant and invaluable help with everything I write, and also many thanks to Amanda, Denise, and Jess who have been excellent in aiding my characterisation. I think I should stop before I do a Gwyneth Paltrow…sob, sob.

“So, that is me. What about you?”

“Luka. I don’t know what to say. I don’t…”

“Carol. Do not worry about it – it is all in the past. I am fine now. So, are you going to tell me why you became a nurse?”

As Carol opened her mouth to reply, the door to the lounge thumped open and Carter stumbled in, still looking half-asleep.

“Did any of you guys page me? Is there something coming in?”

“No…I didn’t page you. Carol has been here as well, she has not been near the phone.”

“There’s no trauma?”

“Not that I know about Carter. You might want to go and ask those guys out there though. I have a feeling they might just know about it.”

“Ahhhhhh.” Carter clumped down into an armchair and threw his head back, rubbing one eye. “I can’t believe they did that.”

“Still doesn’t quite beat the cast though…”

“The cast? Am I missing something?”

“When John was a student here, on a very similar day to this, Mark and another resident put a plaster cast on his leg while he was asleep. He had to spent the rest of the day like that, even during a huge trauma…” Carol started to laugh, Luka smiled at Carter, who had his eyes closed. He looked up at Carol laughing, and pulled an expression in between a wince and a smile.

“The skeleton’s are all falling out of the cupboard today, aren’t they Carol?”

“Are they Carter? I seem to remember you running away when I asked…”

“Yeah yeah yeah…I know, I know. I don’t like an audience, that’s all, okay?” He sits forward and rubs his knees, looking in the direction of the coffee pot.

“Well, you know, you don’t have an audience here so to speak. Just us two. And Luka just told his story, so it’s your turn I think…”

“My turn? Oh please.”

“C’mon Carter. How bad can it be? Don’t tell me your family BOUGHT your way through med school and you’re just another Amanda Lee?”

“Amanda Lee?” Luka looked confused.

“I’ll explain some other time…that’s a really interesting story. But I want to hear about Carter first. I mean, how long have you been here now, and I still don’t know anything about you!”

Carter, now pouring himself some of the coffee, looks around to the pair.

“Okay, okay. I’m going to have to start right from the beginning though.”

“Sure.”

“Well, I was born as a twin. But my twin brother Christian died a few weeks after we were born; he was starved of oxygen at birth. He was the older one, and they took me out by C-section to avoid the same thing happening. He spent all of his short life in an incubator, on ventilation because he couldn’t breathe for himself. The doctors took him off ventilation to see if he could survive, and he didn’t. My parents, the family, were pretty cut up about it, or so I was told, but they kept it in because I was there and they had to look after me. But then they were really thrown over the edge when Bobby died, it was like the final blow. It was hard watching him die, right before all of our eyes. Hard for him too, I was his target for his anger a lot of the time. That was difficult because I didn’t really understand why. I was upset as well, not just because he was always snapping and shouting at me, but because he was ill and he was going to die. I didn’t even understand that he was going to die until I visited the hospital one day, and the doctor there said I couldn’t go and play with him today because he was feeling really bad. I ended up spending most of that day sitting outside Bobby’s room, watching doctors and nurses go in and out, and machines beeping and trays of meds going in. There were so many people; I figured it must be pretty bad what was going on. The doctor came out then and asked me when my parents were going to be in, but they were away for the weekend and I was staying with an uncle, so I told him they weren’t coming in, and I asked what was going on. The doctor took me away to a different room then, and he sat me down and explained exactly what Bobby had and that he wasn’t likely to make it in the end either. My parents had never told me what Bobby had, they just always said he was ill but he would be back home soon. I had so much respect, childish respect though it was, for that doctor - for telling me the truth. The doctor let me go into Bobby’s room and watch him for a while after that, even though he was so drugged that he didn’t know I was there.He looked so ill then, and I was really scared. A few days after that he died, when I was out on my bike with a cousin.

After he died, I remember I had a game I used to play when Bobby was still alive and he didn’t have leukaemia and he would play with me, and my parents would be happy too. And I played a game when I was his doctor and I made him better again, and my parents were so proud of me for saving their son. Probably some sort of catharsis I guess. Also that was the first time that I wanted to be a doctor, just because I admired what they did for Bobby but at the same time wanted to do better.

After a while, you know, the mourning ends, and I went to school and so on. My parents sort of forgot about me for a while there. Just before I started kindergarten I had a nanny anyway, but the nanny stayed right until I went to bed after Bobby died, before he died, she used go home when my parents got home. I didn’t see my parents for days at a time sometimes, except for family functions where we all had to attend. I think that the hardest thing for them must have been knowing they couldn’t help him and just sitting there knowing he was going to die. I don’t have too many clear memories of Bobby, other than the ones I’ve told you, but I think he knew that he was going to die. And more than being afraid towards the end, he was angry with himself for letting my parents down. That he was failing somehow. We were all instilled with this passion to be the top, to succeed, and I think he felt that is illness was his failure. Maybe my parents treated it like that as well, I can’t remember. The sad thing is that I don’t think I would put it past them. They would never say it, but I know they can make themselves heard without saying a thing.

Things got weirder after I started school. After I started school, they started getting really interested in what I was doing and I had a tutor for my reading and writing, and other subjects as I got older. They talked to me more and more, about the news and what my opinions were on everything. When I went to boarding school, they called for reports from my teachers often, not just at the end of term when we would all take our written results home. Now I think about it, I know what they were doing, grooming me to become the ‘head’ of the family. You see, my father was the first son, so he was next to the throne, if you see what I mean. But Gamma was still going strong, still is, as you know, so they wanted to line the next person up, presumably it was going to be Bobby, and then it would have been my twin brother, so it was like they had to settle for me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m starting to sound like I had this terrible childhood when I didn’t. I had a great time, hell, we had the money not to moan! It’s just now that I think back to all these things that seemed so trivial at the time, and realise that they really say something about me and perhaps if I treated someone like this now I would be worried.

So you would have thought that the perfect time for all this stuff to come out would be adolescence! But it never did for some reason. I think by that time I was too well trained. That was it, it was all like some sort of training. I’m not saying that was always a bad thing. I kept my temper in, I didn’t really speak up too much either. But besides, there were other things happening at adolescence, y’know?! I don’t know. I didn’t have too much of a problem with my parents, I didn’t see them often, so it was all a bit disconnected. But boy did I hear from them when I decided I wanted to be a doctor! Ohh ho ho! That wasn’t really in their grand scheme of things! They tried to talk me out of it on the phone, in the holidays, whenever they could raise the topic actually. But I was really set on this, and my teachers were supportive of it as well. I had reports towards the end of high school that said that I should really consider a profession involving people. So I went to college, then med school, and they let me, sort of humouring me in the hope that I would see sense and qualify as a doctor and come back to the family and run it, just with this qualification to make me look better.

You know, I’ve just told you all of that, and I’m still not entirely sure why I wanted to be a doctor. I’ve been through some analysis when I was doing my psych rotation, you know, all med students have to do that, and this was something that came up in all that. The guy thought I became a doctor because I had ‘survivor’s guilt’ and I wanted to prove to my parents that I could have saved Bobby and Christian, and then they would be pleased with me. Maybe so, I sure can’t come up with a better explanation!”

©Triggersaurus 2000