Don't Panic
Letting Go
"Where are…" Emma opened another cabinet and slammed it. So far her search had been futile, but she could have sworn that there was at least one Pop Tart left. And yet she'd been searching for the past five minutes and was still Pop Tart-less.
"What'cha looking for?" Carter's muffled voice pulled Emma from her search. She stared at him as he leaned against the doorframe to their kitchen; he had one of his legs propped up against the other and was still in the sweatpants he wore every night to bed and had yet to put on a shirt. But Emma barely bothered to notice this, she was glaring at the fact that Carter was standing there and chewing on a Pop Tart. Her Pop Tart and her last one at that!
"You ate my last Pop Tart! I hate you," she growled as she crossed the room and punched him on his arm. He winced but laughed all the same.
"Technically I bought the Pop Tart, Em. Therefore it is my Pop Tart and I had every right to eat it." He grinned and took another bite, taunting her with it. She glared and stuck her head in the fridge to look for a suitable alternative.
"We have no food in this house!" she shouted eventually, pulling her head from the fridge while Carter continued to relish in his Pop Tart.
"Maybe we would, if you actually bothered to go grocery shopping."
"It's your house. You're supposed to do the boring shopping," Emma sneered back, finally conceding and slamming the fridge shut.
Carter snorted. "How do you figure that? You live here now too, you know. The 'boring shopping' is just as much your responsibility as it is mine."
"But since you're the one that ate the last little bit of edible food, you should go and buy more," Emma replied staring hungrily at his Pop Tart.
"I got there first, it's my Pop Tart. Stop staring at it like you have some sort of claim to it. If you want another one, go to the store and buy one." Carter took another heaping bite of Pop Tart and grinned.
"I will never go grocery shopping." Emma stormed out of the room with one last glare at Carter. She popped her head quickly back through the doorway. "And nothing you do will ever change that."
Carter smiled as he heard her trump off to her bedroom. He took the other Pop Tart he'd been hiding behind his back, still wrapped in the wrapper, and placed it one the table with a note that said her name on it and set off to get dressed.
"You with Carter today?" Dr. Jeremy Frank asked handing Emma a cup of coffee as soon as she passed him.
"I'm stuck with Carter everyday. It's almost as though he forces me to face his cocky ego just to torture me," Emma growled back. Sure, Carter had left her a Pop Tart but that didn't make up for a lifetime of cruelty on his part.
"You can't hate him that much; I mean you live with him, don't you?" Frank asked with a knowing smirk.
"Yeah. Moment of pure insanity on my part, that stupid Pop Tart stealing bastard."
"Bastard? I mean, Carter is cocky, for sure, but he's not a bastard. Did you know we did our internship together?"
"Oh yeah?" Emma was mildly intrigued to hear a first person tale of this well-known story as she grabbed her stack of files off the counter. Emma was known around the hospital for procrastinating on paperwork until she was practically swimming in it, then she'd beg other residents to help get it all done. It was a vicious circle and everyone knew to avoid Emma Woodhouse when they noticed her toting around her stack of files.
"Yep, right here in this hospital- Tiffany Side as well," he stated matter-of-factly. "Do you need help with those?" It was a rookie mistake on Frank's side that made it evident to the nurses, who watched the exchange and winced at his offering, that he was new to the hospital. Emma smiled and juggled the folders as Frank grabbed a couple out of her hands that were precariously close to being dropped.
"What was it like- your internship?" Emma asked as she stopped at another counter to regain her balance on the large stack. Frank plopped the ones he'd taken from her earlier right back onto her stack as she picked them back up. This threw her off balance once again and caused her to wobble on the spot.
"Oh, same old. Stressful, tiring- days where I thought I'd never make it through. Tiffany, Carter and I were close though. We helped each other out quite a bit."
"So what happened? Why don't you guys get along anymore?" Emma asked as she dropped two of her files and set down the entire stack to gather those that had fallen.
Frank shrugged and watched idly while she gathered her files, n bothering to offer help. "Well, Tiffany just kind of drifted away from the rest of us. She took a fellowship at another hospital and got really into research and academia. She still travels all the time doing lectures and such; we bumped into each other when she was at Oxford. But Carter- Carter kind of saw me as a sell-out when I switched my specialty to plastics. He told me I'd never be a real surgeon if I went into plastics."
"Carter's an idiot," Emma interjected when Frank paused for a second.
"Jokes on him though, isn't it? I'm a wildly successful plastic surgeon that's been offered jobs all across the nation and operates on A-list celebrities. What's he? A neurosurgeon that isn't even respected by his own intern."
"So it's true then? You really do work on celebrities?" Emma asked in awe ignoring the comment about his intern. Emma highly respected Carter; she just didn't get along well with him.
Frank shrugged nonchalantly. "I fly out to Hollywood for a surgery tomorrow. What's that tell you?"
Emma was still very impressed. "It makes me wonder what the hell you're doing here. This isn't Silicone Valley, I'm afraid. What brings you to Northwestern?"
Frank shrugged. "Well, sentimentality… and you of course."
Emma laughed so hard at the way he nonchalantly hit on her that she dropped her entire stack of paperwork and it scattered across the floor.
"Can you feel this?" Emma pinched the man's calf with her thumb and index finger.
"Feel what?" he asked. She moved her pinch higher on his leg. By the time she'd made it to his hip and he still hadn't flinched, the guy's fiancé had begun to sob.
"What's wrong with him?" the woman sobbed as she gripped his hand tighter and curled up next to him on his bed. Emma was very tempted to tell the woman to move, but she was crying and Emma was horrible at dealing with crying people.
She was now making her way across the man's right arm, pinching just as she'd done with each of his legs. She was on his neck by the time she'd finally given up. He hadn't felt a thing through that entire test and it was eerie. "How did you discover that you had lost your…"
"Sense of touch?" the man asked simply. He seemed quite calm compared to his sobbing fiancé. "When my lips went numb. It's a rather odd sensation." His speech was slightly off, due to the numb lips, but still distinguishable.
"What about your tongue? Can you feel that?"
The man clamped his teeth down hard against his tongue. "Nope," he sighed as blood swished around his mouth and his teeth turned red. Emma wouldn't have noticed had the man not given her a toothy grin; it was eerie to see someone smile with that much blood in their mouth. She shoved gauze into his mouth to stem the bleeding.
Emma commanded him to bite down on the gauze. It was weird that he had no sense of feeling, and obviously no sense of taste, and yet he could still maintain muscular control. Emma handed him a plastic cup and commanded him to squeeze. He held the cup with ease.
"Doc," the man muttered through his mouth of bloody gauze. "This is the weirdest sensation ever."
"Miss Bentor I need you to help me out here," Emma pleaded with the sobbing lady. They were standing in the waiting room and people around them were beginning to stare at the lady as she whimpered. "We're trying to discuss your fiancé's medical history. Now when did your fiancé first lose his sense of touch?"
"H-he," she sobbed harder then pulled herself together slightly, "he was complaining about his toes being numb about a week ago and then I noticed that he had a cut on his shin and he hadn't even realized it. Do you think- do you think I waited too long to bring him in? He really c-can't feel a thing?"
Emma shook her head and tried to soothe the maniacal woman.
"You didn't wait too long," Carter suddenly appeared behind Emma's shoulder and sat beside her in a vacant chair. "Although in a situation like this, any time is valuable; there's no way you could have noticed anything any sooner."
"R-really?" she sobbed her eyes connecting with Carter's. Unlike Emma, Carter radiated a sense of cool. He was so collected about the whole ordeal and the fiancé felt pacified by his steady gaze and solid speech. She was ready to rely on Carter the moment she first set eyes on him.
"You played your part beautifully, Miss. Bentor. There's nothing more you can do for now, except help Dr. Woodhouse with your fiancé's medical history."
"I-I'll help. B-but you just h-have to promise me, Doctor, that you'll do whatever it takes to make sure he stays alive. I don't care in what state, I-I just need him. I need him a-alive and here… with me."
Carter's eyes flicked to Emma's. His chin creased in worry and his eyebrows furrowed. "Yes, Miss. Bentor, whatever it takes. I'll do everything in my power."
She sobbed again. "I-I'm just not r-ready-" a great heave and a sniffle "- n-not ready to l-let go."
It was hard to tell if Emma was hiding. She seemed to be nowhere, but Mary knew better. Emma had been seen all morning with a giant stack of paperwork and Mary knew that meant it was Catch-up Day. She knew just where to find her best friend.
The basement was hardly ever ventured into by any doctor if they didn't need to. It was a scary, cold room that seemed to drain the happiness out of people. There were creepy, little steel doors that separated the room from the decaying corpses within. No one ever tried to set foot in the morgue; no one ever wanted to. Well, except Emma Woodhouse.
When Emma was a kid she would sometimes get dropped off at the hospital by a friend's Mom. It was her father's home and so Emma always knew it was where she'd most likely find him. All those hours she spent waiting for her father to finish up "one last case" or "just a bit more paperwork" she'd taken to scouring the hospital, determined to discover every little secret of the large, cold building. That was how Emma discovered her sanctuary.
It was a dark room in the basement; far enough from the morgue that it wasn't creepy. Its location guaranteed privacy. It was quiet down there and Emma could hide for hours, take a nap, and no one would find her; except Mary. Mary banged open the door to Emma's little sanctuary and took a seat beside Emma in the sea of unfinished paperwork. She grabbed a file at random and began to skim through it, checking over Emma's work without her best friend even having to ask.
"I love paperwork day," Mary sighed. "You should really do this stuff as it comes in rather than letting it pile up."
Emma hadn't really heard what Mary had said. "He's lost his sense of sight." She jumped, tossing her file aside and staring at Mary. "He couldn't feel or taste and now he can't see. It's like he's losing all the things that make him human. Carter thinks it won't be long before he can't hear or smell. What makes a person do that? What got into this man that made him… lose it all?"
Mary shrugged and stared at Emma. "We see shit like that everyday, Em. What's got you so freaked out?"
Emma grabbed another file and shoved her face into it, distracting herself from Mary's accusation. "It's his fiancé." Emma jumped tossing that file aside, just like the first, and facing Mary once again. "You should have seen her. She begged Carter to keep him alive. What if he goes brain dead or isn't even human again? When you lose your senses is it even worth living? You're a shell. Who would ever want someone to live as a shell?"
Mary's eyebrows were raised. That was a sudden confession. "Whoa, Em. Slow down. What's going on?"
"The fiancé Mary." Emma hated having to slow down. Her mind was racing and she just wanted to vent as fast as she could. "She told Carter to do whatever it took to keep him alive, no matter what. She said she just can't let go."
Mary shrugged. "That's understandable."
"No it's not," Emma protested. "It's horrible."
"She obviously loves him. It hard to loose someone you love."
"Yes, I know that, but isn't it harder to knowingly force someone to live a fruitless existence? He'll be a shell, Mare. It comes to a point where there's nothing left to hold on to."
"You've obviously never been in love, Em. As horrible as it sounds, if I weren't ready to lose Drake, I don't know how I'd ever be able to face his death. I'd try as hard as I could to hold onto him. I'd do everything in my power to make sure that he wasn't lost to me."
The room was a bit stodgy. Emma could feel the tension of its occupants. She twirled her spinny chair, hoping to ignore the intense glares her father kept shooting her. This seemed like all the more reason to pretend she wasn't in that room. In her mind, she liked to think she was out with Mary buying itty-bitty shoes for the baby and maybe some bigger ones for herself.
"Before I go on, Miss. Bentor, I need to know exactly how far you're willing to go for your fiancé," Carter commanded calmly. Miss. Bentor sniffed but wasn't sobbing again like she did when Emma tried to speak with her.
"Anything," she breathed.
The stuffy room became even heavier; the Chief drummed his fingers across the table so lightly that they didn't even make a noise. Emma coughed to break some of the tension and Dr. Bide, Emma's mentor, shot her a venomous look.
Carter, too, cast Emma a look, but it was a look of mild irritation rather than warning. He was about to make the pitch of his life to perform the surgery of his life and he really didn't want to worry about Emma's disapproval. This was the kind of thing that would make him great, make him recognized and, most of all, open new doors that people had barely even begun to dream of. "Your fiancé was diagnosed with a metastic brain tumor. It's growing very quickly and basically eating away at your fiancé's higher functions. He's already lost the majority of his senses. The other two will go quickly, then his memories, then his personalities. It won't be long before it'll all be gone. Needless to say this is an urgent situation."
Carter paused again. The fiancé wasn't crying, but Emma felt her own eyes prickling. This was the part where shit got scary.
"What I'm proposing, after careful discussion with our Chief of Surgery, Dr Woodhouse, is a partial brain transplant." He stopped when he saw Miss. Bentor wince and gasp lightly. "Now I know it sounds bad but Doctors routinely transplant tissues of all kinds, including brain… just never in quantities of this magnitude."
"H-how much?" she asked softly.
"A little less than half," Carter replied, almost wincing himself. "It sounds horrible, but at the rate this thing's growing, I don't see what other choice we have."
As soon as their little "chat" was over, Emma practically sprinted out of the room; partly because the whole thing made her feel so angry and partly because she was knee high in paperwork. But she didn't make it far down the hallway toward her sanctuary before Carter caught up with her.
"What was that all about?" he asked. He seemed angry, but Emma hardly bothered to care.
"What was what all about?" she asked through pierced lips. "I'm not the one doing some shoddy surgery, risking some man's life all just to get my name printed in a couple of medical books."
"Excuse me?" Carter's anger was temporarily shocked right out of him.
"You heard me Carter. You're doing this surgery for one reason and one reason only: yourself." Emma finally rounded on him and let her feelings flow freely. "I don't know why I'm surprised though; it's the same reason you do anything around here."
Carter spoke back, stern and unapologetic. "I'm doing exactly what that man's fiancé asked me to do. I'm doing the only thing I can do to save his life. If my career gets a boost out of it, well that's just a bonus."
Emma shook her head. "You're career won't get a boost. It's far too risky and I can tell you right now, that man has a ninety-nine percent chance of dying on your operating table. Will you still respect your decision then?"
"One percent?" he echoed back in disbelief. His face hardened and a cocky grin spread across his face. "One percent is all I need."
Emma felt hollow. She was pretty sure if anyone knocked against her, all they'd hear would be an ominous, empty clunk.
"Emma, are you even listening to me?" Ellie however was very much not hollow. Ellie was as chipper and full of life as she was every single other day. Emma found it annoyingly frustrating.
"Yeah," Emma sighed even though she wasn't. She was still playing her conversation with Carter over and over again in her head. She couldn't believe that he actually thought this surgery had a shot in hell.
"… and now I think I'm in love." That did it. Emma was suddenly filled again and Carter was far out of mind.
"You think you're in love?" she echoed back in disbelief. "With who?"
Ellie looked slightly put-out. It was obvious that Emma hadn't paid attention to a single word she'd been saying for the past ten minutes. "With John, my patient I was telling you about," Ellie reminded her slowly.
"You're in love with a patient?" This was a capital offense in the world of medicine. You were never, under any circumstances, to fall in love with a patient. What if they were terminal and you had to be the one to tell them? What if they were there with something awful like Chlamydia or leperacy?
Ellie just nodded as if it were nothing.
"You fell in love with a patient." Emma was sounding a bit like a broken record. She just kept running this over in her mind. Was Ellie absolutely insane?
"Yeah, John. He's so funny, Emma… and cute. He's very attractive, Emma. I think you'd like him." Ellie rambled on and one not realizing that she'd lost her audience. Emma was still stuck on the whole loving a patient thing.
"Anyway, I think he really likes me. He promised to take me out when he gets released…"
Oh God, Emma prayed this wouldn't end badly.
Emma watched John Martin through the window to his private room. Ellie had been right, he was cute and, although he seemed quite bored flicking through the channels on the television, he was also quite catchy.
"What are you doing Emma?" Mary leaned her back against the window that Emma was so intently staring through. "Why are you staring at my patient?"
"Your patient?" Emma asked. This echoing thing was becoming quite a nasty habit; she hoped it wasn't going to be permanent. "John Martin is your patient?"
Mary nodded slowly. "Yeah, he has destructive enzymes. It's kind of gross. His stomach lining is disintegrating and his stomach acids are leaking out all over the place. Sick isn't it? Like his body is eating itself."
Emma blanched.
"See, I told you it was nasty. What are you doing here anyway? Shouldn't you be getting some of that paperwork done? I'm not staying here with you all night this time."
"I'll get it done," Emma muttered distractedly. Her mind was working furiously around this new development. Josh Martin certainly looked fine, but inside he was dying. Emma made a decision right then and there: she would do whatever it took to make sure that Ellie wasn't dragged down with him. Ellie was going to be a great nurse and she didn't need some dying man to break her spirit. Ellie needed protection; she needed to let go of this silly infatuation before it got the best of her; before she ended up a blubbering fiancé pleading doctors to do "whatever it takes."
"Can you do me a favor Mary?" Emma had a plan. "Can you talk to Nurse Roberts about switching Ellie off this case? I think she might be developing… an emotional attachment to the patient. Can you just say that you're having trouble working with Ellie and you prefer her off the case?"
Mary didn't seem to grasp what Emma was saying. She processed the request, agreeing readily and setting off to achieve her goal without a complaint or a question or even grasping what Emma really wanted Ellie switched off the case for.
"You're interfering." Dr. Carter Knight, however, was much more perceptive and just happened to have overheard Emma's request. "And you're only going to mess things up."
"You don't know anything," Emma spat, refusing to look at Carter and instead directing her attentions through the window to John Martin as he laughed at some corny sitcom.
"Ah, now is this anger still from the Pop Tart theft or because I'm going to be wildly successful in surgery today and you're jealous?" Carter could be a bit pompous at times, even he wouldn't deny it. "Because I left you an entire Pop Tart on the table, did you not see it?"
"It's the principle of the matter," Emma replied, finally breaking her attention from Mr. Martin and directing it unwillingly at Carter. "You think the whole world revolves around you. You took that Pop Tart without even a thought that anyone else might want it. You're taking this surgery because you think that you're infallible. Well I assure you, one day you'll get your comeuppance and when you fall from grace I hope you hit hard." She didn't wait for him to reply before she took off down the hallway at a steady, stomping pace.
"I'm self-centered? I'm not the one taking away a patient's last shot at happiness. That man deserves love just as much as you or I would!" he shouted down the hall, his words chasing her as she made her retreat back to her sanctuary. "Death in inevitable, Emma! You can't spend your entire life avoiding that."
"Oh wow, it's true then. You really do hang out in the basement."
Emma quickly looked up from her paperwork as the familiar female voice interrupted her reverie. She hadn't expected the face of Tiffany Side to ever appear at the threshold of her sanctuary and yet, here she was.
"What are you doing here?"
"Some people were a bit worried, so they sent me down to check on you." Tiffany smiled at Emma with a reassuring grin. Emma felt slightly guilty. She'd never even tried to befriend or even get to know this woman; and yet, here she was smiling at Emma and offering a helping hand on the hefty stack of paperwork. "Why do you have so much?"
Emma grimaced. "Well every time I turn around it seems to multiply. I swear to you, paper can breed. That… and I procrastinate."
Tiffany laughed appreciatively and circled a couple of signatures that Emma had left blank. "I can understand that. You're talking to the world's biggest procrastinator."
"Really? You? I never took you for the procrastinating type," Emma replied skeptically.
"Never to this extent," Tiffany said as she gestured around the room at the mounds of paperwork. "But my resident years were hell for me to get everything done."
"How-" Emma hesitated asking this next question. She'd never wanted anyone to see her appear weak; she was one of the strongest residents of their year and had always been so sure about what she'd wanted from her life, and yet, for some reason, Tiffany just seemed so warm and Emma itched to ask her. "How did you get through it all?"
Tiffany shrugged. "I had a lot of help and two amazing friends."
"Carter and Jeremy?" Emma asked as a reflex. The three attendees she now saw as her mentors just happened to be the same three attendees she'd admired most when she was just a fresh-faced twenty year old visiting the hospital to see her daddy. They'd been a kind of mismatched team back in their resident years and it was hard not to admire the way they worked and joked together with such ease. But it was hard to tell they'd been that close, now days. Like Dr. Frank had said: They grew apart and gave into rivalries just like everyone else.
Tiffany sighed and nodded slowly. "In a weird way I think my early years were my best years. I never learned as much as I did then and Dr. Frank and Dr. Knight are still the best I've ever seen. It's kind of intimidating to be working with them again."
"But you're legendary," Emma supplied. "Your lectures are supposed to be the best. You're the pinnacle of your field."
"But Jeremy and Carter aren't in my field, now are they?" Emma shrugged conceding Tiffany's point. "What about you? From what I hear you've got a ton of potential. May be even better than Carter?"
Emma quickly shook her head in protest, not able to handle that idea. "Who would give you an idea like that?"
"More than a few people. Your father, for one. Dr. Drake is a great admirer. And… Carter."
"Carter?" Emma's attention shot off her paperwork faster than it'd ever done before. "He must have been being sarcastic. He does that sometimes; it's difficult to tell if he's ever meant anything seriously."
"Think what you'd like, but I heard it right from the horse's mouth." She smiled at Emma and held out the file she was perusing for Emma to sign the indicated spots. "Being a resident is hard, but I don't think anyone believes you'll make it through more than Carter."
Emma couldn't believe she was staring at a flat line. What had just happened?
"Fuck," Carter shouted as he threw his scalpel onto the floor and ripped off his gloves in one fluid motion. He was out of the operating room before Emma had even managed to grasp the situation. She was still clutching the flaps of a man's skull, refusing to accept the fact that this man was dead. She slowly pulled out her hands with a horrible squelching noise. The nurses slowly regained their composure and gathered up the fallen utensils that Carter had scattered during his exit.
Emma unscrewed the clamps and handed them to an obliging scrub nurse. "I'm really sorry," she muttered to the nurse as she ripped off her own gloves and watched her father follow in Carter's wake.
"Don't worry Dr. Woodhouse. It was a tricky surgery," the nurse replied. They'd worked together long enough for the nurse to understand that this kind of behavior out of Carter was very unusual.
By the time Emma had cleaned up and gone to catch Carter only her father remained. "I sent him home. He won't be operating anymore today," Dr. Woodhouse said to his daughter. "This will be a tough one for him, I'm sure."
Emma nodded once. "He wanted it a lot."
"Yeah," Dr. Woodhouse said patting his daughter lightly on her shoulder. "Make sure everything gets taken care of, won't you Em? Talk to the family and make sure Carter's alright."
Emma nodded slowly. She knew what had to be done; sadly enough she'd been preparing for it all day.
Emma stared at the woman. For once she watched her and she wasn't blubbering like a mad man. Miss. Bentor looked around quickly and finally her eyes met with Emma's from across the waiting room. She couldn't put it off any longer, she was obligated to go and talk to that woman.
"He's dead isn't he?" she asked ominously as soon as Emma was within ear shot. "You don't even have to say it. I can just feel it. It's colder in here than it was before."
Emma slowly took the seat across from the woman. Thankfully, she wasn't sobbing. She sounded resigned and accepted. It was over, and she no longer had any fight left in her. "I'm sorry," she added feebly, attempting a reassuring smile.
"You tried your best. You did everything you could." She gave a watery smile that seemed to reassure Emma more than Emma could ever do for her.
"We did; Dr. Knight did all that he could, it just wasn't possible, Miss Bentor."
The woman looked up at Emma sharply. "I was supposed to be Mrs. Kirk. We'd always joked about how much I hated his name. I'm a pilot. A captain. Did you know that? My name was going to be Captain Kirk." She laughed through her streaming tears, but pulled her laughter back in without a single sob. "Now I'll always be Miss. Bentor. It's a weird thing knowing I'll have to go on without him. Knowing I have to let him go."
Emma made a loud ruckus as she stumbled through the door, laden down with plastic bags full of anything she had the sense to grab. She unceremoniously dropped them onto the floor then searched through them until she came across the one she needed the most. She pulled one of the packets out of the box and hid it in the back pocket of her jeans while she set off into the living room.
There he was, wrapped in a cotton blanket in their eighty degree house and staring blankly at a TV that was turned off. "Hello Sunshine," she said brightly as she watched him from the same doorway that he'd taunted her from just yesterday morning.
"Hi," he muttered back, his eyes slowly un-sticking from the blank screen and resting heavily on her. His disposition was the exact opposite of what it'd been that morning. He was the epitome of the term "down and out" and made no act to prove otherwise. "You were right."
Emma smiled and shook her head. "No you were right." She took the packet out of her pocket and tossed it to him. As a reflex action he reached out and caught it, momentarily forgetting his sadness. He stared at the little bag with the words "Pop Tarts" plastered across the front, not quite understanding its significance. "I did need to go grocery shopping."
She finally crossed into the room and sat beside him on the couch. "Now," she began as she picked up the remote and turned the TV on, "what are we watching? And why are you hogging the blankets? Let them go Carter so I can have some."
Well ok! Emma's so funny to me. She thinks she's so cool and collected and yet she blurts out whatever first comes to mind even if it's not how she really feels. I kind of love that about her. It makes her very human.
This is kind of a sad chapter for me. That part about Ellie and the patient is rather morbid. To love someone when you know they're doomed... my cross between Harriet and Mr. Martin and Denny and Izzy. Except I have no plans to kill John as of yet. I just mean he'll be around for the next few chapters.
My chapters for this story are getting progressively longer. I fear by the last one I wont be able to fit it all into less than 25 pages. I've had an outline for this story since January and looking at it there's nothing I can cut out but I can think of plenty I'd like to add in. Weird how that works...
Well this chapter was sooner than expected. You should be excited about that and also hoping you'll get another at some point because I'm about to fall under a pile of paperwork myself.
Now... Review if you know what's good for you. Wow that sounded scary and brutish. How about you just review because it will make me overly happy.