Beneath the Cool Exterior

Disclaimer: I own nothing, except for the bad grammar and spelling mistakes. ER and any characters I may use aren't mine!

Authors Note: All comments, especially constructive criticism, are greatly appreciated.

Spoilers: None

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Chapter 1 – Prologue

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The ER was painfully hot. Scrubs stuck uncomfortably against skin and a faint veil of fatigue hung suspended in the atmosphere, feeding slowly off the humidity of the air. Trolleys squeaked, lethargically pushing their way through the crowded hallways, banging tiredly through doors until the energetic ding of the elevator sounded. Life bustled on noisily, carelessly, relentlessly.

He shifted, albeit slightly, peeling his sticky hands from the coldness of the stairs. A lonely figure, forgotten, his gaze moved from the grimy specks of dust and dirt that lay seeping from the cracks in the tiles to his hands. They were blackened, encrusted with filth from the unwashed floor and stained with an ever growing sense of despair. Confidence, once a burgeoning force within his personality had yielded to dismal uncertainty. He was drowning among the unending sea of faces which passed him by, the hurried haze of the ER doing little to comfort or distract him.

Patients came and went, but he remained motionless, lost in a world of his own making, haunted as old familiar feelings, long dormant, slowly surged from a hollow abyss within his soul. Feelings that were never forgotten, but which the transience of time gently numbed until they could hardly be felt at all. Loneliness. Fear. The emotions he claimed never to feel, though always completely aware that they formed an almost integral part of his being. He could conceal them easily between thick layers of bravado and attitude, but yet they were omnipresent, a ticking time bomb waiting anxiously to explode.

Her harsh words had pierced him deeply, though he was barely able to admit it. They had left her lips angrily and ceaselessly one by one assaulted his eardrums until his head pounded. Blazing, steel bullets fiercely hammering in the message of what was now a grim and unforeseen reality with slow and painful resonance.  He had never seen eye to eye with her. Not until that moment.

Their eyes had met, ominously narrowed in anticipation of the silent, deadly combat they were about to engage in. She wasn't searching for any spark of uncharted goodness that could lie hidden beneath his cowboy facade, but rather penetrating right down to core of his existence. Trying to burn him unmercifully into submission with a fixed, unrelenting stare. 

It was then that his laughing had stopped, cruelly smothered by dawning realisation.

She had never made any attempt to disguise the contempt in which she held him. Neither had she ever made any effort to understand or get to know him. To her the man before her eyes was a thick, pungent cloud of confidence and attitude. His entire demeanour was the epitome of all that she despised, one so thickly shrouded in self gratification and sheer stubbornness that he was oblivious to any possible consequences of his actions. He was a law unto himself, unpredictable and unreachable, even with the strongest and bitterest of words, yet he was crumbling before her. It was an unexpected victory.

The silence, though deafening and foreboding, had brought with it a paralysing lull in their exchange. It was borrowed time, granted in the middle of their struggle, for him to battle with realisation. She was serious. He was no longer wanted there, he no longer belonged there. A powerful surge of emotion had caught him off guard, propelling him backwards while vehemently squeezing the last ounce of air from his ailing lungs. Venomous words that had already been spoken seemed to ring, metallic and true from each corner of the trauma room, conveniently bouncing from an open tray of instruments. Words that were the only ammunition they both possessed. Why then was he the one lying wounded, unable to retaliate?    

"I have a kid to support"

Even now the desperate tone of that sentence echoed clearly in his head, becoming louder and more forceful with every heartbeat. It had been unintended, an unplanned statement, a final plea to anyone who was listening before he faced the inevitable acceptance of his fate. After their release there had been no point in fighting. Any last trickle of reason had been extinguished from his mind, written off in one devastating blow. Weakened he had screamed out, defeated but unwilling to succumb to having the penultimate say. Once again he was abandoned with no sense of belonging.

His focus turned to the wall. The paint had begun to peel revealing the plasterboard below it. Soft cobwebs had formed in the corners, now dried out by the  unbearable heat. Acutely aware of his surroundings he stood up. An awkward sensation crept through him, tingling its way upwards as blood pooled in his feet, momentarily rendering him blind. Forced to a halt, he waited as blackness yielded to random pinpricks of colour and finally he found himself once again amongst the swirling rush of people. The loneliness and fear he had foreshadowed announced its arrival, oozing out from every corner and crevasse in the room. Crawling, it surrounded him, sinking in through every pore in his skin, it's vile stench slowly choking him.

Each breath became a struggle. He could feel his eyes bulging to the beat of his blood as it coursed through the arteries in his temples. He was running manically, aimlessly. A trapped animal, with no regard for direction, only an insatiable desire to escape. Foot placed in front of foot, arms swinging, he sprinted. There was no time to breathe, even less to think. Unable to see again, but this time blinded by a bleary mass of colours obscured by his dark eyelashes. He was suffocating as his own thoughts tightened their grip around his neck and head, gasping for solace for even a second.

Instantly there was nothing but intense pain. Slow throbbing sensations escalating into violent pulsations. The car had made its presence felt before he had time to see it. Suddenly surrounded he heard their voices. Sporadic comments leaking out of the wilderness. Voices he recognised, but couldn't quite place. Concerned faces looking down at him from above. He was torn between staying or entering the inky blackness that threatened to devour him. There was a surreal vagueness clouding his mind, making him dizzy but at the same time numbing his pain. He felt his head fall abruptly to the side and it was then that he saw it. The river of red meandering among the pebbles and rough edges of the road under his aching body. He stared glassy-eyed as tiny, dirty tributaries began to form, their flow laminar at first but quickly becoming turbulent. All notions of clarity fast disappearing he tried to turn his head back around.

Darkness fell in the middle of the day. And then there was nothing.......

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