The road stretches out in front of us, an endless ribbon of grey tarmac reaching far, far into the distance. It disappears into eternity and that's where we'll follow it.

            I automatically lean over to turn up the car's air-conditioning, desperate for some respite from the scalding heat. But the dial is already turned to the max. Sweat is dripping down me in rivulets and the air smothers me like an electric blanket, and yet this is as cool as it gets. I feel uncomfortable in my skin, like the humidity has somehow sloughed it loose. I want to crawl out of it, leave this body, leave this life and all its incumbent crap behind.

            I long desperately for a cigarette, yearn for that first hit of nicotine in my blood, calming my nerves, occupying my idle hands that should be working, should be busy all the time, should be focusing on other people's problems. But I finished the pack over an hour ago, and there isn't another gas station for miles. In fact there isn't another anything for miles, not even a tiny spec of life glimmering in the middle of the vast desert. We are all alone out here, truly in the middle of nowhere.

            I begin to wonder how good an idea this trip was after all.

            Twelve hours ago it had seemed a fantastic idea. A road trip. Let my hair down. Speed along lonely roads shrieking into the wind, all just for the Hell of it. It had been so long since I'd done anything so carefree, so plainly selfish, that I couldn't wait to set off, to drive without a destination, to speed away from responsibility and duty, to escape the ties that bind my life so securely. To say fuck it. Fuck them. Fuck them all.

            I had been drunk then. Drunk and stupid.

            And now I'm paying for it. Paying for my total lack of judgement with a body that aches for more alcohol – its long dormant addiction now awakened. Paying with the loss of a relationship with a man that I care deeply about and the ruination of a friendship with a man I might very possibly love. Or was our friendship ruined already? Spoilt because of my fear, my abject terror of letting somebody get too close, of dropping the barriers that surround my heart and actually needing somebody else for a change, instead of them just needing me.

I try not to think about yesterday, but I can't exactly help it. I can't stop the memories slipping into my mind, can't stop my head pounding with the ache of the hangover. Can't turn away from the steely features of John Carter in the driving seat of the rental car, staring straight ahead at the road in front of us, not having spoken a word for the last twenty miles.

Perhaps he's regretting this too.

Last night everything was fine. Well, when I say fine, I mean normal. I'd worked an average day at the hospital – been puked on, cursed at, bitten by a hyperactive five year old, had a beautiful young woman with flowing blonde curls (just the kind I've always admired, but would never admit to secretly wanting) come in with fatal injuries from a car crash. We pumped on her chest and spattered blood all over her flawless complexion, until her heart was just a squishy mess in my hands and Dr Benton calmly pronounced her dead. In other words it was just another sucky day in my generally crappy life, but at least I had control over it.

Then I got that phone call. The phone call, the one I've been dreading ever since Mom left Chicago, insisting that everything was okay and that she was better now. This was going to be the time she would make it in the world. Forget her thirty years of failing to take meds and careening from bouts of crushing depression to the giddy heights of mania. Forget the three failed suicide attempts and the arrests and the endless discussions with child and family services over whether she was fit to take care of her own children. Forget the times when I sat by her, helpless as she stared out into space, rocking mindlessly back and forth on her heels. Forget the day when I was eight and she left me and my brother playing on the sidewalk outside a bar, whilst she went inside and picked up men. Forget the entire history of her illness. She was better now and if I couldn't give her that second (thousandth) chance, if I couldn't trust her now…then I was the one with the problem, not her.

I had my doubts when Mom left, disappeared with a cheery smile to stay with a friend whose name I couldn't even remember. I always had that feeling in the pit of my stomach that it wasn't the end, that conclusions didn't come about that easily, answers that didn't exist couldn't be simply found.  I gained no pleasure in being proved right.

The calm authoritative voice on the other end asked for Mrs Lockhart. I ignored the 'Mrs', a title I hated during my marriage and now have no desire to use following my divorce, and said, yes, speaking. The voice went on to tell me about my mother. To inform me it was very sorry for my loss, that they'd tried everything they could, worked on her for a long time, used all the appropriate drugs and medical recourses. She just couldn't be saved.

Couldn't be saved. They got that right, anyway.

I thanked whoever it was and hung up, totally composed, emotionless. I wasn't thinking about Maggie (about my Mom who let us paint the walls and giggled like a schoolgirl and told me stories of wild adventures I was never entirely sure she just imagined…). Instead I wondered how many times I'd been the one bearing the bad news. How I'd doled out the meaningless lines of condolences, thrown in a few technical terms to impress, to make them think we accomplished more than we had, that it was God who took away their mother (or father or child or sibling or spouse), not just a cruel twist of fate or the limits of modern medicine. Then I'd hung up the phone and walked away, forgotten about the other person's pain and just gotten on with my life, because that's the only possible way I could have coped.

I couldn't walk away from this, though. My mother killed herself. Not in the traditional suicidal way, though. She got drunk then decided to go swimming. The twenty-year-old college students she was with pulled her out of the water when they realised she'd been under during a dive too long. They performed mouth-to-mouth and called 911, but it was too late. Always too late.

Luka had gaped at me with a concerned face and eyes that had seen too much death already. "What is it?" He asked, but I think he already knew.

"It's my fault," I had muttered, feeling intensely the truth of the words, as I still do now. I had the chance to help, but I threw it away. I knew this was going to happen, I knew it in my bones and in my heart and yet I still let her walk away from me. She was my responsibility, but I was tired of looking after her, so I gave up. I killed her as surely as if I held her head under the water myself, or held the bottle of vodka to her lips and forced her to drink. My fault.

"No, no, it's not," Luka insisted. "There was nothing you could have done."

I turned on him, three decades of pain colouring my voice. "I could have wanted her. She was my mother and I wished she wasn't."

"Abby…" he reached out for me and I pulled away.

"No! Don't touch me. I don't want you here right now, I want to be alone."

"It's going to be okay," he insisted. "Everything's going to be all right."

"How can you say that?" I yelled, my tightly held control slipping away from me. I was beginning to sound like her – please God, I don't want to turn into her. Spare me that indignity at least. "How can you say it's okay when my mother just died?"

"I understand," he fixed me with an intense stare, the stare that drew me to the relationship in the first place, the one that radiates pain and distance. It screams 'keep away from me' and I liked that, I liked the idea of someone I couldn't connect with completely, someone to be around but not with, someone whose wounds were even deeper than mine. "I know how you feel right now. It hurts like you want to die, but that passes, it never totally goes away, but it gets better then you can move on."

"No, you don't understand," I snapped back at him. "When I heard she was dead – you know what the first thing I felt was? Relief. I was glad it was over. Glad she wouldn't be around to put me through Hell anymore."

Luka said nothing, just kept staring and staring, eyes black as coal, the emotions behind them unfathomable.

"Please will you leave," I begged in a whisper and he did.

It didn't take me long to head out to the nearest bar, to surrender all resistance to the ever-present urge to drown every single one of my sorrows. Five scotches on rocks later, I was feeling a little better. In fact I was beyond better, I was (and I am well aware of the irony here) bordering on manic. A sudden urge to do something crazy, to enjoy my newfound freedom, overwhelmed me and I picked up the payphone in the bar. I dialled Carter's number, something I hadn't done for weeks, not since he told be he didn't want to be my friend anymore, that it wasn't fair on him. I had deliberately missed his meaning then, but that night in the bar it became much clearer.

"John," I greeted him in a husky voice tinged with giggles. "I don't think we should be friends any longer either."

"Abby?" He replied with some confusion. "Is that you?"

"Yup. Who else would it be?"

"Where are you?" He asked and I remember thinking that it meant he cared. Wherever I was, he wanted to find me there, only I wasn't sure whether he could.

"I'm in a bar, downtown."

"You're in a bar? What the Hell are you doing? You're an alcoholic!"

"Come have a drink with me, John," I slurred and he muttered some extra curses then insisted he was coming to pick me up.

True to his word he was there twenty minutes later, during which time I had consumed three more drinks and was feeling the buzz very nicely, thank you very much. When he arrived I grabbed his hand and tried to make him drink, to get him to unwind. He in turn tried to drag me out of there. He wanted to take me home, put me in the shower, a concept I found absolutely hilarious, until a better idea struck me.

"I want to go on a trip."

"A trip?" He echoed doubtfully.

"Yep. I want to leave everything behind and forget about it. I never did that before, I always stuck things out, knuckled down and played good little Abby. I want to be bad for once. I want to not give a shit…"

"And if I take you away, you promise not to have another drink?" He interrupted.

I contemplated the deal for a while. I would just be swapping one form of escapism for another. "I promise."

So, we went home and packed a bag and he took me to the airport. Two plane tickets appeared like magic and suddenly Chicago was a mass of pretty little lights far down below me and the alcohol was beginning to wear off.

I slumped back in my seat, tears beginning to prick at my eyes as reality, no longer veiled by drugs or shock, began to sink in. She was dead. My mother is dead.

John touched my hand tentatively, like he's almost afraid to. "What happened, Abby?" He asked softly. "What made you do this?"

I collapsed over into his lap, crumpling like a paper doll. "It's over," I gasped through my sobs. "She finally did it."

"Maggie," He muttered, knowing exactly what I meant. We are so similar really, we both bottle things up inside, pretend they don't exist until we can deal with them no longer and we self-destruct. I couldn't have broken down like this in front of Luka, he wouldn't have understood with his stoic European ways and his quiet pain. He doesn't get how in some people hurt explodes suddenly and annihilates everything in its wake.

"I'm sorry," John added. "I'm sorry." And then he wrapped his arms around my shaking form, staying like that until the seat belt signs lit up again and I had to sit up with red, puffy eyes, looking like absolute Hell while the plane landed in Arizona.

Outside the airport he asked me what I wanted to do next. I said head to the nearest bar, so he decided for me. We hired a car and started driving and we haven't stopped since.

~~~

John pulls over to the edge of the road, bringing the car to an abrupt halt under the burning midday sun. We sit in silence for a while, suddenly out of things to say to one another.

"Where to now?" He finally asks.

"I thought we were just following the road."

"Ah, but where does it lead?"

I sigh heavily, longing once again for a cigarette or a drink. "I'm not sure we'll ever know answer to that – or if I even want to."

"I know I don't," John returns with a wry smile. The silence stretches long again, but this time it doesn't seem to bother me as much.

"Are you really going to leave County?" I ask, trying to sound disinterested and failing.

"I don't know," John shrugs. "Sometimes you just have to give up and move on."

"And sometimes you have to work at things, dig your heels in and put in the effort," I return with unexpected vehemence.

"Give me one reason why I should stay," he turns and looks me straight in the face.

I hesitate for an instant, before giving in to my reckless streak. "Because I want you to."

"So you can have a friend to sort out problems between you and Luka?" He enquires with no small amount of bitterness.

I shake my head. "No, so I can have someone to call at midnight from a bar because my life is falling apart and I know he'll be there to stop me from ruining things completely. So we can drive all night then get stuck in awkward morning after phase."

"Morning after phase?" He laughs. "Don't we have to sleep together to get that?"

"Apparently not."

"Then I think I'm missing out on the best part of the deal here," he jokes.

"Just drive," I mutter, trying to suppress my amusement.

"But we haven't decided where we're going yet."

"Does it really matter?"

He starts the engine. "No, I don't suppose it does."

THE END

Okay, so how bizarre was that? Very, I know. But forgive me (since it's 1:30am), and please send feedback if only never to tell me to write for the ER genre ever again.