Now 100% spoiler free!
Category: Cast: angst, comedy; romance-free.
Rating: R (swearing; violence off-screen)
Summary: How and why Elizabeth Corday really leaves County.
Other: This part set after 11.2 "Damaged".
Disclaimer:
The characters and setting of ER are the property of NBC, Warner Bros,
Amblin Entertainment and Constant C Television.
ENDINGS
Part 1 SHARKS
SAM TAGGART -
You gonna ask me when it started? Don't, cause I don't know. I do know
when I noticed something was up, I can tell you that. The time the kid
from the war came in. First of many to come, I guess.
For us, anyway. Wonder how many Gallant's seen by now.
So. We got this kid, he doesn't even look twenty, but he's been in the
army two years, been to war, been to Iraq, driving a convoy, and got
his leg blown off by a landmine. Six months ago. Been in hospitals ever
since. *Twenty.*
Me, I'd got knocked up.
He'd presented with headaches. Bad enough for Vicodin, so, yeah, this
is serious. Acting a bit spacey, his mom said. Long story short: skin
grafts not taking, done in Germany, in the CASH. Sinus infection,
spread to the brain. Yeah, he was altered OK.
Getting ahead of myself. Whatever, the kid rolls in and something's not
right, because Carter is just hanging back, and it's like he's trying
to smile but all you can see is two rows of long white teeth.
He's letting Ray handle it. Now maybe Dr SpikeAlike's hair-gel dripped
in his eyes because he just guesses meningitis, which, you know, is
good in a way, because it usually comes right at the end of the
differential diagnoses despite the severity, but it's also bad because,
hello, the poor kid has a bandage all over his face and Ray hasn't even
lifted a corner to take a peek. I gotta do it for him. Making sure I
call Carter's attention to it, not Spikey Boy's.
God, the art of upward delegation.
Carter just stands there and sways a bit. Tries to focus, looks like
he's a million miles away. Anybody else, and you'd have thought
hung-over, but Carter was working the programme, right?
Right?
He even said he was ok when I asked him. Colour me stupid.
LUKA KOVAC -
One minute I'm virtually proposing to Sam, the next we're treating a
guy bitten by a shark. Yes, really. It's only a small one, a metre and
a half long, and the guy fell in while he was cleaning its tank.
When it's all over, I'm at the Desk wondering if I should write it up
for one of the journals, when Malik asks about the shark incident. News
travels fast. We're joking about sharks, nurse sharks, and nurse sharks
working at County.
Then up came Carter, asking if we have nothing else to do. No, he
snapped. Said he wasn't in the mood. That wasn't like him. It wasn't
like we were neglecting patients: there was nothing else for us to do.
Jerry and Malik scattered like a shoal of fish sensing a tiger shark
swimming round them.
I told him he should get the cut above his eye seen to, but he said it
was nothing. It wasn't much: a patient lashed out when Carter was
restraining her, and connected.
Not like Carter to use hard restraints, either.
He seemed off, somehow, more than just tired. We all get tired. I
suggested he left early. He said no, he still had patients here. I
offered to cover for him: he thought it over, then he accepted. And he
left.
That's all we said. He looked bad all day, everybody had noticed, but
nothing else, nothing worse. We talked and he left. I thought that was
the end of it. A good night's sleep, back for the next shift ok.
Of course, he didn't go home. He went somewhere he could get drunk, and
came right back. Drunk. He's not a happy drunk, you know? He went
straight up to the veteran he'd been treating and told him never to let
his ex-girlfriend go. Gave him his cell phone, begged him to call her.
Over and over. The whole ER could hear. Which means the whole hospital,
because news travels fast.
Carter could hardly stand up. I've never seen him like that.
Abby helped me get him away to the Lounge. I think he'd have picked a
fight with me if there hadn't been a woman there. First thing to do,
was get some coffee into him, then calm him down, and start him
talking. I think he trusts me: and I owe him.
At first he said there wasn't a problem. I told him he could confide in
me. That started him talking. About everything: Kem, the baby, the life
they would have had together, how he didn't know how he would get it
back.
He talked about everything except being drunk.
ABBY LOCKHART -
I'd seen him a couple of times that shift, no more. We hadn't worked
together or anything. I was busy: he was busy. Different cases. Yes, he
looked bad, tired, rough. After what he'd been through, who wouldn't
look bad?
Big mistake number one. Thinking it's about what's happening to him on
the outside, not what's happening inside. Forgetting his addiction. Our
addiction.
Luka sent him home early. Not officially, but he did.
Carter didn't want to go, like he had to keep swimming or he'd die,
like a shark. So he left, but came back again, drunk. Don't ask me why:
he doesn't need a reason. If you do, then it's because Carter's an
addict.
More likely drunk than high, seeing he left hospital premises.
Which is shit hitting the fan time. I get him away from a patient, Luka
sobers him up, we walk him to the ambulance bay for real. He's got
enough sense not to drive home, and apologises to me for being a
hypocrite and giving me crap when we were dating. I tell him we're all
hypocrites. He doesn't get it.
I mean we're both drunks, we're like all drunks, hypocrites, liars,
addicts. No different one from another. So he falls off the wagon, it's
not one rule for drunks, and one rule for Carter.
I ask him about his sponsor: he still doesn't get it. I say there's a
meeting and I can go with him, and it's funny but some part of me
really doesn't like doing this in front of Luka but it's got to be
done, so, whatever. Carter repeats says he'll be fine, it was only a
slip, he doesn't need to go to a meeting.
Big mistake number two.
ELIZABETH CORDAY -
Actually, I was lecturing when it happened. "End Points of Trauma
Resuscitation" if you must know. Otherwise known as: Just because you
can flog them, doesn't mean you have to.
Not all day, God, no. You'd go mad. Besides, I was busy. Not officially
covering the ER but I did go down for a couple of consults. I must have
seen Carter if he was on duty, but I don't remember anything out of the
ordinary.
Apart from the shark. *Obviously.*
If I had seen him drunk and incapable, making a scene?
Well - that's a hypothetical question, "would I have turned him in?",
and lawyers tell you not to answer those.
Hypothetical answer?
You have to ask?
Without blinking an eye.
Please. Because he was drunk, and incapable, and on duty. For the
second time. If you must split hairs, fine, then technically, the first
time he was high - on drugs he'd stolen from the hospital. and he'd
been on duty that time too. End of story.
No, I would not have helped stage a second intervention. I have no idea
why I took part in the first one, not really. It's not like I knew him,
or cared, much. I still don't. So Carter sneered down his bony nose at
us, and smirked hard enough to show off his long white pointy teeth,
until Peter had to chase him down the street and frogmarch him into
rehab. Not me.
I'd have turned him in, end of story.
Well - maybe not quite. You really want to know?
Because I owed it to Robert. I turned him in when he was incapable, not
drunk, not high, just rendered incapable through traumatic amputation
in an accident that turned his right arm into chum.
I couldn't turn Robert in and not turn Carter in. That wouldn't be
fair.
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