Chapter Text
Morality Clauses
They sprang apart as if they had both been struck with a cattle prong, stepping as far apart as they could from each other and hoped they had gained a respectable distance before any inquiring eyes caught sight of something revealing.
It was Carol and Lydia, each carrying one of the twins.
“Thanks, Lydia,” Carol was saying as they stepped out into the crisp March night. “Coming up here usually settles them down.”
“I don’t know how you do it,” Lydia told her with a shake of her head.
Carol shrugged. “Well, my mom helps but you know, it wasn’t the plan.”
She seemed as if she was about to say more when she noticed Luka and Abby.
“Popular spot tonight, huh?” Lydia quipped as she shifted Tess from one hip to the other.
“Dr. Kovač was just giving me a pep talk,” Abby said, hoping her tone sounded level and even. “I’ve heard doctors give it a hundred times: ‘you’re not a doctor until you’ve killed someone’.”
“Oh, that speech?” Carol said, smiling over at Luka. “How’d he do?”
“Oh, the usual, we’re not gods or miracle workers. He gave it his best shot...but I still feel terrible.”
“That’s good,” Luka told her earnestly. “It means you care. And it means you won’t make the same mistake again.”
Abby smiled. “Thanks.” Afraid of looking at him too long, she decided to take her leave. “Listen, I’m going to get out of here, drown my sorrows in hot chocolate.”
Abby smiled and headed for the door, hoping she gave nothing away. Luka made it a point not to watch her walk away.
“You think your pep talk helped?” Lydia asked.
Luka shrugged. “Hope so, she’s a good kid. She’s got a good head for this, I think.”
“I trust her more than Malucci,” quipped Carol.
“That’s a low bar,” Luka said, trying to hide a smile.
“Yeah well,” Carol let her sentence trail off. Almost no one trusted Malucci and it was very common knowledge.
After a few minutes of banter about the twins’ feeding schedule, Luka decided to make his own exit. Carol gave him a broad smile which he returned politely before he turned to leave.
He really hoped she wouldn’t read too much into it. He was already in too deep, he didn’t need further complications or anyone watching him too closely.
~~~
“It’s all about visualizing the field,” Luka said in his most doctorly voice as he brought Abby’s fingertips to his lips. Luka, shed of his white coat and tie, in a dark blue t-shirt with matching sweats, was draped across Abby’s sofa and Abby was draped across him, wearing her favorite Nittany Lions t-shirt, commiserating her bad day. “Picture the vein in your mind, the surrounding tissue, the clavicle bone running along,” he said as he dragged her fingertips along his neck, fully leaning into this impromptu remedial anatomy lesson where he was both instructor and practice dummy.
“Think of the syringe and the catheter as an extension of your hand. Slide under the bone, like slipping a card back into a deck.
Abby glanced up at him from the corner of her eye. “And what if I give you a tension pnuemo? What do I do then, stab you in the heart?”
Luka wanted to tell her that he was fairly sure she had already done that, but he didn’t. The day had been heavy enough. He had no desire to bog it down with feelings he didn’t think either of them were ready to fully dive into.
“If you’re visualizing the field, you won’t,” he reminded her.
Abby was still not giving herself any grace. “I can’t believe I screwed up that badly. Corday probably thinks I’m useless.”
“She’s a surgeon. They think anyone who can’t cross clamp an aorta with their eyes closed is useless.”
“Why can’t we just use ultra sounds for this?” she lamented with more than a hint of frustration.
“We don’t have enough portables to visualize every central line we place. We’re a County Hospital.”
“You sound like Romano or Kerry or Dr. Greene. Why is it that Attendings all speak the same tired language?”
“I guess we get asked the same tired questions. Abby, you’re going to be fine. Central lines are tricky.”
She gave him a skeptical glance. “You nailed the first one you ever tried, didn’t you?”
He graciously denied it, but the sheepish grin on his face was a dead giveaway.
Abby pouted. “Luka, you’re a liar,” she told him in a high-pitch singsong voice.
His brows furrowed in bemused confusion. “What’s that voice?”
She came down from where she had propped herself onto her elbow and snuggled into his chest, his arm rising to hold the small of her back.
“It’s what my brother used to say to me when I told him everything would be ok when my mother disappeared for days at a time. I still can’t lie to him, he can always tell.”
Luka leaned his face into Abby’s hair, inhaling softly, his hand rising to cup the back of her head. “Must be nice, to have someone who understands you that way.”
Abby closed her eyes as she pushed deeper, silencing the alarm bell going off in her head reminding her that she should not get used to him.
“Yeah,” she agreed, “It is. You know, he’s kind of all I have.” Fearful of revealing too much, she changed the subject. “What about you and your brother?”
Luka’s mouth quirked downward in the slightest of frowns. “We used to be close, really close. I mean, we did everything together when we were boys. But uh, the war. The war took everything from everyone and now, we don’t speak except when someone dies.”
Abby placed a hand on his chest. She couldn’t imagine not having Eric. He was the one sure thing in her life and she imagined that after everything he had lost in the war, the breakdown of his relationship with his brother must have just felt like insult to injury. “That must be difficult.”
One of Luka’s shoulders lifted in half a shrug. It was. But he didn’t let it bother him much. “It was. It is. But it’s better than all the arguing we used to do. When I first moved here, he would call me up to just yell. I finally stopped answering.”
Abby rested her hands flat on his chest and titled her chin downwards on the back of her palms, looking up at him with a mischievous, tender glint in her eye. “Oh, so that’s it? Stubborn? I’ve been trying for weeks to find a fault with you.”
Luka’s eyebrows rose, a small smile forming on his face. “Have you now?”
“Mmm-hmm.” She had often found herself staring at him with discerning glances, trying to figure him all out—where the cracks formed or where the landmines were buried.
He ran a thumb along her cheek. “May I ask why?”
Abby gave a half shrug of her own. She had no desire to say it out loud, but she knew she had already opened the gate. “I guess…” she hesitated, unsure of how the words felt on her lips and even more unsure of how they would sound to his ears. “It’s because guys like you don’t happen to girls like me,” the words came out in a rush.
Luka’s confusion was evident. “Guys like me?” he queried. He had no idea what she meant, or why it seemed she was always selling herself short.
“You know, hot, successful, the ones with their shit together. I keep waiting for you to tell me you’ve got a storage unit or something with bodies in freezers.”
Luka’s face looked even more perplexed, passing confusion and straight to what the fuck territory.
“It’s a joke,” she told him with a large grin.
He shook his head, rolling his eyes at her dark sense of humor. “No bodies in freezers, I can assure you. And you may need an ophthalmology consult if you think I have my shit together. Stick around, you’ll see all the bad.”
“Is that an invitation?” she quipped.
“If you want it to be. But I’m warning you may not like what you see.”
Neither will you, she told him silently as she smiled. “I don’t know. If there’s not bodies in the freezers, what, do you enjoy torturing puppies or something?”
Luka scoffed. “Was your ex a serial killer?”
Abby planted a kiss to the side of his slightly stubbled chin. “Not that I knew of, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”
Luka smiled. “You’re too hard on yourself,” he told her as he lifted her face up to maintain eye contact. Abby sighed as the warmth of his palm flooded the entire side of her face. “About the central line, about the belly tap. About your ex. You’re not a doctor until you’ve killed someone, you know? I didn’t understand that until…until it happened to me. And you’re not the first person to fall for the wrong person.”
Abby appreciated him trying to cheer her up, even if it was, at that point, a pointless endeavor. She smiled and silently thought to herself that he would not have such a gracious outlook if he knew the real her
“You killed a patient?” she asked, settling for the least emotionally taxing way to continue their conversation.
Luka nodded slowly, his hair dragging along Abby’s pillow. “Yeah. My ICU rotation. Chronic pain management, terminal colon cancer. I didn’t see on the chart that they were on antidepressants and pushed fentanyl. Two hours later, he was dead. Serotonin syndrome.”
Abby stared at him for a long moment, watching the haunting memory play out over his face. “What happened?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking.
“Well, the resident got more heat than I did, but that didn’t change how guilty I felt. Went home and cried for two hours. Danielja thought I’d gone crazy. But to this day, I always read a chart twice.”
Abby looked up at him. “You were already married when you were a student?”
“Yeah, I got married right after high school.”
Abby almost asked if it was a shotgun wedding, but then she realized it would be in poor taste, so she shifted gears. “Right after? That would’ve been scary as hell for me.”
He chuckled. It had been scary. And he told her so. “But we had to get married, I couldn’t wait much longer.”
“To be a husband?” Abby couldn’t believe any eighteen-year-old male was that much of a romantic.
He gave half a smile. “Well, I knew I wanted to marry her, but um, she was very, very devout. Took her faith very seriously. Even when she was little. That meant we waited, and I mean we’d started dating when we were sixteen and by the time we were eighteen, I was losing my mind.”
A pause followed. Abby let his words wash over her. “Wow,” she said finally, somewhat taken aback. His wife really had been everything to him. “You really had the whole storybook.”
Luka shifted. “Almost.”
Abby’s eyes grew large and wide as she realized what he meant. Searching for a safer subject, even she was surprised by the next question she posed. “So, you were a virgin on your wedding night?”
Even in the nighttime darkness of her apartment, she could see the blush on his face. “Yeah,” he admitted, shaking his head.
“That’s probably the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said honestly.
Feeling slightly embarrassed, Luka heard her words with some surprise. “Really?
he asked.
She nodded, her hair rubbing against his chest. “Yeah. The most impressive thing I can say about mine is he was on the lacrosse team. I was sixteen. Howie.”
“Howie? That’s…a name?”
Abby laughed. “Yeah, we were both petrified and it lasted 20 seconds.”
“Seconds? Is that why you always expect to be disappointed?”
Abby took a sharp breath. Luka hadn’t meant to strike such a nerve. He had said it lightly, but he realized it did not strike Abby so. He felt her stiffen in his arms and a long moment of silence passed. He waited, practically holding his breath, wondering if he had pushed too far. He was just about to apologize when she spoke
“No,” she said finally, her voice hushed and almost forlorn. She wondered when he had picked up on that. “That had started long before. Although I don’t think Howie helped. But he was a nervous wreck, so I can’t blame the poor kid.”
“I can’t blame him for being nervous. You would do to that to any guy.” She blushed and dipped her head, unsure of how to respond. “Lacrosse?” he added when it seemed safe to speak again.
“Yeah, I had a thing for jocks. And now I guess I have a thing for docs.”
Their eyes met and he noted the question in hers. There was something she wanted to say.
“What?” he prodded.
“Is this…stupid, what we’re doing?”
He thought for a brief second. “Objectively? Yes.”
“I don’t want to get used to you,” she admitted. “Maybe that’s why I’m trying to find something wrong.”
“Abby listen…if anything happens….if this blows up, I’ll take the heat.”
She looked at him warily. “That would be terribly unfair. I mean, I started it.”
“Yeah, but I’m an Attending and therefore I’m the authority figure and you’ve got your whole career to think of. I can just go back to moonlighting if need be.”
Abby appraised his profile in the darkness. “You’ve been moonlighting now for what, seven years?”
“Yeah.”
“Was there never a place you wanted to stay?”
“Not until recently.”
“Didn’t want to close another storybook?”
It was Luka’s turn to stiffen at Abby’s words. But he recovered much quicker than she did. After a pregnant pause, he sighed. “Didn’t want to start one,” he admitted. “Or at least nothing and no one made me feel like…I could.”
The implication was not lost on Abby, and she suddenly felt they were in way, way too deep. She was not used to being someone’s raison d'etre. She was usually quite the opposite.
“You shouldn’t want to get used to me either, Luka.”
“Is that a warning?”
“I should have probably told you a long time ago, but I’m disaster.”
“I lived through a few of those. Trust me, you’re not.”
She laughed before planting a long kiss to his lips. “It’s getting late, let’s go to bed,” she said as she hopped up and turned to walk away.
He recognized her trying to end the conversation too quickly, something she did often, if ever they started sharing too much.
It would’ve been easier if they had not admitted that their feelings ran deeper than sex on a Saturday night. But they could not un-ring the bell. It seemed to him that Abby was trying to keep them away from the bell ropes as much as possible. And he was trying to respect that.
He soon followed and found her looking out of her bedroom window at the watching the Blue Line train go by, the Skyline westward in the distance.
“Hey,” he said as he came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and lightly kissing her shoulder, listening to her exhale he did, before resting his chin on her shoulder. “I know a way we can test if you’re actually disaster.”
She let out a light puff of air. “Do you, now?”
“The guy I sold my boat to? He’s in the Caribbean for the summer and he’s being delayed. He called and asked if I would get the boat out of dry dock and set it out in the harbor for him. I figured maybe we could have a little barbecue, officially celebrate spring arriving.”
Abby rotated in his arms. “I feel like April is too early to celebrate spring in Chicago but 1sounds nice. I haven’t been on a boat since a kegger in college.”
He moved a hair behind her ear. “Well, I figure if we spend the night on the boat and we’re still floating in the morning, then it’s decided: you’re not a disaster.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Spend the night? Aren’t you being a little presumptuous, Dr. Kovac?”
He rubbed his lips together as his eyes smiled at her. “Am I?” he asked his voice, rising a tad higher.
She stood on her toes and leaned into his face, her eyes glancing over his face hungrily. “Maybe,” she said before kissing his lips. She pulled away. “Maybe not.” She kissed him again and pulled away, but not for long.
Luka clung to her waist and kissed her again, bringing her in closer.
When they finally pulled away Abby sighed to herself. “All right, one boat ride it is. I can’t promise I won’t capsize it.”
“Don’t worry, I’m an excellent swimmer, just hold on tight to me.”
Abby sighed as she felt his lips pressing down on hers again. She really didn’t want to get used to him, but she also wasn’t ready to say no to any of this.
And as one kiss turned to another and turned to another, she suddenly could not remember why she had to in the first place.
As morning rolled around, they both were hesitant to untangle themselves from each other’s arms. But considering they had no choice, they reluctantly began what had became their routine.
When they were spending the night at Abby’s and they both had to work, Luka would leave first, usually before dawn, but not before making Abby breakfast. He would then circle back to his hotel, on the El, drop his things off and head in.
The reverse happened when they were at the hotel. They would order an early morning breakfast, Luka would drive Abby home and then head into work.
Night shifts were much easier as no one really thought much of anyone grabbing a ride here or there especially not in the slow-ending winter of Chicago.
When Luka was running the floor, he always assigned Abby to someone else. When they did get paired together, they tried their best to be professional.
They made it a point of sneaking through the East Wing of the hospital (which was empty and had been scheduled for demolition for nearly three years) to the Good Shepherd Cafeteria where the food was much better, grab a bite and some coffee and then head back in.
If it was too busy to head to GS, one of them would go into Doc’s, grab coffee and if the coast was clear (ie no one they knew there) they would sit. If it was crawling with the County conglomerate, they would end up sharing a coffee or grabbing one from the Roach Coach before heading back in.
They, in short, had it down to a science.
It was fact that had brought peace to Abby’s mind.
About a week had gone by since she’d lost her patient and she was feeling better about herself.
The fact that her and Luka seemed to be avoiding detection in a place that seemed to run on gossip Sonar also made her feel better. Everyone else was apparently too preoccupied.
There were whispers that Carter was acting strange, but she guessed that was supposed to be expected with everything he had gone through.
If that wasn’t enough , County was of course, being County.
That day, as Luka only seemed to be dealing with patients every hour and fifteen minutes, sneaking off to the Good Shepherd cafeteria at an off time was no problem. But as it was a little warmer that day, they decided to go through the park.
“We can’t seem to give this kidney away,” he muttered in frustration as he took a sip of coffee.
“I thought Mr. Fletcher was supposed to get it?” Abby asked as she turned hers around in her hands. Mr. Fletcher, the perpetual dialysis case who everyone was sick of. The man had been sick for a very long time. No one was quite sure how long, but he had all the bitterness of a 1000 men twice as sick, so they hazarded a very long time.
Luka cocked his head grimly. “He was, but he developed an unstable angina. Can’t risk the surgery.”
Abby stared up at Luka’s slightly stressed face. “The next one wasn’t eligible either?”
Luka shook his head, his eyes glancing up the sky. “She was. Until she found out she’s pregnant. She had to make a choice. She chose the baby. She’d been trying to get pregnant…even though she’s been on the UNOS list for years.”
Abby took a large gulp of coffee. “That’s very brave.” She couldn’t imagine having a baby while in renal failure. She could hardly imagine having a baby at all. Motherhood seemed like an abstract concept on the best of days.
Luka looked down at Abby and smiled. “Maybe she doesn’t want to waste time. She realizes she doesn’t have it to waste.”
“But you managed to find a new candidate?”
Luka nodded. “A young guy, so no chance of pregnancy. I don’t think he’s going to develop a heart murmur, but you never know. Lydia’s working him up now. What about your day?”
Abby scoffed. “Oh, I’m just trying to avoid Romano,” he said wincing. I somehow got caught up in the middle of him tearing Dr. Benton and Cleo a new one. Something about a bounceback and a wrong prescription. He seems like he’s on a rager.”
Luka rolled his eyes. “He always is.” If Abby was the best thing about being full-time at County, Romano was certainly the worst.
He found himself leaning in to kiss her—something they made a point of not doing in public, but at that moment, he could not find cause to care.
Saved by the proverbial bell, his pager buzzed.
Leaning back on his heels, he pulled away from Abby, a guilty glowing smile plastered on his face as he remembered himself.
Checking the pager, he sighed. “I guess Lydia’s done with the workup. I better head back.”
“I’ll follow in a second,” Abby said quietly.
She watched him go, seriously wondering when she was going to figure out what was wrong with him.
Height, hair, handsome, hung and a little haunted. What was the catch?
There had to be one. Every fatalistic bone in Abby’s body told her there had to be one. She was too old to believe that Disney princes existed in real life. But as she watched him walk away, though she could think of nothing to fault him with, she knew there had to be something wrong with him.
The question was what and when would she figure out what it was.
To her chagrin, it did not take long.
Their evening had started perfectly fine. They were on the lake, and although it still felt cooler there was a stillness to the night that made it seem peaceful and calm.
“I’ve never been on the lake at night,” she told him.
“Hmm?” he looked up at her, clearly distracted. He was lighting the camp stove which was acting as a fireplace and a stove for their evening and he was grilling steak.
He had been quiet most of the night. And she thought she knew why.
“Luka,” she said slowly. “You can’t really be upset that a guy in renal failure got a kidney.”
The tale of the revolving renal failure had spread around the hospital with the speed that most things did, which is to say, life wildfire.
Luka only grumbled in reply, the whole thing had been a test on his nerves.
“Luka?” she prodded again. “How is that a bad thing? He’s got a new lease on life and another human didn’t die in vain. The kidney didn’t go to waste.”
Luka rolled his eyes. “We don’t know that,” he said, sharply as he flipped a steak. “The guy is going to burn right through it. In 6 months, he’ll be back in renal failure and then not only will someone have died in vain, three other people will still be on the UNOS list, and all the money and time spent procuring the kidney and giving it to him will be wasted.”
Abby stared at him for a moment. “Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on him? I mean, addiction is a disease.”
“He said it himself, he’s not an addict.”
Abby rubbed her lips together, she had not been prepared for how much that stung. “All addicts say that,” she told him quietly.
He looked up at her, something in her tone giving him pause. She was staring at him, something to akin to displeasure growing in her eyes.
“That kid is doubly sick. And now he has a chance. That’s good, right?” she asked him, folding her arms.
“I just don’t think Corday made the right judgement call.”
That crawled up Abby’s spine.
“Last time I checked,” came her angry reply, in a tone icier than the lake they were floating on, the judges are at the Daley Center. Our job is to save lives, not to judge them.”
She turned away from the dismayed confusion in his eyes and stormed away to the other side of the boat to watch the dark water float southward.
Uncertain of what he had done wrong, Luka turned the grill down and walked over to her.
He placed his arms on her shoulders. “Are you mad at me?” his voice was gentle and soft.
She turned around in his arms, her frowning eyes melting ever so slightly under the alarmed look in his. “I…” she paused, realizing she had revealed a struck nerve. “I just don’t think someone getting a second chance is a bad thing.”
Luka sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t exactly mean it that way.”
Abby scoffed as she turned around in his arms as they encircled her again. She placed her arms over his wrists. “Yes, you did.” The bite in her voice was gone, replaced more with subtle, affectionate annoyance.
He sighed and rolled his eyes a little self-deprecatingly. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s just I saw a woman in turmoil, agonizing over whether to have a baby or get a kidney. And with her renal failure…the odds are stacked up against her. And even Mr. Fletcher, who’s got a major insect in his anus--,”
“Bug up his ass,” Abby corrected. “And I think he has an entire hornet’s nest.”
Luka laughed darkly. “He’s been on the list since 1992. You know as cranky as he is, he just wants to be well. Today was supposed to be his chance.”
“That doesn’t make his life more valuable than anyone else’s, even if someone hasn’t made the best choices.”
Luka sighed. “I didn’t mean to suggest that. I guess I just…”
“Don’t like the guy? Because he uses drugs?”
“No, not because he knows that at any given moment, someone could die and give his life back to him and he’s on borrowed time—,”
“Using drugs?” Abby offered for him. “Well, now he has a chance now to do better.”
“I love the way you hope,” he told her with a smile.
Abby scoffed. “‘Hope’ is not a word I associate with myself, Luka.”
“That’s ok. I’ll do it for you. Look, we haven’t capsized yet. I guess that means you’re not a disaster.”
Abby smiled to herself and then smiled up at him. “You sound pretty hopeful yourself.”
Their lips touched briefly, the soft moment interrupted by the sizzle of the grill.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Luka cursed as he raced over to the grill to remove the steaks before they became charcoal themselves.
Abby laughed as she watched him quickly try to recover the meat. “I think I saved them, just a little more medium on one side,” he called out.
She grinned, but it didn’t totally reach her eyes. His comments had unsettled her slightly. He didn’t know she was four years sober. He didn’t know she didn’t drink. What would he think of her if he did?
Maybe it was just a Catholic judgement thing. She remembered her grandmother being good for that. Still, she wondered how he would react.
He thought “hope” when he thought of her. Would that change if he knew what a mess she really was?
“Ok, the food’s almost ready, I just need to finish the baked beans,” Luka told her as he came up behind her.
As he spoke, she felt something cold touch her shoulder. She looked up and saw snowflakes falling down over Lake Michigan. She groaned inwardly as the cold white flakes started to cover the deck of the boat.
“Oh, my God, it’s April,” Abby yelled up, cursing Mother Nature.
Luka grabbed a blanket and wrapped them both in it, pulling Abby into his chest.
“Does this constitute as disaster?” Abby asked as she snuggled into his warmth.
“Not even close,” he said with a smile. “This is just Chicago.”
He leaned in to kiss her lips again. She was hopeful, even if she didn’t see it. She had given him something to hope for, something to long for. He knew it was dangerous..
This was everything he told himself he was not going to do. He had gone from moonlighting, hopping from place to place, to accepting a full-time position at the one place he had ever walked into that was more broken than he was. But that had just been work.
This was personal. Abby had caught hold of him in a way that no had since—
“Is the food ready?” Abby interrupted his thoughts.
“Oh, the beans,” Luka said with a smile. “Come on. Let’s eat.”
They gathered up the food and headed below deck. Abby raced down the stairs carrying a cast iron skillet full of green beans and Luka came down holding the steak.
They turned to face each other in the small cabin of the boat, they both started laughing.
Abby walked over to him, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck and dusted the snow out of his hair.
A long, slow passionate kiss followed.
Luka felt his heart pounding slow and steady. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in, as if he did not want to let her go. He realized that he didn’t.
An emotion he recognized but did not himself register floated to the top of his brain. I’m not. I can’t be, he told himself even as his lips refused to part from hers.
Abby, for her part, was also trying to control the deep emotion she felt, but it was tinged with a hint of fear.
She didn’t know if she had ever longed or dreamed of someone looking at her the way Luka did. But now, she knew the warmth of his gaze, a sensation that reminded her of sinking into a jacuzzi—soothing, all-consuming, and impossible to ignore. That look from him made her heart flutter and her fears momentarily fade away, even as she tried to hold on to her composure.
Would it be the same if he knew her darkest secrets? Would his eyes still look at her as if she was sunlight peaking through the clouds of a miserable, rainy day?
Ever since that fateful night, she had told herself a thousand times over not to get used to him. But as she stood on her tiptoes, her lips committing his to muscle memory, she realized she had not listened.
She remembered swimming in Raystown Lake during her college days, that feeling of being carried and buoyed by the water and before she realized, she was farther from the shore than she intended.
At this point, it felt like she was halfway to the Atlantic.
But if he knew was was a trainwreck she really was, how she had killed her first marriage, how she managed to ruin everything, and God forbid, if he ever met her mother…
Could a secret, forbidden relationship have morality clauses? More importantly, if necessity demanded it, could she let him go?
The questions swirled in her brain, but then his hands gripped her hips and thought, as if often did, parted from her.
Two days later, Abby was having dinner with Janet, out near her house in Evanston. She had reluctantly left Luka’s hotel room a few hours earlier. He was on nights the rest of the week and they had most reluctantly parted.
Abby got there first and was immediately seated as the restaurant, a little boutique seafood spot, was practically empty with a recent cold snap sending the majority of the population ,who had so wanted to believe the False Spring of the last few weeks was reality, back into their radiator-heated walkups.
She was just taking a look at the menu when Janet came up behind her.
“Hey, there you are,” she said with a warm smile as Abby hopped out of her seat to greet her with a hug.
“Hey, Janet,” Abby returned. She needed advice. And although she was risking huge scolding from her sponsor, not to mention former supervisor, she couldn’t think of anyone else to ask.
“I’m so glad you called. I have been looking for a reason to come here,” Janet said as she sat down and picked up her menu. “What do you think, scallop pasta or surf and turf?”
“Surf and turf sounds good. I was thinking the salmon.”
“Surf and turf it is.”
The waiter, a scrawny kid maybe in his early 20s with frosted tips approached their table. “Can I interest you ladies in our wine list?” he asked.
“Just water,” they both said automatically. They ordered their food and both made significant inroads on the bread and butter.
“So, why did you want to meet up?” Janet asked after she finished buttering her second piece of bread. “Everything ok?” there was an edge of concern in her voice that gave Abby pause.
“Well,” she began slowly. That was certainly a loaded question. As far as her sobriety went, everything was fine. As far as her training was concerned, everything was fine except her unpaid bill. “I’m fine,” she added quickly when she noticed Janet’s eyebrows rising in alarm. “It’s just…” she trailed off. “Ok,” she said with a sigh, dropping her bread back on to its plate. “Do you remember the ‘fun’ Dana told you I was having?”
Janet nodded. “Let me guess: Not fun anymore?”
Abby rolled her eyes upwards and sighed. “Too much fun. So much fun, it’s…serious,” the word tasted like ashes as Abby said it, but she could think of no other term to describe it.
Janet’s eyebrows raised. “Is that a bad thing?” she offered with a shrug. You’re four years in. Kept your plants alive, well at least that first one. You’re in your third year of training. Everything you’ve set your mind to you, you’ve accomplished. And it’s not Richard, right?”
“No,” came her digusted reply. “He’s…an Attending.”
Janet’s eyes bugged out of her head. “At…County?”
Abby sucked her lips in and nodded sheepishly. “Mmm-hmm,”
“Abigail, if you tell me you’re fucking Mark Greene, I swear to God I am going to carve you up into little pieces with my fish knife.”
“What the hell?? No, it’s not Dr. Greene. He’s dating Dr. Corday.”
Janet’s jaw dropped. “Really? God, she could do so much better.”
“Well, you know, maybe she appreciates the basement more than the attic.”
Janet nearly choked on a sip of water. “Abby, I have been looking forward to this food all day, don’t make me lose my appetite. But back to you. So, who is it?”
“Dr. Kovac,” Abby said, ignoring eye contact with Janet in favor of swirling the ice around in her water goblet.
“The new guy? The tall one with the accent?”
Abby nodded. “The very one.”
Janet cracked a smile. “Well…didn’t see that one coming. I figured he was most likely shacked up with a French supermodel.”
Abby shrugged. “You would think, right?” “But, no he’s not. He’s…well, he’s kind of been through stuff and it’s really complicated and I don’t know how to stop it—”
“Do you want to?” Janet asked, calmly.
Abby paused again. The answer was obvious and yet, she almost could not bring herself to say it. “No,” she finally admitted. “I don’t. He’s wonderful. But it’s totally against the rules and he doesn’t know.”
“Doesn’t know what?”
“About my drinking or not drinking I guess.”
“Have you…I mean, are you close enough to be on those kinds of open terms?”
“Getting there, I think. Like I said, it’s not just fun.”
“Are you scared to tell him? Because you know, it’s something you should be upfront with right away. The longer you wait—,”
“The longer you wait,” Abby finished. “I know. I guess I just…it was supposed to be a one-time thing, and it then became an all-the-time thing and it was nice having a clean slate with someone and now—,”
“You don’t want to sully that clean slate?”
“He tells me I’m hopeful. He tells me I’m beautiful. But he’s a little, I don’t know, He’s a doctor. He’s a man. He’s Catholic.”
“You think he would judge you.”
“He was pissed that Corday gave a new kidney to a coke user.”
Janet cocked her head. “Well, based on the circumstances, I might be pissed off about that, too. But I see how that would alarm you. Just talk to him, Abby. If it’s as serious as you say, he may understand. He’s a doctor. He knows addiction is a disease.”
“Wait, are you saying that you don’t have any reservations about this? You’re not going to tell me that what I’m doing is risky and the whole spiel?”
Janet seemed to mull Abby’s words over in her head. “I didn’t say that. As your sponsor, I’m telling you overcomplicated relationships are never what you need. Your relationship with yourself and your recovery is complicated enough, so there’s your word of caution. As a physician, he’s an Attending and this liaison could jeopardize both of your careers. And you have worked really, really hard to get where you are now. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. So, as a woman? My advice: sit on his fucking face.”
The few guests who were also in the restaurant suddenly turned their heads in response to Abby laughing too loud at Janet’s frankness. But it didn’t matter.
“I did that this morning,” she told her when she stopped laughing. “I have no regrets.”
Janet raised her water goblet. “Cheers, babe. But be careful.”
Abby raised hers. “I will. Cheers.”