Damage Undone



Chapter 2. The Aftermath





Elizabeth woke up slowly.

She didn’t open her eyes – she lingered, instead, in the cozy feeling of a healing sleep. Her surroundings seeped into her senses with languid, delicious slowness. She felt cold air on one side of her face, a cushioning warmth on the other. Cotton-clothed flesh cradled her cheek, supported her body. Unfamiliar, compact strength oddly accommodating to her shape. Her hand was resting on ribs she could distinguish through cloth, and an arm stretched around her shoulders, encircling, embracing.

Romano.

Elizabeth jerked upright, gasping, and his arm fell down behind her, rustling past her back. She’d, horrifyingly, had one arm flung over his stomach in an almost-embrace and she pulled her hand away, her face heating up furiously.

Her muscles felt liquidated, trembly. She stared at the face beside her. Bristly lashes, a strong nose, a jaw whose outline was craggy and severe, even in sleep. All of his features belied the way it felt to lean against him in a vulnerable moment.

—I slept with Romano, she noticed suddenly, almost giggling with odd, incongruous and totally inappropriate humor.

Then reality followed quickly upon that thought. How could Mark have left her alone for – she checked her watch – five hours? It was past four in the morning, he should be back by now. He should never have left her to seek comfort from the man she had hated, like a comforting habit, for years.

Her anger spilled onto the innocent man still sleeping beside her. What right did he have, anyway, coming in like that? Comforting her? He just reveled in it all, she supposed: his feisty little British protégée snuggling into his chest. Needing him.

(It’s not exactly his fault, a tiny, irritating voice reminded her. You fell into his arms, remember?)

She blushed a little, to think of it – of how Robert must have seen it. And panicked, pulling further away. She could feel the imprint of wrinkled cloth on her cheek and held her hand to it, modestly, as she whispered, “Robert.”

He arched his back as if to stretch himself out and murmured, eyes still closed, “Lizzie.”

Then he woke up. Eyes flying open in realization. “Lizzie!” he repeated, in a rather different tone.

“It’s morning,” she said, looking around at the slowly lightening PICU. “I – you – we slept through the night.” Her eyes dared him even to think of gloating.

He took the dare. “I must say, I always thought my first night with you would be slightly different,” he said groggily.

“Honestly—” she started, flying into a fury intensified by her embarrassment.

His face was sheepish. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he muttered, giving her a guilty little look. “I was going to wake you up after awhile.”

She wasn’t sure she believed him. It would be just like Robert to jump at the chance to be near her, to hold her as long as he could.

“I feel so stupid right now,” she muttered.

“I can’t imagine why,” said he, amusedly.

Gloating again. Elizabeth mustered the most evil glare she possessed, and he didn’t quake – any more than she ever quaked at his glares.

But something else did flicker into his expression, and he looked down at Ella. “She looks a little better.”

Elizabeth nodded, trying to smile, her concern for her baby flooding back over her. When even Romano was being nice to her, it only reminded her of everything terrible that was happening. She reached down, stroking the round pale cheek.

“You seem better,” he offered. “Less tired.”

That sounded suspiciously like another jab about falling asleep. Elizabeth said icily, “I’m fine.” In fact, those few hours of sleep had chased away the fever and nausea. She was only conscious of a vague ache in her head.

“I, uh—” He looked down at the paper bags laden with greasy, cold Chinese food and took a deep breath, almost as if he were nervous. “I’ll throw these out. They shouldn’t be in here anyway.”

“Don’t worry, you can’t get in trouble for it,” she said tiredly. “You are the boss.”

Robert quirked an eyebrow. “I was starting to wonder if you knew that.”

“I prefer to ignore it.”

He departed with a little, sympathetic smile, leaving Elizabeth to her daughter. Trying to calm her swirling feelings, Elizabeth reached over the sidebars to lay her index finger in the tiny palm that lay face up and limp on the bed. Usually, even in sleep, the little fingers would instinctively curl up at her touch and enclose her finger in a trusting grasp. Today Ella’s hand was still and unresponsive to hers.

*

The light pierced Rachel’s eyelids, and she woke up to find herself still fully clothed, lying on top of the covers on her bed. She remembered nothing of last night after one in the morning, when Dad finally got her into the car and drove her home.

Gingerly she lifted herself up and swung her legs over the bed, testing fatigued muscles. It was nine o’clock. Sweet. No one expected her to go to school today. It was pointless, anyway, and she was tired as hell. All that emotional shit was kind of draining on her resources.

Rachel pulled her new cell phone out of her purse and sent a text message to Andy. He’d get out of class somehow and amuse her for the morning, till she absolutely had to go visit the hospital. Take her mind off things – in the way only Andy could. Thank god for boys to distract her from all the boredom and dreariness in the world.

*

Mark approached the PICU, nervous. His watch said four-thirty: he’d been away for five hours.

When he sidled into the room, the first thing he noticed was an odd, earthy, salty smell. He sniffed a bit, wondering.

Elizabeth turned to see him, looking wan and, as he’d feared, chilly. She was startlingly like her mother when she did that.

“How is she?” he asked, timidly approaching her. There was an extra chair by the bed, but he didn’t sit down, afraid to seem too cavalier about the whole situation.

She shook her head, mouth compressed tightly. “I don’t know.”

Tentatively he touched Elizabeth’s face. “You seem tired,” he said. “Have you slept?”

At that question, Elizabeth flushed scarlet. “Uh—I dozed off a few minutes.”

“That’s okay,” he said, vaguely puzzled. “You need your rest. Are you feeling better?”

“I’ve been able to keep some food down,” she said, her face still flushed.

“That’s good. Want me to take over?”

“I’m staying here,” she insisted. “Mark—”

He braced himself.

“You need to do something about Rachel,” she said.

“I had no other choice—”

“This is exactly why she treats you like a doormat,” she said impatiently, “it’s because you act like one. You just sit back while she drags you away from your baby, last night of all nights – Ella might have had a seizure, Mark! She might have died while you were fetching Rachel from her precious Starbucks.”

This probably wasn’t the right time to point out that it actually wasn’t Starbucks, it was a Turkish café. Mark stuttered and then managed the sentence, “Rachel’s in pain, too.”

“Oh, yes, the guilt is obviously killing her,” Elizabeth said with immeasurable scorn. “What took you so long? You’ve been gone since eleven-thirty, Mark!”

“She was hungry,” he said. “I let her finish eating at the café.”

“For four hours?”

“I drove her home and took a shower – and picked up some clothes for you.” He’d laid the sleepy Rachel on her bed as if she were still a child, tucked her in, turned off the alarm so she wouldn’t need to go to school. She stirred and murmured a name, Andrew, reminding him afresh how far she’d grown up without any help from him at all.

Elizabeth blinked and broke eye contact with him, turning back to look at Ella. “That girl is going to keep leeching off your sympathy until there’s nothing left,” she said with icy softness.

“I love her. She’s my daughter.”

Elizabeth’s face registered irony at that word, daughter, but she refrained from speaking. After awhile, Mark sat down, resolving to be careful around Elizabeth for awhile. No talking till the doctor came and they decided to extubate. Then he obligingly volunteered to go get a breast pump for Elizabeth and went downstairs, relieved that he hadn’t made Elizabeth mad again.

Only when he was well out of sight of his wife did he allow himself to feel a surge of loneliness. They had hardly been able to celebrate when Ella drew that all-important first breath: a few kind words for each other could hardly bridge the ugly rift that had been growing, if he was honest, for months now and that lingered under their pathetic attempts to whitewash it for a moment.

Mark had always found relationships difficult, as well as rare. Love was rocky territory for him, fraught with the daunting prospect of conflict and his own torturous self-doubt, and he now felt lost in mazes of guilt and obligation and reproach.

Not like last night, when there had been a friendship he could hold onto, a person he could reach for blindly. His old friend, his dearest friend.

The soft smile that spread on his lips at the thought only widened when he saw Susan’s face down the hall.

She greeted him warmly, although her eyes were heavily shadowed with lack of sleep. As they walked down the hall, he told her the good news about Ella.

“If she’s seizure-free for two days, we’re in the clear,” he finished.

Mark felt her eyes on him while he assiduously searched the supply cabinet. He felt shy about last night, about confessing his guilt to her like that. It seemed like he should have been saying it to Elizabeth.

“That’s great, Mark,” she said. Then, “What are you looking for?”

“Breast pump for Elizabeth.”

Oops, he thought immediately. Too much information again. He could almost imagine her answer dryly, “Sexy,” in that funny sarcastic way of hers, if they had been in the mood to joke.

When he’d found the pump Mark turned fully towards her. “Thanks for covering my shift,” he said.

“You need to be with your child,” she said, shrugging it off.

He flushed. Was that meant as a reproach?

Susan realized what he was thinking and corrected herself quickly. “I mean—you know what I mean.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” She must think he was a bad father too.

The day passed. Mark found himself sucked back into working the ER, Elizabeth’s accusing glares notwithstanding. He was resigned: you couldn’t escape this job. It consumed you, swallowed you whole. Susan’s compassionate gaze told him she understood how everything could pull you in different directions, how you could stand in one place and feel yourself both crushed and overextended by too many pressures to count.

Time passed colorlessly, today’s melancholy only a sadder version of business as usual after the high drama of yesterday. Mark worked dutifully. He smiled dully – at patients, at well-meaning coworkers. He juggled work and worry for Ella and fights with Elizabeth and tried ineffectually to defend his forgiveness for Rachel against Elizabeth’s mysterious, unreasonable wrath. Colorless – until, trying to comfort Rachel, to dissuade her from leaving, he felt his teeth close with a sharp stab of pain on his tongue.





Chapter 3: Bite Your Tongue