Yuletide fic repost: "The Price of Admission" [E.R.]
Title: The Price of Admission
Characters: Ray Barnett, Neela Rasgotra, ER ensemble
Pairings: Ray/Neela, Gallant/OFC
Wordcount: ~ 9700 words
Beta: Thank you very much, millari, and also to daybreak777 and all the others who gave me very useful recs and pointers when I asked about movie recs for the "pretend relationship" trope.
Summary: Everything is not right in the world of Ray Barnett. Not only did the woman he loves recently move out of their shared apartment, but as of today, all the ER knows about how they had a torrid affair while she was married to another man... Everybody, that is, except Ray.
Fact was that I hadn't gotten all that much sleep that night. I mean, I know - what's new. I was an R2 at a County ER at the time, it wasn't like I didn't live on Red Bull and the not-so-pleasant fear of accidentally killing people. But I'd tossed and turned all night. So I wasn't quite awake when I walked into the ambulance bay that shift, and that accounted for how I didn't immediately notice that something was off.
Say, how Jane was kinda short with me when I joined her at the gurney of a heart attack the paramedics were delivering just now, wrinkly old guy who was actually proud of the fact that he'd had three - yes, three - of them before. Malik was on a first-name basis with him at this point.
"You need any help?" I asked when Jane veiled him off.
"You need help," she stated rather calmly. "Jerk." And off she was, leaving me looking after her with amazement. But hell, weird is the middle name of everything that happens in that hospital. People get funny towards the end of a night shift. Plus, this was Jane.
Things got a little more obvious in the form of Clemente stopping me at Admit when I had a look at the board on my way to the lockers to assess the work load of the day. Speaking of weird, Clemente had been back on the duty roster for a week or so since the whole gig where he'd shown up with a bullet wound and crunked. Jane had nothing on him.
I might have retreated a step just out of instinct. I don't like people who cover up their drug habits with lies when they're supposed to be in charge.
"Hey X-Ray." Clemente leaned over the desk and grinned at me through the gum he was chewing, except for how there was nothing happy on his face. "I thought you and I should have a little talk."
Morris and Chuny were there at Admit, I think, Frank too, and they all looked up in interest.
I mentally checked if I'd recently dumped any patients on interns or gotten someone killed.
Strangely enough, I was pretty sure I hadn't.
It was hard to stifle a yawn. "Something the matter?"
"Oh, you know, I've just been thinking," Clemente said. "A week ago, I come back here, you treat me like shit. And that's okay, you know, that's really okay. I get that. It's all about trust, right? I let you down. You'd thought I'd lied and I can respect a doc who doesn't take shit like that from his attendings. I can use a guy like that on my team."
I raised a very tired eyebrow. "Does this have a point?"
"All I'm saying, man," Clemente said with a shrug, "is I should have known it was all just a load of crap."
Man, I was just exhausted. I had no idea what he was talking about. Clemente pushed himself off the desk and stalked around it, bomb-before-explosion style. Poking me in the chest. I frowned.
"Let me make one thing clear, Ray. I don't appreciate a double standard. I don't appreciate it at all. You expect people to be honest, you don't go around asking people for favors every two minutes without having the decency of telling them the truth!" His voice had risen until he was shouting, poking his finger against my chest with every word. Before I could come up with an answer - one other than asking if he wanted me to call psych - he'd turned around and stalked away.
A question mark, my face was it.
"Well, that was a little harsh," Morris commented conversationally.
"One way to put it." I turned to throw the others a question. "Anybody know what that was about?"
Funny thing was, turned out later that Doc Exótico had been needing a psych consult, and his little clinically paranoid explosion had only so much to do with me. Something about stalking and dead fish. Yeah, compared to some stuff that went down in that ER, my story is more like something you'd tell little kids before they go to bed.
Take Morris who - for a reason nobody ever explained to me - was wearing an Armani suit.
"I'm just saying," he said. "It's not like you and Clemente are close or anything, right? Not like you and me. I mean, I like to think of us as friends, Ray." Walking up to me, he threw an arm around my shoulder despite of how I tried to convey with my eyes what I thought of that. "Now I think you and I need to go fetch a cup of coffee together, clear the air, talk everything through."
"Talk what through?" I asked carefully, wondering if I'd reach my locker before Kovac could notice that I hadn't picked up any charts yet.
"About you and Neela, of course."
"Uhm, I think we had that talk on Tuesday, man."
Automatically, I stiffened. I hadn't liked the talk on Tuesday so much. Started with the fact that it had been where I found out that the whole ER had assumed I'd been sleeping with Neela while we'd lived together, right up to when she'd suddenly gotten hitched to Gallant. Ended with how I had come home that night to find her in the throes of moving out. She hadn't even waited to find a new place. She hadn't even wanted me to find out before she was gone.
And just thinking of her again made something in my throat close up. Goddammit.
"I do indeed remember that talk," Morris replied easily, arm still slung around my shoulder as if we were best buddies. "Which is why today, we'll do the version of it where you, you know, don't lie." His smile broadened. "It's alright, Ray, tell Uncle Archie. You can give me all the slinky details now, because we know."
"Neela told us all about the affair you had while she was with Gallant," Chuny supplied with a friendly smile, as if she was meaning to let me off a hook.
Just served to make me wonder who was hallucinating - them or me.
"I beg your pardon?" A total lack of understanding apparently makes you fall back on what your mother has taught you about being polite. Next thing I'd start producing hankies.
I mean, I heard the words and all, and they just made no sense.
"Neela told us," Morris repeated in a placating tone of voice. "It's alright. I understand how you decided to lie to us for the time being, considering the circumstances..."
"Natural instinct to hide your sins," Frank quipped.
"But it's alright now," Morris continued. "I mean, with the annulment and all." His smile was genuine, that was the bizarre part. He looked like he actually believed those words coming out of his mouth. "Man, you must be so excited. Let me tell you from my own experience, fatherhood is so great. You're gonna love it. And hey, you know what?" His eyes were shining with joy. "Our kids could have play-dates! We could invite Abby's, too!"
That was it. I shook him off, stumbling away from them to seek safety from the distance.
Morris was still beaming, Chuny's face was one of rapt curiosity and Frank looked like he was ready to take notes.
I blinked.
"Are you all on meth?" I asked carefully.
The expectancy on Chuny's face grew.
I sighed, rubbing my eyes. Thinking that I should have gone to law school after all. Looking at the madhouse I worked in, who cared about having to wear ties?
"Alright," I said, because what the hell. No such thing as privacy at this place. "I'm not having an affair with Neela." Don't you wish. "Never had one, never will." God knew she had side-stepped my attempt to kiss her, or, hell, stay friends. We hadn't in actuality talked since she'd left. "Whoever told you we're having a thing has been fucking with you, alright? We don't even live together anymore. If she's pregnant, which I doubt..." Guess whose condom supply had been used up while Gallant was around. "...it's gotta be Gallant's..."
"I am so, so sorry that I told them without warning you." The loud and clear and smooth announcement cut right through my speech.
My hand, moving to rub my eyes again - I really needed some sleep - froze, and a second later, I looked up. My first reaction was just to the fact that it was Neela, talking to me, coming towards me like she meant business. My heart might have sped up. But then I grew aware of the words and - the hell?
I believe that psych calls this a dissociative stupor.
"I should absolutely have talked to you before I told them about us," Neela said primly, fierce tiny thing that she was, hair open and falling onto the blue scrubs, which - bizarrely - were covered in a sizable patch of clotting blood. Trauma. She must have started early. Still looked stunning, I noted despite the confusion. "But I just couldn't wait! The annulment is through!" Neela gave me a broad, sociopathic smile and - frosting on the bizarro cake - emanated a completely fake girlish squeal. Then she threw herself into my arms. "I'm so happy!"
Ninety pounds of girl hit me, with a wave of that peach stuff she puts in her hair that always filled the bathroom. My coat was unzipped, and all her body pressed against mine, warm and strong and soft. The impact was so overwhelming that it made me dizzy. The fact that I'd suddenly entered an alternate universe, and that other people were around, didn't so much matter with her cheek pressed against mine.
"Please, please, please play along," she whispered in my ear in her normal voice. "I'll do your next colonoscopy for you, I swear."
Nothing like a rectal to kill the mood.
Forget about my attending going paranoid over dead fish, convict ex-husbands kidnapping nurses, or Pratt finding his chi in Sudan. Or any of the other dozen really crazy things that had happened over the years in that fucking ER. This, hands down, was the most surreal moment of my whole life.
"Your next colonoscopy. Your next five colonoscopies and your next student lecture! I know you hate the student lectures. You always prepare them on breaks." Neela looked at me with wide eyes. "Please, Ray."
"Ah, that would be no, and no."
"You owe me so many favors."
"Not that many, Neela, I don't."
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. It felt like I'd never been so cold.
We'd relocated to Sutures, where Neela had firmly locked the door behind us, and where we were relatively alone apart from a homeless guy sleeping it off with a banana bag. Judging by how his snoring could have substituted for a sub-woofer at a gig of my old band, he wouldn't be joining us any time soon. Pretty much everybody's eyes had followed us when Neela had dragged me here, including exasperated looks by Sam and annoyed ones from Weaver, passing through on her way to her office. I had a strong suspicion that they all thought we'd come here to fuck.
With my head, maybe.
"Explain to me again how exactly everybody needs to think we're a couple expecting a child."
Neela sighed. Drying blood still covering her chest, she was looking stressed and overworked - which made sense considering that she'd apparently spent yesterday running from one registration office to the other. And lying in bed awake herself, most likely, thinking of ways to mess up my life.
"I am so, so sorry," she repeated the hundredth time, sounding more British at every reiteration. I had to squelch a strong urge to step forward and kiss her already. "Truly, Ray, I am. It was the only way I could think to get an annulment." Starting to pace in the small room, she looked like she was getting a headache. Not so much in the mood to offer sympathies, I leaned against the edge of homeless guy's bed. Screw the instincts. Wouldn't happen. "It's just. It all just suddenly happened. I was so unhappy after Michael's parents came to visit, so I moved out, because I thought you and I were the problem but we weren't, and I just felt worse. And Michael, I just had to talk to him, so I called him and we had a conversation. A real conversation. And it turns out that he was just as unhappy!" She shook her head about herself. "I mean, it was a crazy idea to get married. What the hell had we been thinking?"
Rigidly, I stayed where I was.
"And suddenly he was telling me that he had met this woman..."
"Soldier from his unit, yes," I said much more easily than I felt, trying to speed this up. We'd been through it, and each part of it taken for itself still made sense to me, except for how I got involved. I was wide awake now, but still exhausted as fuck. "And you were relieved."
"Yes!" Neela exclaimed. "I was relieved. I was just so... so relieved. Because you know what, I never wanted this to have happened. It was a terrible idea. It's just. All this needs to end before it gets bad." She took a deep breath. "So this woman Michael met, she's a Catholic. A really devout Catholic. And all he's asking me is that we try and get an annulment. Just in case. And how could I not give him that, Ray? It's not like we were ever really married in the first place. I didn't love him. I've never loved him! I don't even know how he likes his eggs!"
That was the kind of radical non sequitur that made you suspect schizophrenia in a patient, but I'd been through worse today. "So you want to use me as your beard because you know I like them scrambled?" I said disbelievingly.
"Exactly!" It could have been funny but really wasn't. She looked at me with wide eyes, wide and confused. Made me ache. "I know everything about you! You know everything about me! We lived together for two years!" She actually threw up her hands at me when I gave her a skeptical look. "People believe it anyway!"
"Actually they just thought we were fucking," I said tersely. "Until we stopped because of Gallant."
I honestly can't count the one-night-stands I've had in my life, and I'm not a fragile flower, but here in this context, the use of that word still sounded ugly. As pathetic as it might sound, I hadn't missed a night of sleep just because I'd wanted to fuck Neela. If that was the only issue, the other room in my apartment wouldn't be empty.
I pressed my lips together. "And if I went and lived the life people think I have, I'd long be dead of an overdose in Vegas."
There were tears shining in her eyes now. Jesus Fucking Christ. "It's a condition for annulment, Ray. I know I got a little overboard, but those people at the office said they'd check out my life, and Morris kept asking why I'm suddenly telling them now, so... so all I could think of was this story about how I was overdue..."
"Got a little excited, did you?"
"... and that it wasn't fair to any of you and that it made me realize... And that I loved you."
And that I loved you.
God. Nice use of the conjunctive there, Neela.
Wrapping my arms around my chest tightly, I had to work hard on not kicking something - the wall, the bed, anything. I swear I've never wanted to punch anything in my life, but I did at that moment. I don't believe in god and all that crap but right now, I could believe that somebody up there, likely somebody senile, had made all this up to have a laugh.
You're the best friend I ever had, I'd said to her.
I'd lain awake all night because of her, for fuck's sake.
Shouldn't have forgotten that Neela did best when she was cutting people open with 10-blades.
"So what's gonna happen if the child won't pop?" My voice sounded distorted to me. Fucking bizarro life. I missed the passed opportunity that was law school more by the minute. Or going to LA with the band. Anything would have been better.
I could hear her breathe, though, one, two calming breaths, off-beat to the homeless guy's snoring. "I was just late, I jumped to conclusions. The pregnancy test was contaminated. I got an abortion." I could almost feel her shrug when she carelessly listed the options. "Pseudocyesis."
"Fake pregnancy," I said, rubbing my face. "Sure."
"It doesn't have to be forever," Neela said keenly. "Just for a couple of weeks, until the annulment is through. We'll just tell people we want to live apart to do things right this time around, so I can stay at Abby's. We'd barely have to see each other with the shifts we work." A pause, her voice even quieter. "I need you to do this for me, Ray. It's not Michael, it's me who needs to do this. I need this marriage to never have happened."
Oh, but nothing would be like this had never happened, couldn't she see?
I listened to myself breathe - in and out. It was an attempt to not have to listen to her. Except for how I was still overly aware of the space Neela took up in the room even without looking at her, the way her hair had been ruffled from all the times she'd brushed it out of her face, the way she'd felt pressed against me. That memory wouldn't pale any time soon.
I couldn't say no to her, was the thing.
Because she was still Neela, and she needed my help and she'd asked.
"Ten colonoscopies..." she implored.
"Don't," I cut her off in a warning tone.
Homeless guy grunted and twisted in his sleep, starting to wake up.
I ran into Abby on my way out of the room.
God knew I wouldn't get to see patients this shift at that rate.
It didn't improve on my day how she shrugged her lab coat into place before she gave me a standoffish look. Judging from the circles under her eyes, she was about to go off shift.
"What?" I asked impatiently.
Abby blinked, then had a look around to make sure the hallway was empty. Strange enough, it was. Considering the circumstances, I should probably have been grateful for that small mercy, which I can tell you, without giving anything away, was going to be the last one I'd get this shift.
"You know," she said, and paused, before apparently deciding to go for it. "You know, Ray, I'd thought you were done with the Ben Linus routine."
The fact that I got the Lost reference was also solely thanks to Neela, like everything about the sudden change of my Facebook relationship status.
"Listen, Lockhart, your boyfriend is gonna start kicking my ass if I don't get to work."
Abby pressed her lips together. "Alright, I'll make it quick." The way she raised her chin reminded me of the first weeks of our residency when I'd entertained notions of ripping her head off because she'd kept messing with my patients. "Remember I was the one you signed off to last week when you wanted to go on your date." It took a moment for me to catch up. Right, the date that hadn't happened. I'd ended up watching poker with Neela. Hadn't thought of it since. "Now, I know for a fact that Neela was at the Spouse Club meeting at the time, so you can't have been with her."
Suddenly I realized where this was going. All joy leaving my face, I lost interest in any quip I might otherwise have made.
"So I don't know what you're playing at here," Abby continued. "And I know I don't have all the facts yet. But Neela is in a very difficult situation right now and I won't let you make things harder for her. I'm her friend more than yours and whatever you've been up to while you were dating her, if you don't tell her about it, I will."
"Oh Jesus," I muttered. Very slowly, the implications of what I'd agreed to do started dawning on me.
I was so thoroughly screwed.
Let's just say my day didn't improve.
It started with the patients who, yes, I unfortunately got to see. Both Morris and Kovac were about to corner me - the latter hopefully to bitch about my slack instead of my private life - when a wave of soccer moms brought in a whole kiddie league team with food poisoning and projectile vomiting. I tried to dump them on the med students, but fainting got involved and in the end, I wasn't unhappy for the opportunity to avoid Neela. Plus, it helped improve my quota. I'd barely had a chance to change into another lab coat when the real fun started with a pile-up on the interstate because some lunatic decided to drive his van against the traffic for fun.
Strange but true, we got acquainted with three different personalities of his before he was veiled off into surgery, one of which tried to kill himself with a scalpel when he learned what he'd done.
And that the kid in his passenger seat had died when I just couldn't re-inflate her lung.
Then, this morning's heart attack coded and started laughing right the second we brought him back.
"I cheated the devil!" he chanted with wide manic eyes, grabbing my collar and drawing me in. "Four times down, four times survived! I cheated the devil again!"
"One of us should," I muttered once I was free, turning to find myself facing Morris.
I gave his suit an unkind look and refrained from asking where he'd been when the Chicago Kickers were taking aim at me.
"Looks like things have calmed at last," he said, joining me on my way to Curtain 4. "What a day!"
"I have cheated the devil and I'll do it again!" the heart attack was singing in the background, fortunately not at me.
I needed more coffee.
"So," Morris said. "How about those dirty details? Like, what I don't get is, how did you work it out during that time when Gallant was on leave? I mean, you moved out of the apartment when he was here, right?"
"Stayed at a friend's," I agreed, fantasizing about antitrust cases and suits of my own.
"Man, I don't know if I'd be able to take it. You're really something, you know that? If I knew my lady-friend was doing it with some buffed up future general while I slept on a seedy couch..."
"Gotta take care of this," I interrupted him and drew the curtain behind me and whoever the name on the chart was shut.
My jaw was clenched so hard that it hurt.
Then, I turned away from the view board to find myself facing Pratt, who shouldn't even have been here.
"Shouldn't you be on your way to Darfur?" I said and blinked.
Hence the leather jacket instead of the lab coat. But trust in Pratt showing up on a day when I wanted everybody close to Michael Gallant far away from me. I'd only met Gallant a handful of times, but I knew that much about him: He and Pratt were best buds. Accordingly, Pratt did not look like a happy camper. "Yeah, well, I needed to pick up some paperwork," he said curtly. "Had a little talk with Frank on my way through. So I'm thinking, you and me need to find a quiet corner. Now."
"Aw, Greg," I said, because I liked living dangerously. "I'm flattered, really, but I've got a pretty nasty case of kidney stones I need to..."
"Keep it for Morris," he growled. A gurney was being wheeled past that moment by Inez, who gave me an inexplicable dirty look, and Pratt glanced at it with an irritated expression before clasping my shoulder, dragging me into a corner and shoving me against a wall. "You and Neela, Ray, seriously? Mind telling me what the hell you were thinking?"
I looked at Pratt's hand on my lab coat unkindly until he let go with an impatient expression.
"I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time," I eventually said, trying to keep my cool.
Pratt smirked unhappily, shaking his head. "Seems like a damn stupid idea to me, man. I know this will make me sound like your father or something, but I would have expected better of you, Ray, seriously. Last thing I would have expected of you is walking around banging married women. Mike is off in Iraq saving lives, for god's sake."
"Well, you know, it takes two to tango," I sniffed. "How about you talk to Neela and Gallant? She's the one who couldn't make up her mind about us."
Pratt rolled his eyes, reaching out to give me a short shake. "Of course she couldn't," he snapped. "How do you suppose she would if you're there to jump her at every opportunity! I told you to leave her alone, didn't I? What did you think I was doing when we had those talks, screwing with you? You really think she'd be getting a divorce now if it weren't for you?"
"You know," I said rather calmly, slowly getting angry. "I wasn't the one who talked her into a marriage she didn't want. You know how I feel about..."
I stopped in my tracks, tensing up.
"What?" Pratt asked impatiently.
Throwing a look over his shoulder, I saw that Neela had stepped out of an exam room, looking up from the phone she'd been about to grab when she saw us.
Focusing my eyes on Pratt, I took a deep breath. "You know how I feel about her," I hissed in a low voice. "I wasn't the one who nagged at her until she agreed to get hitched to shut him up. I'm pretty much the only one between the three of us who doesn't have trouble making up his mind." My voice was getting louder again. I'd gladly let her hear this part. "That divorce isn't about me. It was never about me. I'm just a convenient tool for them to make up their minds, and I'm not the one walking around and using other people for my own means here."
Thing was, I'd thought Pratt and I were on our way to becoming friends. God knew he'd had my back a couple of times in the last two or three months when Neela had somehow managed to twist my brains into braids. Obviously though, he thought I'd played him those times. If those conversations had happened while I was secretly dating Neela, things looked bad for me, because the only explanation was that I'd done it so he'd get off my back during work.
"I'd never have treated Neela like that," I said through clenched teeth. "So I suggest you talk to her or Gallant if you want to get the full story, and get the fuck out of my hair."
Pratt hardened his face, not giving an inch. "What I know is that you were the one who paraded his girlfriends through the whole ER, Ray," he said with a low growl. "And who went home with his groupies whenever Neela came to see your band. You better get this sorted quick, because I swear to god, Ray, if I get as much as one word from Neela or Mikey, you've got hell to pay."
I never got a chance to at least try and push him off me, because suddenly he was gone, striding down the hallway and vanishing out of side. Slumping against the wall, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
I'd had a pretty bad start at this job, was the thing. I'd kind of acted like a bozo, and yeah, telling petty lies to get people off my back had been a pretty big part of it. Didn't really matter why now - I'd gotten things wrong, I'd figured it out in the end. But it had felt good to get over that. I was committed to this gig now. What with the band leaving for LA, what with eighty-hour-weeks leaving little room for a private life, I'd gotten comfortable with the idea of being part of the dysfunctional psycho family that was the ER.
I'd used to be that guy, but I'd stopped.
I didn't like going back to that. Not one bit.
It sucked.
When I opened my eyes again, Neela was still standing with the phone in hand, looking like she wanted to say something but didn't know how.
"Happy now?" I angrily mouthed at her, waiting just long enough for Haleh to wheel another gurney past - pointedly not looking at me while doing so - before pushing myself off the wall and stalking off.
Kidney Stones was unlikely to care which of my private problems had resulted in the delay.
"Okay, Inez," I said impatiently. "How about you just spill."
I looked up from the chest tube I'd been checking, because Inez had retreated to silence and scathing looks ever since Sam had left in search for the portable CT. The patient - stabbing victim - was stable right now, though a minor meltdown was still happening in the other trauma room.
Inez hadn't been working at the ER for very long at that time, but it had been long enough to let everybody know how you shouldn't ever mess with her. I'd seen her beat up a sumo fighter twice her size once, I swear to god. And she'd been giving me the cold shoulder all shift.
Now she raised her chin, delicately checking the IV. "That kid," she eventually said. "Last month. She was beaten up by her father. You had me sit with her while you tried to find a way to make him go away. You collected money to get her away later on, because Social Services couldn't help."
It took a moment to catch on, but then--
Oh crap.
"Zoe," I breathed.
"I didn't ask then and I'm not asking now," she said.
"Listen..." I said, feeling pained.
"I'm not asking," she repeated firmly.
"I've got it!" Sam swept into the room, pushing the missing machine.
Thanks to Neela's discretion, very few people had been privy to how my girlfriend had come in with an STD and turned out to be fourteen. When she'd come back after her father had beaten the shit out of her, though, a handful had heard him accuse me of statutory rape in the middle of the ER.
And Inez had been one of them.
There was nothing I could say. Sleeping with a fourteen-year-old victim of parental abuse and causing her father to beat her up more for it was one thing. God knew I'd felt like shit about myself for days. Doing so while simultaneously cheating on my girlfriend, and telling Inez not to get Neela involved, was apparently another. I hadn't wanted her anywhere near the psycho dad. How'd it look from this new point of view? I'd cheated, asking Inez to cover it up.
Ouch.
The heart monitor started making funny noises that moment. The stabbing victim collapsed. Three bags of o-neg and numerous rounds of epi later, I was still so mad I could barely breathe.
Clemente had joined in at that point and wheeled the lady off to surgery with a sharp order at me to stay the fuck out of his face. Left standing alone in the puddle of blood on the floor, I looked up to see Neela's eyes on me from the other trauma room, her patient making her frown and the sight of me making her concerned. Or maybe the other way around.
Something Chuny said to her startled her, and it was only when the nurses and Kovac looked in my direction, too, that she smiled at me brightly, because that's what she was expected to do.
Zoe. Neela. Pratt.
I'm a pretty zened out guy really, but anger was suddenly boiling within me so hot that I could feel it burning my veins.
So I decided I didn't have to take her shit. Couldn't have told you what it was exactly that ticked me off - the rejection in Inez' reply, Pratt's anger, Neela's look or just the fucking lack of sleep. All I know that I was standing there, Clemente stealing my patient, Neela giving me the fake smile, that I finally snapped.
"So what happened to the suit?" I asked when I fell into step with Morris, who was wearing scrubs. Then nodded at his stash of charts. "Those mine?"
Morris had been Chief Resident for almost a year at the time, but it still kind of disturbed me that I was supposed to present my patients to him.
"I spilled coffee on the suit." His face looked crestfallen when he handed me one of the charts. "What a waste of a generous sign-up bonus. Remind me to tell you that story. But alas, yes. I did the ultrasound for Mrs. Schreiber while you were caught up in trauma. Called for a surgical consult, confirmed the appendicitis. Albright is operating on her now."
"Huh. I had this feeling she was faking it. Her white cell count was alright."
"Ah, but sometimes the lie turns into the truth, si?"
"Well, one down, twenty-five or so to go. Thanks, man."
"Sure, buddy." Morris rearranged the stash of charts on his arm to reach out and pat me on the back. "Listen, Ray," he said in a slightly more serious voice. "We're good, right? I mean, you and Neela. I didn't mean to intrude. I just mean it, it can't have been easy to keep mum about it, so I thought you'd appreciate a chance to talk."
He smirked at me peaceably. "I guess Neela is worth it, huh? One hell of a woman."
"Oh yeah," I agreed breezily. "Neela's great."
Then I took a deep breath. My head had rarely felt so clear all shift. "How about we have that cup of coffee some time soon? I mean, I was surprised before, you know? Seriously, you're right. It's time I get to tell my friends."
Morris smiled.
The battle was on.
"Listen, I know how it must look like to all of you," I said. I lowered the stethoscope, giving Sam a serious look. The eight-year-old in the bed between us started sniffing again, and I automatically reached out to ruffle his hair. "And I'm sorry I couldn't tell you the whole truth from the start. I'm really glad that it's all out in the open now. It wasn't easy for me either, alright? But it wasn't exactly my choice."
Sam looked hesitant, like she didn't really want to make it her business, but eventually decided it was curious enough. "Neela wanted the two of you to lie?" she asked. "Really?"
"Oh yeah." I shrugged. "Can't blame her, right? She wanted to sort out the whole mess with Gallant first. I mean, I dated, sure, but she kept putting things off. It's not like I still had much hope."
"How did you know she wouldn't stay with Gallant?" she said.
"I didn't."
Pressing my lips together, I trained my eyes on the boy until I felt hers stopping to burn into me.
"Huh," Sam said.
One bed over, Haleh crooked her head in thought.
"I mean, it was hard, you know?" I said to Morris, clutching the hot cup of coffee in the cold that was the ambulance bay. "Keeping quiet about a woman like Neela, man. I don't know how I did it." I shook my head. "It helped that we weren't exclusive, of course..."
"I knew it!" Morris said in interest, and added by way of explanation, "I'd been wondering about that."
I shrugged it off like it wasn't a big deal, making like I was checking if anybody else was there before I spoke on in a low voice. "The only way to make it work in a situation like that, right? But it's not so much of a problem having two girlfriends, believe it or not. I mean, Neela didn't expect much by way of presents, she had Gallant for that, and since they agreed to do it with me at the same time..."
Morris' eyes grew round.
"I'm all ears," he said.
"Dr. Barnett? You called us about our daughter Libby." The female half of an elderly couple approached me in distress. "You said she was in surgery..."
"The OR had to perform an appendectomy, yes," I said. "Mrs. Schreiber, right? We were running short of time, but it's a perfectly routine procedure, and I hear it went down without a hitch. I'll show you upstairs so you can talk to her surgeon..."
"We thought she was making it up," the husband muttered. "She always makes it up."
"What's a lie if it gets you what you need," I said.
"You just gotta understand, man. The sex. The sex was really, really good. I kept telling myself that was enough. And it's not just the threesomes, which were, you know, great..."
Morris made a breathless sound of agreement.
"Neela, man. Neela... she's wild. She's up to all this crazy stuff, like... like last week she downloaded this whole stash of fetish porn and sent me the highlights with notes on how she wants to re-enact it and where to buy the costumes..."
"Wow, I mean, wow."
"Never thought I could be that kinky, but whatever keeps her happy, right?"
"You'd never know from seeing her at work at the ER."
"Are you kidding? She keeps wanting to call me Dr. Barnett while I spank her, but, there are lines, you know?"
"I am so, so jealous of the two of you."
"So it's worth it, you know?" I shrugged. "Even if she kind of keeps breaking my heart."
"Such a bitch," he wholeheartedly agreed, and in a smaller apologetic voice: "Kinky hot bitch."
A lascivious smirk on my face is a clear sign that I'm shitting you.
But I have a feeling I was keeping Morris too busy to focus on my face all that much.
"Yeah, just talk to Michael if you don't believe me.
"I know he's not easy to reach, but maybe write him an e-mail? Or, you know. Trust me for a change. I'm just saying. I mean, you're gonna be dying of malaria in Darfur this time tomorrow, I'd just hate it if you remembered me as anything but a perfect gentleman while passing away."
My smirk grew while I listened to Pratt's answer, pressing the phone to my ear when I saw Clemente walking towards Admit, acting like I was focused on the chart. That guy hadn't talked to me all day whenever he could avoid it. The nurses and Morris were one thing. They weren't my attendings.
Clemente would have fared well at the law firm where I'd work if I wasn't a doctor, though. He had incompetent at the time of the crime written all over him.
"Heh. Glad to hear it, Greg. Good luck over there."
I hung up. My eyes remained firmly trained on the chart, though I couldn't have told you who it was about. My attention was on Clemente, who had paused behind me. In the reflection of the door to the waiting room, I could see him pausing and staring at my back long and hard.
He muttered something about cheaters and liars, then walked off. Turning my eyes heavenwards, I muttered a thanks to the possibly senile god up there who was fucking with me for his personal amusement.
This was when a hush ran through the ER and I knew, without looking up, that Neela had come into sight.
An ever so vicious smile tugged at the corner of my mouth when I looked up.
You know what they say about love and hate.
Right now, it felt to me like there was a lot more to say about the latter.
My eyes fell on Haleh first, actually, who'd been checking a curtain patient's IV and graced Neela with a long skeptical look before working on, shaking her head to herself. Now there was a round that I'd won.
But Neela was already storming towards me.
Ah fuck, she was furious. Eyes blazing from anger and cheeks flushed from not so much anger but a good dose of embarrassment, too, if my Neela reading skills weren't failing me. The fact that I could make out the shape of Morris in the exam room she'd just left helped with that evaluation, too.
Shoulders set, Neela had crossed the distance between us with few determined steps and hissed, still loud enough for pretty much everybody to hear but apparently not caring, "Ray! What the bloody hell have you been..."
"Aww, honey-buns!" I crowed - definitely loud enough for everybody to hear - and side-stepped the Neela freight train with my superior pogo skills. One way for the background in music to come in handy. Then I caught her waist, twirling her around and bending her over my arm like in a dance. Time to cha-cha.
She squeaked. It was really kind of lovable.
I smirked right at her face so close to mine, appreciating the situation doubly. "You're not mad that I talked to people about us, right?" I said, enunciating clearly and batting my eyelashes at her. "I just couldn't help myself. It's so liberating to let it all out, you know?" If looks could kill. I didn't give her time to react, pushing her up again. It's a miracle I didn't hurt her back, seeing as how pogo doesn't actually have anything to do with dancing. "I just want to shout into the world how much I love you, Neela Rasgotra!"
Then I broke into a rendition of I will always love you except an octave lower, because as I had told Morris, there were lines.
When I closed my mouth, Neela - still in my arms - was staring at me in open terror.
Funny enough, that was when an old lie of my own caught up with me.
"I knew you were playing me at Christmas auditions last year, mister," Haleh's stern voice could be heard. "Ain't nobody who sings Jingle Bells that badly in the world."
I didn't look at her, because my eyes were glued to Neela's lips.
Her chest was rising and falling heavily, pressed against mine.
"Is this for real?" someone's - Sam's - disbelieving voice said far away.
In the corner of my eye, Morris was crossing his arms in front of his chest. He had to have hurried out of the exam room to see what all the ruckus was about. "Wait a minute," he said. "It's not April's Fool or anything, right? You're not making this up! Oh god, they're making it up. You're just bullshitting us. I mean, I should have known! Threesomes, what the hell!"
"Threesomes?" Neela mouthed at me dangerously.
"We haven't even seen you kiss!" Morris added helpfully.
Looking back at Neela with my eyebrows raised, the unpleasant smile on my face grew when I saw her glaring at me, telling me with her eyes that I was so about to die.
Shame that I couldn't be bothered to care.
Pulling her closer to me, our lips touched.
"Mmph," Neela said.
I'd never kissed a woman who didn't want me to before. It had seemed like a good idea just a second before, but as soon as I did it, I stopped liking it. It felt weird - disorienting - the motions all there, but lacking the sex part, like dry-humping a pillow or something. I put a bit of an effort into it, because it was supposed to, well, fool people into thinking we were madly in love with each other, but not so much with success. I got a second to bitterly bury all my hopes for this woman and what she meant to me and what I'd thought could have been.
Except then, Neela crooked her head, somehow melting against me, and something... shifted. Snapped into place. Before I knew it, her hands were around me. Mine was on the back of her neck, her mouth opened to mine, and there was warmth and her body pressing against me for real. Suddenly, all I could do was press closer, overcome by a mad urge to crawl into her and never let go. She was mirroring the motion, moving by instinct more than rational thought. Nothing about this had anything to do with rational thought. I couldn't let go. It felt desperate. Who knew what would happen if I did?
A wild surge of arousal shot through me, such a powerful delayed reaction. I don't know if I'd closed my eyes, because my world had narrowed down to the feeling of her lips, cheeks, her nose gracing mine.
When she broke away to breathe, I was somewhat reluctant to refocus.
"Or maybe not," Morris said.
Neela was looking at me with hooded eyes as if her brain had temporarily stopped working.
Then she cleared her voice.
"I... really need to talk to you alone. Love," she said, freeing herself from my arms to grab my hand and drag me off towards Sutures, throwing everybody an abashed smile. "Right now."
You could see that Neela wasn't seething anymore from the way she took care to lock the door behind herself before turning around to me with a forced and perfectly unamused smile on her face. This was worse than fury. She was beyond that now.
I, on the other hand, was feeling exhilarated. I had no interest whatsoever in considering the ramifications of what I'd said and done right now, ready to just go with the flow, pumped on too many feelings, too much adrenaline and way too much coffee. Smirking, I crossed my arms in front of my chest. In another situation, I might have jumped up and down by way of a warm up and to celebrate the victory that was mine.
Because that's what I took that kiss to mean: victory. Leading the whole production ad absurdum, giving Neela what she had demanded without giving it to her at all. She hadn't seen this coming.
It might have been petty, but ask anybody at the hospital if I'm generally considered a warm and empathetic person.
"This," Neela said like she was seconds from exploding. "This is completely uncalled for, Ray."
My smirk grew. "Aw," I said, leaning against the empty bed. Kind of a shame that Homeless Drunk Guy wasn't there anymore to keep us company, although not exactly a surprise - a look at the clock above the door told me that the shift of horror would be history soon. "Think it was a little too much? I mean, I'm not a big fan of Whitney Houston either, but what's love without a song, right?"
She narrowed her eyes at me. "Do you think this is fun for me? That I'm doing this to you as some kind of elaborate joke?"
"Well, it was pretty funny just now, you gotta admit."
"You know what, Ray? It really, really wasn't. I can't believe I thought you would be ready to help me with this." She shook her head, starting to pace in the small room. "What the bloody hell was I thinking? Just let them think what they want to think, I thought. Just smile and nod. Not that much to ask. What could go wrong? It's not like anybody cares what we do with our private lives! No possibility of transforming it into some cheap sort of evening entertainment!"
Oh wow. It's not like anybody cares? That line of reasoning had pretty much backfired on her. Where had she worked in this last couple of years? "But see, that's where you're wrong. You should have seen Morris when I told him how we had sex in the medicine cabinet..."
"Oh sure, I have heard all of what you told him about our... sexcapades."
Sexcapades? This was worth it just for that.
I stifled a laugh.
"Just tried to keep things realistic."
"It isn't a prank on April's Fool, Ray. It's my life. If this backfires on us, I can go to prison for fraud!"
"Oh come on, I was just trying to lighten up the mood..."
"You were trying to sabotage me!" She turned around to me, throwing up her hands accusingly. "I thought you would want this, Ray! You should be the first to applaud the decision! All I want is my life back, so that this joke of a marriage can be over! Michael has a right to be happy despite of one mistake and you know what? I have it, too. Can't you see? It's a chance to do things right this time around."
My heart had sped up at those words despite myself. I should be the first to applaud the decision? She couldn't mean... She couldn't possibly. And it wasn't just what she was saying here, suddenly and out of nowhere, like she and I were suddenly a possibility when we'd never been before. That supposition was still wrong on oh so many different levels.
Because I'd stood back when she got married, when she moved out. I'd never have gotten in the way of her marriage. It had been what she'd wanted. I'd never have gotten in the way of whatever made her happy.
No matter how easy a time Pratt had of thinking the opposite of me.
The thought made me angry.
"Now listen..." I said.
"No, you listen to me, Ray Barnett," Neela said. "I asked you to do me this favor. I might have pressured you into it, it's true, and I didn't give you a lot of choice, but you could still have said no if it was apparently so unbearable for you..."
"You seriously think I stood a chance to be okay here? Because you're right, Neela, nothing about this is fun..."
"You could have said..."
"No, I couldn't have said no, and you damn well know it! What do you suppose I say? No, thanks, I don't want you to stop being married to another guy? No, I don't care that you need my help so much, I don't want to be close to you and help you out, go away? But you know what..." I raised my voice when she tried to interrupt me, talking right over her head. "Yes, Neela, this is asking too much. Do you know that half the ER thinks I'm some sort of notorious liar?"
"Oh come on, nobody cared when Abby didn't tell anybody about her and Luka and the baby..."
"Well Abby wasn't married to a soldier fighting in Iraq, alright?! People here care, Neela. They've known Gallant longer than me and they like him. Pratt was pretty much ready to beat me up on his behalf when he heard. Abby thinks I cheated on you. Inez thinks I cheated on you with a legal minor, and had her cover my ass once I was done."
"Then maybe you need to stop caring so much what people think!"
"Oh yeah, says you? Like I'm so sensitive in that way? Cut me some slack here, Neela. The last time we talked, you were getting the hell out of our place because too many people had told you that living with a male friend looked funny. And now you're asking me this?"
Neela was shouting at me now, both of us were. The only good thing here was that the doors of Sutures were thick enough that people outside wouldn't understand the words. "I picked you because it made sense! It made so much sense that it ended my marriage before it even had a chance to start!"
"And that's my fucking fault how?"
"It's bloody well your fault that I fell in love with you! I can't remember you preventing it!"
That stopped me in my tracks, both of us breathing hard. Across the room, I was staring at her like I'd seen a ghost. At the way her chest was rising and falling, at the angry dark dots that had appeared on her cheeks, at the way her hair was a mess from the dozens of times she'd brushed it out of her face in annoyance. Those scrubs were just too thin, because I could easily make out the outline of her body underneath - or maybe that was just because I'd pictured it too often, having too good an idea what it might look like.
The moment my breath calmed down enough for me to notice, I was again hit by the faint smell of peach from that stuff she always put in her hair.
It reminded me of how I'd lain awake tonight trying to recall that exact smell, and how that had been just wrong. I still hadn't been to shut off my brain and sleep.
I don't know who between the two of us moved first.
One second we were standing there, staring each other down, the next we were suddenly on each other. My hands were wrapping around her waist and hers were interlaced behind my neck, drawing me down with so much vigorous force that I would have laughed if I hadn't been busy catching her lips with mine. I didn't waste any time going slow: I was right on her, opening her mouth, finding her tongue, and she let me do it, moaning against my mouth and frantically pulling me close. The half-suppressed arousal from before hit me again, so sudden and painful that it made me dizzy.
Pieces of clothing were being discarded of in rapid succession. I felt Neela's hands on my jeans, the sound of my belt being pulled off resolutely, and my hands were under those scrubs, feeling skin - real skin, not just figments of imagination. God, she felt hot, burning up really, warmer than could possibly make any sense.
"I locked the door..."
"People will still hear..."
"They think we're shagging, anyway."
A spark of arousal mixed with relief blindsided me just after that, so stark that I lost any ability to think. Because it was just possible that we had been careening towards this all day, but that didn't mean I'd seen it coming.
I thought, there was a lot more than telling a bunch of silly lies that I'd have done to end up here.
Then I didn't think at all.
The Admit area was quiet when we left Sutures.
Too quiet.
Frank was busying himself next to the phone, scribbling something down on a notepad and emitting the occasional pointedly focused grunt.
Morris and Kovac were intently staring at the board. None of them moved.
Chuny was checking a curtain patient's IV, visibly fighting to suppress a smile.
This morning's heart attack was propped up against a pillow one curtain over, licking his lips salaciously when he caught my eyes and giving me a not-so-secretive thumbs-up.
"Hey Morris," I said. "I know it's still a little early, but do you think you could handle the rest of my patients if..."
"Yes," Morris exclaimed without looking around.
I felt a smile tuck at my face.
Well. Looked like these people had learned another new thing about us just now. No matter what else they thought was true about me, they also knew that I was such a fantastic lay that I made my girlfriend scream when she came.
That made up for a lot, I'm not above admitting.
"See?" Neela whispered at Sam when we passed her by. "That's why I had to make this change."
"I can see your point," Sam muttered back.
"Jealous," Morris mouthed after me when we walked towards the door in our coats ten minutes later. "So damn jealous!"
We stepped into the ambulance bay with our arms around the other, unwilling to let go any time soon. Jeff from the janitorial staff looked up from whatever he was doing at the garbage bins to give us a short wave. Jerry was crossing the street on his way to start his shift; he'd undoubtedly look up and see us holding hands any second. Glancing down at Neela, I could see that she was still smirking, madly, like she'd never want to stop. She'd start giggling at random intervals, and I had trouble suppressing a chuckle whenever she did.
There was no doubt in the image we presented that we belonged to each other, happiness for everyone to see.
There was no way I could have stopped smiling, either.
"If I should stay, I would only be in your way..." I hummed. "But I will always love you..." Neela laughed.
"That's such a terrible song."
I grinned, drawing her in closer. She snuggled against my chest on the way up the stairs to the El.
Life had never felt so good.
Characters: Ray Barnett, Neela Rasgotra, ER ensemble
Pairings: Ray/Neela, Gallant/OFC
Wordcount: ~ 9700 words
Beta: Thank you very much, millari, and also to daybreak777 and all the others who gave me very useful recs and pointers when I asked about movie recs for the "pretend relationship" trope.
Summary: Everything is not right in the world of Ray Barnett. Not only did the woman he loves recently move out of their shared apartment, but as of today, all the ER knows about how they had a torrid affair while she was married to another man... Everybody, that is, except Ray.
Fact was that I hadn't gotten all that much sleep that night. I mean, I know - what's new. I was an R2 at a County ER at the time, it wasn't like I didn't live on Red Bull and the not-so-pleasant fear of accidentally killing people. But I'd tossed and turned all night. So I wasn't quite awake when I walked into the ambulance bay that shift, and that accounted for how I didn't immediately notice that something was off.
Say, how Jane was kinda short with me when I joined her at the gurney of a heart attack the paramedics were delivering just now, wrinkly old guy who was actually proud of the fact that he'd had three - yes, three - of them before. Malik was on a first-name basis with him at this point.
"You need any help?" I asked when Jane veiled him off.
"You need help," she stated rather calmly. "Jerk." And off she was, leaving me looking after her with amazement. But hell, weird is the middle name of everything that happens in that hospital. People get funny towards the end of a night shift. Plus, this was Jane.
Things got a little more obvious in the form of Clemente stopping me at Admit when I had a look at the board on my way to the lockers to assess the work load of the day. Speaking of weird, Clemente had been back on the duty roster for a week or so since the whole gig where he'd shown up with a bullet wound and crunked. Jane had nothing on him.
I might have retreated a step just out of instinct. I don't like people who cover up their drug habits with lies when they're supposed to be in charge.
"Hey X-Ray." Clemente leaned over the desk and grinned at me through the gum he was chewing, except for how there was nothing happy on his face. "I thought you and I should have a little talk."
Morris and Chuny were there at Admit, I think, Frank too, and they all looked up in interest.
I mentally checked if I'd recently dumped any patients on interns or gotten someone killed.
Strangely enough, I was pretty sure I hadn't.
It was hard to stifle a yawn. "Something the matter?"
"Oh, you know, I've just been thinking," Clemente said. "A week ago, I come back here, you treat me like shit. And that's okay, you know, that's really okay. I get that. It's all about trust, right? I let you down. You'd thought I'd lied and I can respect a doc who doesn't take shit like that from his attendings. I can use a guy like that on my team."
I raised a very tired eyebrow. "Does this have a point?"
"All I'm saying, man," Clemente said with a shrug, "is I should have known it was all just a load of crap."
Man, I was just exhausted. I had no idea what he was talking about. Clemente pushed himself off the desk and stalked around it, bomb-before-explosion style. Poking me in the chest. I frowned.
"Let me make one thing clear, Ray. I don't appreciate a double standard. I don't appreciate it at all. You expect people to be honest, you don't go around asking people for favors every two minutes without having the decency of telling them the truth!" His voice had risen until he was shouting, poking his finger against my chest with every word. Before I could come up with an answer - one other than asking if he wanted me to call psych - he'd turned around and stalked away.
A question mark, my face was it.
"Well, that was a little harsh," Morris commented conversationally.
"One way to put it." I turned to throw the others a question. "Anybody know what that was about?"
Funny thing was, turned out later that Doc Exótico had been needing a psych consult, and his little clinically paranoid explosion had only so much to do with me. Something about stalking and dead fish. Yeah, compared to some stuff that went down in that ER, my story is more like something you'd tell little kids before they go to bed.
Take Morris who - for a reason nobody ever explained to me - was wearing an Armani suit.
"I'm just saying," he said. "It's not like you and Clemente are close or anything, right? Not like you and me. I mean, I like to think of us as friends, Ray." Walking up to me, he threw an arm around my shoulder despite of how I tried to convey with my eyes what I thought of that. "Now I think you and I need to go fetch a cup of coffee together, clear the air, talk everything through."
"Talk what through?" I asked carefully, wondering if I'd reach my locker before Kovac could notice that I hadn't picked up any charts yet.
"About you and Neela, of course."
"Uhm, I think we had that talk on Tuesday, man."
Automatically, I stiffened. I hadn't liked the talk on Tuesday so much. Started with the fact that it had been where I found out that the whole ER had assumed I'd been sleeping with Neela while we'd lived together, right up to when she'd suddenly gotten hitched to Gallant. Ended with how I had come home that night to find her in the throes of moving out. She hadn't even waited to find a new place. She hadn't even wanted me to find out before she was gone.
And just thinking of her again made something in my throat close up. Goddammit.
"I do indeed remember that talk," Morris replied easily, arm still slung around my shoulder as if we were best buddies. "Which is why today, we'll do the version of it where you, you know, don't lie." His smile broadened. "It's alright, Ray, tell Uncle Archie. You can give me all the slinky details now, because we know."
"Neela told us all about the affair you had while she was with Gallant," Chuny supplied with a friendly smile, as if she was meaning to let me off a hook.
Just served to make me wonder who was hallucinating - them or me.
"I beg your pardon?" A total lack of understanding apparently makes you fall back on what your mother has taught you about being polite. Next thing I'd start producing hankies.
I mean, I heard the words and all, and they just made no sense.
"Neela told us," Morris repeated in a placating tone of voice. "It's alright. I understand how you decided to lie to us for the time being, considering the circumstances..."
"Natural instinct to hide your sins," Frank quipped.
"But it's alright now," Morris continued. "I mean, with the annulment and all." His smile was genuine, that was the bizarre part. He looked like he actually believed those words coming out of his mouth. "Man, you must be so excited. Let me tell you from my own experience, fatherhood is so great. You're gonna love it. And hey, you know what?" His eyes were shining with joy. "Our kids could have play-dates! We could invite Abby's, too!"
That was it. I shook him off, stumbling away from them to seek safety from the distance.
Morris was still beaming, Chuny's face was one of rapt curiosity and Frank looked like he was ready to take notes.
I blinked.
"Are you all on meth?" I asked carefully.
The expectancy on Chuny's face grew.
I sighed, rubbing my eyes. Thinking that I should have gone to law school after all. Looking at the madhouse I worked in, who cared about having to wear ties?
"Alright," I said, because what the hell. No such thing as privacy at this place. "I'm not having an affair with Neela." Don't you wish. "Never had one, never will." God knew she had side-stepped my attempt to kiss her, or, hell, stay friends. We hadn't in actuality talked since she'd left. "Whoever told you we're having a thing has been fucking with you, alright? We don't even live together anymore. If she's pregnant, which I doubt..." Guess whose condom supply had been used up while Gallant was around. "...it's gotta be Gallant's..."
"I am so, so sorry that I told them without warning you." The loud and clear and smooth announcement cut right through my speech.
My hand, moving to rub my eyes again - I really needed some sleep - froze, and a second later, I looked up. My first reaction was just to the fact that it was Neela, talking to me, coming towards me like she meant business. My heart might have sped up. But then I grew aware of the words and - the hell?
I believe that psych calls this a dissociative stupor.
"I should absolutely have talked to you before I told them about us," Neela said primly, fierce tiny thing that she was, hair open and falling onto the blue scrubs, which - bizarrely - were covered in a sizable patch of clotting blood. Trauma. She must have started early. Still looked stunning, I noted despite the confusion. "But I just couldn't wait! The annulment is through!" Neela gave me a broad, sociopathic smile and - frosting on the bizarro cake - emanated a completely fake girlish squeal. Then she threw herself into my arms. "I'm so happy!"
Ninety pounds of girl hit me, with a wave of that peach stuff she puts in her hair that always filled the bathroom. My coat was unzipped, and all her body pressed against mine, warm and strong and soft. The impact was so overwhelming that it made me dizzy. The fact that I'd suddenly entered an alternate universe, and that other people were around, didn't so much matter with her cheek pressed against mine.
"Please, please, please play along," she whispered in my ear in her normal voice. "I'll do your next colonoscopy for you, I swear."
Nothing like a rectal to kill the mood.
Forget about my attending going paranoid over dead fish, convict ex-husbands kidnapping nurses, or Pratt finding his chi in Sudan. Or any of the other dozen really crazy things that had happened over the years in that fucking ER. This, hands down, was the most surreal moment of my whole life.
"Your next colonoscopy. Your next five colonoscopies and your next student lecture! I know you hate the student lectures. You always prepare them on breaks." Neela looked at me with wide eyes. "Please, Ray."
"Ah, that would be no, and no."
"You owe me so many favors."
"Not that many, Neela, I don't."
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. It felt like I'd never been so cold.
We'd relocated to Sutures, where Neela had firmly locked the door behind us, and where we were relatively alone apart from a homeless guy sleeping it off with a banana bag. Judging by how his snoring could have substituted for a sub-woofer at a gig of my old band, he wouldn't be joining us any time soon. Pretty much everybody's eyes had followed us when Neela had dragged me here, including exasperated looks by Sam and annoyed ones from Weaver, passing through on her way to her office. I had a strong suspicion that they all thought we'd come here to fuck.
With my head, maybe.
"Explain to me again how exactly everybody needs to think we're a couple expecting a child."
Neela sighed. Drying blood still covering her chest, she was looking stressed and overworked - which made sense considering that she'd apparently spent yesterday running from one registration office to the other. And lying in bed awake herself, most likely, thinking of ways to mess up my life.
"I am so, so sorry," she repeated the hundredth time, sounding more British at every reiteration. I had to squelch a strong urge to step forward and kiss her already. "Truly, Ray, I am. It was the only way I could think to get an annulment." Starting to pace in the small room, she looked like she was getting a headache. Not so much in the mood to offer sympathies, I leaned against the edge of homeless guy's bed. Screw the instincts. Wouldn't happen. "It's just. It all just suddenly happened. I was so unhappy after Michael's parents came to visit, so I moved out, because I thought you and I were the problem but we weren't, and I just felt worse. And Michael, I just had to talk to him, so I called him and we had a conversation. A real conversation. And it turns out that he was just as unhappy!" She shook her head about herself. "I mean, it was a crazy idea to get married. What the hell had we been thinking?"
Rigidly, I stayed where I was.
"And suddenly he was telling me that he had met this woman..."
"Soldier from his unit, yes," I said much more easily than I felt, trying to speed this up. We'd been through it, and each part of it taken for itself still made sense to me, except for how I got involved. I was wide awake now, but still exhausted as fuck. "And you were relieved."
"Yes!" Neela exclaimed. "I was relieved. I was just so... so relieved. Because you know what, I never wanted this to have happened. It was a terrible idea. It's just. All this needs to end before it gets bad." She took a deep breath. "So this woman Michael met, she's a Catholic. A really devout Catholic. And all he's asking me is that we try and get an annulment. Just in case. And how could I not give him that, Ray? It's not like we were ever really married in the first place. I didn't love him. I've never loved him! I don't even know how he likes his eggs!"
That was the kind of radical non sequitur that made you suspect schizophrenia in a patient, but I'd been through worse today. "So you want to use me as your beard because you know I like them scrambled?" I said disbelievingly.
"Exactly!" It could have been funny but really wasn't. She looked at me with wide eyes, wide and confused. Made me ache. "I know everything about you! You know everything about me! We lived together for two years!" She actually threw up her hands at me when I gave her a skeptical look. "People believe it anyway!"
"Actually they just thought we were fucking," I said tersely. "Until we stopped because of Gallant."
I honestly can't count the one-night-stands I've had in my life, and I'm not a fragile flower, but here in this context, the use of that word still sounded ugly. As pathetic as it might sound, I hadn't missed a night of sleep just because I'd wanted to fuck Neela. If that was the only issue, the other room in my apartment wouldn't be empty.
I pressed my lips together. "And if I went and lived the life people think I have, I'd long be dead of an overdose in Vegas."
There were tears shining in her eyes now. Jesus Fucking Christ. "It's a condition for annulment, Ray. I know I got a little overboard, but those people at the office said they'd check out my life, and Morris kept asking why I'm suddenly telling them now, so... so all I could think of was this story about how I was overdue..."
"Got a little excited, did you?"
"... and that it wasn't fair to any of you and that it made me realize... And that I loved you."
And that I loved you.
God. Nice use of the conjunctive there, Neela.
Wrapping my arms around my chest tightly, I had to work hard on not kicking something - the wall, the bed, anything. I swear I've never wanted to punch anything in my life, but I did at that moment. I don't believe in god and all that crap but right now, I could believe that somebody up there, likely somebody senile, had made all this up to have a laugh.
You're the best friend I ever had, I'd said to her.
I'd lain awake all night because of her, for fuck's sake.
Shouldn't have forgotten that Neela did best when she was cutting people open with 10-blades.
"So what's gonna happen if the child won't pop?" My voice sounded distorted to me. Fucking bizarro life. I missed the passed opportunity that was law school more by the minute. Or going to LA with the band. Anything would have been better.
I could hear her breathe, though, one, two calming breaths, off-beat to the homeless guy's snoring. "I was just late, I jumped to conclusions. The pregnancy test was contaminated. I got an abortion." I could almost feel her shrug when she carelessly listed the options. "Pseudocyesis."
"Fake pregnancy," I said, rubbing my face. "Sure."
"It doesn't have to be forever," Neela said keenly. "Just for a couple of weeks, until the annulment is through. We'll just tell people we want to live apart to do things right this time around, so I can stay at Abby's. We'd barely have to see each other with the shifts we work." A pause, her voice even quieter. "I need you to do this for me, Ray. It's not Michael, it's me who needs to do this. I need this marriage to never have happened."
Oh, but nothing would be like this had never happened, couldn't she see?
I listened to myself breathe - in and out. It was an attempt to not have to listen to her. Except for how I was still overly aware of the space Neela took up in the room even without looking at her, the way her hair had been ruffled from all the times she'd brushed it out of her face, the way she'd felt pressed against me. That memory wouldn't pale any time soon.
I couldn't say no to her, was the thing.
Because she was still Neela, and she needed my help and she'd asked.
"Ten colonoscopies..." she implored.
"Don't," I cut her off in a warning tone.
Homeless guy grunted and twisted in his sleep, starting to wake up.
I ran into Abby on my way out of the room.
God knew I wouldn't get to see patients this shift at that rate.
It didn't improve on my day how she shrugged her lab coat into place before she gave me a standoffish look. Judging from the circles under her eyes, she was about to go off shift.
"What?" I asked impatiently.
Abby blinked, then had a look around to make sure the hallway was empty. Strange enough, it was. Considering the circumstances, I should probably have been grateful for that small mercy, which I can tell you, without giving anything away, was going to be the last one I'd get this shift.
"You know," she said, and paused, before apparently deciding to go for it. "You know, Ray, I'd thought you were done with the Ben Linus routine."
The fact that I got the Lost reference was also solely thanks to Neela, like everything about the sudden change of my Facebook relationship status.
"Listen, Lockhart, your boyfriend is gonna start kicking my ass if I don't get to work."
Abby pressed her lips together. "Alright, I'll make it quick." The way she raised her chin reminded me of the first weeks of our residency when I'd entertained notions of ripping her head off because she'd kept messing with my patients. "Remember I was the one you signed off to last week when you wanted to go on your date." It took a moment for me to catch up. Right, the date that hadn't happened. I'd ended up watching poker with Neela. Hadn't thought of it since. "Now, I know for a fact that Neela was at the Spouse Club meeting at the time, so you can't have been with her."
Suddenly I realized where this was going. All joy leaving my face, I lost interest in any quip I might otherwise have made.
"So I don't know what you're playing at here," Abby continued. "And I know I don't have all the facts yet. But Neela is in a very difficult situation right now and I won't let you make things harder for her. I'm her friend more than yours and whatever you've been up to while you were dating her, if you don't tell her about it, I will."
"Oh Jesus," I muttered. Very slowly, the implications of what I'd agreed to do started dawning on me.
I was so thoroughly screwed.
Let's just say my day didn't improve.
It started with the patients who, yes, I unfortunately got to see. Both Morris and Kovac were about to corner me - the latter hopefully to bitch about my slack instead of my private life - when a wave of soccer moms brought in a whole kiddie league team with food poisoning and projectile vomiting. I tried to dump them on the med students, but fainting got involved and in the end, I wasn't unhappy for the opportunity to avoid Neela. Plus, it helped improve my quota. I'd barely had a chance to change into another lab coat when the real fun started with a pile-up on the interstate because some lunatic decided to drive his van against the traffic for fun.
Strange but true, we got acquainted with three different personalities of his before he was veiled off into surgery, one of which tried to kill himself with a scalpel when he learned what he'd done.
And that the kid in his passenger seat had died when I just couldn't re-inflate her lung.
Then, this morning's heart attack coded and started laughing right the second we brought him back.
"I cheated the devil!" he chanted with wide manic eyes, grabbing my collar and drawing me in. "Four times down, four times survived! I cheated the devil again!"
"One of us should," I muttered once I was free, turning to find myself facing Morris.
I gave his suit an unkind look and refrained from asking where he'd been when the Chicago Kickers were taking aim at me.
"Looks like things have calmed at last," he said, joining me on my way to Curtain 4. "What a day!"
"I have cheated the devil and I'll do it again!" the heart attack was singing in the background, fortunately not at me.
I needed more coffee.
"So," Morris said. "How about those dirty details? Like, what I don't get is, how did you work it out during that time when Gallant was on leave? I mean, you moved out of the apartment when he was here, right?"
"Stayed at a friend's," I agreed, fantasizing about antitrust cases and suits of my own.
"Man, I don't know if I'd be able to take it. You're really something, you know that? If I knew my lady-friend was doing it with some buffed up future general while I slept on a seedy couch..."
"Gotta take care of this," I interrupted him and drew the curtain behind me and whoever the name on the chart was shut.
My jaw was clenched so hard that it hurt.
Then, I turned away from the view board to find myself facing Pratt, who shouldn't even have been here.
"Shouldn't you be on your way to Darfur?" I said and blinked.
Hence the leather jacket instead of the lab coat. But trust in Pratt showing up on a day when I wanted everybody close to Michael Gallant far away from me. I'd only met Gallant a handful of times, but I knew that much about him: He and Pratt were best buds. Accordingly, Pratt did not look like a happy camper. "Yeah, well, I needed to pick up some paperwork," he said curtly. "Had a little talk with Frank on my way through. So I'm thinking, you and me need to find a quiet corner. Now."
"Aw, Greg," I said, because I liked living dangerously. "I'm flattered, really, but I've got a pretty nasty case of kidney stones I need to..."
"Keep it for Morris," he growled. A gurney was being wheeled past that moment by Inez, who gave me an inexplicable dirty look, and Pratt glanced at it with an irritated expression before clasping my shoulder, dragging me into a corner and shoving me against a wall. "You and Neela, Ray, seriously? Mind telling me what the hell you were thinking?"
I looked at Pratt's hand on my lab coat unkindly until he let go with an impatient expression.
"I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time," I eventually said, trying to keep my cool.
Pratt smirked unhappily, shaking his head. "Seems like a damn stupid idea to me, man. I know this will make me sound like your father or something, but I would have expected better of you, Ray, seriously. Last thing I would have expected of you is walking around banging married women. Mike is off in Iraq saving lives, for god's sake."
"Well, you know, it takes two to tango," I sniffed. "How about you talk to Neela and Gallant? She's the one who couldn't make up her mind about us."
Pratt rolled his eyes, reaching out to give me a short shake. "Of course she couldn't," he snapped. "How do you suppose she would if you're there to jump her at every opportunity! I told you to leave her alone, didn't I? What did you think I was doing when we had those talks, screwing with you? You really think she'd be getting a divorce now if it weren't for you?"
"You know," I said rather calmly, slowly getting angry. "I wasn't the one who talked her into a marriage she didn't want. You know how I feel about..."
I stopped in my tracks, tensing up.
"What?" Pratt asked impatiently.
Throwing a look over his shoulder, I saw that Neela had stepped out of an exam room, looking up from the phone she'd been about to grab when she saw us.
Focusing my eyes on Pratt, I took a deep breath. "You know how I feel about her," I hissed in a low voice. "I wasn't the one who nagged at her until she agreed to get hitched to shut him up. I'm pretty much the only one between the three of us who doesn't have trouble making up his mind." My voice was getting louder again. I'd gladly let her hear this part. "That divorce isn't about me. It was never about me. I'm just a convenient tool for them to make up their minds, and I'm not the one walking around and using other people for my own means here."
Thing was, I'd thought Pratt and I were on our way to becoming friends. God knew he'd had my back a couple of times in the last two or three months when Neela had somehow managed to twist my brains into braids. Obviously though, he thought I'd played him those times. If those conversations had happened while I was secretly dating Neela, things looked bad for me, because the only explanation was that I'd done it so he'd get off my back during work.
"I'd never have treated Neela like that," I said through clenched teeth. "So I suggest you talk to her or Gallant if you want to get the full story, and get the fuck out of my hair."
Pratt hardened his face, not giving an inch. "What I know is that you were the one who paraded his girlfriends through the whole ER, Ray," he said with a low growl. "And who went home with his groupies whenever Neela came to see your band. You better get this sorted quick, because I swear to god, Ray, if I get as much as one word from Neela or Mikey, you've got hell to pay."
I never got a chance to at least try and push him off me, because suddenly he was gone, striding down the hallway and vanishing out of side. Slumping against the wall, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
I'd had a pretty bad start at this job, was the thing. I'd kind of acted like a bozo, and yeah, telling petty lies to get people off my back had been a pretty big part of it. Didn't really matter why now - I'd gotten things wrong, I'd figured it out in the end. But it had felt good to get over that. I was committed to this gig now. What with the band leaving for LA, what with eighty-hour-weeks leaving little room for a private life, I'd gotten comfortable with the idea of being part of the dysfunctional psycho family that was the ER.
I'd used to be that guy, but I'd stopped.
I didn't like going back to that. Not one bit.
It sucked.
When I opened my eyes again, Neela was still standing with the phone in hand, looking like she wanted to say something but didn't know how.
"Happy now?" I angrily mouthed at her, waiting just long enough for Haleh to wheel another gurney past - pointedly not looking at me while doing so - before pushing myself off the wall and stalking off.
Kidney Stones was unlikely to care which of my private problems had resulted in the delay.
"Okay, Inez," I said impatiently. "How about you just spill."
I looked up from the chest tube I'd been checking, because Inez had retreated to silence and scathing looks ever since Sam had left in search for the portable CT. The patient - stabbing victim - was stable right now, though a minor meltdown was still happening in the other trauma room.
Inez hadn't been working at the ER for very long at that time, but it had been long enough to let everybody know how you shouldn't ever mess with her. I'd seen her beat up a sumo fighter twice her size once, I swear to god. And she'd been giving me the cold shoulder all shift.
Now she raised her chin, delicately checking the IV. "That kid," she eventually said. "Last month. She was beaten up by her father. You had me sit with her while you tried to find a way to make him go away. You collected money to get her away later on, because Social Services couldn't help."
It took a moment to catch on, but then--
Oh crap.
"Zoe," I breathed.
"I didn't ask then and I'm not asking now," she said.
"Listen..." I said, feeling pained.
"I'm not asking," she repeated firmly.
"I've got it!" Sam swept into the room, pushing the missing machine.
Thanks to Neela's discretion, very few people had been privy to how my girlfriend had come in with an STD and turned out to be fourteen. When she'd come back after her father had beaten the shit out of her, though, a handful had heard him accuse me of statutory rape in the middle of the ER.
And Inez had been one of them.
There was nothing I could say. Sleeping with a fourteen-year-old victim of parental abuse and causing her father to beat her up more for it was one thing. God knew I'd felt like shit about myself for days. Doing so while simultaneously cheating on my girlfriend, and telling Inez not to get Neela involved, was apparently another. I hadn't wanted her anywhere near the psycho dad. How'd it look from this new point of view? I'd cheated, asking Inez to cover it up.
Ouch.
The heart monitor started making funny noises that moment. The stabbing victim collapsed. Three bags of o-neg and numerous rounds of epi later, I was still so mad I could barely breathe.
Clemente had joined in at that point and wheeled the lady off to surgery with a sharp order at me to stay the fuck out of his face. Left standing alone in the puddle of blood on the floor, I looked up to see Neela's eyes on me from the other trauma room, her patient making her frown and the sight of me making her concerned. Or maybe the other way around.
Something Chuny said to her startled her, and it was only when the nurses and Kovac looked in my direction, too, that she smiled at me brightly, because that's what she was expected to do.
Zoe. Neela. Pratt.
I'm a pretty zened out guy really, but anger was suddenly boiling within me so hot that I could feel it burning my veins.
So I decided I didn't have to take her shit. Couldn't have told you what it was exactly that ticked me off - the rejection in Inez' reply, Pratt's anger, Neela's look or just the fucking lack of sleep. All I know that I was standing there, Clemente stealing my patient, Neela giving me the fake smile, that I finally snapped.
"So what happened to the suit?" I asked when I fell into step with Morris, who was wearing scrubs. Then nodded at his stash of charts. "Those mine?"
Morris had been Chief Resident for almost a year at the time, but it still kind of disturbed me that I was supposed to present my patients to him.
"I spilled coffee on the suit." His face looked crestfallen when he handed me one of the charts. "What a waste of a generous sign-up bonus. Remind me to tell you that story. But alas, yes. I did the ultrasound for Mrs. Schreiber while you were caught up in trauma. Called for a surgical consult, confirmed the appendicitis. Albright is operating on her now."
"Huh. I had this feeling she was faking it. Her white cell count was alright."
"Ah, but sometimes the lie turns into the truth, si?"
"Well, one down, twenty-five or so to go. Thanks, man."
"Sure, buddy." Morris rearranged the stash of charts on his arm to reach out and pat me on the back. "Listen, Ray," he said in a slightly more serious voice. "We're good, right? I mean, you and Neela. I didn't mean to intrude. I just mean it, it can't have been easy to keep mum about it, so I thought you'd appreciate a chance to talk."
He smirked at me peaceably. "I guess Neela is worth it, huh? One hell of a woman."
"Oh yeah," I agreed breezily. "Neela's great."
Then I took a deep breath. My head had rarely felt so clear all shift. "How about we have that cup of coffee some time soon? I mean, I was surprised before, you know? Seriously, you're right. It's time I get to tell my friends."
Morris smiled.
The battle was on.
"Listen, I know how it must look like to all of you," I said. I lowered the stethoscope, giving Sam a serious look. The eight-year-old in the bed between us started sniffing again, and I automatically reached out to ruffle his hair. "And I'm sorry I couldn't tell you the whole truth from the start. I'm really glad that it's all out in the open now. It wasn't easy for me either, alright? But it wasn't exactly my choice."
Sam looked hesitant, like she didn't really want to make it her business, but eventually decided it was curious enough. "Neela wanted the two of you to lie?" she asked. "Really?"
"Oh yeah." I shrugged. "Can't blame her, right? She wanted to sort out the whole mess with Gallant first. I mean, I dated, sure, but she kept putting things off. It's not like I still had much hope."
"How did you know she wouldn't stay with Gallant?" she said.
"I didn't."
Pressing my lips together, I trained my eyes on the boy until I felt hers stopping to burn into me.
"Huh," Sam said.
One bed over, Haleh crooked her head in thought.
"I mean, it was hard, you know?" I said to Morris, clutching the hot cup of coffee in the cold that was the ambulance bay. "Keeping quiet about a woman like Neela, man. I don't know how I did it." I shook my head. "It helped that we weren't exclusive, of course..."
"I knew it!" Morris said in interest, and added by way of explanation, "I'd been wondering about that."
I shrugged it off like it wasn't a big deal, making like I was checking if anybody else was there before I spoke on in a low voice. "The only way to make it work in a situation like that, right? But it's not so much of a problem having two girlfriends, believe it or not. I mean, Neela didn't expect much by way of presents, she had Gallant for that, and since they agreed to do it with me at the same time..."
Morris' eyes grew round.
"I'm all ears," he said.
"Dr. Barnett? You called us about our daughter Libby." The female half of an elderly couple approached me in distress. "You said she was in surgery..."
"The OR had to perform an appendectomy, yes," I said. "Mrs. Schreiber, right? We were running short of time, but it's a perfectly routine procedure, and I hear it went down without a hitch. I'll show you upstairs so you can talk to her surgeon..."
"We thought she was making it up," the husband muttered. "She always makes it up."
"What's a lie if it gets you what you need," I said.
"You just gotta understand, man. The sex. The sex was really, really good. I kept telling myself that was enough. And it's not just the threesomes, which were, you know, great..."
Morris made a breathless sound of agreement.
"Neela, man. Neela... she's wild. She's up to all this crazy stuff, like... like last week she downloaded this whole stash of fetish porn and sent me the highlights with notes on how she wants to re-enact it and where to buy the costumes..."
"Wow, I mean, wow."
"Never thought I could be that kinky, but whatever keeps her happy, right?"
"You'd never know from seeing her at work at the ER."
"Are you kidding? She keeps wanting to call me Dr. Barnett while I spank her, but, there are lines, you know?"
"I am so, so jealous of the two of you."
"So it's worth it, you know?" I shrugged. "Even if she kind of keeps breaking my heart."
"Such a bitch," he wholeheartedly agreed, and in a smaller apologetic voice: "Kinky hot bitch."
A lascivious smirk on my face is a clear sign that I'm shitting you.
But I have a feeling I was keeping Morris too busy to focus on my face all that much.
"Yeah, just talk to Michael if you don't believe me.
"I know he's not easy to reach, but maybe write him an e-mail? Or, you know. Trust me for a change. I'm just saying. I mean, you're gonna be dying of malaria in Darfur this time tomorrow, I'd just hate it if you remembered me as anything but a perfect gentleman while passing away."
My smirk grew while I listened to Pratt's answer, pressing the phone to my ear when I saw Clemente walking towards Admit, acting like I was focused on the chart. That guy hadn't talked to me all day whenever he could avoid it. The nurses and Morris were one thing. They weren't my attendings.
Clemente would have fared well at the law firm where I'd work if I wasn't a doctor, though. He had incompetent at the time of the crime written all over him.
"Heh. Glad to hear it, Greg. Good luck over there."
I hung up. My eyes remained firmly trained on the chart, though I couldn't have told you who it was about. My attention was on Clemente, who had paused behind me. In the reflection of the door to the waiting room, I could see him pausing and staring at my back long and hard.
He muttered something about cheaters and liars, then walked off. Turning my eyes heavenwards, I muttered a thanks to the possibly senile god up there who was fucking with me for his personal amusement.
This was when a hush ran through the ER and I knew, without looking up, that Neela had come into sight.
An ever so vicious smile tugged at the corner of my mouth when I looked up.
You know what they say about love and hate.
Right now, it felt to me like there was a lot more to say about the latter.
My eyes fell on Haleh first, actually, who'd been checking a curtain patient's IV and graced Neela with a long skeptical look before working on, shaking her head to herself. Now there was a round that I'd won.
But Neela was already storming towards me.
Ah fuck, she was furious. Eyes blazing from anger and cheeks flushed from not so much anger but a good dose of embarrassment, too, if my Neela reading skills weren't failing me. The fact that I could make out the shape of Morris in the exam room she'd just left helped with that evaluation, too.
Shoulders set, Neela had crossed the distance between us with few determined steps and hissed, still loud enough for pretty much everybody to hear but apparently not caring, "Ray! What the bloody hell have you been..."
"Aww, honey-buns!" I crowed - definitely loud enough for everybody to hear - and side-stepped the Neela freight train with my superior pogo skills. One way for the background in music to come in handy. Then I caught her waist, twirling her around and bending her over my arm like in a dance. Time to cha-cha.
She squeaked. It was really kind of lovable.
I smirked right at her face so close to mine, appreciating the situation doubly. "You're not mad that I talked to people about us, right?" I said, enunciating clearly and batting my eyelashes at her. "I just couldn't help myself. It's so liberating to let it all out, you know?" If looks could kill. I didn't give her time to react, pushing her up again. It's a miracle I didn't hurt her back, seeing as how pogo doesn't actually have anything to do with dancing. "I just want to shout into the world how much I love you, Neela Rasgotra!"
Then I broke into a rendition of I will always love you except an octave lower, because as I had told Morris, there were lines.
When I closed my mouth, Neela - still in my arms - was staring at me in open terror.
Funny enough, that was when an old lie of my own caught up with me.
"I knew you were playing me at Christmas auditions last year, mister," Haleh's stern voice could be heard. "Ain't nobody who sings Jingle Bells that badly in the world."
I didn't look at her, because my eyes were glued to Neela's lips.
Her chest was rising and falling heavily, pressed against mine.
"Is this for real?" someone's - Sam's - disbelieving voice said far away.
In the corner of my eye, Morris was crossing his arms in front of his chest. He had to have hurried out of the exam room to see what all the ruckus was about. "Wait a minute," he said. "It's not April's Fool or anything, right? You're not making this up! Oh god, they're making it up. You're just bullshitting us. I mean, I should have known! Threesomes, what the hell!"
"Threesomes?" Neela mouthed at me dangerously.
"We haven't even seen you kiss!" Morris added helpfully.
Looking back at Neela with my eyebrows raised, the unpleasant smile on my face grew when I saw her glaring at me, telling me with her eyes that I was so about to die.
Shame that I couldn't be bothered to care.
Pulling her closer to me, our lips touched.
"Mmph," Neela said.
I'd never kissed a woman who didn't want me to before. It had seemed like a good idea just a second before, but as soon as I did it, I stopped liking it. It felt weird - disorienting - the motions all there, but lacking the sex part, like dry-humping a pillow or something. I put a bit of an effort into it, because it was supposed to, well, fool people into thinking we were madly in love with each other, but not so much with success. I got a second to bitterly bury all my hopes for this woman and what she meant to me and what I'd thought could have been.
Except then, Neela crooked her head, somehow melting against me, and something... shifted. Snapped into place. Before I knew it, her hands were around me. Mine was on the back of her neck, her mouth opened to mine, and there was warmth and her body pressing against me for real. Suddenly, all I could do was press closer, overcome by a mad urge to crawl into her and never let go. She was mirroring the motion, moving by instinct more than rational thought. Nothing about this had anything to do with rational thought. I couldn't let go. It felt desperate. Who knew what would happen if I did?
A wild surge of arousal shot through me, such a powerful delayed reaction. I don't know if I'd closed my eyes, because my world had narrowed down to the feeling of her lips, cheeks, her nose gracing mine.
When she broke away to breathe, I was somewhat reluctant to refocus.
"Or maybe not," Morris said.
Neela was looking at me with hooded eyes as if her brain had temporarily stopped working.
Then she cleared her voice.
"I... really need to talk to you alone. Love," she said, freeing herself from my arms to grab my hand and drag me off towards Sutures, throwing everybody an abashed smile. "Right now."
You could see that Neela wasn't seething anymore from the way she took care to lock the door behind herself before turning around to me with a forced and perfectly unamused smile on her face. This was worse than fury. She was beyond that now.
I, on the other hand, was feeling exhilarated. I had no interest whatsoever in considering the ramifications of what I'd said and done right now, ready to just go with the flow, pumped on too many feelings, too much adrenaline and way too much coffee. Smirking, I crossed my arms in front of my chest. In another situation, I might have jumped up and down by way of a warm up and to celebrate the victory that was mine.
Because that's what I took that kiss to mean: victory. Leading the whole production ad absurdum, giving Neela what she had demanded without giving it to her at all. She hadn't seen this coming.
It might have been petty, but ask anybody at the hospital if I'm generally considered a warm and empathetic person.
"This," Neela said like she was seconds from exploding. "This is completely uncalled for, Ray."
My smirk grew. "Aw," I said, leaning against the empty bed. Kind of a shame that Homeless Drunk Guy wasn't there anymore to keep us company, although not exactly a surprise - a look at the clock above the door told me that the shift of horror would be history soon. "Think it was a little too much? I mean, I'm not a big fan of Whitney Houston either, but what's love without a song, right?"
She narrowed her eyes at me. "Do you think this is fun for me? That I'm doing this to you as some kind of elaborate joke?"
"Well, it was pretty funny just now, you gotta admit."
"You know what, Ray? It really, really wasn't. I can't believe I thought you would be ready to help me with this." She shook her head, starting to pace in the small room. "What the bloody hell was I thinking? Just let them think what they want to think, I thought. Just smile and nod. Not that much to ask. What could go wrong? It's not like anybody cares what we do with our private lives! No possibility of transforming it into some cheap sort of evening entertainment!"
Oh wow. It's not like anybody cares? That line of reasoning had pretty much backfired on her. Where had she worked in this last couple of years? "But see, that's where you're wrong. You should have seen Morris when I told him how we had sex in the medicine cabinet..."
"Oh sure, I have heard all of what you told him about our... sexcapades."
Sexcapades? This was worth it just for that.
I stifled a laugh.
"Just tried to keep things realistic."
"It isn't a prank on April's Fool, Ray. It's my life. If this backfires on us, I can go to prison for fraud!"
"Oh come on, I was just trying to lighten up the mood..."
"You were trying to sabotage me!" She turned around to me, throwing up her hands accusingly. "I thought you would want this, Ray! You should be the first to applaud the decision! All I want is my life back, so that this joke of a marriage can be over! Michael has a right to be happy despite of one mistake and you know what? I have it, too. Can't you see? It's a chance to do things right this time around."
My heart had sped up at those words despite myself. I should be the first to applaud the decision? She couldn't mean... She couldn't possibly. And it wasn't just what she was saying here, suddenly and out of nowhere, like she and I were suddenly a possibility when we'd never been before. That supposition was still wrong on oh so many different levels.
Because I'd stood back when she got married, when she moved out. I'd never have gotten in the way of her marriage. It had been what she'd wanted. I'd never have gotten in the way of whatever made her happy.
No matter how easy a time Pratt had of thinking the opposite of me.
The thought made me angry.
"Now listen..." I said.
"No, you listen to me, Ray Barnett," Neela said. "I asked you to do me this favor. I might have pressured you into it, it's true, and I didn't give you a lot of choice, but you could still have said no if it was apparently so unbearable for you..."
"You seriously think I stood a chance to be okay here? Because you're right, Neela, nothing about this is fun..."
"You could have said..."
"No, I couldn't have said no, and you damn well know it! What do you suppose I say? No, thanks, I don't want you to stop being married to another guy? No, I don't care that you need my help so much, I don't want to be close to you and help you out, go away? But you know what..." I raised my voice when she tried to interrupt me, talking right over her head. "Yes, Neela, this is asking too much. Do you know that half the ER thinks I'm some sort of notorious liar?"
"Oh come on, nobody cared when Abby didn't tell anybody about her and Luka and the baby..."
"Well Abby wasn't married to a soldier fighting in Iraq, alright?! People here care, Neela. They've known Gallant longer than me and they like him. Pratt was pretty much ready to beat me up on his behalf when he heard. Abby thinks I cheated on you. Inez thinks I cheated on you with a legal minor, and had her cover my ass once I was done."
"Then maybe you need to stop caring so much what people think!"
"Oh yeah, says you? Like I'm so sensitive in that way? Cut me some slack here, Neela. The last time we talked, you were getting the hell out of our place because too many people had told you that living with a male friend looked funny. And now you're asking me this?"
Neela was shouting at me now, both of us were. The only good thing here was that the doors of Sutures were thick enough that people outside wouldn't understand the words. "I picked you because it made sense! It made so much sense that it ended my marriage before it even had a chance to start!"
"And that's my fucking fault how?"
"It's bloody well your fault that I fell in love with you! I can't remember you preventing it!"
That stopped me in my tracks, both of us breathing hard. Across the room, I was staring at her like I'd seen a ghost. At the way her chest was rising and falling, at the angry dark dots that had appeared on her cheeks, at the way her hair was a mess from the dozens of times she'd brushed it out of her face in annoyance. Those scrubs were just too thin, because I could easily make out the outline of her body underneath - or maybe that was just because I'd pictured it too often, having too good an idea what it might look like.
The moment my breath calmed down enough for me to notice, I was again hit by the faint smell of peach from that stuff she always put in her hair.
It reminded me of how I'd lain awake tonight trying to recall that exact smell, and how that had been just wrong. I still hadn't been to shut off my brain and sleep.
I don't know who between the two of us moved first.
One second we were standing there, staring each other down, the next we were suddenly on each other. My hands were wrapping around her waist and hers were interlaced behind my neck, drawing me down with so much vigorous force that I would have laughed if I hadn't been busy catching her lips with mine. I didn't waste any time going slow: I was right on her, opening her mouth, finding her tongue, and she let me do it, moaning against my mouth and frantically pulling me close. The half-suppressed arousal from before hit me again, so sudden and painful that it made me dizzy.
Pieces of clothing were being discarded of in rapid succession. I felt Neela's hands on my jeans, the sound of my belt being pulled off resolutely, and my hands were under those scrubs, feeling skin - real skin, not just figments of imagination. God, she felt hot, burning up really, warmer than could possibly make any sense.
"I locked the door..."
"People will still hear..."
"They think we're shagging, anyway."
A spark of arousal mixed with relief blindsided me just after that, so stark that I lost any ability to think. Because it was just possible that we had been careening towards this all day, but that didn't mean I'd seen it coming.
I thought, there was a lot more than telling a bunch of silly lies that I'd have done to end up here.
Then I didn't think at all.
The Admit area was quiet when we left Sutures.
Too quiet.
Frank was busying himself next to the phone, scribbling something down on a notepad and emitting the occasional pointedly focused grunt.
Morris and Kovac were intently staring at the board. None of them moved.
Chuny was checking a curtain patient's IV, visibly fighting to suppress a smile.
This morning's heart attack was propped up against a pillow one curtain over, licking his lips salaciously when he caught my eyes and giving me a not-so-secretive thumbs-up.
"Hey Morris," I said. "I know it's still a little early, but do you think you could handle the rest of my patients if..."
"Yes," Morris exclaimed without looking around.
I felt a smile tuck at my face.
Well. Looked like these people had learned another new thing about us just now. No matter what else they thought was true about me, they also knew that I was such a fantastic lay that I made my girlfriend scream when she came.
That made up for a lot, I'm not above admitting.
"See?" Neela whispered at Sam when we passed her by. "That's why I had to make this change."
"I can see your point," Sam muttered back.
"Jealous," Morris mouthed after me when we walked towards the door in our coats ten minutes later. "So damn jealous!"
We stepped into the ambulance bay with our arms around the other, unwilling to let go any time soon. Jeff from the janitorial staff looked up from whatever he was doing at the garbage bins to give us a short wave. Jerry was crossing the street on his way to start his shift; he'd undoubtedly look up and see us holding hands any second. Glancing down at Neela, I could see that she was still smirking, madly, like she'd never want to stop. She'd start giggling at random intervals, and I had trouble suppressing a chuckle whenever she did.
There was no doubt in the image we presented that we belonged to each other, happiness for everyone to see.
There was no way I could have stopped smiling, either.
"If I should stay, I would only be in your way..." I hummed. "But I will always love you..." Neela laughed.
"That's such a terrible song."
I grinned, drawing her in closer. She snuggled against my chest on the way up the stairs to the El.
Life had never felt so good.