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Post by jadestar on Oct 14, 2006 11:27:14 GMT 10
OMG amazing, wonderful and great!!! you really did a great job on this chapter - it is perfectly written *bows and claps*
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Post by larue on Oct 15, 2006 1:31:25 GMT 10
Some dialog borrowed from 'Where The Heart Is'.
Spilling Secrets
“I want you to give your mother another chance,” Legaspi had said. “Don’t let her leave without really talking to her.” Abby sighed as she settled herself on the el seat and thought about the day. Luka was bugging her to join the ER softball game. He missed her. She didn’t really know why she didn’t want to go. She loved playing softball when she was a kid. And she was good at it. He was right. One night away from Maggie wouldn’t do any harm. And then she had gone to Maggie’s counseling session with Legaspi. It had worried her. She didn’t know what Maggie had been saying about.....them. It always bothered her to think that perfect strangers had insight into what her life was like. And the session had been as bad as she expected. Maggie was leaving. Going back to Minnesota. She had made the plans herself. Abby didn’t know what to think. She was angry that Maggie had told someone else before she’d told her. She was worried about her being alone so far away from anyone. Worried that she would go off her meds again. As much as she wanted to believe that Maggie was capable of handling things on her own, deep down she was afraid that she would be going through all of this again. Afraid? She was terrified. Terrified that she wouldn’t be there next time.
Maggie was setting their table for dinner when she opened the door. Wonderful smells were coming from the kitchen. The super must have fixed the stove fan. They chatted aimlessly for a moment as she looked through the stack of mail. Invite Luka to dinner? He was playing softball. And then Abby looked up at her mother. The moment had arrived. Sorry about running out of the therapy session but it was scarey to hope too much. Maggie understood. She took a deep breath and told Abby that something had happened in ICU. She didn’t want to die and more importantly, she didn’t want her little girl to watch her die. Little girl? The hard knot in Abby’s throat began to soften. A soft buzzing began in her ears. Maggie went on. She was going to manage her own life from now on and that Abby could get on with her own. Stop sitting things out. The buzzing began to get louder and louder. Go to med school. That’s not so easy. Get married. I was married. Get pregnant. I was pregnant!
The shock of having finally said it aloud slapped them both. Abby couldn’t look at her mother. The buzzing stopped and was replaced by the soft hum of the aspirator as that entire day flashed in front of her like a fast forwarded video tape. The panic. The worry. The sounds. The procedure. The cramping. The overwhelming sadness. What happened?
“I had an abortion,” she said softly as she slipped to the edge of the couch. “Some people aren’t meant to be mothers.” She felt Maggie sitting beside her.
“Abby,” she said. “I was a lot younger than you when I had my first manic episode. I have watched you since you were a little girl. You’re not bipolar.”
“No, but my kids could be.”
“But they might not be.....they could be anything......You just love them, that’s all.....You never even told Richard, did you?” Abby shook her head slowly.
“I think that was the beginning of the end for us. We stopped talking about everything.” Abby’s heart began to break into little pieces and pushed their way into her throat. “I just couldn’t risk it.......”
“Couldn’t risk turning into me....” Abby nodded as her insides began to shake . “Or risk taking care of another me?” Abby nodded again and the pent up sobs began to choke her.
“Aw, honey...” Maggie said as she pulled Abby into her arms. “That’s all life is, is risk. “ Abby held herself stiffly as she fought the tears that were beginning to flow.
” You’re going to miss out on all the good things in life,” she was saying. “And you deserve all of the good things, Abby. All of the good things.” Abby nodded and began to relax a little in her mother’s arms. For the first time in a long, long while, she felt like the child again. A child with a mother instead of the other way around.
They sat together for a long time as she cried. As they cried together. Cried for everything that she had gone through alone. Cried for her lost childhood. Cried for the loss of her marriage. Cried for her lost child. Just cried. And Maggie held her. Tight. Until she was finished. She was exhausted. And then she suddenly wanted to see him. Wanted to be with him again. She dug through the boxes her closet and found her softball glove. They left their dinner untouched on the table and took a cab to the baseball fields in the city park. Maggie waited to get a hot dog at the concession stand but Abby made her way to the fencing along the field and looked for him. A smile traced her lips as she saw him crouching in the infield with his cap on backwards, trying to look like he’d been playing the game forever. She waved.
He straightened when he saw her standing there, waved and then bent back down as Malucci drew his attention back to the game. He trotted over to her when the batter struck out.
“Change your mind?” he asked.
“Yep,” she said. “Even brought my own glove.”
“Hey, Abby...you playing?” Malucci asked as he hung a bat on the fence. Abby nodded.
“Then choose your weapon. You’re up after Carter.” Luka looked up as Maggie approached with a small box of food and drinks.
“You brought your mom?”
“I didn’t know you played softball,” Maggie said to him.
“I don’t,” Luka shrugged. “I’m last in the batting order.”
“You should put Abby up,” Maggie said as she shifted the food in her hands. “She was an all star in little league.”
“What about you?”
“I’m just going to watch,” she said as she headed toward the empty stands.
“An all star?” he asked as Abby smiled and began to test the baseball bats along the fence.
“I like you in that hat,” she said.
“Almost look American, eh?”
“Almost....” she chuckled. Luka grinned and took her glove from her as she stepped into the on deck circle and swung the bat.
They lost the game. But it wasn’t for lack of enthusiasm. Maggie was cheering from the stands. Luka ran the bases...on a foul ball. And Abby laughed for the first time in a long while. Maggie was going to take a cab back to the apartment after the game but Carter insisted on driving her. Abby and Luka went for a walk along the Lake Michigan shoreline. It was a cool night but they sat together on a bench, snuggled together, and looked at the stars above them. There was something different about her now. Luka could sense that.
“She’s leaving in a couple of days,” Abby said as he adjusted his arm and picked up one of her hands in his. “For Minnesota.”
“She’s going home?” he said. She nodded.
“Yeah. Alone.” Abby looked up at him and smiled a little. He took note of the worried lines on her forehead and kissed her there.
“She’s a big girl,” he said. “She can handle it.” Abby chuckled.
“Like she has in the past? Right.....” Luka sighed and squeezed her hand.
“If she doesn’t...we’ll be there.”
“We will?” Abby cocked an eyebrow and frowned slightly.
“We....will.” She smiled slightly at his response. So final. So determined. She nestled in his arms and looked out at the dark line of Lake Michigan. She listened to the waves breaking against the shore and to the sound of his heart beating against her ear. She sighed.
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lubylover319
Lady of Luby
Avatar by Andressa- wonderful work!
Posts: 103
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Post by lubylover319 on Oct 15, 2006 1:42:58 GMT 10
Larue, this is absolutely wonderful. You are a fantastic writer. Keep on keeping on... Kira
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Post by luby2534 on Oct 15, 2006 2:29:55 GMT 10
Your writing at times moves me to tears. When Abby and Maggie are discussing the abortion i could feel the tears welling up, and when you describe Luka and Abby by the lake when Luka tells Abby they will be there for her (maggie). WOW
I just get so taken in.
Keep up the good work. I love it !!
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Post by jadestar on Oct 15, 2006 2:53:38 GMT 10
'we'll be there' - wonderful!!!
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Post by Cornflake Girl on Oct 15, 2006 8:04:00 GMT 10
Really, really nice chapter Larue, I really enjoyed it. I am loving the insight into their relationship. And just by chance I am actually up to this episode in my season seven marathon! LOL a whole season in 2 days, my eyes are about ready to pop out
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Post by larue on Oct 15, 2006 22:15:58 GMT 10
Relationship Reflections
Why did relationships have to be so complicated? Why wasn’t it simple? I love you. You love me. Where was it written that people had to go through so much to find happiness together? And who was to decide which two were meant to be together? With Luka it seemed simple. He was just there. But that presence could be taken for granted....and was....by both of them. Their fight had been horribly hurtful. They’d said things without meaning to but there was no going back. Now, several months later, they seemed to have evolved into a comfortable friendship of sorts. Carter. Well, that was a different kind of story. They tapped danced around one another for a good long while. She gave him lots of opportunities to initiate something but he always backed off. She honestly thought that he thought Luka was still in the picture. And he wasn’t. Not like that anyway.
Abby stared intently at herself in the bathroom mirror and ran her fingers through her dark hair. Today was her birthday....and she was alone. She closed her eyes and groaned inwardly as she heard the verbal abuse and yelling continue from the other side of the wall. The new neighbors were not making any friends in the building. She shivered pondered the idea of skipping her shower. The apartment was freezing and by the looks of things through the window it wasn’t any better outside. February. ‘Welcome to Chicago’ indeed.
She was hurrying through the ambulance bay when Susan Lewis stopped her and told her to bring the patient in off the coach. She wasn’t even checked in yet but she was wearing a coat. The day was off to a great start. Whoop.
The ER was freezing. A frozen homeless guy with Black Hawk tickets in his pocket died in the trauma room. A lost little boy with a missing mother had spent the night in chairs. And then Richard. He just showed up and wanted to take her for a cup of coffee. Had he remembered that it was her birthday? Hardly. He didn’t remember it when they were married. They walked across the street to Doc Magoo’s, sat at the counter and ordered hot coffee. It wasn’t any warmer in there than it was at the hospital.
“You look great,” he said.
“I guess shift work becomes me,” she said with a curious grin.
“Seeing anybody?”
“Oh yeah....” she smirked. “I’m breaking hearts all over town.” Richard chuckled and shook his head. The small talk was a little disconcerting. She studied his profile curiously. “So....what do you want....X?” she asked. He frowned a little and listened to her silly sarcastic litany of the uses of ‘X’. Poison. Ecstacy. Porn. Ex-husbands. She was immediately contrite. He looked a little hurt. That surprised her. She hadn’t really thought of him being vulnerable.....ever. No, he always seemed to take advantage of her own vulnerability. “I didn’t want you to hear this from someone else,” he said. Her first thought was that he was going to jail. He just shook his head and frowned at her. No, he was getting married again. To a Teacher with a child. He was going to be a father. Her mind was reeling. Richard. Married again? A father? Why should that bother her? Well, all told, maybe it didn’t. It was actually decent of him to tell her himself. And he wasn’t smirking about it. He was just sharing some news with....a friend. But, why today of all days? He didn’t remember. But then, why should he? She wasn’t a part of his life any more. And he wasn’t a part of her’s. She studied his profile again. So this was really it. The door between them was really going to close. Was she supposed to give him some sort of blessing or something? She wasn’t sure what to say so she got up to leave. As she walked away she stopped and turned back to him. “Richard,” she said. He turned to look at her.
“I hope it’s works out this time.” He smiled at her, a little wistfully and nodded. She nodded and pulled her hat closer on her head and went back to the ER.
The cold had kept the craziness at bay for most of her shift. They had found Douglas’ mother. She was in the morgue. Abby took him to see her there and then worked with Frank trying to find a relative to take him till his father arrived from Australia. Weaver was demanding that she call Social Services to come for him. Dr. Gallant was making her crazy running every treatment option he was thinking past her. He had a patient that was insisting that he be moved to another hospital. Abby went with him and as she pulled back the curtain she cringed. She was looking into the face of the psych patient that had stabbed Carter and killed Lucy Knight.
“I didn’t want to come here,” he said suddenly as he realized she recognized him. “The paramedics....they brought me here.”
She did everything she could to keep Carter from learning that Paul Sobricki was there. But in the end, it didn’t matter. He was angry with her for trying to keep it a secret. Just as he would have been angry at her for telling him. Irregardless, it closed a door between them as well. Closed? More like slammed. She asked him to go with her for dinner..... or maybe just coffee and pie? He’d refused. So she’d gone home alone. Her neighbor was waiting on the staircase as she got her mail. Abby sat on the steps with her and went through her mail. There were cards from her mother and Eric mixed in with the usual bills and advertisements. And another familiar heavy cream colored envelope. She still couldn’t bring herself to spend the money Richard’s mother sent her, not as regularly now, and didn’t quite know how to return it. She wondered how much longer Jacqueline would continue to send it to her after Richard’s news today. Maybe it was time for another door to close as well.
“A beer?” Joyce was asking. Abby shook her head a little and sent her thoughts spinning away.
“What?”
“Have a beer. You look like you could use one.” Joyce handed her an open bottle and Abby looked at it for a moment and then took it in her hand. Joyce was going on about the cards she had gotten and asked if it was her birthday. Abby stared at the bottle in her hand and then lifted it carefully to her lips for a sip.
“Um...yes,” she murmured when Joyce asked again if it was her birthday.
“Congratulations,” her neighbor smiled. “You made it!” Abby just chuckled and took another tenuous sip from her bottle.
They sat on the steps for a moment longer and then Abby said she needed to warm up in her apartment. She carried the mail - and the bottle - inside and turned on the lights. She dropped the mail on her table and tossed her coat, hat and mittens onto the couch. She checked the thermostat and shivered as she hurried into her bedroom and changed into her flannel pajama pants and a sweater. She stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror and ran her fingers through her dark hair. This day had totally sucked. Douglas. Abby cringed a little when she remembered his cries as the Social Services worker tore him out of her arms to take him to a foster home for the night. Gallant. She’d finally told him off.....set him on the road toward being a real doctor. That was one good thing that had happened. And Carter? Maybe it was just as well. She was getting tired of waiting. Tired of canoodling with him. Abby chuckled a little. Canoodling? Where had that come from? She reached for her toothbrush and toothpaste and looked at herself in the mirror.
“Happy birthday, kiddo,” she whispered and shook her head.
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lubylover319
Lady of Luby
Avatar by Andressa- wonderful work!
Posts: 103
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Post by lubylover319 on Oct 15, 2006 22:27:20 GMT 10
Again, amazing. I really felt sorry for Abby on that episode- no one (except her family) remembered her birthday. Hell, that would have me drinking to- alcoholic or not.
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Post by zelda on Oct 15, 2006 23:16:31 GMT 10
You are an amazing writer who describes Abby's feelings as though you were...HER. All the questions we are asking ourselves about her, and that TPTB never develop, we find the answers in your fics. Heartbreking moments with Maggie, sweet but awkward ones with Luka ( with so many things unsaid).... ....the loneliness of her birthday...they are all here. I've always thought that this eppy about her birthday was the darkest one in Abby's life. Only regrets and failure... and emptiness! One of your best fics, Lyn.
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Post by larue on Oct 16, 2006 1:39:31 GMT 10
Jacqueline
Abby grimaced as she studied the state of her black eye and bruised nose in her compact. The foundation she had used hadn’t covered much. She probably shouldn’t have made this lunch date with Richard’s mother until it was all gone. A week ago she’d thought it would be. She snapped the compact shut and slipped it back into her purse in her lap and glanced around her. They’d decided on a small restaurant she and Richard used to frequent. Memories were tumbling all around her. Good ones though. That was nice for a change. There was a lot to be said for this moving on stuff.
She smiled and lifted her hand in a wave as she saw Richard’s mother come in the door. Jacqueline smiled broadly as she spoke to the hostess, never taking her eyes off her, and then crossed the room toward her. Abby stood up and smiled. Wordlessly Jacqueline drew her into a snug embrace and hugged her. Abby closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her former mother in law. She grinned as Jacqueline held her back at arms’ length, checked her over and then hugged her again.
“You look beautiful,” Jacqueline said as they finally sat down and drew their chairs up to the table. “I love your hair long again.” Abby shrugged and drew a strand of her hair back over her ear.
“You look....the same.” Jacqueline laughed and reached across the table to take her hand.
“Now tell me about your eye,” she asked. Abby chuckled and shrugged.
“There’s nothing to tell really. I got in the way of a neighbor and his wife,” she sighed. Jacqueline frowned worriedly.
“But she’s safely away now,” Abby went on. “And so is he.”
“And you’re still in the same apartment?” Abby blushed a little.
“I stayed with a...friend...for a couple of weeks,” she said. “But I’m back home now.” Jacqueline studied her for a moment and then shifted her eyes to the menu in front of her. They placed their order with the waitress and then sat in silence for a long moment.
“Richard came to see me,” Abby said finally. “He told me his news.” Jacqueline’s eyebrows went up and she nodded approvingly.
“Corrinne. She’s a lovely woman,” she said. “I think he’s happy.” Abby nodded.
“I’m glad,” she said. And surprisingly, she was.
“He told me that you had quit medical school,” she said. Abby shrugged.
“I just decided not to go back,” she said. “Nursing’s not so bad. I like what I do.”
“Really?” Jacqueline scrutnized her again. Abby blushed and then nodded.
“I really do,” she said. “I get to take more time with patients than a doctor does. I can really make a difference for them.....” Jacqueline’s expression didn’t change. Abby laughed. “Stop that,” she chuckled. They straightened as a waitress set their coffee in front of them. Abby took a deep breath and reached for her purse.
“I needed to talk to you about....these,” she said as she drew out the stack of envelopes she had tied with a ribbon. She set them in front of Jacqueline. “I can’t accept them.” Jacqueline picked the stack up in her hands and fingered the red ribbon that had been tied into a bow. She looked up at Abby and then handed them back to her.
“Yes, you can,” she said softly. “It’s just....money.”
“I appreciate it, Jacqueline, but....” Jacqueline pressed the stack of envelopes back into her hands.
“Someday...maybe even soon now..... you are going to make a decision that is going to change your life,” she said firmly. “I want to be a part of that. I am not your mother in law any more, Abby, and if this is the only way I can share that with you....then so be it.” Abby studied the stubborn fire in her blue eyes - so much like Richard’s - and sighed. She slipped the envelopes, each holding a five hundred dollar bill, back into her purse.
“Thank you,” she said softly and her shoulders sagged a little.
“Now, you put that money in a bank account until you are ready to use it...where it can earn some interest,” Jacqueline ordered and glared at her playfully. Abby laughed as a salad was set before both of them.
“Did Richard tell you that Becca is having another baby?” Jacqueline said as she lifted her fork to the salad in front of her.
“Another one?” Abby’s eyes widened. "I didn't know she had any."
“Yes...this one is coming any day now,” Jacqueline smiled. “She’s has a lovely little girl, Rachel, who is a two year old terror and Ryan is finally getting serious about someone.....” Abby sighed happily as she immersed herself in the news of the family that she was once a part of.
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Post by luby2534 on Oct 16, 2006 2:40:08 GMT 10
Loved it..
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Post by jadestar on Oct 16, 2006 5:30:19 GMT 10
wonderful and lovely - it is simply beautiful
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Julianna (juscully)
Duchess of Luby
"I don't want to be alone, I want to be left alone.? Audrey Hepburn
Posts: 352
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Post by Julianna (juscully) on Oct 16, 2006 10:08:43 GMT 10
awww... lovely updates... you had me crying in the last one, with abby and jacqueline talking about the money! love it!
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Post by Cornflake Girl on Oct 16, 2006 17:14:08 GMT 10
I am loving this story! You wright Abby so well, her heartaches really come though, it is what makes Abby, Abby - thanks for the new posts.
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Andie
Duchess of Luby
Posts: 325
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Post by Andie on Oct 16, 2006 22:36:09 GMT 10
What an amazing way to start the week... i get here and find two brilliant updates just waiting for me...hehehe!!!! I totally love Abby with Jacqueline, she is just so sweet!!! And I'm already wanting a new Upadate!!!! Please let it come soon!
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