Few to no people considered Kerry a warm person by any means, her abrasive tone, and insistence on the importance of rules and regulations normally overshadowed any underlying feelings she had and it would be often mortifying to her to let people know any different.
But lately, she had been slowly opening up to the more reliable of her colleagues, Abby Lockhart in particular.
Thanks to the increasing pressures of her job, a job where nobody could win; people berating her from above and below, she found herself losing her temper more and more regularly and at things often so trivial she previously would have paid them no mind as Chief of Emergency Medicine and perhaps even when she started as Chief of Staff. But everything was different now.
Her personal life, one she had spent years searching for, one she had had to work through decades of internalised oppression to achieve. For it she had been: publicly humiliated, on the brink of losing her job, suffered a miscarriage which had left her feeling powerless and still had to continue attending a workplace where she was hated for expecting just half of that same commitment, had had to forego time off to spend with her wife and child to make sure she wasn’t seen as weak or as a burden for being gay.
So when she had finally found someone who would love her, who would give her a child. She had hoped, stupidly perhaps, that the worst of it was over.
She did her best to forget that godforsaken day, the day her soul and any remaining hope she had for happiness died. She was scared of what she’d do if she remembered. But there were some truths it left behind that even she couldn’t avoid, the emptiness, the loneliness, somehow more poignant now than they had ever been before, now that she’d had a taste of what fulfillment could be.
She was starting even to miss his screams. She often awoke late at night in a cold sweat, fearing he’d been taken or worse because she couldn’t hear him and each time reality and the fear she felt upon waking caused her to break down sobbing with only her pillow to console her.
Each day as she went into work dragging herself through the endless slog of meetings and paperwork and patients and employees who hated her, employees who slacked, employees who complained about missing a tv program because they had to stay 20 minutes later than usual. It fuelled the tornado inside her the anger and the self-hatred, if she had only been less committed, less ambitious, she could have had the same degree of negligence towards her job, then she may have been able to make those she loved happier by not caring she was gay, not staying the extra hours when she had a screaming baby at home. In fact, the fact that she should be despised was one of the few things she and her colleagues agreed upon.
Yet, she carried on. Making enemies with her peers on the board and in the ER. But as the weeks passed her irritability was undeniably increasing...
“When I say your shift starts at 7 your shift starts at 7 I don’t see what’s so difficult to understand.” She shouted.
The terrified medical student stood eyes wide, shaking a little. “I-I’m sorry Dr. Weaver, my car broke down.”
“Damn right you should be.”
“I ran as fast as I could to get in on time.” She tried again with a little hope in her voice.
“I don’t see any sweat.” Kerry retorted.
The student paused, “What?”
Kerry walked closer to her, her voice almost cruel as she said very slowly, “You should've run faster.”
Everyone in the lobby area stared, some with their mouths agape at the exhibition readying to tell all the people who’d missed the show about how Weaver had finally lost it.
“Don’t you all have work to do.” Kerry finally addressed the crowd before storming off in the direction of the lounge. Silence remained. Abby looked around the silent ER, let out a breath, and followed Kerry in, leaving the rest of County’s employees to share a wince on her behalf and collectively agree not to go in there for a while.
“Kerry, what the hell was that?” she said, letting the door slam behind her, folding her arms across her chest.
“What was what?” Kerry replied, her back to Abby, dipping a tea bag in and out of a mug, her back tense as if the slightest added pressure would make it snap.
“That..that display.”
Kerry half turned, using the hand which wasn’t holding the mug to wave in time with her very structured rant. “If you’re late, prepare to reap the consequences. You know that, she knows that, everyone in this damn hospital should know that by now. If a patient dies because there aren’t enough people attending them then whoever’s missing can feel guilty about it then.”
“Kerry-”
“And who are you to tell me what to do as far as I’m aware I’m the boss around here you have no right to speak to me like that.” Kerry’s voice lifted as she finally confronted Abby, putting her mug down and leaning heavily on her crutch as she turned completely to face her.
“I believe I have the right when a colleague of mine is upset.”
“She’s not technically a member of staff ye-”
“I mean you.”
Kerry stopped, before scoffing and shaking her head at the audacity of it all, “I’m not upset.”
“Really, Kerry?” Abby said, unfolding her arms. “I’ve seen you these past couple of months and with everything going on-. Kerry, you don’t care about anything anymore. Not even you. There’s so much more to you than all this, I know it.”
Kerry stared, her eyes downcast. Deep down she knew Abby was right. But in her typical Weaver fashion, she decided it better to say nothing than to say something that could potentially compromise her.
“Kerry, please. Look after yourself. Even if you don’t care about yourself, I do.” Abby said in a low voice as she gently approached her friend.
The hot tears of anger that had been lingering, balancing on the tip of her lower eyelid, now decided to fall and the second Abby saw this she crossed the room to wrap Kerry up in a big hug.
Kerry wept into Abby’s shoulder, the overwhelming stress of her personal and professional lives finally getting the better of her despite all her bravado. She knew, later on, she would grow to regret this moment of weakness, but for now, she could do nothing but admit that it was nice to be held as if someone cared about her.
