Disclaimer: They’re not mine

Spoilers: None past Season 10’s “Dear Abby”

Pairing: Luby

Rated: T or PG-13, to be safe.

Summary:Luby Set mid-season 10. Luka, sick with malaria, comes home.

So I’ve seen the Season 12 finale now and it was intense, wasn’t it? Brilliant, definitely – one of ER’s best. I can’t wait until Season 13 starts. But anyway, yes, I said I would write this chaptered fic since that Luby standalone I wrote, ages ago. I guess my obsessive CSI-fic writing stopped this from taking off and, to be honest, I’m a bit stuck with this. So I thought I’d put it up and see if anyone was interested, and that maybe, hopefully, that’d spur me on to write.

Anyway, I’ve tried to get my malaria facts right and I hope you guys like it. Forgive me, if it's slow. Read, review – that would be nice. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx

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Kisangani Dreams. Chapter One. An Illinois Paradise

- o -

“We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character”

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

- o -

This is the way to come home, Luka is sure of it. Private jets, helicopters and a pretty face by his side – Gillian holding his hand throughout the journey and intermittently checking his IV line. If it wasn’t for the cold sweats, shivering, aching, slipping in and out of consciousness, this might’ve been the ideal trip. But as it was, he’d missed most of it. Save for opening his eyes to the curved plane roof, the shuddering helicopter ceiling and – once – blue skies, he had his eyes loosely shut the whole way, quaking within his own skin.

He’d missed it, too, when he’d been lifted, pushed, lowered, still on his gurney in and out of small aircrafts, across runways and through the musty corridors of small airports. He didn’t realise when they crossed the Atlantic and hit some turbulence midway. He didn’t realise the doctors’ flurry of activity when his heart rate dipped and raced alternately for a while. And he didn’t realise the inky lettering on the envelope tightly clamped under the dead weight of his palm, pressing her name into his chest – a smudgy backwards “Abby” imprinted on his once-white vest.

Air con.

Now that was different.

He wakes now to a different ceiling – level and white. Electric lights. And clean sheets.

Luka blinks his eyes awake. Gillian smiles at his bedside.

“Hi,” she greets softly. His mouth stretches into a slow smile.

“Hi,” he answers and looks dazedly around him. “Chicago?” She nods.

“Back at County,” Gillian tells him with a grin. “The best healthcare around, so I’ve been told.”

Luka croaks a laugh. “It’ll do,” he replies and sinks his head back into the pillow as Gillian shifts her chair closer.

“You were out for two days,” she says. “You missed a lot of visitors – but they left their mark.”

She waves a hand around the room and it’s only then that he notices the get well cards plastered on any viable surface and all sorts of miscellaneous items supposed to contribute to his recovery, including a bottle of mosquito repellent that Luka guessed was some form of joke from Frank.

In the corner by the door, all packed up and ready to go, is a small black suitcase.

Luka looks to Gillian. “Am I going home?” he asks in confusion.

“You wish,” she smirks and then hesitates before answering. “No, I am. Going back to Montreal. My boyfriend heard I was back...”

Somehow, Luka is not surprised to hear it and only smiles, closing his eyes again. “Complicated,” he provides and Gillian nods her head.

“Yes. It’s complicated.”

And then he is asleep.

-

The next time Luka wakes up, the middle of night, Gillian – and the suitcase – are gone. He lies for a while in the darkness, considering the lack of emotion at her absence. Perhaps it was expected. Things were different there – different here; the same rules almost didn’t apply.

It’s late. His limbs ache but his head feels curiously clearer. And he feels tired. Tired, weak and thirsty.

A shadow flits past the blinds. Someone opens his door quietly and comes inside. Luka wants to sit up and see who it is but his neck complains at the movement so he lies still, attempting to swallow in his dry mouth.

“Are you a nurse?” he asks hoarsely, looking up at the ceiling as though for some kind of response.

“Yes.” she says after a moment.

Luka coughs. “Could I please have some water?”

“Well,” the nurse begins. “I am off-duty, but why not?”

He recognises the voice, the tone. “Abby?” he voices into the dark.

“Hey Luka,” she appears over him and smiles, holding a cup of water to his lips and helping him drink it. “How are you feeling?”

“Terrible,” he answers when he’s taken a sip of water. Abby laughs.

“Malaria will do that to you,” she quips.

Luka grins again and sinks deeper into the hospital bed, shutting his weary eyes.

“It’s good to see you again,” he tells her in the silence. “I’m sorry that I was asleep.”

“When?” Abby asks, confused.

“When you visited. I was probably asleep.”

“Oh.” she utters and is quiet for a while longer before confessing, “Actually this is my first visit. I haven’t had the chance to get up here yet.”

“Nice to know you care,” he jokes.

“You know I do,” she states. “I do care; I’ve wanted to see you since you came in, but I’ve been swamped with work.”

Luka turns his head on his pillow to look at her. “You work too hard,” he says decidedly. Abby shrugs her shoulders – still in scrubs.

“I need the money.” She breaks her gaze away from him and studies her hands in her lap. “I’ve been thinking,” she starts, almost shyly. “And I spoke to Kerry about it. But I was thinking that I’d like to go back to med school.”

She looks up at him to gauge his reaction. When he doesn’t say anything, she averts her eyes out of the darkened window instead. “It’s stupid, I know – but I really wanted –“

“It’s not stupid.” he cuts her off firmly. “It’s not stupid at all. You’ll make a very good doctor; I always thought you would. I’m happy for you.”

Abby beams; she hadn’t spoken to anyone but Kerry Weaver about it, hadn’t found the courage, somehow. She didn’t know what she’d expected though – the worst, usually: scepticism and pity, perhaps? She should’ve known Luka would be supportive – he always was.

“Thank you.”

Luka attempts to nod his head on an aching neck but stops, another thought, instead, occurring.

“Did you get your letter?” he asks suddenly. “John gave me a letter for you – I don’t know where...”

“Gillian gave it to me,” Abby interjects. “I got it.” And on hearing the finality in her voice, Luka knows better than to press any further.

“It was not as though I didn’t see it coming,” she continues. “It was probably the best thing he could have done; we were more sick of ourselves than we were of each other. We needed to change – apart.”

She looks at him, almost embarrassed to catch herself voicing this, and shakes it off. “It was over months ago really; I’m not angry at him, or upset. I’m not really anything.”

Then she takes a breath and smiles. “Although I am so glad you’re okay,” she says to him, changing the subject.

He closes his eyes once more. “Me too.”

She doesn’t say anything more while he falls back into a deep sleep; she’ll be gone when he wakes up, though he’ll wake with the unshakeable feeling that she’d stayed through the night.

And as he sleeps, he dreams he’s back on that gurney crossing the Atlantic in the small aircraft – alone. Delirious, he shuts his eyes to the vast blue stretching out from the windows on either side and remembers only the feel of paper under his palm. A letter with more confessions than a death row convict’s repentance – in an envelope, tightly pressed to his heart. And four letters, boldly penned in someone else’s handwriting, burning a name into his skin.

Abby.

Spreads a strange kind of warmth from his chest, where she’s held, right down his fingertips and to his toes.

Luka Kovac’s body begins to shiver as the fever takes a hold. He presses his hand even more strongly into his chest and, as he slips underneath the fresh wave of fever, thinks only one thought – Abby.

- o -