Usual disclaimers apply: I own nothing but the story.

BONE DEEP   by Jayne Leitch

C. 2003

Luka's different here. He walks--head bowed, shoulders straight--as if the bloody mud clumped in the treads of his shoes makes it easier for him to find his footing, both on the dusty planks of the clinic and the scored dirt and grass outside. He's freer with his hands, if only with the other doctors; he pets Gillian's shoulders or back or hair when he passes by, if he's not wearing gloves, and clasps Carter's arm like he knows it won't keep him from wearying. His liquid French sometimes gives way to strings of gravelly Croatian, slips that stopped happening years ago with his English. Slips that make Carter wish he had a better ear for languages so he could get a sense of what Luka's saying right before he loses track of who he's talking to.

Here, it's no secret who Luka's sleeping with. Even if there were more possibilities than Gillian available, everyone would know because here, discretion is a concept the thickness of mosquito netting.

And because Luka's freer with his hands.

Carter's different here, too--or at least, he hopes he is. After being shot at, after watching Luka's steady hands push a saw through a non-anaesthetized girl's leg, after having to run and hide in the jungle to stay alive--after seeing Luka's bone-deep conformity to this place, where those things happen, achieved far more naturally than Luka ever managed at County--Carter hates to think he's the same person he was when he left Chicago. He wants to have changed; he wants to be different.

He doesn't *feel* different. More tired, yes; more grateful for what he's got at home, of course. But as he forces himself not to react--to the squalid conditions he's working in, the treatable illnesses he's letting go untreated, the reused gloves and empty-eyed people and lack of anything resembling real relief--he doesn't think he knows what change feels like. He tries not to let his affable doctor-face slip into an expression of horror, because everyone else he works with has already stopped thinking about how much better things are at home, how much good they could do if those facilities existed here, and he'd only look like the starry-eyed kid he hasn't been for years. Or the starry-eyed kid he still is, but knows how to hide a little better, now. It's the knowledge that that kid's still looking out his eyes, still thinking with his brain, that convinces Carter he isn't different, despite the squalor and weariness and bullets.

And Luka. Carter thinks Luka hasn't worn an expression of horror in years, and doesn't have to wonder anymore why that might be. He'd never expected to get the whole story; crouched with their patients in the undergrowth of the jungle, it was the last thing he expected to hear, even while watching Luka get angry enough to *say* it before cutting himself off and looking away to tend to that little girl. And for a second there, Carter thought that he felt something changing--something falling away, something deepening, something strengthening--but now, out of the jungle, hours after, he can't figure out what that something was, or if it was there to be changed in the first place. Now, he finds himself thinking again about the medical supplies he doesn't have instead of the ones he does, the people he couldn't treat instead of the ones he did, the donations he could make with his family's money--

He hasn't changed. He's not different, not really. Maybe, for a little while, while he's here and it's all too freshly real to be idealized or demonized, he can walk with a little more purpose or make do without complaining. Maybe, when he re-dresses the girl's ragged, oozing stump of a leg and doesn't bother with a false smile, he can glance up and meet Luka's weighing gaze without blinking and turning away. Maybe, in the dark outside the clinic, pressed against the single solid wall farthest from their only outdoor lamp, he can be equal to Luka's silent, steady stroking, as if now he really does understand what Luka does, and accepts the things they cannot do.

Maybe, while he's here. But Carter will be different at home.

End.

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