Admit It To Yourself

AUTHOR: Gemma Lambourne
EMAIL: pony_gemma@yahoo.com
CATEGORY: Mainly JC
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: Not that I know of.
ARCHIVE: Please ask me.
DISCLAIMER: This is a piece of fan fiction so it is purely fictional, none of this is true and will not appear in an up - and - coming episode of NBC's ER, and it has nothing to do with the cast, or production team of "ER", NBC, or Warner Bros. I'm also not a doctor so my medical knowledge isn't the best.
SUMMARY: Carter admits his addiction.



It's late at night, Carter was in the lounge getting ready to leave the ER after finishing his shift. It has been a long, hard shift. A 16 - year - old teenage boy had been brought into the ER, after overdosing on a bunch of painkillers that he'd found in his bathroom cupboard. He'd had a history of being bullied at school, so the police had come to the conclusion that he's tried to take the pain away as he'd taken too much of the bullying and wanted to stop it once and for all.

This was only too familiar to Carter, he was stabbed on Valentine's Day 2000, by a psyciateric patient, Paul Sobriki, who he and Lucy Knight were treating. Lucy was also stabbed, but she wasn't so lucky. Carter blamed himself for what happened to Lucy. He blamed himself because he wasn't in the room when Sobriki visciously stabbed Lucy, and later stabbed him. He slowly deteriorated and started taking more drugs than required to take the pain away from his wounds and the pains away out of his mind. He got found out when Abby caught him injecting the last of the fentanyl from a trauma into his wrist, she went and told Mark and Kerry who had a word with him among with some of his closest friends in the hospital. Carter was given the choice to go the rehab in Atlanta, or leave. He began to leave but Peter Benton stopped him and acompanied him to the rehab centre in Atlanta where he stayed for ninety days before leaving back to Chicago. Carter slipped up along the way in Chicago by swallowing two tablets left in the trauma room, he got them back up, and told Abby, who was his sponsor at the AA meetings which he had to attend. He later told Dr. Weaver who put him back onto smaller duties where he couldn't used any controled Narcotics and then he was back to normal as soon as his time was up.

"Carter, Carter," he could hear a female voice calling him, "Carter!"

He turned round, it was Abby. "Are you okay? It must have been tough earlier huh?"

"I'm fine really, I've seen things like that loads of times, really I'm fine," Carter said looking at Abby who he could see was not at all convinced.

"Okay, if you say you are, I'll take your word for it," Abby said looking at him in the eye, Carter smiled back at her. "And you know," Abby began, "If you ever need anyone to talk to I'm always available to listen."

"I know," Carter said nodding his head, "I know."

Abby left the lounge and smiled at him as she closed the door behind herself. Carter looked into the mirror in his locker, "Things can only get better John, things can only get better and they will."
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It's 2:27am Carter is dreaming of all the events of the last shift and the past months were staying afixed into his mind.

Woman whose son overdosed: "Please don't let my son die, please don't let my son die!"


Lucy: "Carter!"

Carter: "Not now, Lucy..."

Lucy: "Paul Sobriki, he doesn't have the CNS infection. I think he might be schizophrenic."


Chen: "John! Can you hear me?"


Chen: "John?"

Carter: "Deb?"

Chen: "Look at me, do you know where you are?"

Carter: "My back..."

Chen: "You were stabbed. We've got your pressure up."

Carter: "Lucy?"


Peter: "Hey, I'm getting you through this, man."


Carter: "Lucy's dead, isn't she?"

Peter doesn't give the answer.


He then pictures his whole conversation with Chase ("SURRENDER"), that he had two days earlier, when he admitted that he was a 'drug addict'.


Carter's pager then goes off, he wakes up and looks at his clock, 9:30am, he was due in work at 8:00am. He then looked at his pager, it read, "Carter where r u? U were supposed 2 B here @ 8, & now it's 9:30! Weaver." After reading it he quickly shot up and put some bread in the toaster while he ran to the bathroom to quickly get ready for work.

Five minutes later...

He ran out of the bathroom with his tie tied completly wrong, he grabbed the toast from the toaster and grabbed for his car keys and left the house.
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Kerry was impatiently standing at the admin desk looking at her watch, 9:45am. "Has anyone seen Dr. Carter?" she yelled out hoping that someone was to answer her, but no one did, no one had seen him.

"Oooh someone's gonna be in trouble." Dave said finding it really funny, that he was imagining Carter being moaned at by Kerry instead of him for a change.

"Shut up Malucci!" Kerry snapped at him. "He could be anywhere for all we know." She said slightly beginning to become concerned. "Anyway haven't you got patients to see Malucci?" She asked, hoping it to sound to him as a rhetorical question so that he would go away and deal with some patients other than him replying some dumb answer like 'Actually chief I haven't'.

For once Dave did see it in the way Kerry always meant it to be, and he walked over to the board, looked up a patient in chairs and went over to look for his patient. "Mr Chester?"

"Yeah." The patient said.

Dave looked around to see who spoke, it was a man who looked in his late thirties, with stylish specs and mid - brown coloured hair. "Okay Mr Chester can you come with me please?" Dave said.
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Carter had just parked his car at in the staff car park at County General. He quickly ran into the hospital through the front entrance. He passed Jing - Mei "Hey John you look awful, are you okay? do you know Weaver's looking for you? You're late where have you been?

"Thanks Deb." Carter answered her. "I'm fine. I know, I know, I know I'm late and that Weaver's looking for me because that's obvious if anyone's late she's after them and she's pretty mad." Carter said running to the ER.

He arrived into the ER, he looked and saw Kerry at the admin desk, so he went into the lounge trying to get into the room before Weaver noticed him, but he wasn't so lucky.

Kerry turned round to view the position of the lounge in time to see Carter enter.

"Kerry here's your labs back on the Dakota girl." Luka informed Kerry.

"Okay thanks, Luka." Kerry said. "Can you hold onto them for me for a moment please." Kerry said as she began to walk to the lounge.

"Yeah sure." Luka replied watching her walk away.
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Kerry entered the lounge. "Carter you're an hour and *She looked at her watch* fourty - five minutes late." She yelled at him. "Well?" She said waiting for an explanation.

Carter turned round to look at her, he hadn't had enough time to shave and his tie still wasn't tied properly. He spoke to her, "I slept in."

"Well that's not good enough." She said not looking at him, then she turned to him. "God John are you okay? You look awful." She said changing the tone of her voice from a shout to being rather concerned.

"I'm fine." Carter replied. "I just slept in so I didn't have enough time to get ready that's all."

Kerry didn't look impressed, "Are you sure that everything alright?"

"Okay," Carter began, "I had a bad night, it all came back to me in a dream, all the events in the past year. And now it's all clear." he stopped.

"What's clear?" Kerry asked.

"A couple of days ago I went to see my cousin Chase, you've heard about Chase right?"

Kerry didn't want Carter to know that she knew about Chase but she admitted it, "Yes."

"Looking at him makes me feel thankful that I had friends to help me get over my addiction. I thought I was fine you know, but looking at Chase, and knowing what he was like, I admitted to him and myself that I was just as bad as he was, I was practically the same as him the only difference was that I didn't take drugs because I had nothing better to do with my spare time like he did. 'I'm a drug addict' *Kerry interupted*

"You WERE a drug addict." trying to make it plainly clear that they all knew that he was, at that now he'd got over it.

"I thought you guys just thought I had a problem." He said. "Chase didn't want to know, and no one else didn't seem to want to listen."

"I'm listening now." Kerry said sympathetically.

"And I'm glad you are. I've needed this all along. I can help myself now I see that I've admitted my situation to myself, I can now help myself." He stopped. "I WAS a drug addict *He siad looking at Kerry* and I couldn't have got through it if I didn't have the help and encouragment from all of my friends and from you setting me straight each time I did wrong. Each time I lapsed, I knew I'd go back to not being about to use any controled narcotics, so it kinda gave me a goal and it really helps. And if I'd lapsed another time I clearly knew that I'd be outta here.

Kerry just stood there are listened to what he had to say in full to her.

"And the meetings with you and Dr. Greene, they really helped, even though I looked like I didn't care, I did, and the AA meetings , they showed me that I'm not the only person with a problem, others out in this big wide world do too. So I'm going to go to an AA meeting today and share because I'm finally ready to share. I'm going tell everyone that I've overcome my addiction and why. " He looked up at Kerry. "What I'm trying to say is thank you."

"Your Welcome John." Kerry answered. "I'm pleased for you, we all are, everyone here has always had tha faith in you to overcome.

He shyly smiled.

"Come here." she said tidying up his tie. "I'll give you twenty minutes to clean yourself up and look respectable, then I want to see you out treating some patients yeah?" Kerry said.

"Yeah" Carter said nodding his head.
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Twenty minutes later...

"Hey Carter." It was Abby calling Carter, who'd just walked out into the hall of the ER.

"Abby, Hi." Carter said replying her.

"Are you okay?" Abby asked, "Chen said that you didn't look too good earlier."

"I'm great, she's right I didn't look too good earlier. I slept in and did a lot of thinking too."

"Good for you." Abby said. "I bet Weaver wasn't too over - the - moon that you were nearly two hours late."

"A matter of fact she was." Carter said grinning.

"You're kidding right?" Abby said quite amazed, usually when people were late Kerry went mad at them.

"Nope." Carter answered.

"Dr. Carter we've got a 45 year - old man coming in suspected MI, EMT's will be outside in a couple of minutes." Malik shouted out.

"Okay thanks Malik." Carter called back. "I've got to go." He said to Abby. "And oh yeah, before I forget, are you going to the AA meeting tonight?" he asked.

"Yeah if you want me to be there, why?" she asked.

"Because I've decided that I'm ready to stand up and share."

"I'm glad." Abby said as Carter walked away to the emergency doors at the ambulance bay just as the EMT's ran through with a gurney.

"how long's he been down?" Carter asked the EMT's.

"Ten minutes." an EMT answered.

"Lets get him to a trauma room." Carter said. "Someone get Weaver we could do with some help in here."

Weaver was closly following the gurney. "Lets get a chem 7, cardiac enzymes, and coag panel."

"He's in V - tach." Lydia yelled.

"Okay lets shock him. Charge the paddles to 250!" Carter yelled. Haleh passed the paddles to Carter and someone charged the machine, "1...2...3... CLEAR!" Carter yelled.

Outside the trauma room Abby was watching. Her shift was over and she was ready to go home. She was glad the Carter had chosen to finally share. She smiled at Carter who looked up at her then she left the hospital and Carter, Weaver and the trauma team were left to finish the trauma. The man, Mr Jason, lived, he did suffer an MI (heart attack).



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