New Fanfic-Talking Things Out Part 1

Neela walked into the office of Dr. Michaela James, a therapist that was strongly recommended to her by Dr. Dubenko, who had talked to her after he had quit County. He had recently came back to work after the staff from both surgery and the ER had a sit in at Anspaugh's office. He had seen that there was something wrong with her and that she was close to a breakdown, so after he couldn't get her to tell him what was wrong, he recommended her to Dr. James.

Neela went up to the receptionist's desk and let them know that she was here. She then walked over to one of the couch's in the waiting area for somebody to call her back to Dr. James' office. She didn't have to wait long.

"Neela Rasgotra." A woman in her mid forties, about five foot five, long dark hair, wearing a business suit, stepped out of the one of the doors and waited for her to walk over to her. The two women walked into the office and shook hands before Neela sat down on the couch that was right inside the door and Dr. James sat down into a wingback chair that was facing the couch.

"How are you doing today, Dr. Rasgotra?"

"I'm okay."

"I can tell from your accent that you are British. What part of England are you from?"

"London. My boss, Lucien Dubenko told me about you and that you were a very good doctor."

"Lucien is a wonderful man that needed to talk about some issues that were troubling him. You obviously have somethings that you need to get out of your system. How about you tell me about it, sometimes just talking to someone who doesn't know you, will give you a fresh perspective on what is wrong."

"I think my issues really started when I first came to County as a med student. I had trouble fitting in and on my first day, a patient that I was caring for died. The intern who was supervising me, Michael, was so kind, handsome and he was willing to help me get the hang of things."

"Michael? He sounds like he became very important to you."

"He did. I ended up marrying him two and a half years later."

"Your records stated that you were a widow. What happened?"

" Michael was a soldier and the army had paid for him to go to medical school. About six months after I started at County, he was called to Iraq. We had only realized that we liked each other and he had to leave. We wrote each other but it wasn't the same as seeing him everyday."

"While Michael was in Iraq, I graduated med school and got an internship at Michigan. I quit and came back to Chicago, where my friend, Abby, let me sleep on her couch. I looked for a job and finally ended being a cashier at the Jumbomart, a convience store across the street from County. When one of the interns at County quit, Dr. Lewis, the Chief Of The ER at the time, asked me to come back to County. I joined Abby and the other intern, Ray Barnett..." A sad look came over Neela's face as she mentioned Ray.

"From the look on your face, Ray is important to you as well and it didn't end very well."

"No, it didn't. About six months after I started staying with Abby, she kicked me out and Ray offered me the extra room in his apartment. I decided to move in with him, under the agreement that we would work separate shifts. That didn't last long."

"What happened?"

"I was ready to move out from almost the first day I moved in with him because he was in a rock band. If I wasn't dealing with his bandmates, I was having to hear him have very loud and noisy sex with groupies."

"He sounds like he wasn't a very good roommate."

"He got better at it and became a shoulder to lean on when my life got even more bloody crazy than it already was."

"Okay. How did your life get crazy?"

" A month or so after I moved in with Ray, Michael came back for a day, so he could bring a burn victim back to County. We ended up talking before we then decided to go out to dinner. We went back to my place and let's say, we didn't make it to dinner. We ended up sleeping together. He went back to Iraq and we continued to write to each other and I didn't see him again until November of 2005. We spent an amazing week together and then he asked me to marry him. Everything inside of me was saying that it wasn't a good idea, that we didn't know each other well enough to get married yet. I didn't listen and I married him."

"That was very quick, don't you think?"

"Iknow. I don't normally do things as impulsive as that but when he told me that he loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, I gave into him. Abby tried to talk me out of it, but I didn't listen."

"What did your roommate have to say about this?"

"He didn't say anything to me about it, he seemed to be supportive of me and Michael. He had his own issues going on that if it would have come out, he would have went to jail. I had tried to protect him but I didn't succeed very well."

"What happened?"

"Well you know how I told you that he brought home groupies?"

"Yes."

"One night he brought home one that caused him more trouble than he wanted. All because he didn't talk to the girl first before he took her home and slept with her."

"I have a feeling this story is about get very interesting."

"We found out a week later that Zoe hadn't been honest about herself. She came to me saying that it was starting to burn when she peed and I thought it was a bladder infection, given the amount of sex she and Ray had'd that week. The interesting part was when I asked for her birthday. It seems that she was fourteen years old."

A stunned look came over Dr. Michael's face before she composed herself enough to speak.

"I have to hear the rest of this, you have me intrigued as to how this part of your story ends."

"I did some tests on her and found out that she had Chlamydia. I found Ray, who was also working that day, and told him how old she was and her diagnosis. He was freaked out about it and confronted her. Come to find out, Ray wasn't the only person Zoe had slept with that week. His tests came back negative for Chlamydia, so he started to avoid her after that. That is, until her father came into the ER insisting that I tell him just what was wrong with his daughter. I told him that because of privacy laws, I couldn't tell him. It seems Ray grew a conscience and decided to tell her father the truth. I had to stop him because I couldn't let him go to jail because of Zoe. I failed."

"Her father found out."

"Yes. He intimidated Zoe to the point that she told him the truth. We were leaving work that night and Zoe's father attacked Ray and told him to stay away from his daughter or he would kill him."

"I do see the man's point, he did have sex with the man's fourteen year old daughter."

"It seems Mr. Butler wasn't a very nice man. A month after I married Michael, while I was dealing with my husband telling me that he was going back to Iraq, Ray was trying to save Zoe and get her to a safe place. Her father had beat her up."

"It seems like a lot of your life at the time was more with Ray than your husbands, Neela."

"It was. Ray was the one who was there for me after Michael left. He stopped bringing women home and spent his time with me."

"It seems he was more like a husband to you than Michael was."

"Now that I think about it, he was."

"You fell in love with Ray, didn't you?"

"Dr. James..."

"I can see the look on your face, Neela. You were married to one man but in love with another."

"I bloody loved Michael!" Neela said, raising her voice.

"I didn't say you didn't love Michael. I'm saying that you weren't in love with him, Neela."

"I don't have to listen to this, I'm going home." Neela said, getting up and walking towards the door.

"You run from things don't you, Neela. If it is anything that is too hard to face, you run away or don't face it and make things worse."

Neela stopped and turned back around, facing Dr. James, who was still sitting down.

"How would you know, you sit here and listen to everybody else's problems. You don't know what you are talking about."

"Actually I do, Neela. More than you know. I was in love with a man that was my best friend. We did everything together, he was the one person I could count on to be there for me. I lost him for a brief time because of my own pride and stupidity. I started to date another man that my parents thought was better suited for me than Miles. He watched me marry this other man and didn't say a word, even though his heart was breaking."

Tears filled Neela's eyes as she went back to sit down and listen to Dr. James' story.

"My marriage lasted six months before I left Brian. I loved him but I wasn't in love with him. He was in love with me but his service to his country was more important to him than me. We filed for divorce and my parents had a fit. I told them to butt out of my life and that I wasn't going to let them control my life anymore."

"What happened with Miles?"

"He was there for me at the end of my marriage but then I did something so stupid. I slept with this other man, who I didn't love, that was nothing more than a rebound relationship. I hurt Miles more than you know and his response was to date my assistant at the time. My relationship with the other man lasted for a few months before I realized that I had been running from the man I truly loved, Miles."

Neela felt a kinship to the other woman and listened to her finish her story.

"I broke up with the other man, who tried to make things difficult and didn't want to let me go. I finally told him the truth about my feelings for him and I went to find Miles. He was so hurt at how I had been treating him, that he wouldn't talk to me for a brief amount of time. He was tired of me playing with his heart and if I was going to get him back into my life, I had to fight for him. He finally let me back into his life and we have never looked back. We got married three years ago."

"What about your assistant that he was dating?"

"She was very angry at being used and quit not long after we started to see each other."

"You're right. I'm in love with Ray and rather than face him and my feelings for him, I throw myself into flings with men that I know there is no future with. One of them was a former paramedic that I met not long before I married Michael. His name was Tony Gates. I didn't hear anything from him until the day after I buried Michael, who had been killed in Iraq. He's been dead for two years now."

"I am so sorry to hear that Neela."

"Thank you."

"I moved out of the apartment I was sharing with Ray after I realized I was falling in love with him. I moved into our friend Abby's old apartment, who had sense gotten involved with Luka, the Chief Of The ER at the time and they were having a baby. When I found out Michael had died, I pushed Ray away even more. Instead of turning to the one person that I wanted to hold me and tell me that everything was okay, I pushed him away and started a relationship with Tony that should have never happened, who had became a doctor."

Michaela felt a connection with the young woman's story and continued to listen to her.

"What Tony neglected to tell me was that he was living with a woman named Meg and helping to raise her daughter, Sarah. I was acting so selfish at the time, that I slept with Tony anyway. All I cared about was forgeting about Michael and the guilt I felt over falling for Ray while he was in Iraq, that I really didn't care who I hurt. I had told Tony to stay away from me after Meg and Sarah found us in bed together on Thanksgiving of 2006. I was done with him until the one person I needed told me that he was tired of playing my games anymore. Ray, who had ended up dating my med student Katey, told me that I had made my choice and that I couldn't have it both ways. I was vulnerable and in a bad place when Tony came up to me and gave me a speech about how because of me that he wanted to change. I took him back to my place and started a chain of events that would cause four innocent people more pain than they deserved."

"What happened, Neela?"

"Meg got drunk and confronted Tony and I in the middle of the ER, calling me a whore and screaming that I wasn't going to take him from them. Tony took Meg to another room so she could calm down. I went to find Sarah, who had seen the confrontation. She told me to find somebody else that he did this all the time and he always come back to them. A week later, Meg took some pills and committed suicide, breaking that little girl's heart."

"Oh my."

"It gets worse. I had pulled away from Tony, especially after he told me that Meg had told him before she died that Sarah could be his daughter. I turned to Ray, who was there for me as he always was. One night, after Tony had left work and not told me he was leaving, Ray took me home. We shared a kiss that night. If we hadn't of came to our senses, it would have turned out to more than a kiss but I couldn't do that Tony."

"You have a strong sense of right and wrong, don't you?"

"Yes. Ray told me one time that it made me a selfish righteous pain in the ass but it was one of the best things about me." Neela said, smiling sadly at the memory.

"Something happened to Ray, didn't it?"

Tears filled Neela's eyes as she described the events that she hadn't talked about in a year.

"I had told Ray to wait for me that I needed time. I was going to end things with Tony but I couldn't catch up with him to do it. There was always some drama with him in some way shape or form. There was supposed to be a dinner for the ER and I was going to go alone. Tony showed up and I gave in and went with him. Ray saw us together and walked off to another part of the warehouse that the dinner, which we later found out was going to be a wedding for Abby and Luka, was located at. We talked and I was getting ready to confess my feeling when Hope, an intern who had helped Luka plan the wedding, walked up and told me that Abby was looking for me."

"What happened that night."

"After the wedding, I was watching Abby and Luka have their first dance and I couldn't resist looking at Ray. He had walked off and I started to follow him. Instead I found Tony on the terrace. He tried to talk me into giving us another try and had caressed my face. I pushed him away and told him that we needed to talk. I think Ray saw us and took it the wrong way. He got really drunk and started a fight with Tony. Pratt and Morris, two of the attendings in the ER, stopped them. Pratt took Ray outside and Morris took Tony to the bathroom. I broke up with Tony that night and then left a message on Ray's voice mail," Neela stopped talking and fought to not break down into sobs as she revealed the next part of her story. "We couldn't find Ray for a week until I finally got a call from him. He was at Mercy hospital but he wouldn't tell me what was wrong. So I went down there and what I saw, broke me."

"Neela, we can save this for your next session."

"No, I have to say this now or I never will. He had been hit by a truck and they had to amputate both of his legs at right below the knee."

"Wow." Dr. James said, unable to say anything else.

"He was so angry and hurt and I had caused this to happen because I couldn't tell Tony that I didn't want to be with him anymore."

"Neela, what happened to Ray wasn't your fault. It was a horrible accident."

"He wouldn't have bloody been in that road if I hadn't of been such a selfish bitch. Katey and Tony were both right. I am a selfish and narcissistic bitch, who thinks of no one but herself. I have especially proven the two of them right with my actions of this past year."

"Neela..."

"Ray went home to Baton Rouge to recover and I promised him that I would visit him. The day he left, I went to a peace rally and someone set off an explosion. I was knocked down and trampled by the crowd. I had to have surgery and was in the hospital for awhile. When I recovered, I went back to work and went on as if my best friend and the man I love wasn't hurt because of my own selfish stupidity. The worst thing I did of all came just a few weeks ago. I didn't learn from my mistakes and almost slept with a man that made Tony look like an angel. The only thing that stopped it from happening was when Simon and I were both paged because of an explosion in the ambulance bay."

"I heard about that on the news, one of the doctors at County died right?"

"Yes, Dr. Pratt. I didn't tell you before but he was Michael's best friend."

"I am so sorry to hear that, Neela"

"So in the space of two years, I buried my husband, started a stupid relationship with Tony, Ray got hurt and left me because of my own stupidity, I was injured myself, instead of learning my lesson from what happened with Tony, I almost slept with Simon, and then Pratt died."

"It sounds like you have been through an emotional roller in the last four or five years. Neela, you need to face the fact that Michael's death and what happened to Ray wasn't your fault. You can't keep running from your problems, you have to face them. Michael's gone, but Ray is still here. You need to decide what you want for your life and if it is Ray, you need to go to him and make him see that he is the one you want."

"What if he has already moved on with someone else?"

"Then you will know the truth and can move on with your life. You will never knew until you try."

"Thank you, Dr. James for telling me your story and listening to mine. I will think about everything that you have said."

"You're welcome, Neela."

Neela shook Michaela's hand before she left the office. As the door closed behind her, the door to the adjoining office opened and a handsome man in his late forties, about six foot with blond hair and blue eyes stepped out, carrying a cane. He slowly made his way over to her side and held her.

"That story sounded very familiar didn't it."

"Yes it did, Miles."

"How did you find it in your heart to forgive me after all I put you through?"

"I realized that a lot of what happened was because I didn't fight for you as hard as I should have."

"Do you think he will forgive her?"

"That is up to Ray, but if he is in love with her as much as I love you, I think everything will be okay."

Miles kissed his wife softly before he walked back into his office, while Michaela walked over and called her next patient.



A couple of days later, Neela was at the airport waiting to board a flight to Baton Rouge when she felt someone tap her on the shoulder. She turned around and saw Ray standing there, with a smile on his face. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him, not giving him a chance to say a word. She knew that they had a lot of things to still talk about but he was here and she wasn't going to make the same mistakes that she did before.

Beautiful story! I loved it! If only you were working for TPTB!

How I'd love that to happen in ER! would be so good as if it were this way
Great fic! I it!

I am moving this into Save Reela fanwork