A Father's Plea/Worried:100moods

ER/Luka Kovac 100. Worried
Title: A Father's Plea
Fandom: ER
Characters: Luka Kovac
Prompt: Worried
Word Count: 484
Rating: PG
Warnings/Spoilers: Contains Spoilers to Bloodlines
Summary: Could history be repeating itself?

Abby doesn't want me with her, she says it's because she doesn't want Joe to be alone but I can't help wondering if there's more to it. Does she blame me for not being there to protect her when the shooting began in the ER, for not being there able to stop the contractions, to keep our son from coming too soon? Logic tells me that there was nothing I could have done to prevent either thing but and as I stand here watching Joe sleep I can't shake the feeling of hopelessness that threatens to consume me. All the years of training, all my years of hands on experience, and here I stand doing nothing.

I can't help but find my thoughts returning to that tragic day in Vukovar when I lost Danijela and the children. I know now that Marko's death was never one I could accept blame for, that his life was taken before I even found him. For years I second guessed my actions on how I tried to save Jasna, wondered if I might have saved her if only I'd had more experience, if I could have left Danijela and carried her to a hospital. It was the same with Danijela, though I know I could never have left Jasna to die alone to save her mother.

With Joe it's different, here I can only watch, he's so close and I can't even touch him. I lay my hand on the incubator and I imagine my hand is on his chest, I imagine that I can feel each rise and fall as he struggles for each breath and I find my own breaths altering to keep pace with his as if that might somehow help him find the rhythm he needs to survive. I worry for him and find myself praying to the God I had turned away from for all those years, begging him to spare this small life and not take yet another child from me.

I don't think I realized it would be like this, but then too wonder if it's anything I could ever really have planned for? Abby and I talked about how we would parent our child when he or she arrived, but neither of us knew or could have expected him to arrive two and a half months early. We hoped, as all parents do, that he would be healthy, and as doctors we understand too well the realities that his early birth brings with it.

Maybe it's because I've already suffered the losses of two children, but mentally I know I'm not prepared to lose another child. So, with that in mind, I'm willing to set aside the facts and the statistics, and I'm even willing to turn back to the faith that I'd abandoned. For Abby, for all he has yet to experience, for me, please, let him live.