Amy Dover [Fault]

Amy was not an affectionate person.

With Ben, she was not stingy with her hands, or her lips, or any other part of her body, ever. With her children, she wasn't cold or indifferent or unfeeling. With her patients, she didn't let anything get in the way of what she needed to do to heal them. But she did not see the worth in romantic gestures when what she needed to express was passion. She did not see the point of being gentle when what she needed to do was whip her children into shape. She did not sugar-coat a situation where her patient was wasting away on a geurny. She did not beat around the bush, and she didn't waste time.

It was something that came with working in a hospital; Amy knew better than most that time was short. People didn't get allocated lengths of it; some didn't get any at all. In one day, her coworker Arianna had delivered two stillborn babies, and had no time to stop; six other women were in labor. When Arianna went home, she could mourn all she wanted and do whatever she had to do to numb the regret and pain she felt. Amy didn't have that luxury.

It was something that came with working in a hospital; Amy had grown to expect the unexpected. She specialized in diagnostics; her forte was the odd and unorthodox. But even outside the medical aspect of hospital life, the most unexplicable events occured in the hospital. Like the day Ben Dover was rushed into the emergency room. Amy was certain it was one of Bedelia's, her best friend from school and at work, little jokes, an imaginary patient with a name as ridiculous as 'bend over.' But Ben Dover wasn't imaginary, and even if he was a joke, the punchline was not on her.  He wasn't checked out of the hospital before Amy was on her way to the rest of her life with him.

Suddenly, Amy's life was a coin with two sides. On one side, her career, where every day she told death to go fuck itself. On the other side, her marriage, which involved a different sort of fucking all together. When stress from work built up, she went home and the stress was eradicated entirely. And then, suddenly, that easy escape was over. Her four-year grace period was made up for by a seventy-three-hour labor and four little bundles of Dover-Amherst genetics: Harley, David, Greene, and Ridley.

She no longer had the escapes that her coworkers had. She couldn't come home and work her problems out with Ben until they both passed out. By day, she had to break death down while everyone else danced around it. And then, when that was done, she had to return home and fill in every crack, smooth over every wrinkle, put out every fire, and fill every stomach. And that was fine with her. More than fine. She could handle that; solving problems, cleaning messes, fixing sticky situations. Diagnose the problem, treat the problem, make the patient healthier for it. She could do that. She could fix it. She could make everything fine. She could make it all work out.

So how the fuck was it that her son was at the bottom of a river, pinned beneath a rock and a motorcycle.

It was something that came with working in a hospital; Amy was not an affectionate person. There were six dying children in one ward, and she couldn't stop to cry over one when another needed her to keep pressing. There was family to cry. There were other doctors to cry. There were people to comfort them. She needed to take comfort one step further; she needed to make them better. She needed to fix their problems. She needed to give them what they needed.

There were four children in one house, but there were no other mothers. There was Ben, and Ben was who they went to when they wanted to hear a story, or play a game, or sing a song. When they wanted to go on a bike ride, or had a great joke to share, or wanted someone to watch them do something stupid. Amy couldn't do those things. She wasn't that parent, she wasn't that mother. She'd thought, when she was pregnant, that she would change when she could hold her children in her arms. She'd only gotten harder. Only grown stronger. In the hospital, if one patient is sick, and one just healed, you don't stop to celebrate with the healthy one. You fix the sick one.

Now she couldn't remember if Harley was the healthy or the sick one. Harley was the quick one, but Harley was also the last one. Harley hadn't needed her the way the others had. Ridley wasn't that bright, so Amy had to push him to make him smarter. David wasn't confident, so Amy had to push him to make him braver. Greene wasn't self-reliant, so Amy had to push her to make her independent. Harley was sharp as a whip, Harley was more courageous than the three others put together, and Harley was so independent he ran recklessly ahead of the lot of them, Amy included.

Amy hadn't needed to push him. Amy needed to reign him in, put him in his place, before he hurt himself.

But sometimes, you could treat every symptom of the patient, stop sickness in its tracks, and the root will still be there. Sometimes you can't pull the root out. Sometimes patients just can't be healed. Usually, Amy didn't have patients like those. Usually, she did her job and sent her patients home healthy and never saw them again. That was what she was supposed to do, as a mother. Right? Raise her children to be strong, so that when they left her house, they wouldn't need her again. They'd be fine.

Harley was the rare case. Harley was the exception. Four patients with the same symptoms, not all of them will have the same illness. But it was trickier than that. Her other three children, they all had different symptoms, but they stemmed from the same place. Harley wasn't sick. Harley was just Harley. There was nothing she could fix with Harley, so what was Amy to do then?

Anything. Anything but what she had done. She could do anything else, say anything but what she had said. But it wasn't that night. She'd fucked up with Harley his whole life; misdiagnostics, neglegence, caution. Three things Amy had to avoid as a doctor. Three fatal errors she had made with Harley. When you misdiagnose the patient, the risk of death increases. When you neglect to treat the patient, the risk of death increases. When you hesitate, the risk of death increases. When you do all three, the patient dies.

Amy wasn't an affectionate person; it was something that came with being a great doctor. But Amy had fucked up horribly as a mother. And she had lost her son, more important than any and all of her patients, because she hadn't stopped to celebrate with the healing patient. Because she hadn't stopped to cry over the dying patient. Because she had focused all of her time and energy in fixing problems, some problems that weren't there. It was something that came with working in a hospital.