"Dr. Carter, may I have a word with you?"

"What’s up Kerry?"

Pulling Carter away from the lurking traffic behind the board and ushering him into the lounge, Kerry waited until the door shut behind her, then leaned upon its comforting weight. "I just reviewed Kevin Hendrickson’s chart." Not telling him that it took all of her weight as departmental head to pry it out of the psych department’s hands. For some reason, Kim had been set on not letting her see that chart. After reviewing it, Kerry could see why.

"Hendrickson?" A puzzled frown crossed his face.

"I’m not surprised you don’t remember him. He was the psych consult whose history you didn’t bother to take."

Despite her even tone, Carter blushed darkly under the implied criticism– but he had the grace to not try and defend himself. "I don’t know what happened."

"What happened, Dr. Carter, is you let your personal feelings get in the way of patient care. And as a result, you endangered a colleague."

"You can’t believe I wanted her to get hurt!" he objected vociferously. "I had no way of-"

"I don’t believe you did," she gentled him. "But the fact remains that you didn’t take a comprehensive history. If you had, you would have seen that he had been admitted three times in the past four months and was combative all three times. And further that all three admittances were predicated on a psychic break caused by his dropping of his medications. Your instincts were right– they told you this man was unbalanced– but you didn’t follow through."

"I never wanted her to get hurt."

"I didn’t say you did." She wanted so much to reach out to this young man– who had been the closest thing to a pupil, to a son, that she had ever known– that she ever would have. He had grown so much in the years she had known him, grown so far away in that same time, that now she wasn’t quite sure how to reach him. Especially with the specter of Kim Legaspi standing between them.

"But you blame me." He turned accusing eyes on her, shifting– as he had so many times in the past– the burden of responsibility to someone else’s shoulders. "Because…"