Summary: There was salvation to be had in the tale of lost love, as Layla had discovered today, and it gave her extreme amounts of joy to be able to abuse her position as Happy's surrogate daughter and play the part of the office gossip.
Set: During 216: Caveat Medicus
Spoilers: 216 : Caveat Medicus. And probably the two episodes before it.
Layla Young was a compassionate, intuitive person. Everyone who knew her knew this about her, but often didn't realise exactly how intuitive she was. The truth was, she knew her friends better than they wanted to be known.
She knew that Happy was miserable without Ella, regardless of how well he was hiding it. She knew that Jamie wanted to quit emergency but felt too guilty to after Tony's death.
And although no one else had, Layla had worked out weeks ago that one of her best friends was falling hard for their new medical case manager.
The best friend in question was, of course, Amanda McKay, and the new medical case manager none other than Simon Lloyd. Almost anyone would've laughed her down had she commented on it, but she saw it. Amanda lit when Simon was around, dimmed whenever he rejected her – regardless of how impersonal it was, even the times she asked him to dinner and he already had theatre tickets hurt her – and was destroyed the day he resigned.
Amanda was more careful around him since then, Layla had notice; not sure how open to leave herself, preparing herself for his imminent and inevitably devastating absence. It was taking a heavy toll on her. The pull from Amanda to Simon was almost tangible to Layla. She saw how much Amanda cared for him, how much she worried about him; how much she had come to love him, really.
But, there was salvation to be had in the tale of lost love, as Layla had discovered today, and it gave her extreme amounts of joy to be able to abuse her position as Happy's surrogate daughter and play the part of the office gossip.
She walked over to Amanda's desk – Simon was nowhere in sight, so Amanda was actually concentrating on work; actually, on closer inspection she was possibly silently mulling over how unfairly he'd dismissed her that morning. Amanda was obviously worried when Simon had walked {in reality "limped" was a more accurate description} into work with his foot bandaged that morning. She had obviously been hurt when he ignored her heartfelt "what happened?" dismissing her out of sight and asking her where Happy was. She'd covered with typical feat of Amanda-ness; seeming for all intents and purposes, fine, but Layla had seen through her.
Layla handed Amanda work things, listing them on rote, and sneakily adding on the end "and I think Simon might've just un-resigned."
She watched her friend actively suppressing a fierce grin, staring down at the work on her desk to try and collect herself.
"Well." Amanda managed eventually. "At least we won't have to find someone to replace him."
Layla resisted the urge to say "Right, Amanda. That was the issue." but instead left her friend in peace to release the grin she was fighting and enjoy the fact that the man she loved was no longer moving to the other side of the planet.