Merry Christmas to you all that celebrate it and to those who don't, Happy Friday! I had a few oneshot ideas but this was the one chosen on the Holby City Forum that I have begun (please check it out and feel free to join in!) so I've written this short story about my favourite Holby family :)

A Christmas Miracle

Everyone else dreaded being put down for the Christmas Eve shift but Jac Naylor volunteered to do it every year and to work Christmas Day too. Staff was kept to a minimum for the day as there were no non-emergency operations and no meetings took place; it was a shift of ward rounds and catching up on any paperwork that needed to be completed all whilst getting paid more than usual. The few surgeries that did occur were often exciting as they weren't the usual CABG or valve replacements that she had done so many times she could perform one in her sleep but Jac hadn't been in theatre once and it was approaching midday on Christmas Eve so she wasn't holding out for anything special in the remainder of her shift.

As a result of it being quiet, Jac had retrieved her daughter – who was two years old in a couple of weeks – from the crèche and set up a few toys on the rug in the middle of the room to keep her occupied. She'd finished her work a while ago but still had to remain on the ward in case of emergency so she was just watching her daughter play with a shape sorter whilst she wondered what Emma's father would be doing for Christmas. He'd probably be celebrating with his family up in Scotland – he had moved up there to be closer to them. But she couldn't help but wonder what they'd be doing now together as a small family if things hadn't have gone wrong.

They'd begun arguing the day after Jonny had quit and Jac took her delayed maternity leave and had bickered up until the day Jonny had left for Scotland. Jonny had never dreamt of leaving his daughter but fighting for months and months had been enough to change his mind. He and Jac were arguing because she'd been offered a place on a highly competitive course in South Korea to learn to perform an operation that had saved her patient's life a couple of weeks ago. She wanted to go on the six week long trip but Jonny wasn't content with Jac going and him looking after their daughter for so long or for all three of them going to a foreign country for that length of time. There was no way Jac was turning down the experience but eventually, Emma helped to make the decision for them.

She reminded him that she wasn't just his daughter, she was related to Jac Naylor and had hence inherited some of her steely traits. She had begun to show favouritism amongst her parents and whilst Jonny knew it was somewhat normal, Emma had taken it to a new level. She wouldn't do anything her father asked her to do, she'd purposely make a huge mess if it was him who was feeding her and she wouldn't sit still for him to read a story to her and yet she'd do anything Jac wanted her to do. That had been why he'd moved back up to Dunfermline – his own daughter showed no sign of love towards him no matter how hard he tried and his relationship with Jac was like walking on eggshells from the moment he woke in the morning to the moment his head hit the pillow again.

Suddenly, Jac was brought out of her thoughts when there was a knock at the door and Mo swiftly entered – everyone else would wait for permission to enter except her.

"Ah, rumour had it that there was a toddler seen on the ward but it turns out it wasn't a rumour." Mo smiled. "How is she after the whole roof incident?"

"She'll live." Jac replied as the toddler crawled away from the shape sorter and grabbed a toy pig from the sofa.

"I didn't think she liked Ralph." Mo frowned.

"Did you come here for any particular reason Maureen?"

"Yeah, Alice Gardner left this for you." Mo stated as she brought a bottle of champagne in a gift bag from behind her back.

"Who?"

"Your frozen elephant trunk patient. She popped in to say she's doing well and to thank you but you weren't around. I presume it was when you were collecting Emma from the crèche."

"Oh right... You can have it."

"Really?"

"I can't take my eyes off of this one for a minute, let alone have a drink. She's a walking hazard like her father."

"Thanks, I'll enjoy that later. But speaking of her father… have you heard anything from Jonny recently?"

"Haven't you got a ward round to be getting on with?"

"Message received: butt out." Mo concluded. "Bye bye." She waved at Emma before she left the small family alone and closed the office door behind her.

"What're you doing face ache?" Jac raised an eyebrow as her daughter began rifling through the bag that was on the sofa in the office that was given to the ladies in the crèche whenever she was looked after there.

"Please." Emma requested as she pulled out an empty sippy cup.

"Come here, you can have some of this." Jac stated as she took her own bottle of water that was on her desk. The young child padded over as Jac took the lid off and then she held the bottle for her daughter whilst Emma put her tiny hands on top of her mother's so she didn't make a mess.

Jac was just screwing the lid on her bottle when there was a knock at the door and as it opened without her expressing permission to enter, she assumed it would be Mo again only it revealed a curly haired Scotsman who had a large gift bag filled with presents and a smaller gift bag in one hand, a pull-along suitcase in the other and a large rucksack on his back. "Maconie? What are you doing here?"

"Daddy!" Emma exclaimed as she ran as fast as she could across the short distance and then hugged one of his legs.

"Hello you." Jonny smiled as he stepped into the room, put down the bags and then crouched down so that he could hug her properly.

"Why are you here?" Jac asked suspiciously as she rose to her feet and folded her arms across her chest.

"Because of all of these." He stated as he picked up the smaller gift bag and handed it to her. She then took out the leather bound book to find it was a photo album filled with pictures of Emma's first eighteen months of life as well as a couple of when Jac was with child and before that when she and Jonny were together.

"This doesn't explain why you're here." Jac aired aloud as she placed the book on her desk.

"I'm here because these photos remind me how happy I was before it all went wrong. I'm here because I want a second chance to be Emma's Dad." Jonny admitted. "I know I was finding things difficult but she's a toddler; she doesn't mean whatever she's done and I've always known that it just got too difficult to bear. I shouldn't have blamed you for her behaviour. It was wrong of me and I'm sorry."

"But what about next time when you can't cope? What if you walk away again and I have to sit with her and tell her that I don't know if her daddy is ever coming back and that I heard the door slam at three o'clock in the morning only to find that you'd packed all of your things and left us without a backwards glance?"

"I'll never leave you again - it's the worst thing I've ever done. I've regretted it ever since I left and the feeling of guilt that I left my partner and my daughter is not something I could ever go through again."

"I don't think you understand how physically sick I felt when I saw the train tickets that you'd booked. I thought you might've just got called into work and didn't want to wake me but when I saw the laptop screen I thought I'd been abandoned by the one person that loved me. Again."

"I love you." Emma pouted as she looked up to her mother. It was the longest thing she'd learnt to say but she'd surprised her mother with the phrase after watching it on a children's programme.

"She's grown a lot since I left." Jonny smiled as she tussled the youngster's mousy brown hair.

"She didn't sleep through the night for weeks after you left." Jac sighed.

"I missed you too Emma, and your mummy." He said softly but the child was more interested in getting the coloured blocks back out of her shape sorter so she sat down on the carpet and begun playing again. "Seeing my sisters with their kids and partners… it just wasn't right for me to spend Christmas without you two. Please can I come home?" He pleaded. "And could you just bare it in mind that all the train services are closed now for the holidays so if you say no I've got nowhere else to go." He added with a smile.

"I might be cold hearted but even I wouldn't make you spend Christmas streets." Jac said simply.

"Thank you, thank you so much you won't regret giving me another chance I promise Jac." He said gratefully as he walked over and wrapped his arms around her but he sensed her tense up so he released her. "Sorry." He apologised as he gathered they weren't quite back to normal yet. "Did you have fun decorating the tree together?" He asked his daughter who was making quite a mess out of only a couple of toys.

"We haven't got a tree." Jac replied.

"What?"

"We're not celebrating Christmas; we're not religious and she'll never remember anything anyway."

"Well I'll remember it. I'm sure we can find somewhere that still has a few trees left. How long have you got left on your shift?"

"I'm here until five."

"Oh..."

"If you really want to, you can take her now and go and buy a tree. But it has to be a fake one – I'm not having needles drop all over the carpet."

"I spent all the money left in my bank on the journey here." Jonny admitted. Since quitting his job at Holby, he hadn't applied for another job and when he was with Jac, money was no problem nor was it a problem when he was staying with his family but now that he was in between them, it was a problem.

"Go and get my handbag out of my locker – I can give you some money and you can borrow my car too." She ordered as she took her keys out of her pocket.

"Great."

"Jonny, I can trust you can't I?"

"Of course you can mummy." He replied with a grin. "We're going to have the best Christmas tomorrow, just us three."

"I'm working tomorrow." She admitted.

"Can't you get someone else to cover?"

"Mo was looking for an excuse to get out of having to go to her family's meal." Jac suddenly remembered.

"Well then Emma, I hope you've been a good girl because otherwise Santa won't come tonight."

"Please don't make her believe in all that commercial rubbish." Jac complained as Jonny walked out of the room with Emma's tiny hand in one of his.

X

It was early evening and Jac had just changed out of her work clothes and into a blue checked nightshirt when Jonny entered the master bedroom with a smile on his face.

"Emma's fast asleep… she let me read her a whole story and we went through all the pictures together. And she even said she wasn't going to sleep unless she had ralph by her side – she hates him." He declared quietly. "She's like a completely different girl."

"Maybe you leaving made her realise what she had." Jac shrugged. "And the only reason she likes Ralph now is because I told her you got it for her when she was a baby. She won't go anywhere without him."

"It's a bit early for her to be going to sleep now isn't it?"

"She sleeps more hours at night now because she's given up her morning nap. She just has an hour in the afternoon to get her through the day. Plus she still likes to get up early to watch the sunrise. It's okay at the moment because sunrise isn't until around eight o'clock but last summer we had to get up at quarter to five in the morning."

"Oh right..." Jonny nodded but with every new morsel of information he was told it made him feel terribly guilty for leaving her and his daughter. "Are you going to bed now too?" He asked as he watched her close the curtains.

"Yes." Jac confirmed as she pulled back the duvet on her side of the bed.

"This is weird between us, right?" He questioned as he wasn't entirely sure of the sleeping arrangements and her particularly short nightshirt only increase his desire for her.

"Absolutely." Jac sighed as she sat down on the bed and ran her fingers through her hair to brush out any remaining hairspray from the day.

"Are you going to make me sleep on the lumpy sofa?" He asked eventually.

"It depends."

"On?"

"Did you just come back for Emma? Because if you did then that's fine but I need to know where I stand."

"Actually, you're sitting." He quipped which caused Jac to roll her eyes. "Jac you know how I feel about you: I love you I just... We always end up fighting with each other and I want us to get things sorted before Emma gets old enough to realise what's going on. I'd love for us to settle down, just you, me and Emma. We've just got to promise that we're not going to fight again and that if we ever have a problem, we'll sit down and talk. You can't just bottle your problems up and then have a massive argument; it's not fair on Emma. I know I'm not innocent in this either, I'll do my best to make sure that we get on." He explained. "I think the way forward is for us to take things slowly and I should start applying for a job."

"Where?" Jac asked reluctantly.

"I was thinking St James' or St Mary's." He admitted. "Because I don't think we can make this work if we work in the same place."

"No neither do I. I think that's a good plan."

"So no lumpy sofa?"

"No. Not for tonight at least." Jac replied as she laid down in bed and pulled the duvet up to her chin whilst Jonny flicked the light off and then slid under the duvet on his side of the bed.

"Did you go to South Korea then?" He asked and Jac rolled her eyes as she realised that she wouldn't be getting sleep anytime too - he could speak for Scotland when it came to what he mistakenly called pillow talk.

"Yes."

"Did you have a nice time?"

"Emma loved it. You wouldn't believe how much clearer sunrises and sunsets are when you're twenty stories up in a hotel."

"So she hasn't inherited her fear of heights from her father then." He smirked.

"No because she's not irrational." Jac remarked.

"I was thinking and... since I haven't gotten you a present for tomorrow," he whispered "how about I give you one now?"

"Seriously? You left me for months and you think sex is the answer?" Jac hissed as she propped herself up on her elbows and flicked her bedside lamp on.

"It was always the answer before Emma was born – I forgot to pay my electricity bill, no matter we'll have sex by candlelight. You were mad at me for lying about being a neurosurgeon and then we had sex because you were angry with me – it's our thing, it's what we do." Jonny protested quietly.

"Fair point." Jac twisted her lips as she looked up at the ceiling.

"So sex?"

"So long as the necessary precautions are taken to ensure what happened after Tara died doesn't happen again." Jac quipped.

"Haven't you got anything?"

"I didn't know you were in Holby until a few hours ago." She protested.

"Alright, I'll run to the drug store quickly now." He said as he slid out of bed and picked his phone off of the bedside table.

"Are you kidding me?"

"Needs must Jac, it's been a long time." He grinned . "I'll be back soon. Don't miss me too much."

"If you're not back by the time I fall asleep you're getting nothing." Jac sighed.

"Well then drink some coffee, it's going to be a long night."