Chapter 1: "You see, your mouth says no..."
Zoe's heels clicked along the floor of the ED as she made her way to the office she shared with the new her, the new clinical lead, Connie Beauchamp. With her phone in one hand and takeaway cup of strong black coffee in the other, she was too preoccupied to notice the young porter gazing at her from the reception desk. "She's way outta your league mate" joked Noel, playfully shoving him at the same time, which broke his gaze and startled him. Quickly, he snapped out of it and picked up the pile of patient files sitting on the desk. "Dr Hanna? Nah, she's not really my type..." He mused, walking off in the direction of cubicles, flashing Noel a cheeky smile. "In way over his head that one" Noel commented, laughing to himself.
"For you" Max smiled, throwing the patient files down on Zoe's desk. Zoe groaned and added them to the already massive pile of admin she was attempting to get through, yet seemed to be growing faster than she could shrink it. "Just think of the whole 15 minutes you'll get to spend with me having a fag in 2 hours, that should get you through it" joked Max, to which Zoe gave her first genuine smile of the day and rolled her eyes. "I look forward to it, Mr Walker" she replied, not taking her eyes off the paperwork she was focussing on. Max sensed he wasn't going to get much more conversation out of her without annoying her, and left as Connie arrived through the door. "Admin day!" trilled Connie and dumped the large mountain of paperwork she'd been carrying on her desk, took a sip of her green tea and sat down. "At least someone gets excited about it." Zoe commented.
The two women had been working in silence for over an hour and a half when they heard a commotion out in the ward. Both of them leapt to their feet and opened the door to see what was going on. Much to Zoe's horror, she saw Max lying on the ground beneath an angry patient. His lip was bleeding and eye was already starting to swell. "What's going on here?!" Connie yelled over the commotion, as Zoe rushed to aid Max. "I was just trying to take him to x-ray" stated Max angrily "when he freaked and hit me. I was just doing my job, or trying to." Zoe took Max's hand and made sure he got up alright. "I'll check Max over while you deal with this" she said to Connie, taking Max to cubicles. "You could check me over any day, injury or no injury" he flirted with her, once he knew they were out of earshot of the rest of the staff. "If you didn't already have a black eye, I'd be giving you one right now" Zoe retorted quickly, giggling. She pressed the pads of her thumbs up and down his cheekbones and round his head. Apart from his eye, which would soon be black, his cut lip and a small cut above his eyebrow, he didn't appear to have any significant internal injuries. "I'll just clean up your lip and dress the cut on your head, and you'll be ready for that cigarette. Now hold this ice on your eye to reduce the swelling" she smiled, winking at him. "If I didn't know you any better" Max said "I'd say you were flirting with me. Not very professional is it?" He laughed. "If we're going to open the professionalism door..." Zoe started, but was interrupted by Max's exclamation of "Okay, I'll let it slide this once then, since you're kind of my boss". "Hmmm, thought you might say that" flirted Zoe. She finished cleaning him up and opened the curtains. Her exclamation of "There we are, almost as good as new" was met with a goofy smile from Max and an encore of "almost!?". "See you outside in five" she whispered as they parted ways and walked off in seperate directions.
As Max sauntered out of the ED his eyes were immediately drawn to Zoe on the other side of the loading bay, taking the first drag of her cigarette. He stopped to admire her, her volumptuous figure, her thick, shiny hair, her beautiful... "Max, earth to Max, Max you're IN THE WAY!" grumbled Big Mac, trying to push a trolley full of god-knows-what into the ED. "Oh sorry Big Mac" Max said absent mindedly, making his way towards Zoe. "Young ones today, eh?" Big Mac muttered to himself, trying to get the trolley moving again. Zoe smiled as she saw Max approaching and held out her cigarette towards him. "Thought you were gonna let me down" she quipped, her smile turning into a wry one. "I would never let you down Doctor Hanna" he remarked, as he took her cigarette and smoked it a couple of times. "Let's go for a walk, round this corner?" He said with a twinkle in his eye. Zoe started moving towards him and asked "so why are you so interested in exercise today? Fights with the punters, walks on your break, it's like you're trying to get in shape. Hmmmm, are you trying to impress someone, Max Walker?" They were now out of sight round the corner, and Max spun Zoe round and pushed her gently against the wall. "Woah, Max, I don't think..." She started but she was silenced by a soft kiss on the lips. She pushed him away. "Max, we can't do this, not again, one of the reasons I left to go to Africa was..." she said solemly but was interupted. "Well, stop me then" grinned Max and kissed her again, for longer this time, knowing full well that she wouldn't and maybe even couldn't. And he was right on both of those guesses.