There are a number of sensations, Bernie secretly enjoys.
There is the mundane task of slowly peeling off her scrubs after a long and strenuous operation. To her, it always feels like a clean slate, a pardon in a sense, which allows her to leave whatever just happened in theatre and move on to the next patient that needs her help.
Some days, it's the burn she feels inhaling the smoke of a freshly lit cigarette because it makes her feel something, anything, even though she has received disapproving glares for this habit of hers from various people throughout her life.
Starting with Sister Mary – Mary Agatha to be exact – that caught her and her friend Helen smoking a cigarette behind the school garden shed. Oddly enough, that one didn't go down well with her parents. A few weeks later, Sister Mary had luckily been too occupied to spy on them once again. Had she not been busy planning the teachers' conference, she might have caught them doing something else entirely, something considered worse than smoking. It had been innocent, sloppy, but coronary-worthy all the same. Sadly, Helen hadn't needed for Sister Mary to find them. She had developed a bad conscience all by herself and went and told her parents. After a stern talking to from both Bernie's parents and Sister Mary, Bernie switched schools. No need to mention that old-school Catholicism, habit, cassock and all, had given her the creeps ever since.
Lately, however, most sensations Bernie cherished were in some way or another related to Serena and – ironically enough – to that wonderful feeling she discovered and buried behind that garden shed all those years ago.
Serena, who had graciously accepted her back into her life, had accepted her scared excuses, her rubbish behaviour, and her radio silence. Took all of it and kissed away two miserable, lonely months in an unfamiliar and coldly neon-light-lid hospital in Kiev.
Serena, who didn't mention the rhyme that was made up to make fun of her until one cozy evening, when Serena thought her relaxed enough to listen to it. "Serena Campbell, pudding and pie, kissed a girl and made her cry," she had whispered with tears in her eyes, but a slight smirk on her face.
Despite irregular outbursts of "Why is everyone joking about toasters?" and "Do you think I'm gay or am I gay for you?" and the occasional "Do you think we missed out?" Serena had been surprisingly calm about dating a woman. The fact that she's the woman being dated gives her all kinds of fuzzy feelings she would never mention to Serena. At least not yet anyway.
Sometimes she thinks that dating is not quite what they are doing. They skipped so many steps and were stuck on others, everything had gone to shit and was mended in such a gentle fashion that it feels like more. It feels like something she might have had with Marcus if he hadn't been, well, a man. In the beginning, she had bathed in the approving looks of her parents and she still loved her children dearly. She even liked Marcus, liked the conversations they had early on before she fled to war zones and he started to become bitter and cold.
She realized then and there that she never loved him, not in the way she loves Serena, she couldn't have. That thought makes her shudder, her stomach clenches uncomfortably, but she is also filled with a warmth that makes this whole unfamiliar emotional turmoil worthwhile.
At the moment, however, all these happy thoughts about Serena are out of the window.
Because Bernie can feel a particular sensation that she passionately hates. It's to do with physics and wind and power and she knows that, but mankind is not supposed to spread its wings like a bird. Bernie is sure of that. And with one look at Bernie's closed eyes, sweaty hands grabbing at the armrest and clearly agitated breathing patterns, Serena realizes two things. Bernie is afraid of flying. And her big macho army medic is trying to conceal it.