This was originally meant to be a one-shot with a slightly different focus, but as I was writing it somehow went in a different direction. So it will now be a 2-shot piece with the second part containing the original idea. Although I'm not sure when part 2 will be ready, so hopefully it works OK as a standalone piece for the moment. Enjoy, and please review - I really do like to know what everyone thinks...

11 weeks

Jac closed her eyes and breathed in the silence, feeling the sense of being scrutinised slowly falling away from her. She shifted in the chair making herself more comfortable and took another deep breath. She had needed some time to think and so had come to the one place she thought Jonny wouldn't think to look for her. Although, she remembered, he had found her here once before, but then she reasoned, he had known she was missing. Today, she expected, he would simply presume she had just left without saying goodbye, and would no doubt be thinking that it was typical of her, just the sort of thing she would do. She opened her eyes at this thought, wondering for a moment why it mattered so much before she remembered (if that was the right word) why, and consciously tried to stop thinking about it – knowing the path such thoughts led her down. Instead she looked around the room, determined to find something else to focus on. She noticed the way the light was filtered by the 'stained glass', and was then captivated for a moment by the dust motes which appeared to be dancing through the diffused rainbow light which shone through the covered windows. She was reminded of the time one of her primary school teachers, Mrs Davidson, had shone a beam of light at a crystal and broken it up into its constituent colours, how miraculous that had seemed – that the colours of the rainbow could be locked away in something so ordinary, and then revealed in all their wonder as if by magic. Then another memory was triggered – a kaleidoscope she had had as a child, the multi-coloured beads she had spent so long gazing at, changing the patterns they formed with a simple movement of her hand. If only everything was so easy to change, to make how you wanted it to be….

But it wasn't, and wishing that it was wouldn't make it so.

She sat forward in the chair and put her head in her hands for a few seconds before running them through her hair and once again sitting up. Her hands now resting in her lap she wondered idly if she'd always sat like this, gently cradling her abdomen, or whether it was a new thing that she had begun doing since the baby. She honestly couldn't remember, things she had done before the baby seemed much more distant from her than the few weeks they actually were temporally. It was almost as if they belonged to a different life, as if they had happened to a different person – which, she supposed, in a way was true. She was a mother now – the baby might not be here yet, but she knew somewhere deep within herself that that was the truth. She might be a 'mum-to-be' in the eyes of the few people who knew, but to herself she was a mother, not that she really knew what that feeling meant, but she knew that she felt it. And then she thought how much easier life would be if this wasn't the case, not better – definitely not better, but still…easier. She wouldn't be forever linked with Jonny for a start – tied to him for a lifetime by a visible symbol of what they'd once shared (however fleetingly), of the love they'd once felt for one another. There'd always be a reminder now of what she'd let slip away, a wonderful reminder no doubt, but still….. And there wouldn't be the almost constant worry, worries. If Sacha was right and she did have 'it'? What everybody (or most people) would say, behind her back obviously, when they found out? How she would cope when Jonny moved on, as she was sure he would, and probably soon, to someone new but was still the father of their baby as he always would be? When, if ever, she would feel 'normal' again? How she would get everything that needed doing done in the time she had left before the baby came? How she would feel when that moment came?

So yes, the thought repeated – it would be so much easier if 'this' wasn't, but then she heard another voice saying 'but the best things usually are hard, and normally so very worth it', and she knew that that too was true.

And, also knew, as she had from a point deep down in the very centre of her being from a few moments after Mr T had dropped her bombshell that she didn't want the baby not to be here. Even before his words had punctured her conscious mind and registered there, before the shock had shown on her face and Mo's 'bum-hunch' was confirmed, she knew. Knowledge that coalesced when she thought it was gone - the desperation she had felt adding weight to the truth she had known since she became aware of its existence. She couldn't rationalise or even vocalise what she was thinking, didn't really know if the truth were told. But she felt it immediately, a visceral pull, a hitherto unimaginable sense that this was somehow right. In so many ways, almost unbearably wrong – but in the only way that really mattered, unbelievably and wonderfully right! And she'd had wobbles, she was prepared to admit that – times when she'd thought about if she was doing the right thing, questioned whether she could actually do it, but she'd never felt any differently. And she realised that the feeling was, in this case, the most important thing perhaps, in fact, the only thing that mattered.

And she knew how that realisation ran counter to almost everything else in her life, seemed contradictory, was contradictory to how she normally thought about things. She had never been one for feelings, preferring to rely on more definite, predictable, constant concepts – like experience and knowledge and logic. She was prepared to admit that intuition might be a good thing – that those hunches you sometimes got might occasionally point you in the right direction. But she would argue that those hunches were based on reality, not feelings - on things you had noticed but weren't consciously aware of, or on things you knew but hadn't consciously remembered. And it wasn't that she didn't experience feelings, despite what many people who knew her might think, because she did. In fact sometimes she believed she experienced them more acutely, felt them more deeply than most of those people who judged her to be cold and unfeeling. She felt them, of course she did, she just tried so hard not to let them show. Except of course for anger – that emotion she was more than comfortable to display. Although even that, except for a few notable exceptions, was still controlled and contained, not that anybody unfortunate enough to have experienced her wrath would have believed it. But it WAS true, whilst she knew most people thought of anger as a dangerous emotion, one which came with obvious risks attached, she also knew that in normal circumstances her anger posed no threat to her. That she would not usually say or do anything that she wouldn't have said or done if she was calmer, usually….. But of course it was the unusual times that did for you – those few rare occasions when the control slipped and you were there in all your unbridled fury. Those moments which you couldn't take back, couldn't repair, just had to deal with and somehow work through. And in a strange convoluted way it was one of those moments that had brought her to here – that meant she was sitting in the prayer room on Darwin at the end of her day. 'Hiding out' she thought 'like an outlaw', which raised a smile as she remembered games of 'Cowboys and Indians' and 'Cops and Robbers' she had played as a child. But then another thought came to her, 'No, NOT hiding away – staging a tactical retreat, to preserve your strength for what's to come, the battles still to be fought.' And she liked that thought – it somehow seemed to fit better and it gave her the impetus to get up and leave, to re-engage once more with the world, with the ward, with Jonny. "Let battle commence," she said softly to herself before, after taking a deep breath, she stepped back, unseen, in to the hustle and bustle of the (her) busy surgical ward, closing the door quietly behind her as she did so. She wondered off down the corridor and after picking up her bag from the locker room headed to her office to collect those journal articles she was determined to read tonight, marvelling as she walked at how her 'research day' had been sabotaged by Elliott's forgetfulness, the almost unbelievable propensity of the patients on the ward to cause her trouble, of one kind or another and the downright dunderheadness of some of her colleagues in other departments. 'Honestly' she thought, as she scooped the papers from her desk where they'd been piled neatly all day waiting for her attention, and put them in her bag 'you'd think good patient care was the last thing we should be thinking about the way some people round here act. But' she thought with a smile, as she took her jacket down from the hook and opened the office door 'I soon put them right on that score.' And that sense of satisfaction kept her smiling slightly as she walked down the corridor towards the exit.

"Hey, I thought you'd gone," a voice said from behind her.

She turned, to see Jonny standing outside bay 3 with a blood sample in his hand, "No," she replied simply.

"But I was looking for you" he persisted.

"Oh"

"And I couldn't find you?" he said, and Jac knew that the statement was a question, so gave him an answer...of sorts

"Well I didn't leave. We must have just kept missing each other. Is that for Mrs Jarvis?" she asked, indicating the blood sample, and hoping that he wouldn't notice how she had changed the subject.

"Erm, yep," Jonny replied.

"Great, can you get the lab to fast-track the results then please? We'll need to know what's going on with her by tomorrow morning."

"Course."

"Alright then, I'll see you tomorrow," she said, before taking pity on him and moving closer she continued quietly. "We wouldn't leave without saying goodbye you know." Before she ever so gently kissed his cheek, whispered "Bye Jonny" in his ear and turned towards the exit, leaving Jonny staring after her in astonishment. And just as she reached the doors, another thought occurred to her, consistent with her earlier metaphors. 'The fight goes on!' And as the doors opened as she pushed, she had to agree, smiling slightly as she did so, 'Indeed it does, indeed it does!'