So, I've watched Holby on and off since it started… which is kind of scary and makes me feel old, but I digress… Jac has always been the character that has held the most interest for me, along with Joseph and Chrissie, and having just got back into Holby I felt the urge to write this. Also I am suffering from quite severe jetlag, so yeah, there's that. Do let me know what you think.
It eased in the quiet, in the criss cross of paper green leaves, tentative buds of spring undisturbed on roadsides barely swept by fumes. It eased; but she hates the countryside, hates its unconscious existence, its still being, ebbing and flowing with the seasons. Changes occur there, natural and expected, organically rising from the earth. She saw a deer give birth, its offspring slippery and wide eyed, on its feet within seconds, amniotic fluid still glistening on its skin. Humans are flawed; they require more than a lick and a nudge from their mothers.
She returns to the hum of the city, the rumble of disruption, the unregulated process of living and dying, the tampering. She does not believe in fate, of course she doesn't, she is invested in the manipulation of the future, the achievement of the impossible, life where no life should be.
Sitting in the car she looks around its clean interior, its capsule like containment, she could walk away from the scene of a crash and there would be no evidence that this car is hers. A foster mother in that other life had a piece of every child who had ever passed through her home seemingly scattered within her worn hatchback: colouring books, curled star shaped stickers from furry school jumpers, photographs, snacks for every persuasion, a collection of spare underwear and crayons in the seat pockets.
She leaves no trace. Her work is her legacy.
He leaves things: ridiculous bubble-gum flavoured toothpaste, crumpled crisp packets, a sock with a hole in the toe. And now this, he has left her with this.
Although he didn't leave, she did; an unplanned bout of holiday entitlement that she usually never takes. She considered telling him (she gave it more thought than he would believe) but ultimately did not, was she afraid he would follow her? They are doing this thing, after all. She does not know what that means and she is sure he doesn't either.
On the ward things pulse and crash, without warning, without preamble the earth shudders beneath the feet of the people life has brought here. Not fate, she is careful not to think that. There are no designs. We follow the devices and desires of our own hearts, the atheist inside her smirks at the memory of a pious surrogate father. We err and we sin. We are born and we die, and that is all, everything else is up to us. There are very few things over which there is no choice. Parents can certainly not be selected, you are lucky or you are not.
She is determined to avoid him but he is persistent and aggravating in equal measure, this suits her, it plays on the surface and she brushes him away, turning instead to the obnoxious specimen in the silk pyjamas. It does not last and she is not entirely in control as he pulls and her resolve to push back weakens. He tells this inconsequential patient, this man with whom misogyny seems a way of life, he tells him about them, about their situation. He pulls too hard and she lets go.
"I have discovered parts of this hospital I never knew existed."
This is certainly unchartered territory.
"Why don't you undiscover this part?" she says.
"This intrepid explorer will not be so easily deterred by hostile natives."
She glances at his face, just for a moment, taking in its gentle lines and openness.
"God, you're tiresome."
"I know," he says, resting his forearms on the bar beside her as they both look down at the uninspiring landscape of the clinical waste loading bays below the hospital. "I think I'll return to this spot, it has a certain romance, the smell of leg ulcer dressings…"
"You're disgusting."
"And you are not keeping your appointments. There's a trembling obs and gynae consultant waiting for you."
There is a hard edge to the light burr of his voice. He is pressing his lips together, his eyes wide, she knows this without looking.
"It's nothing, an early scan because of the endometriosis."
"Right. So…" His hands fold around the bar and he leans back on his heels. "Scans are something I should come to."
"You've been consulting a manual, well done."
"I want to come."
"Well, as you've already pointed out, I've missed my appointment."
He lets go of the bar and steps back, forcing her to turn to look at him, that compulsive smile, those open arms.
"You may not know this about me but I am a demon with an ultrasound machine. I know what the buttons do and everything."
She weakens and he pulls her almost close enough to touch.
She laughs humourlessly at the pantomime of the situation, Mo's hissed commands to hurry and the firm click of the door as she shuts it; shuts everything out, so she and Jonny are alone in the side room set up for their purpose.
"Go on, then," he says, gesturing with the ultrasound probe at the bed.
"Stop wielding that thing like a sword."
Rolling up her scrub top and tucking the paper towel into her trousers takes seconds but her breath hesitates somewhere between the back of her throat and her thorax, it hesitates so long she thinks she may pass out, but she doesn't and a reassuring smile is there when she opens her eyes.
"You ready?"
"Yes," she replies. "And don't tell me it'll feel cold."
"I will dispense with my usual patter."
"A small mercy," she says, her fingers closing unconsciously around the sheet as the probe touches her skin, causing her to suck in her stomach.
He is silent and any further jibes die on her lips as he presses down and narrows his eyes at the grainy black and white screen as it settles into focus. There is something to see; the space of her uterus, and, at the top, near the centre, something small with a flicker nestled in the middle, a heart; a heart that is beating. They focus on that point, and his hand is almost still, the twitch of his fingers all that belies the tremble there. She sees him in profile when she looks away from the monitor; his mouth slightly open, his eyes wide, a barely perceptible shake of his head as he presses the button to print and folds down the screen. The probe is replaced and he takes the paper towel to dry her skin, only then do their eyes meet. His hand stills on her stomach and in that moment it is so easy to return his smile, to capitulate. There is something dangerously close to the surface and as his fingers smooth her abdomen she pulls down her top, dismissing his touch, and there is no trace of the moment other than the picture in his hand.
"Keep the picture. But don't stick it up in your locker, for god's sake."
He nods, his grin uncontained.
It eases, the glutinous lump in her throat disperses and she realises that it has been there for days, weeks.
She stands looking into the sky, it is red, and with every blink the clouds have moved. She is tethered, to the ground, to the world around her, to Jonny, the shadow of his hand resting over her stomach, still. For a moment she thought he would kiss her, she thought of the rattle of a shelving unit falling backwards in a supply cupboard, of their sightless stumbles, his hands encircling her waist so she wouldn't fall, the taste of salt on his lips, the rough hair on his thigh as her leg wrapped around his. They crashed together, as they did that night, too, Tara's death fresh in their hands. If anything it was more frantic, more fuelled by something neither of them understood or could control. They did not make it to the bedroom. He pushed her against the wall, lifting her up so her thighs felt the jut of his hipbones, his face buried against the curve of her neck, his lips hardly touching the unbearably sensitive skin, there.
It takes minutes, a night, to change the game, to disband the rules.
It left them here; it left life where death had been.
"Jac?" He jogs up behind her but she doesn't turn around.
Standing beside her he turns his head to follow hers, above them, the barren unknown.
"I don't even have the words," he says. "Or not enough words, anyway, but I'm here. I'll always be here."
She doesn't believe him, even as he reaches to take her in his arms and she lets her head rest against his chest, his lips in her hair.
Nothing brings suffering as does the untamed, uncontrolled, unattended and unrestrained heart. That heart brings suffering.