Lost Before The Dawn
by Lucy Maria Elmer
WARNING: This fic contains scenes relating to attempted suicide and rape. Its very angsty and very dark so if this is going to upset you please don't read. I don't like upsetting people.
Tom sat beside the stretcher in the ambulance, her cold hand in his own. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks drained of all colour as she battled for her life. A life that she had tried to end. A life that meant so much to him.
He had never seen her looking so small and vulnerable since he had known her. She looked so fragile lying on that bed. So unlike the Anita he knew and loved. Her rosy cheeks were white, such a contrast to her dark hair and her startling blue eyes that were closed as she hovered between life and death during that desperate journey to the hospital.
Oxygen was being forced into her lungs through an oxygen mask while her heart was being monitored, the slow beeping comforting to Tom, showing him she was still with him, although what damage had been done...he couldn't even bear to think about that.
All he knew was she must have been in so much pain to do that. To put herself on this stretcher on the way to hospital, her body full of tablets that she had intended to end a life that she felt she no longer had the will to live. It tore at his heart to know she could see no other way out but to sit alone in her flat, as the rain poured outside and take those pills. To know that she couldn't even reach out to him when she needed him most. But then that was his fault. She had told him she loved him just a little while previously in the bar and he had pushed her away. He'd brushed off her feelings because of his own fear, because he didn't want to hurt her, but ultimately he had hurt her more than he could ever imagine.
He had made the beautiful woman that he had fallen in love with think that he didn't love her, and those could very well be the last thoughts in her head if she succeeded in doing what she intended. If she slipped away from him and the life to which at the moment she was clinging on to by a thread. She could die thinking that she had never held his heart, that she had been alone in life. That she had no one, when truly he'd been hers since the very first moment they met.
A tear fell down Tom's cheek as he clung onto her hand, hoping that from wherever she was at that moment she sensed the need he had for her to pull through. He had never felt so helpless in his life, every second feeling like an eternity as the ambulance sped to the hospital, as her condition worsened with every minute that ticked by. He could feel her slipping away from him, drifting further off into the abyss and he knew there was nothing he could do but hold her hand and pray they made it to Holby in time. Losing her would be losing the thing that made him feel human. That made him feel. When he was with her he felt love and hope, happiness and contentment. Without her... It didn't even bear thinking about.
Tom was shaken out of his thoughts by the paramedic who sat monitoring Anita's condition.
"Do you know what she's taken?"
Tom looked at him blankly not registering anything that was going on around him. The only thing he could hear the sound of her heartbeat on the monitor. The only thing he could see was her laying on her bed at home, her eyes closed and a bottle of pills at her side.
"Mr Campbell-Gore do you know what she's taken or how much? They're going to need to know."
Tom blinked and only then registered that the ambulance had stopped and the paramedic that had previously been driving had opened the doors ready to rush her inside to A&E.
"Mr Campbell-Gore..." the driver called again.
Tom looked at him having never felt so lost in his life. He handed over the empty pill bottle he had put in his pocket.
"I uh...I don't know how many she's taken but the bottle was empty. I think she's taken a lot. I think she meant it." He added sadly.
The paramedic looked at him sympathetically.
"You need to let go." He told Tom looking at the wounded man who was still clinging to Anita's hand.
Tom kissed her hand, which was still enveloped in his own, and then put it tenderly down on the stretcher at her side. The paramedics immediately rushed her into accident and emergency to be assessed and treated.
Tom slowly stepped out of the ambulance and then froze, all the emotions that he had been bottling up on the way there forcing themselves out of his body. He fell down onto his knees as he began to sob, not caring who saw him. All he could think about, all he could see was her fragile figure and think what pain she must've been in, and all he could do was pray was that she could find her way back to him from the dark.