If There's A God On My Side, a holby city fanfic

A/N: This is set between the time of Jac finding out she's pregnant and Jonny finding out, when she's torn and raw about it still, because they didn't really show her having to coming to terms with it all.

The song is "If There's A God On My Side" by Rosanne Cash.

Sarah x

I walk through the wind, the snow and the rain
And no one is there when I fall
The sound of my heartbeat
Is all I have left me
But you know once I had it all

Jac Naylor walks the grounds of the hospital in the bitter cold. It is bitterly cold for the time of year and she almost wishes she has her coat with her rather than just her hoodie. But then having her coat, she realised, would be too simple. Too painless. The Gods above her clearly don't want her to have an easy, warm journey through life. They want her to suffer every adversity they can throw at her.

She has had every imaginable hardship and endured it, and now she finds herself walking through a cold, harsh world she has created for herself. When she slips, there is nobody left to help her up. She realises now that her world is too cold for warm Jonny Maconie, and she would be wrong to make him live in it.

Her hand rests above her heart for a moment, feeling it pumping blood around her body. She thinks of it mechanically rather than the way most interpret a heart. That feeling of that mechanism pumping away, keeping her body functional, against her hand is a reminder that all she can say she has achieved is that she is a survivor.

But living and surviving, she accepts as she strolls along the path next to the car park, are two very different things. "Survival is insufficient," she whispers to herself.

There was a time when she had been she had been more than a survivor. When she was younger she had thrived in the knowledge she was tough enough to withstand the harshest storm, and that she could do anything she wanted to.

But what she wants to do has changed. She wants now to do things she is unsure of. She wants this baby more than she had first expected. Perhaps because she had thought it near impossible, she is seizing the opportunity, whether Jonny likes it or not.

The prayers of a fool are spoken in haste
And I'm just the one who would know
But I'm sending signals
'Cause I'm falling deeper
Than I thought I could go

"God," she whispers into the midnight air. "What have I done to deserve this?" she asks the sky. "I'm a bitch. I know that. But there's no need for all this, is there?"

She's never believed in religion, but she is quickly discovering it may be the only concept of comfort left to her. She's left herself nothing, physically, emotionally, spiritually...at least if there is some power doing all of this then there is an explanation.

She doesn't normally ask for help, but she has to now. She has to ask now, or she will have nothing. She will have nobody.

Her hand comes to rest over her womb, on her child, and she can barely believe the mess she finds herself in. A broken relationship, a child she never thought she could have, an illness that means it may well be the only pregnancy she can carry. A man she loves more than anything but cannot inflict her madness upon any longer.

She's been low before. She's been lower than this. But this is the lowest she's ever felt. It's the most broken world she has created for herself, and she feels like she is walking barefoot over broken glass.

"Please, just make this easier, just this once," she pleaded. She feels like a moron, talking to a God she doesn't even believe in.

If there's a God on my side
Why don't she show her face?
If there's a God on my side
Could she live in this place?
If there's a God on my side
Is she inside these walls?
If there's a God on my side
Could she not hear me call?

"If there's someone up there who can hear me," she says, looking up at the dusky sky. "Please, stop doing this to me. If you're testing me, you've thrown enough at me already, surely?"

Part of her thinks she is insane for speaking to the sky, but the other, slightly less cynical, part hopes there really is someone up there listening to her pleas for relief. She needs a friend. Not a pushy one like Mo, the woman who knows it all. A friend. A woman who knows what it is to face motherhood and wish she wasn't there.

She looks up at the hospital, wondering if such a woman walks the wards of Holby General. A hospital full of women – nurses and doctors, though admittedly there was only one other female consultant – and she still feels alone, like nobody can understand her.

She feels like she could shout for help at the top of her voice and not one single person would acknowledge her, dismissing her as Jac Naylor, the woman who needs nothing from anyone.

But she does need them. She needs someone.

The tears of the damned
Are falling on me
And mine are the first to go by
The moon starts to spinning
I'm standing frozen
When once I was alive

She is startled when she feels tears fall down her face. She blames her hormones but she knows it's more than that. She knows she is crying because she is helpless. For the first time in years, she is facing something she cannot handle, and it terrifies her. The last time she felt so helpless, she was twelve years old and her mother had just abandoned her.

That's the other thing – what if she screws this up? What if, God forbid, she does to her child what her own mother had done to her? She knows how that feels. She knows what it does to a person. And she knows she has it in her to do that. She doesn't like it, but she knows that potential to forsake her child. She hopes though, that there would be someone to stop her.

She does not realise she is still crying until the teardrops fall from her jaw onto her neck. She wipes them away angrily, irritated at her own weakness.

She looks up and sees the moon peaking out from behind the clouds against the dusky blue sky. She's so cold and, though she is hardy, she decides staying out here any longer without a coat is a bad idea. Hypothermia, she thinks sarcastically, would be an unfortunate turn of events. She is alive – just. Surely they wouldn't take that from her too.

She sighs, wiping away the tears, striding into the main building. She resolves to sit on the third floor stairwell, where no-one would bother her at this time of the night. She puts her head in her hands, completely lost. More lost than she will ever admit, to Mo, to Jonny, to Elliot...to anyone. She is too proud to admit she is utterly out of her depth here.

"If you're real," she reasoned into the silence. "If you do exist, show me. Give me a break. Send me some help."

It's the closest to a prayer she will ever speak, but for some reason she doesn't feel as moronic as the when she started this prayer. It's the last resort. It's out of desperation that she asks the emptiness for help, hoping there was someone listening to her pleas.

"If you're real, send me someone to help me," she begged, acutely aware of the lump in her throat. "Please. I can't do this on my own. I can't tell him. I need a woman to show me the way."

She hopes there is a woman who would be willing to guide her through this uncharted territory she finds herself lost in, a huge landscape before her, not knowing which way is safe to travel. Someone within these walls to keep her on the straight and narrow until she can build herself up to tell Jonny.

And I keep on calling
Oh, I keep on calling

"Please," she cried, totally desperate now. She can't do this. She's been too strong for all her life, and it has taken its toll on her willpower.

I walk through the wind, the snow and the rain
And no one is there when I fall
The sound of my heartbeat
Is all I have left me
But you know I once I had it all

"I face down everything you send me," she said. "You gave me a rotten mother. You let me grow up in care. I grew up to be a doctor. She came and took my kidney. She abandoned me again. I took my life and I proved to you I can live despite the mess she left behind her. You gave me endometriosis. I conceived anyway. Don't you think I've proved myself to you enough yet?"

She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and went on, "You throw everything at me, and when I fall over you give me no help. You leave me to get up myself while everyone else picks each other up. I've got nothing left apart from the fact I'm alive, and that I'm pregnant, both of which are nothing short of miraculous. If this is your idea of a sick joke, it's not funny."

She can't recall feeling this desperate. Even when her mother left her – both times – she saw the light of the situation: she was better off without the woman. But here she is left clueless as to how to bring up a child, or how to tell Jonny.

"Just help me," she wept. "Just send me someone."

"Now, I never took you for the spiritual type," a familiar voice said as a there were footsteps on the stairs before a familiar woman sat down on the stair next to her. "In which case, you do realise that talking to yourself and-or invisible people is considered a sign of insanity?" Serena Campbell smiled.

Jac laughed through her tears and looked up briefly. "Thank you," she mouthed. Whoever was up there, they had finally heard her calls for help.