I've had this idea for a while, and the first chapter was very easy to write, which is why I've posted quickly. Set after 9-1, but that awful "We could never be more together than we are right now" rooftop conversation never happened.

Harry rolled over, waking from the deepest sleep he'd had in weeks and extremely annoyed that his phone was ringing. He fumbled for it, rubbing his eyes and looking at the clock. 3:04am the digital numbers showed. Bloody hell.

"If this isn't important, I'm going to sack you," Harry said in his sternest voice as soon as he'd managed to answer the call.

"Er… I'm trying to contact Mr Pearce," an unfamiliar voice said on the phone. "Am I speaking to him?"

"Yes," Harry said warily. "Why?"

"I have some bad news I'm afraid. I'm a nurse at St Mary's hospital, and you're listed as the emergency contact."

"Oh God," he said, sitting up, as every possible nightmare scenario filled his mind. "Is it Catherine?"

"Er… no," the nurse said. "It's Ruth Evershed."

"Oh no, not Ruth," he said to himself. "Is she all right? What's happened?" He spoke calmly, and could feel himself slipping into spook mode. A disaster had happened, but he couldn't afford to panic until he knew how bad things were. Until it was all sorted out peacefully. Almost as if his emotional side had been switched off until he knew the damage.

"Miss Evershed's been hit by a car," the nurse said gently. "She's in pretty bad shape, but she's stable." The words "for the moment" hadn't been said, but they might as well have been. Harry could hear them in the air.

"How bad is it?" he asked. "I mean, what's the damage? She's not going to…" he swallowed, making himself say it. "Die is she?"

"I can't give out a lot of details over the phone, but she's serious but stable," the nurse said, that familiarly bad line from anyone who watched TV or films. "But… I'd get here tonight. Just in case. I mean, we don't call the family at three a.m. just for the hell of it."

"Okay," he said. "I'm on my way. St Mary's right?"

"Yes."

"I'll be there in half an hour," he said, already mentally planning his route across London. He put the phone down and hurried to get dressed. He could feel his mind working, the same way it did when he'd been on the grid for three days constantly. He wasn't allowing his mind to shut down or to even comprehend the devastating news he'd just been told. It was important that he functioned normally for a little while longer. At least until he saw her. Then he could fall apart, but not now.

He drove carefully to the hospital, and despite his best efforts his mind kept replaying the sentence "Miss Evershed's been hit by a car." Ruth, hit by a car. God. No Harry, concentrate on driving. Getting yourself into an accident will hardly help matters. Serious but stable. Two opposing views there. Which one was it leaning towards? Was it more serious or stable? Red traffic light.

He braked and shook his head. The problem was he'd seen too much. He'd seen photos of too many dead bodies, and he could all too easily imagine Ruth lying in a crumpled ball on the street, eyes glazed over into unseeing blindness as her life's blood poured out on the tarmac. He could see her body twisted at an impossible angle, bones broken as the Londoners just walked on by. He knew she was in the hospital, the nurse had told him so. But the image of Ruth broken on the pavement wouldn't leave him. Green traffic light.

He drove on, and tried to distract himself. So, Ruth had put him down as her emergency contact. That should please him. But when he stopped to think about it… Her parents were both dead, she had no family left at all and no partner in her life. Now that he came to think about it, she must be so lonely. She had no one. Save him. A man whom she'd refused to marry not ten days ago. At Ros's funeral. Please God don't give me another funeral to go to. Not hers. I want to die first. I'm older than her, its fair if I go first. Don't make me live in a world without her.

He was so lost in thoughts about Ruth that he nearly missed the turning to the hospital. He quickly turned left and parked the car, before racing to the hospital reception desk.

"Ruth Evershed," he breathed, a little out of breath from his impromptu jog through the car park.

"Are you family?"

"I'm her emergency contact," he said, annoyed with this. "You called me, I'm Harry Pearce."

Her mouth formed a silent "O" as she looked at him. "Sorry, yes. I'm just going to call through, to get a doctor to come down."

"Great," he said. "So she's alive?"

"Yes," she replied. "She's a... bit of a mess, but yes, she's alive."

"Okay," he said, feeling a slight lessening of the tension in his gut. "That's good." The receptionist smiled, then picked up the phone.

Harry sat down, tapping his foot on the floor with impatience. There were few other people here. A mother, her child sleeping against her shoulder as she stroked her hair, and an elderly man snoring in the corner. That was it.

He was grateful that they didn't keep him waiting too long. A doctor approached him, and before he could even open his mouth, Harry asked "how is she?"

"If you'd like to follow me?" Harry nodded and walked after the doctor. "Ruth has sustained serious injuries," he started. Her right side has been completely crushed by the car and she has… had internal bleeding which we've stopped surgically.

"You waited until after her surgery to call me?" he asked in disbelief.

"Well, to be honest I was more concerned with the fact that I had a patient who would die quickly without medical interference. For me, I thought it best to treat her, then look up her details." Harry found he couldn't argue with that. "Anyway, we've stopped her internal bleeding, but we've had to remove one of her kidneys, and a part of her liver. Also her right lung collapsed, so we've had to put her on a breathing tube to stop it happening again. She'll have that for a few days."

"Oh my God," he said. "Will she be alright without part of her liver?"

"Yes," the doctor said with confidence. "The liver regenerates, and within two or three months, that'll be back to normal. We are worried about her lung. She needs to fight."

"She's a fighter," Harry said. "She won't give up," as they stopped walking outside her hospital room.

"Well," the doctor said. "That's not up to us. Also she has a few broken bones too. Her right femur is fractured, so is her tibia, and a couple of toes which we're not really concerned about. Her radius and ulna are broken as well."

"A few broken bones?!" Harry questioned. "That's nearly half her body! And femur fractures take months to heal."

"I know," the doctor said. "I'm sorry. To be honest, the internal injuries are much more worrying. The bones, we will realign them and they'll heal.

"You will realign them?" he asked. "You haven't done it yet?"

"We've fixed her arm, but we've put external fixation on the fractures her leg. We'll go back in a few days to align them properly when she gains a bit more strength. I didn't want her under anesthesia longer than necessary."

"Okay," Harry said.

"She'll probably won't wake up for a while," the doctor warned.

"I want to sit with her until she does," Harry said firmly. The doctor nodded in agreement.

"It might be a little bit of a shock to see her," the doctor warned. Harry nodded impatiently. He'd seen people tortured to death before by Iraqi's who were hardly famed for their kindness. Ruth wouldn't be… couldn't be as bad as that. Then he opened the door.

Ruth looked worse that he could ever have imagined. "Oh my God." She was attached to so many wires and machines he could barely even see her. Just a few strands of dark hair around where her face should be. There were metal contraptions on her right leg which looked like a torture device, even though he knew it was keeping the bones straight, as they should be. Her face was obscured by a tube which was helping her breathe, her right arm was in a cast and she looked so very small and fragile.

"God Ruth," he said hoarsely. He sat down on her left side, her uninjured side and picked up her hand carefully. As if she might break if he handled her too roughly. She had two scratches across her face, her left cheek and her forehead. "I'm such an idiot."

He wanted to hear her agree with him, but of course she said nothing. He'd been avoiding her for about a week. Ever since he'd proposed and she'd said no, he hadn't been around her much. Because his pride was bruised, and he was hurting. What a stupid, stubborn, selfish man he'd been. It didn't matter! When he saw Ruth like this, none of it mattered. So, she'd turned him down, so bloody what? He'd wasted time. They'd both wasted so much time. "God Ruth, I'm so sorry," he whispered. "I'll make it up to you. You'll wake up, and I'll make it up to you. I promise." He felt like a prize idiot. How on earth could he feel upset about something so… well, trivial! Looking at Ruth now, it felt very trivial indeed.

More soon. I've researched the medical details, but I've also just tweaked things for my own use. Hope no one's offended! If you have time, leave a review and thank you for reading.