'What happens when Joey comes back?'

It had been two days since Angelo had asked that question. Now finally all alone in the stark white hospital room, Charlie let Angelo's words again roam wildly in her mind. Her response at the time had been ambiguous to say the least. She was sure Angelo had not been happy with her simple words of not wanting to two time anyone now or in the future. Who had she been referring to? Now, days later, Charlie was still uncertain herself.

Shifting uncomfortably in the bed, for the hundredth time that day, Charlie could feel the ache which throbbed deep in her hip. Even through the morphine Rachel had administered to her earlier. She wondered if she should ask Rachel for more? Secretly, or not so secretly, she had been quietly enjoying the drugged haziness the morphine let her messed up world fall into. It allowed her a little escape from being 100% focused on reality. Without it her mind would have been alive and reeling the last couple of days. Madly debating and struggling to understand everything that had happened in her life recently, particularly the last three or four months.

Charlie was lying very still in the hospital bed. In her mind, she heard Angelo ask the question, again and again: 'What happens when Joey comes back?'

Not for the first time that day she sighed loudly to herself in response to the inaudible question, then pushed her body further back into the bed in search of a little pain relief. Before the accident Charlie hadn't given any thought to that scenario, the one where Joey comes back to the Bay. Now, with the question raised it was all she could think about. Admittedly, her thoughts seemed to come and go in a drug induced haze, as if swimming uncontrollably in her mind, but they were still there.

Surely Joey would have been contacted by the hospital. Her brother, her only family, had been involved in an accident. He was in hospital. She would be told Brett had hit someone with the car. That that person was Charlie, Charlie Buckton. How would Joey react? Charlie's fuzzy mind wondered. Would Joey even care about her any more or would her concern lie with her brother? Even after all he had done? Charlie shook her head. Her thoughts were becoming slow and confused.

Pushing her head deep into the pillow behind her, Charlie lay back on the bed. Her eyes were heavy, she let them close. A tiny happy smile struggled to form at the corners of her otherwise drugged lips. A comical sight as the morphine worked to push her mouth into a frown and thoughts of Joey were wanting her to smile. Charlie could see Joey's face before her. Her soft lips, her deep brown eyes. A cheeky lopsided grin. She wanted to reach out and touch the image that was etched on her heart. The eyes were sparkling. They were looking directly and intently at Charlie. Reflecting the water that was all around them. Charlie could remember that moment vividly. It was their moment on the boat. A perfect day where Joey had managed to see deep into Charlie's soul.

Charlie had been happily startled that day just how much Joey seemed to understand her. Joey had instinctively made Charlie feel so comfortable and natural. They had talked about personal things and they had danced. Charlie never let herself go like that. Definitely not enough to dance freely in the open as they had done. Then, as naturally as could be, the mood had changed. A slower song had begun to play on the radio. They had looked shyly and cautiously at each other. A spell seemingly cast over them. Joey had reached slowly and tenderly for Charlie's hands and Charlie, nervously, had let Joey take them. She had been transfixed, lost in a mesmerizing moment she never thought she would be lucky enough to experience in her lifetime. Then Charlie had run. The moment suddenly overwhelming.

That was the moment Charlie's world changed. The moment everything Charlie thought she knew about herself faded. It was the moment where everything Charlie was questioning about herself, everything and all the emotions she had been pushing down, somehow embarrassed by them, somehow deciding she would be unable to cope with the perceived enormity of it all, sprang wildly to life.

Back then it had been a raw, open and honest moment shared between two connected people. Now, to Charlie it appeared to simply be a magical moment of her past, lost, but forever locked in her heart.

In the hospital room Charlie opened her eyes slowly and stared hard into the dark night which lay beyond the window. A solitary tear rolled gently down her cheek. She clung to the memories she had just drifted through, wondering where Joey was at that precise moment-in-time. Her heart beat, just a little faster, at the thought of the woman whose heart she had broken.

Letting her eyes close slowly, Charlie saw Joey's eyes before her again. The eyes that had made her squirm and fidget in a powerful loving way. The eyes that made her question herself. Eyes that Charlie had fallen in love with. She had never met anyone that effected her the way Joey had. Sadly, with a heavy heart, Charlie also remembered the hurt and angry eyes that had bore menacingly into her when Joey warned her, don't touch me. That was the heartbreaking moment Joey found out about her one night stand with Hugo and their once happy world collapsed. Charlie had never wanted to hurt Joey.

The last memory made Charlie uncomfortable, she shifted carelessly in the bed, causing a searing pain to rip from her hip. She wanted to yell, she felt trapped in the hospital room and wanted desperately to get up and walk out. Unable to she gritted her teeth and closed her eyes tight against the pain.

It was now in amongst the searing pain bearing down on her hip Charlie let her mind drift to Angelo. She felt her heart slow a little in its rhythm. Losing some of the excitement it had previously felt remembering Joey. Here, all alone in the hospital room with just her thoughts and her memories, Charlie had to be honest, she had to admit finally, it wasn't love that bought her and Angelo together. She wondered why she did it. Why she fell into this relationship. Their first time was over a bottle of tequila and Roman's rejection, this time perhaps out of loneliness and Joey's rejection? She didn't like that thought.

Am I really so weak I need to be in a relationship, any relationship, to feel loved? Charlie wondered. She didn't want to be that person. She was strong and independent at work. She was strong and protective when it came to Ruby. Why was she not strong and open when it came to her personal relationships? Charlie, once again, marveled at where life had taken her. She was amazed at society's perceptions, its consciousness, what people tell themselves is right and wrong. What she had told herself was right and wrong. The weight of society is a very powerful thing Charlie told herself, knowing she had often been more concerned with other peoples opinions than her own happiness.

Charlie's heart and mind felt heavy. The morphine was finally claiming the body it had been invading all day. Her eyes were opening and closing uncontrollably. Batting slowly between a state of wakefulness and their desperate search of sleep. Laying there in the silence Charlie struggled to grasp her final thoughts before a dreamless sleep came to claim her; 'why was it easier for me to commit to the man that killed a friend and colleague than it was for me to commit to a woman?' She never had the chance to answer before she drifted to a place of suspended consciousness, where she was numb and blissfully ignorant of the world around her.

She never stirred later that night when Joey stood over her bed, tears clearly glistening in the brown eyes Charlie had earlier been remembering with love.