A/N: OK, so this was written on a phone. On a bus. In Dundee. So please forgive any spelling errors ;) this is set directly after last night's episode "Unravelled," when Serena eventually gets a hire car upon remembering hers was in the garage.

Sarah x

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Serena sighed, thoroughly annoyed now. She one-handedly searched her bag once more for her purse but it definitely was not there.

She'd been uptight all day, and angry at Chantelle, Ric and Malick for what happened to her mum, and upset the Eleanor had chosen to hang up rather than hear her out. Then, of course, was the pain of seeing her own mother in such an awful state. The embarrassment of almost crying in front of Ric, whom she was supposed to be professionally superior to. She hadn't, she confessed to herself, acted very professional today. She didn't know whether to be the consultant or the upset daughter. She hadn't known which lines to say or which role to play.

She was driving a powerful car she wasn't used to and she didn't like it. It was heavy on the steering, too, which she wasn't accustomed to. The engine was more powerful; she didn't have to put as much pressure on the throttle to get the same amount of power as she did from her own car.

Groaning, she decided she had to phone and see if she left it in the hospital. She dug around her bag for her phone and dialled Ric's number, putting it on speaker in case she got pulled over.

"Hello?" he answered. He sounded tense, probably expecting abuse to be hurled at him over today's incident. She could hardly blame him; she knew she hadn't been nice to anyone today. Being nice, she'd discovered a long time ago, got her nowhere. Laying down the law did.

"Ric, can you check if I've left my purse in the office?" She heard him get up and rifle through her desk until her found it.

"Yeah," he said. "It's here. Tell me where you are and I'll come and meet you with it," he offered, unusually kind for a man she was lodging a complaint against.

"I'm on Provost Road," she told him. It was dark, and she only knew where she was because she knew that little area very well – she even recognised the cars of those who lived there. "I'll pull over when I get to Robertson-"

She never got to finish that sentence – the car started spinning on what could only be black ice as the frost had fallen tonight. She realised far too late she'd been doing fifty miles an hour on a residential street, and she also realised there was no way she could stop what was about to happen.

The air bag inflated in her face when she hit the lamp post, and the car spun sideways, the driver's side hitting the wall lining the street. She felt the steering wheel lock and push up a little, and the door collapse in beside her. There was a sharp pain in her head and her stomach, and the doctor in her told her she would be knocked out soon enough. She heard, as her consciousness started to decline, Ric's voice from the other side of the car. "Serena?" he said.

"Ric," she forced out, the pain in her abdomen unbearable. She felt dizzy and sick with the level of agony. "I've...crashed," she managed to say, but she didn't think her heard her – her voice was too weak.

The last thing she heard before she lost consciousness was him shouting, "SERENA!" down the phone at her, but she was incapable of responding. Everything went black, and everything stopped. She didn't even half time to clinically assess her own condition.

When she started to wake up, she felt a hand on her face, trying to get a response. "Serena?" an American voice said. She opened her eyes to see Michael Spence Standing over her. "Serena, you've been in a car crash," he told her.

"Yes, I remember," she snapped impatiently. "I was there."

"Good to see you've not lost the legendary Campbell charm," he grinned down on her. "Now, I'm going to refer you up to Keller. Ric and Hanssen are going to operate; the door collapsed in and caused a lot of damage."

"I don't feel that much pain," she protested.

"That's just because Sacha and I decided to dose you up to the eleven on morphine when we realised how much pain you'd be in," he explained what she should have already figured out.

"Eleanor," Serena said, choking from a combination of lying down and not being able to breathe right. "Where's Eleanor?"

"Was she in the car?" he asked, shining a light at her eyes. He looked troubled, and she knew that she was in worse shape than he was letting on in his efforts to keep her calm. They all seemed to forget she was a qualified, experienced doctor who knew that the fact she was having trouble breathing and could feel some pain despite the morphine was not a good sign. The only thing was that her confused and drug-addled brain wasn't in any state to try and work it out for herself.

"No. What about Mum? Is she OK?"

"Serena, shut up and put yourself first," he advised her sternly, calling Chrissie over to help him take her up to Keller. The familiar lift took them up to the general surgery ward, where Chantelle and Ric met them. Great. Just the people she wanted to see; she saw now she'd crossed a few lines today in her upset. These people were now the ones her care was in the hands of, and, regardless of her words and actions today, she did trust them with her life. How could she not?

"Serena," she heard Ric's calming voice. He sounded as worried as Michael had, and it made her wonder what they weren't telling her. Or, for that matter, if she wanted to even know before they sorted her out. "Henrik and I are about to take you into surgery, alright?"

Serena nodded as best she could; her neck felt very stiff, even if the morphine had subsided the pain, though she still felt twinging and aching past the drugs. She saw Chantelle's pretty face, and it was clear the girl was worried, despite the way Serena had treated her today. "Don't worry, Ms. Campbell," she smiled. "We're going to make sure you're fine."

Chantelle was adorable, Serena had to admit. There was no way she would have not done her best today. Serena had known full well Keller was short-staffed because of the weather that had just very nearly killed her. She'd known Chantelle was one of very few nurses on Keller. She knew the agency nurse never showed up. All of these things were beyond both her and Chantelle's control.

She resisted the temptation to remind the nurse that she was a doctor and wasn't stupid, and that she didn't need the explanations no-one had given her to know her body was in some state. If she had cleared her mind before she'd started driving, and if she hadn't been on the phone, she knew she wouldn't be awaiting surgery right now. They took her through to the prep room, without even changing her out of her clothes – was it actually that urgent? Chantelle anaesthetised her. "Count back from ten, Ms. Campbell," she said.

Serena couldn't help rolling her eyes at being reminded to do it but did what she was told. "Ten..." Everything started going hazy. "Nine..." Really hazy. "Eight..."

Hope this is OK!
Please feel free to leave a review and let me know what you think!
Sarah x