On the morning of her wedding day, Bernie wakes to a burning pain stretching across the entirety of her left hip. It's not agonising, not quite, but it is intense. It's white hot and focused, which she immediately finds strange because that doesn't seem quite right. She lies in bed, cataloguing as she's been taught to do. Without even opening her eyes to get a visual, she can tell that nothing seems amiss. No raised skin, nothing too tender beneath the skin, no excessive amounts of heat.
When she realises this, her eyes fly open. Because there's a burning sensation. With no heat to accompany it. A sickening jolt turns her stomach where she lies, she's out of bed in seconds. Heart a sledge hammer against the inside of her rib cage, barely daring to breathe, she stumbles her way to the mirror in the grey light of the pre-dawn. It lights the room pretty well, given that all it has to work with is the slight chink in the curtains.
Far too quickly, she finds herself in front of the full length mirror. She musters all of her courage, praying to every god she's learnt the name of in her twenty four years of life, and reaches for the hem of her sleep shirt. With trembling fingers that feel too numb to grasp and breath that hitches in her throat, she pulls the shirt clumsily upwards, exposing her hip to the dim light of the approaching dawn.
There, in an elegant and bold script, is a name. The name she's always feared getting. The name she thought she'd managed to escape. The first thing she notices about it, is that it is written in jade green, all swirls and flourishes. It all seems a bit time consuming to Bernie, wasting so much time on such fancy pants nonsense. Still, if that was what her soul mate liked, then she supposed it didn't matter all that much. Efficiency and time saving wasn't everything, after all.
The next thing she notices, the thing that makes her throat close up on itself, is the name itself. Serena. Because it's female. And it's not that she wasn't expecting such a thing, because she's old enough to admit that her eyes tend to linger on women. It's just that, a part of her was hoping that it wouldn't be a woman's name, if it had to come at all. It can't be a woman's name, such a thing just simply isn't allowed.
It's a beautiful name, and she can just imagine the woman to go with it. Calm and kind and full of concern for the welfare of everyone else. She'd have warm brown eyes and the hair to match. Bernie gives herself a moment to think, to pause and to imagine. She'd be sophisticated and open. Sure of herself in everything she did.
Bernie allows herself a moment, and nothing more, to imagine life with a stranger she's not yet met. She imagines loving and laughing and living and basking. She imagines happiness and a busy life with a strong, bold woman at her side. She imagines loving openly, not having to draw her eyes away from the woman she would be able to love. Not having to restrain herself for thinking and feeling and wanting. She imagines children and a career and a soft, warm embrace to return home to at the end of a hard days' work. She imagines an embrace that feels safe, like home.
And then she forces herself to remember that today is her wedding day. And that she is marrying Marcus. Reminds herself that even if she were to meet this Serena tomorrow, their lives would be full of discrimination and hiding and strain. They wouldn't be able to hold hands and walk down the street. Or marry and have children. Or even love openly without being jeered at and endangered.
Marcus is the safe option. He loves her, even though he has another person's name tattooed across his lower back in sky blue. It's the name of another woman, a woman he's never met. A woman he may never meet. He'd once asked Bernie if it bothered her, that he was destined to love another. She'd said no, and it hadn't been a lie. But she'd held her tongue rather than tell him why.
He was the safe option, and life with him would be mapped to a certainty. They'd get married and have 1.5 kids and a dog named Rover. They'd both become doctors and they'd balance a career and home life. They'd make it work. It was what everyone expected. And her mother liked him, perhaps even more than she did.
Bernie panics herself when she thinks about telling him. Still, she musters her courage and marches straight to him, still in her pyjamas. She tries to stutter out an explanation, fails. So she lifts her shirt, exposes herself, and hopes that it is enough. He doesn't say a word, and eventually she drops her shirt and looks at him. He stares straight back. Tells her, in an even enough voice, to return to her room and forget that she ever saw him. He'll see her in the church in a couple of hours.
When she gets down there, he's waiting by the alter, false smile plastered to his face. He marries her, and she tries to be happy. Reminds herself that this is the safe option. That she should be content. If it feels like an awful lot like a means to an end, there's not that much she can do about that.
He marries her and stays throughout the long years that follow. Through the absences and the knowing that they're just not meant to be. On their wedding night, while he goes about his business above her, grunting and rutting against her like an animal, all course hair and harsh touches, she tries not to picture soft curves and questing fingertips in his place. That won't get her any where.
And if, in the years to come, he avoids touching her left hip like the plague, she ignores it. She knows on some level he's jealous, although he has no right to be. She isn't written across his skin either, so it's sort of like they're both waiting for the best thing to come along. They have Cam and then Charlotte and so she pretends and pretends until she's practically blue in the face. She tries to be happy for her children's sake when she's on leave, and for the most part she succeeds. If, even after all these years, she still dreams of imagined hazel eyes, it's nothing to any one else.
She learns a lot about herself in the early years of her cold and shallow sham of a marriage. She learns that the man she promised herself to is jealous, and petty, and fond of being the good cop when it comes to their children. She learns how to conceal the hurt she feels when Cam and little Lottie go running to Daddy, rather than to her.
She learns that absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder, not where her husband is concerned. With her children, it's a different story. After she's learnt to love them, because loving never comes easy to her, leaving them wrenches her heart out of her chest. And then she finds its trampled beneath her feet with every step she takes away from them.
She learns that tolerance is all she can manage towards Marcus and his unwanted attentions. He expects her to want him, even though he knows. At one point, she could pretend. Fool him into believing that she wanted him as much as he desired her. It waned over time, as she found herself caring less and less about the man whom had once been her best friend. Every time they're together, at least twice every time she's on leave, she closes her eyes and let's him do his thing. She imagines the hazel eyes of a stranger, a woman she's never met.
She learns to never let her eyes stray. Never to let her eyes wander or linger. Never to let herself imagine what it would be like to surrender, to touch and taste and feel. Never to let herself get lost in a moment, in a fantasy. Those are dangerous. They make Bernie wish for a life that could have been, but never was.
She learns how to perfect the art of being a wife, when more than half of the time she isn't around. She learns how to be a good Mum, and it takes practice, but she gets there. So if she's absent, her kids still know they're loved. Albeit from afar. If her take on being a mum incorporates good old British reserve, at least she's trying. She tries and pretends, even as she finds herself screaming internally, a suffocation risk.
She learns to dread the returning home, the drowning in the picturesque streets of suburbia. Home means having to pretend, for the sake of her kids, who are oblivious to the sham of a marriage their parents have. Home means family dinners on quiet Sunday afternoons and walks in the country side. Home means pretending to fit into the life she never really wanted. The life that was expected of her, even if it makes her feel trapped.
Bernie doesn't need to learn to savour every second on the front line, every second of danger and peril. Savours the good moments and the bad alike. Even in the bad moments in the desert, choking on dust she should be impervious to after so much time, she feels free. Free from the confines of her loveless marriage and the expectations that come with it. Free from the name forever burnt into her hip. Free from everything except the reputation she has built for herself.
By the time she meets Alex, her kids are both young adults and it doesn't feel like there is anyone much to pretend for. Cam and little Lottie may still be young, but neither of them are babies any more. It's been twenty two long years since she'd married Marcus, and if it had been a mistake then, it was even more of one now. Still, she tries her god damn hardest not to react to the charms of Alex. Tries to ignore the soft smiles and the lingering touches and the looks that set her alight.
She tries so hard to follow all that she has taught herself. Doesn't look, doesn't linger, doesn't let herself reach out and touch. Even if it's what she wants most in this world (behind the hazel eyes of her every imagining, of course). She grinds her teeth practically to their root and clenches her fists so hard she could swear permanent indentations have been left. She avoids her company, and when that fails tries solely for friends.
For a time, it works. She convinces herself she can be faithful to her marriage, even if it makes her feel trapped. She convinces herself that friendship with this woman, this enchanting woman, is enough. She's not her soulmate, never will be. She's here and present and friendship will be enough. Just like it always was before.
They become friends and connect in a way that she's never connected with any one before. It's on a deep level, one that she's never reached with another person before. They talk and laugh about anything and everything, in a way that Bernie never has. She ignores the way that touches linger between the two of them in a way that is just about on the wrong side of friendship. She pretends that she doesn't see the way Alex looks at her, tender through and through. It's enough, and it makes her happier than she ever expected to be.
It's enough, until one day, something changes. Together they'd treated a boy, younger than her Cam, and he hadn't made it. It wasn't the first time, and she knew it wouldn't be the last, but it had hit her. He didn't want to die, she could see it in his eyes, hear it in the way his breath trembled. He'd clung to life for longer than she had thought he could, for so long that for a moment she had though he would make it. And then he had been gone.
So, late at night, they sit outside in the frigid air and try to comfort one another. Bernie can never quite place her finger on how it happened, but out of nowhere they seem to be kissing. It's full of salt from someone's tears and relief from finally giving in. And that seems to be that. Alex isn't bothered by the other woman's name on her left hip, because she has one of her own.
She holds with the idea that neither woman is here in the now, so they can worry about that when it comes to pass. She doesn't feel guilty for cheating on Marcus, because was there really ever something there to betray? For once, she does something for her, because she wants to. Her and Alex make a great team, even if they're not built to last.
In a way, they're very happy inside their own bubble, amongst the dirt and chaos of the desert. Both of them know that they are not made to last for forever. Both know they won't make it in the real world, when reality comes calling. But a war zone is a different world entirely, with its own pace and set of rules. So, in the desert, Bernie finally lets herself love another woman. Just like she had always longed to. And she does love Alex, as Alex teaches her to love. And they have their time, a run of four years, which is definitely nothing to scoff at.
So the day an IED goes off when they're on patrol, she knows it's the thing to burst their bubble. Later, when she's back home with Marcus, she gives herself time to mourn. She'll miss Alex, but they were never made to last. She was a love of her life, but not the one that was made for forever. Even at her age, she hopes that is still to come.
After she recovers from her accident, she decides it's time to start a new chapter of her life. She decides it's time for a less messy, albeit only slightly, existence. Alex visits, and they bod each other farewell. They keep in contact, of course they do, and it's not long before Alex tells her of a Northern woman, Vix.
She divorces Marcus, and both of them are happier for it. Finally, she gets around to sitting the kids down and explaining about the name on her hip. She has to bite her lip and blink hard to keep from crying when faced with their reactions, both so understanding and loving. Bernie thinks it's nice to know that even if most of her life has been an escape act and a shit show, at least she got one thing right.
She starts a new job, after taking a step back from the army (her accident proves to her that she's simply getting too old for such things) at Holby City Hospital. It's a quiet, civilian sort of job, and it's vastly different from the fast pace of the army. There's no more operating in dirt, and the paperwork seems to go on for days and days. She finds the changes alarming, but if there's anything Bernie Wolfe is good at, it's acclimatising to change.
Early one morning, little over a week into her new job, she comes across a very angry woman in the car park. She's cursing like a trooper down the phone, muttering something about her car. And Bernie isn't quite sure why her heart skips a beat, nor why a smirk appears on her face. She finds the sight endearing, and before she knows it, she's drawn in.
Then suddenly they're in conversation, and her heart seems to be beating far faster than it should be. As they talk, they walk the line between flirtation and friendly banter, and she's never felt more at home with a perfect stranger before in her life. And it's all about a car. Then the shorter woman, all hazel eyes that sparkle and dark hair that looks incredibly soft, sticks out a hand.
She introduces herself as Serena Campbell and the whole world seems to freeze. Bernie finds rushed back into reality by the feel of her hand squeezing Serena's, even as she introduces herself. For a second, Serena's hand tightens around hers, and then the smile on her face grows. Bernie finds herself thinking that she's practically glowing.
She's taken back twenty six years, to the morning of her wedding. The imaginings she'd had of a life she has always though could never be. She finds herself drawn back to the flashes of growing old together, and thanks the gods that such a thing could be her new reality. Because Serena hasn't lowered her hand and she's still smiling like this is the happiest she could ever possibly be.
She stands in a car park outside the hospital and finds that, rather than today being defined by its rubbish beginnings, it feels strangely like a beginning. And if, in the next email she sends Alex, she uses the name Serena as often as possible, so sue her. New beginnings are meant to be enjoyed.