Trying not to remember
Jac walked into her office and sat down, sighing. She'd had a long day, full of difficult patients and not enough coffee to top it all off. She turned her computer on and stared at her reflection in the screen. She looked tired, I must try harder to sleep, Jac thought, but then she knew why she wasn't sleeping, no! She wouldn't think about it. She glanced down at the paperwork on the desk and shook her head. Sahira's writing was almost impossible to read. She got up to track Ms Shah down.
A flustered and angry Sahira marched into Jac's office, why the hell had she made her rewrite the whole report? Sometimes Sahira wondered if Jac got her enjoyment from watching other people suffer, she didn't seem to do anything else. She slammed the report down on the desk, upsetting a folded, crumpled piece of paper that fluttered to the ground. Sahira crouched down and picked it up, unfolding it she saw that it was a photograph. "What the hell do you think you are doing?" Jac stormed, furiously in to the office. She snatched the photo from Sahira's hands. "Who is he?" Jac shook her head. "Please leave." The photo was crumpled up in Jac's palm. Sahira shook her head and spoke. "My rewritten report's on your desk." Jac nodded. Sahira looked back on her boss, realising that there was more to Jac than her steely exterior.
Jac un-crumpled the photo and smoothed it out. She folded it up and placed it back in the draw, where it belonged. She leant her head on the cool desk in front of her and tried to think of something different, something more important, more worth her thinking power but her brain decided that toady was the day where she couldn't get away from it. He was everywhere, she thought she saw him everywhere; she had little reminders of him, like the photo. She knew why today, as well, it wasn't just a random day; it was 3 years since- no! She wouldn't think about it, she couldn't think about it because then her walls would start to crumble around her and didn't want that to happen. She couldn't let her shield down even if it was for him, she never could, could she, well not until it was far, far too late. Somehow she had started thinking about it, and she inwardly cursed herself.
Sahira strode back into the office. "I can't believe you're…." She trailed off realising that the office was empty. She went over to the desk and collapsed into the chair, needing the rest. Curiously Sahira grasped that Jac didn't have a single sentimental thing on her desk, not pictures, not a single thing that wasn't work related. She glanced over at Elliot's desk; she could see the backs of photo frames from here. Sahira pulled open the top draw on Jac's desk and was welcomed with lots of reports and patient records. She shook her head and opened the second draw. There was the photo from earlier, smoothed out and placed in the draw carefully. There was another photo, this time framed, in the draw. It was the same man as in the other photo but instead of being alone, he was holding a baby. He was smiling but Sahira noted that the smile didn't quite reach his eyes. There was also a pager lying at the bottom of the draw. Sahira flipped it on to its side, and was shocked when she saw that the name on the side wasn't Jac's, but a man's name, Joseph Byrne, it read. Sahira raised her eyebrows and made the link that the man in the photos was most probably Joseph Byrne. She put the pager down and shut the draw. She stood up and left the room.
Jac ambled into the room, almost on auto-pilot. She sat down, gratefully in the seat behind her desk. She had just dealt with a particularlary hard operation where there had been several bleeds. She was thinking through what had happened when subconsciously she reached out her hand and opened the second draw and she picked out the pager. She swivelled the pager in her fingers, before lying back and putting it on the desk. One day she would have to think about it, his departure, and all the interlocking emotions that came with it, love, guilt, happiness, sadness too. Emotions that she didn't want to remember, because there was so much hurt attached to all of them, love the most. She had hurt the man she loved so much, but he would always be the man she loved, whether she could think about him or not. There would never be anyone else.
Hope it's good. It's just a oneshot at the mo but might expand to multipart if anyone thinks I should.