*NOTE: This begins right after the episode "Milk Run" (VI/7), where Chris decides to stay with the Service, despite being offered a good position in a city hospital.
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Tom was the last one at the base. He took a lot of time finishing off all the paper work. He did all the filing of patients charts and then he sat for a few minutes at his desk. He was thinking. He was actually wondering about himself and putting a lot of questions to him.
Then he got up. Picked up his briefcase, turned off the lights, went out and locked the door.
Chris hadn't felt like dining at the pub. Geoff and Kate had asked her to come, but she hadn't felt like company at all. And she wasn't hungry either. So she went home to her place and now stood in the kitchen. She was rather restless. Yes she'd declined that job offer; yes, she'd known that afternoon that after all Coopers Crossing was the place she wanted to be. She felt at home here. But now she also felt incredibly lonely. Lost. Lost in her own home. She didn't want to fix herself a dinner, she didn't want to read, nor to turn on the TV. So she stood in the kitchen and mechanically, poured herself a glass of water. A few minutes later she though she might as well water the plants in the house. Some of them looked rather weary. And after finishing the plants in the house she looked outside on the veranda and thought she might as well water the plants there, too, they looked even drier. So she filled up the watering can and went outside. It was late, but still sweltering out and she stopped for a moment to breathe. The heat was still shimmering over the dry grass next to the house. She felt her body and let the heat in, yes, this kind of air was one of the reasons she had grown to love the place. As long as you don't have to do a clinic run in this kind of weather, she thought.
When she had turned to the side of the house on the veranda, she thought she heard someone at the front door. She went back and looked around the corner. Tom was standing at the screen door, but didn't make a move to open it or to knock. So Chris, feeling more like herself already, came around the corner and smilingly said: „Looking for something?"
„Ah, yeah, ... you actually."
„Well, you've come to the right place then. I live here, remember?" Tom didn't say anything. So Chris came to the door, opened it and on her way in asked him: „Want anything to drink?"
„Yeah, sure, why not!", but he made not move to follow her inside. Chris went inside, over her shoulder she told him to go sit on the back veranda.
Minutes later Chris came out back, two glasses of red wine spritzer with ice cubes in it in her hands. She sat down next to Tom on the porch swing. It wasn't swinging, Tom had his feet firmly on the ground.
„So...?" Chris tried again, handing him one of the wine glasses.
And Tom didn't say anything, again, he looked at the glass in his hands. Chris took a sip of her's.
They sat in silence for a few minutes.
„You know," Chris said musingly, „I'm happy with my decision. I want to stay. I love this place. The work, the people and, you know, just the ‚clime'. I like it."
Tom looked at her and just nodded, smiling ever so slightly. Then he looked back down on the glass in his hands.
„I don't know what I'm afraid of. I really couldn't tell you. It's stupid. And I'm done with it."