A single tear streaked it way down her cheek leaving a wet trail in its wake. She spent about 90% of her life being tough, not letting emotion or fear in, but right now her composure was waning. Sitting in the back of a taxi on the way to a hotel, she had broken everything familiar she knew in civilian life, and it was proving much harder than she had expected.

Today she had worked with Alex. They had ended up working a trauma case together as Alex was the locum on call anaesthetist today. Not that Bernie had known that before coming face to face with her in scanning. It had reminded her of her former life in the army, the secret bubble her and Alex had lived in out in Kabul and all the feelings she had been desperately trying to suppress.

As she let herself into the reasonably sized hotel room it hit her. As she shut the door behind her, the tears began to fall. Big, fat, salty beads, running one after another down her cheeks, like someone had switched on a tap without giving her instructions on how to switch it off. She slid down, the now closed door, into a heap on the floor and sobbed. She rarely had time or the need to allow her own emotions in so the enormity of her reaction right now was overwhelming in itself. In the army emotions made you weak, they meant you lost your focus, your control and could put you or your comrades in danger. So she had learned over a period to switch them off, never showing them to anyone except her very closest confidantes or in complete privacy.

"Nothing makes any sense without you." Alex had got that right. Nothing made any sense any more. She'd screwed everything up and now she was alone and confused. There were a torrent of thoughts and feelings running through her head but wasn't sure how to deal with any of them.

A person who lacks courage to face danger or difficulty, that was the definition of a coward. Not a word you would expect to describe a British Army Major. However, these past few weeks, in her personal life, Bernie had certainly been a coward. After being blown up by the IED and returned to Holby she had told Alex she wasn't coming back to the Army, that there 'bubble' was over. It was easier for Bernie to take the cowards way out, to go back to Marcus than it was to admit she was actually in love with a woman. She'd managed to get some alone time in the locker room with Alex earlier in the day, they'd talked, shared a kiss, and the moment Alex's lips touched hers the world felt like it had stopped, like everything made sense. But Dr Copland saw them and Bernie had been a coward. Again.

"Alex and I were lovers. Officially very much not allow, but we kept it absolutely secret. We were in this amazingly happy bubble, and then the IED hit and I was blown back to reality." She admitted to Dom as they sat in the peace garden. It was the first time she had ever said that out loud, or to another person.

As was always the case since she got back from Kabul her mind had wandered back into the bubble where life made sense, where she felt herself, where she was incredibly happy. The thoughts illicited a slight, coy, smile.

"So Marcus doesn't…" Dom queried before jumping to conclusions.

"No, he doesn't have a clue. Even though….all I've done since I got back is think of her. And how wonderful life would be if only I was brave enough."

Picking herself off the floor she changed out of her clothes and into some clean pyjama's from her camouflage rucksack and flopped down on the bed. She picked up her phone to find 4 messages from Marcus that she had no intention of reading this evening but nothing from the one person, the only person she desperately wanted to talk to. She opened her contacts and hovered her finger over her name.

'Alex'

But she didn't quite have the courage to press call. What would she say anyway? She had already hurt the women more than she imagined possible and she couldn't think of a single thing to say right now that which was going to fix any of that.

"Are you brave enough now?" Talking to Dom had made her see what she wanted, who she wanted.

But her realisation had come too late. Her heart was broken into thousands of tiny shards as Alex walked away telling Bernie she needed to sort her life out and decide exactly what she really wanted. She wasn't going to beg for her to stay though letting Alex's hand go was the hardest thing ever. In fact, telling Marcus that she wanted a divorce when she got home had somehow felt much easier.

How different things would be right now If only I had been brave enough Bernie said in her head. She crawled into bed and lay staring at the ceiling.

Today had officially been crap.