A/N: So I'm not sure where this came from. Just a random idea I expect to be two to maybe four chapters long.

Sarah x

She sighed as she wandered onto Keller, iPad in hand, as she tried to answer emails and walk at the same time. It was not going well; touchscreens and Serena Campbell were not always the best friends, and when she was tired they were mortal enemies. And this morning she was not only tired, but she feared she had one glass of wine too many last night.

She looked at Edward from across the ward and was somewhat satisfied to see him sneak a couple of paracetamol. He was suffering too. Served him right, since she was almost certain he had gone home with Mary-Claire Carter last night. With a smirk to herself she set the iPad down.

Her smirk faded as he approached her. "You're wanted on Darwin," he informed her, and she was surprised at his clipped tone.

"Wake up in the wrong bed this morning?" she quipped.

"Don't you mean 'wrong side of the bed,' Serena?" he grumbled and took a swig of his coffee.

She looked him straight in the face. "No." Annoyed already she walked away to the lift, secretly thankful for whatever issue there was on Darwin as it cut her time around an irritable Edward by a yet to be seen level. She was in no mood to put up with him. Even Darwin, a warzone of the personal and professional alike, was more appealing than her native homes of Keller and AUU – she was also in no mood for the dramas of the younger doctors on AUU.

She stepped out on Darwin, immediately abducted by Jac Naylor. "Seventy-eight year-old woman, had a mild heart attack and fell down the stairs," she explained.

"And you need me because?" Serena demanded.

"Because we need a GS consultant to see to her possibly damaged spleen," retorted Jac. "If you're too busy, I'll get Michael," she snapped impatiently.

"No, it's fine."

Serena strode forward, feeling slightly guilty for the way she had spoken to Jac. It wasn't her fault she was putting up with her stressful ex-husband, a stressful job and an even more stressful daughter. She wandered past Jonny and a nurse she was yet to learn the name of, though they looked cosy. Well, that explained Jac's impatient mood. Serena wished Jac and Jonny would just decide what they were doing and get on with it; this miscommunication and inability to share how they felt was no good to anyone.

Without looking she stalked into the patient's room. "I hear you've taken quite the tumble," she smiled, rubbing alcohol gel into her hands without even looking up. She was beginning to find herself continually rushed off her feet. It felt like every day she got up earlier and went to sleep later, leaving her constantly tired on some degree. And the staff weren't helping matters, either, with their thoughtless actions and stupid ideas.

"I've taken worse," the woman replied. Her subtly Scottish accent made Serena look up. She was suddenly ten years old again, and the woman before her was in her early forties as they sat outside with books and paper and pens, the sun beating on her back and the cool coastal wind blowing across her face.

"Mrs. Munro?" Serena said hesitantly. Not entirely sure she was right, she squinted slightly at the patient. She looked at the board behind the old retired teacher and saw she was right – her name as Jan Munro, her nurse was Jonny Maconie and her CT consultant was Jac Naylor.

"Yes," she answered. Serena noticed Jac shoot a glance between the two; she had not told Serena the woman's name, only why she was here.

"Serena Cam-McKinnie," she corrected herself, remembering that Jan Munro would remember her as tiny, short Serena McKinnie. "Serena McKinnie. You-"

"I taught you," Mrs. Munro supplied with a slight smile. "Primary six and seven, until you moved back to Surrey."

"Oh, good," Jac rolled her eyes. "You know each other." Serena withheld her smile at Jac's unfailing impatience.

Mrs. Munro looked at Jac. "I tend to remember all my pupils, darling. Many years of having to learn thirty new names at a time can do that to a person."

"I'm sure I'm one you would rather forget," Serena snorted, looking through her notes quickly, and seeing the test results on Jac's iPad. She remembered being a well-mannered child, but had always felt she was a burden to everyone and anyone who was meant to be responsible for her and for anything that may have happened to her.

"Nonsense."

Serena smirked slightly. "Now you're lying through your teeth. I know I can be...difficult. Just ask Miss Naylor here." She looked around Jac, knowing she agreed with Serena's knowledge of herself.

"I've not seen you since you were eleven years old, and at that point you weren't as bad as you always thought," Mrs. Munro smiled. "I'm glad to see you've grown a wee bit." Serena raised an eyebrow at her quip, remembering was a short, skinny child she had been. It had not helped that she had been physically impeded by a leg that protested with agony when it felt it was being abused; annoyingly, its idea of abuse had not been everyone else's.

"Yes, though unfortunately out the way rather than up the way," Serena answered back. She pulled up the thin sleeves of her shirt and started to feel Mrs. Munro's abdomen; though they were long past the stage of school, Serena could not think of her as anything but Mrs. Munro. "Yeah, do a scan to check but I think it's going to have to come out," she informed Jac.

The old woman in front of her was not the woman in Serena's memories, but at the same time there was no mistaking her. She was formidable, even now as she lay in a hospital bed after a heart attack, frail and thirty-five years older than Serena remembered. Her blonde hair was now grey, her face more lined than she recalled. But she still held the authority and pride that silenced a class of twenty-seven children every day.

Serena allowed her a slight smile and left, Jac hot at her heels, as fast as her expanding pregnant body would let her. "You know, she's not from around here," Jac said. "She's-"

"Scottish," Serena cut across the redhead, turning to face her colleague. "Yes, Miss Naylor, well spotted." Jac's expression was strange; if pregnancy was making her soft, Serena wasn't going to be happy. Jac was one of the only people around here who was actually in possession of a backbone and, even better, knew how to use it. "What are you getting at?"

"Well, she's got nobody here for her, and you're a familiar face."

Serena let out a short laugh. "I'm hardly 'familiar.' I haven't seen her since I was eleven."

Jac's eyes narrowed slightly, her stare going right through Serena. "There's more to all this than you're telling," Jac accused quietly. As much as she wanted to, speaking with Mrs. Munro was not a good idea. That was why she was deflecting what she knew Jac was trying to suggest. There was too much ground covered and to cover. There was much left unfinished and that could now never be finished.

"There isn't," Serena replied. "I just have a lot of work to do." It wasn't a lie. Well, it was. It was a rationalisation – she was lying to herself more than she was to Jac, so she didn't feel so bad.

Jac sighed and shrugged, walking back to her office. She left Serena in a slight daze; she had tried to forget the time she spent on the east coast of Scotland as a child. Between the ages of seven and eleven she had lived in Angus and gone to school outside Montrose, with her parents both working full time, or so she had been told – it had been a strange time for Serena, who, at the time, had no idea why they were there or why they so abruptly left.

To make it better, primary school had never been a great place for Serena. She had been the misfit who couldn't run, far too short for her age and more mature than any child of that age usually was. She could never do P.E. or play games in the playground. She was therefore intensely academic and musical where her peers had been athletic.

She was still academic though she had lost her musicality over time. There were things Serena didn't want dredged up. There was such a difference between her now and back then that she could hardly recognise herself, yet everything she had been through had helped build her to be who she now was. During her teenage years she had rebelled but as a young adult she had merely accepted the person she was.

Then she had been changed again by marriage, motherhood and eventually divorce, though the foundations Jan Munro had built for her remained, and without them she would have amounted to nothing. In all honesty, Serena probably owed her career to that woman.

But not all had been sweet and simple, as Serena had realised when she grew up a little. There had been things Serena had blocked out, parts of her life she was only beginning to understand as she left the area.

The blur at home was steadied by school where, though she was a misfit of sorts, she felt comfortable. In the family home there had always been a tension that could have been cut with a butter knife. People flitted through her home, gone as quickly as they arrived, often without introduction. To them she was invisible, to be ignored. To be seen when it could not be avoided but never heard.

And Jan Munro had known about it.

She had known why Serena wasn't able to run and why she was overly mature. She knew Serena, in the intellectual, emotional and psychological senses, usually fended for herself. She knew her mother had probably told the teacher the basics of the situation, but Serena probably – as an occasionally naïve child – let slip the bulk of it.

So when Mrs. Munro had helped shape her into true solidity and independence, to be the woman she was now, didn't Serena owe her a few minutes to just make sure the woman, now as alone herself as Serena had been as a little girl and many times since, was alright. But she couldn't. So she turned and stood at the lift, trying not to look back; she was determined that the next time she would see the woman would be in theatre.

But the human part of her told her off for her crass heartlessness, reminding her that she was the only person in this place Mrs. Munro had ever known, even if it had been so many years ago that it made Serena feel rather ancient.

The doors opened and Serena stepped in, and when she looked out just before the box closed again, she caught Jac's suspicious and perhaps even slightly concerned gaze at her. Serena was quickly learning that the younger woman was seeing more around her than she said.

It wasn't Mrs. Munro she was scared of. It was what she represented, and the time from which she came. Serena only hoped she would understand that, and see why her former pupil was choosing to keep a distance, despite the fairly close bond they had struck up at school. Her quite vague memories of their conversations and their chosen alternative to P.E reminded her that she had a place in this world as a child she didn't have now, and that she had only been given that because the woman lying in that hospital bed had made the effort where others had dismissed her.

With a resigned sigh, Serena rammed her finger onto the '6' button so hard it actually hurt.

She could not dismiss the woman. It wasn't right.

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