Hello chaps! Welcome to story three! I hope you are all still enjoying the series and it's not too long winded or rambly! If you are enjoying, or have any comments that you'd like to make, please do review, or send me a wee message, I love silent witness discussions and no one in my real world are as obsessed as I am.

The themes in this story I should warn you, are very difficult and quite upsetting, especially at the beginning. I've tried to be as sensitive and tasteful as possible, I have no idea what it's like to go through something like that and I hope I never do. I just hope I've done it justice.

Love, as always xxx

Nikki will be okay.

September 4th – 7.00pm

It all happened in a bit of a blur really.

Evidence on a victims coat had led you to a breakthrough of a long and mentally draining case.

A house to be exact.

Leo had told you. He had told you to leave it. But you couldn't.

Not now you knew the answers were out there.

Waiting to be found.

You had packed up. As if to go home. You could feel Leo's eyes on you all the way to the car. He worries. He knows what you're like. He's right to worry.

It was only when you landed with a soft thud into the driver's seat that you felt it.

Exhaustion.

Sheer, agonizing exhaustion.

Your stomach was heavy now and your back was beginning to hurt and you could feel your eyes drooping as the car heated up. Pretty soon you would have to start thinking about baby things. Nappies, clothes, cots…

Christ where do you start?

You'd have to do all this alone. That's the most daunting part. And you're always so, so tired. What you would have given to sleep right now…

And what wouldn't you give to have someone to rub your aching back after a long day of rushing around, someone to sit you down, prop your feet up, pass you a gaviscon. Someone to gently make love to you to relieve some of the stress, the pressure.

You shook it off. Told yourself it would be over soon enough. Once you had the answers. Then you could rest, stop focussing on work and start preparing yourself for a more 'all-consuming' job ahead of you.

Why, why did you shake it off?

The house is in darkness. Deserted long ago it seems. The door handle is cold against your withered hands but the door opens under your touch with relative ease. The silence of the hall is almost astonishing and for a moment or two you just allow yourself to breathe. Be at peace. There is a small movement in your stomach and you place your hand there, rubbing, as if quelling hunger. You're guilty of that. Forgetting that there is a baby there. A tiny human. Harry was always so much more engrossed in the sheer magnificence of it, a look of complete amazement on his face as he holds his hand gingerly over the movement under your skin. You always remained stoic. Emotionless, reluctant to share any intimacy with him, in doing so, occasionally detaching yourself from the magic of it all. Perhaps you will live to regret that.

You are searching the house now. You find a small room behind a damp kitchen. It contains a modern computer, out of place in the otherwise abandoned abode. Intrigued, you close in. You bend over the chair to switch it on.

It all happened in a bit of a blur really.

You see it in the worst possible place; the corner of your eye, where imagination and reality almost seem to merge into one. Where horror and truth become the same. Your head snaps round to take it in. In the shadows there is a figure.

A figure that then appears to panic. A figure that runs at you with full force. Pushes the chair into you, causing you to fall.

And then they are gone, they take the laptop computer and are gone.

Then you hear screaming.

Screaming.

It takes you a while to realise it's you.

The pain is almost unbearable as you push the chair off and attempt to stand. You fall again, sliding on something…

Blood.

Pints and pints of blood.

Your blood.

Now you're screaming again. But not in pain. The pain doesn't matter. All that matters is your baby and its safety, and the fact that you are completely alone.

In an instant, you forget everything you were taught at med school.

With bloodied shaking hands you do the only thing you can think to do.

You call him.

Harry.

You call him, and call him and call again. Nothing. He has forgotten you. He has moved on. To something new. To someone new. But sometimes you were so sure, when your eyes meet his as he feels your baby move, his baby move…

But he's not here. Not anymore. To save you. No one is here. You scream and you cry and you emit sounds so completely horrific they could only be the cries of a mother scared for the life of her child.

The bleeding continues.

You manage to dial for an ambulance before the world disappears. The agony disappears.

It all happened in a bit of a blur really.