Disclaimer: All rights belong to Tony Grounds and the BBC

Author's notes: I'm sticking to Afghan for their initial meeting, but changing the scenario and then moving them back to the UK and Headley Court. Hope you enjoy it, please let me know.

"Molly?"

Shit, she'd seen him as soon as he walked into the room but had hoped that if she kept her head down he wouldn't notice her, or maybe not even recognise her, while she waited until his back was turned and she could then escape. She hadn't seen him since the hospital at Bastion but she would have known him anywhere, he had starred in enough of her daydreams and "getting off to sleep" fantasies over the past year, with all the inconvenient facts air brushed out.

"Hello, small world, innit?"

"Indeed. " He smiled "It's good to see you, how are you?"

"Better than you by the look of it, you look like you've been in the wars again" She laughed "Course you have, you wouldn't be here if you hadn't been in a war, would you?"

She'd known he was there, Suzie had told her the day he was admitted for physio and rehab on a bad leg wound and had said what a good job it was that she was on nights with the amputees on the other side of the facility so that their paths shouldn't need to cross. Molly had very mixed feelings about it, on the one hand she would have loved to see him again, to see him smile at her, but on the other hand, there was no point in asking for her feelings to set off again on a hiding to nowhere, because nothing had changed.

He couldn't believe that he had been gearing himself up to ask the nurse on his ward about her, he remembered that they had worked together at Bastion and he thought that maybe she would know where Molly had been posted, when he limped into one of the cafeterias on the ground floor, needing to sit down and rest his leg as much as to have a coffee, and there she was. She looked exactly as he remembered her, dressed in scrubs, so she obviously worked here, with her hair tied back in the same heavy plait that he had imagined loosening all those months ago.

Og…og…og…og…og

She had been so deeply asleep it was as if she was in a coma when the 'incoming injured' sirens had gone off, so deeply asleep that she hadn't heard a thing so that Jackie had been forced to shake her really hard to rouse her enough to be sure she was awake before racing off to the hospital, leaving Molly to follow.

"Molls, Molly, come on open your eyes, you've got to wake up"

"It can't be time yet, Jacks, just another ten minutes" Molly whimpered.

"Incoming, got to go in now"

"Oh shit no, I'm minging, I need a shower"

"Well you can't have one, just get moving…now"

Molly didn't sleep well when she was on night shift, she would toss and turn most of the day, finding it impossible to drop off in the stifling heat, with the air thick with dust and the constant racket outside, despite the fact that she was exhausted. She would finally drop into the near coma in the late afternoons, so that when she forced herself out of bed she was still tired and unrefreshed and in desperate need of a cool shower so that she could function. She lived for her nights off to restore her to her normal cheerful, chippy self.

She dragged herself out of her pit, knowing that she had to move immediately, as she fought the overwhelming urge to lay down and go straight back to sleep and that she had to report without the benefit of a shower or even a cup of tea, so that she knew she looked pale and tired and heavy eyed and was horribly afraid that she didn't smell too great either. A splash of water on her face and a spray of de-odorant in her armpits followed by a quick swill of mouthwash didn't improve the way she felt to any significant degree but at least she wasn't quite so smelly, or at least she hoped not.

The casualty clearing hall was its usual organised chaos with teams surrounding the stretcher trollies working calmly to well-practised routines, but at least there wasn't any screaming from young soldiers with limbs blown off or the distinctive smell of scorched flesh and freshly spilled blood which always stuck in her throat.

"What's gone on, Jacks?" She stuck out her arm and waylaid Jackie who was hurrying along the corridor.

"Troop carrier overturned out at one of the FOBs"

"Fatac?" She was asking if there were any dead.

"No, not yet anyway" Jackie shook her head "Lots of broken bones, couple of query spinals, Officer got a hell of a whack on the head, so he's away with the fairies, but they think he'll get away with it"

"Will anyone notice if he don't?"

"Don't be a cow" she laughed "Actually this one is one of the good guys, bloody good looking as well, or he was before he had two stonking black eyes and a swollen nose"

Molly reported to her nursing station feeling very hard done by. There was nothing for her to do, no-one had been warded yet and there was a full compliment of day staff still there which meant that she would have had plenty of time to shower, have a cup of tea and even eat some breakfast. There was probably no point in asking now, although she might try for a shower by pointing out that nurses with minging body odour weren't the best when it came to leaning over patients. She was allowed to shower and put on fresh scrubs, even got a reasonably fresh cup of tea, well not too stewed anyway, and stole a couple of the patients' biscuits before the bodies started arriving on the ward.

The two query spinals were the top priority, they had to be kept absolutely still and flat on their backs as they waited for scans and X-rays, just in case they had broken any bones in their backs. One, a lad who seemed to be called Fingers for some reason, or so he said, seemed to be better than the other. He had a bit of neck pain but could move his arms and legs and wiggle his toes, so that the nurses were betting on nothing worse than a bit of whiplash but the other, a Welsh lad called Dylan Smith, or Smurf as he kept insisting was his name, was a bit more of a worry. He said he had no pain but was complaining about some worrying tingling in his hands.

The Officer was put in the side room, mainly because he was an officer, which, Molly moaned, made it bloody inconvenient for the staff, meaning her, to do his hourly obs. She could see that he was probably nice looking, although not at the moment when he looked as if he had got in the ring with Mike Tyson and lost badly, and she had to rouse him every hour to make sure he wasn't slipping into a coma. His irritable muttering every time she woke him was getting worse and they were watching him closely because being irritable could be a symptom of a worsening head injury or it could just be that he was pissed off that she wouldn't let him sleep. She was shining a light into his eyes to check his pupils for the fourth time when he turned his head suddenly and vomited copiously over the bed and her.

"Oh, lovely, thanks for that mate" She grabbed a kidney bowl and held his head as he continued to retch on an obviously empty stomach, well it was empty now anyway.

"Sorry" He muttered, awake but with his eyes tightly closed.

"It's okay, couldn't matter less" Molly trotted out her usual platitude "Lets get you mopped up and I'll get someone to help me change your bed" She rang the bell for some help, but she also needed to report his sickness, it could be another symptom of rising pressure in his brain.

Captain James had no idea where he was or what had happened, one minute he was sitting in the troop carrier with 2 section, laughing and listening to their ceaseless banter as they trundled back to the compound, the next there was this huge lurch and everything was tumbling around them as they turned over. There was a blinding pain as something whacked him across the eyes and he hit his head on something, and then darkness as he lost consciousness. He came round briefly in a helicopter without his helmet and with someone shining a light in his eyes, with his crashing headache being made far worse by the noise of the rotors, then went out again. He kept going in and out of the world around him and he could hear people speaking without knowing what they were saying until he knew he was in a bed and it was bright and noisy and someone kept waking him up when he was asleep and then patting his hand and saying 'sorry mate' as she opened his eyes and shone a light in them. It was beginning to seriously piss him off that she, whoever the hell she was, wouldn't let him sleep when the fourth time she woke him to shine a light in his eyes he suddenly knew, without warning, that he was going to be sick.

He knew he'd thrown up over her and tried to apologise, but she was very kind and matter of fact about it, something that made him feel better, well as much as anything could at that moment. He knew there was something he needed to ask and was trying very hard to think what the hell it was through the fog and crashing pain in his head as her tiny hands mopped him up as if he was a child, something that left him feeling comforted.

He was aware of being wheeled down to some scanning contraption and being fed through and told to stay as still as he could while it was turned this way and that, he had no idea what 'mate' looked like but he couldn't hear her voice so he presumed she wasn't there. He heard her voice when he was put back in his room and he tried to smile at her, still unable to remember what it was he wanted to ask.

It was daylight when she put her head round the door to see if he was awake, so he managed to open his eyes a slit and saw that she was very little, but he couldn't open his eyes enough to see whether she was pretty or not, as she told him that she was going off duty and then laughed as she said 'you have a nice day, now' in a fake customer service voice and he tried to smile back, not for a second believing that she was being sarcastic, and then remembered what it was he wanted to ask her.

"The lads?" his voice came out as a croak, as though he had a very sore throat, or he hadn't spoken for days,

"They're all fine, mate, you're the only one who really copped it, and even you're not that bad. See you tonight, unless they've discharged you back to the war"

Molly found getting to sleep impossible, even worse than usual, as she lay and worried about him. She didn't usually take her work home with her, so to speak, but despite her joking when she left him this morning, there was something about him that deeply worried her. She wanted to get up and pop back to the hospital to check on him, to see if he was okay, which she knew was bloody ridiculous and anyway would get her put on a charge. She must have dropped off eventually because she woke with a start far too early for her shift and then couldn't get back to sleep, which was unheard of for her. She lay and fretted about him, convinced, for some reason, that he wouldn't still be on the ward that night; that he'd either have been transferred to ITU or worse.

The side ward was in darkness when she reported for duty, and her stomach dropped as 'I knew it' flooded her brain. She didn't know him like she got to know some patients but she felt like she'd had some sixth sense and she cared, so she sent a silent plea that it was ITU and not the alternative.