My eyes dropped shut as my head hit the floor. It was cold, the floor, a sort of numb that I welcomed gratefully. My skin burnt ferociously and a searing pain erupted from my back. Blood spread, to my fingers, my face. The red shone in the dim lights of the bathrooms and began to engulf my hands completely. My attempts to keep my eyes open failed, and I succumbed to the darkness.

It went black, then blacker still and then, there was nothing.

I felt dead. Unable to move, speak; all I was left with were thoughts and pain. Thoughts of pain. I lay motionless - it hurt too much to move - and let my mind carry me away. I thought of Sunny first; the one person in my life worth saving but I couldn't even do that. Then came Hannah and dad, and I realised just how mucked up my family really was. Just how mucked up I really was. How stupid; the doctor trained to save peoples' lives can't even save her own. Maybe I didn't want to be saved. Maybe I couldn't be saved.

Pushing that far out of my mind, I focused on the positives. Weighing up the pros and cons of my life, pondering that I if I had minutes to live, how would I want to spend them? Seeing as it appeared those final minutes had come, I thought back to my first day at Holby, thinking of the friends I'd grown close to over time - Donna, Maria, Linden, Dan.

Dan. The pain burnt faster, harder as I thought of his name, his face. The passion I'd felt for him, the poison he'd fed me; 'Don't ever let yourself be second best'. Then came the pain. The harrowing pain every time he left me. I thought eventually it'd numb, become easy like part of a routine. But it never did. Instead, every time he came waltzing back, the wounds were reopened and he closed them each time he left with wonky stitches liable to come undone as he pleased. As a surgeon, he was faultless. As a man, he was flawed. Faulty and imperfect, just like everyone else.

The difference? I didn't love everyone else. It was him, always him. So as I lay, blood pounding and pouring fast, my heart failing and dimming, I hoped for the last time, that Dan would return to close my wounds and tidy me up. Like the faultless surgeon he was.

Only he didn't. Perhaps because I was delusional as I lay there, cold and unmoving, surrounded by blood and remnants of the past. Or perhaps because he was not just a surgeon, but a man. A man who, despite my best efforts, never knew how much I needed him.

Just as the light in my about was about to fade, a door opened in the distance, and people were crowing, chorusing my name. I headed for them, the light surrounding me and then I saw it. Life. And it was beautiful.

But there was something behind it, hiding and hovering. I squinted and opened, squinted and opened, trying to distinguish what it was. Who it was.

And then I realised.

It was him. His hand grabbed mine, as dozens of others fought to save me. But the fight had already been won. He'd come back, and for the first time, to him I wasn't second best. Together, we fought the fight and finished it victorious. He'd saved me once again, and this time, the stitches he sewed stuck. Forever.