Stu knocked on the door and entered when Jack answered. Jack looked him over, and he didn't look too good. Stuart's eyes had dark circles beneath them, the livid bruise on his cheek stood out against the abnormal pallor of his skin, he looked shattered and in considerable distress, and was clearly favouring his left side.
"Stuart, you should be at St Hugh's."
"Guv... I." he nodded slowly. "Just wanted to drop this in." He put the file down on Jack's desk.
Stu walked slowly over to his desk, operating on autopilot, his whole body aching, the tightness in his chest and his throat acute, he could barely breathe. There was nowhere that didn't hurt, but Stu welcomed the pain like a close friend, losing Ant was breaking him in two. He didn't want to live in a world without him. His chest and left side constricted, and he paused a second, literally unable to move another step. He breathed in slowly, his abused and broken ribs screaming. He sat down very carefully.
Sam walked up to his desk. "Stuart, you really should be at St Hugh's."
"Advised, Ma'am. But I have paperwork to complete."
"Stuart." Sam snapped, out of patience with him. Four days of him running around going off at half cock had been just about enough, then he'd put himself in harm's way, they'd lost the suspect and a man was dead. "That isn't a suggestion, it's an order. Just once do as you are told, and perhaps I can forget all the other times you have deliberately disobeyed me during this operation."
Stu swung round on the chair, suddenly blazingly angry. "If I remember rightly ma'am, you wanted in on my informant, even though I told you that he wanted only to deal with me, I warned you of the risks involved, and still you pushed ahead. Now a man is dead... a man..." he lunged to his feet, choked, he couldn't breathe, he struggled to draw breath, the tightness in his chest like bands of steel, an agonising pain shot through his left side, and Stu clutched at his chest in panic, he looked into Sam's face as the black pool opened up at his feet and he dived in.
Sam watched in horror as he keeled over. Jo was on her feet and across the office like a flash, Stevie lunged for the phone, swiftly dialling for an ambulance. Stuart had gone down like he was poleaxed, clutching at the left hand side of his chest. Stevie stumbled over the words, suspected heart attack, how could Stuart Turner, young, fit and healthy, possibly have a heart attack at the age of only 35.
Sam and Jo were on their knees, together they loosened his clothing, Jo unbuttoned his shirt, gasping at the bruises on his ribs, something didn't look right about the left hand side of his chest, gently they moved him into the recovery position, rolling him onto his right side.
The paramedic examined Stuart carefully, he could hear the tell tale whistling in Stu's laboured attempts at breathing. Quickly they loaded him onto a stretcher. Jo needed no asking, she grabbed her jacket and bag and followed as they moved him down to the ambulance.
"DS Turner has four broken ribs, under sudden extra stress one of those collapsed inwards puncturing his left lung, which collapsed." Sam looked at the doctor in horror, when he'd suddenly lost his temper, that's when the final damage had been done. She could still see the stricken look on his face as he struggled to draw breath and couldn't, and she had been the one to push his buttons. Sam had always prided herself on her understanding of human nature, yet she had gone off at Stuart, so sure of her facts and her righteousness that she hadn't even registered the signs. She'd pushed him into overload. She looked through the glass at him, nearly as pale as the sheets he was lying on, wires and tubes protruding everywhere, as she listened absently to the doctor's enumeration and assessment of Stuart's other injuries. Watching Jo sitting by his bedside, holding his hand, talking to him, as she had several times before.
Stuart and Jo had always been close, almost from the start, only lately, they'd seemed closer than ever, and Sam wondered what was going on there. There was some deeply held, deeply charged secret between them. Sam supposed in a way she felt slightly jealous, and then Stuart's behaviour during the operation left a lot, in her eyes, to be desired. Sam wondered why that should be. She had a lot of questions, and she suspected that only Jo had the answers.
She quietly thanked the doctor and pushed open the door as silently as she could. Stuart was heavily sedated, but she didn't want to disturb him. Jo looked up at her as she walked towards the bed, and to Sam's surprise, she got to her feet, gave Stuart's hand a squeeze and bent over to kiss him gently on the cheek. "I'll be back in a minute, hun."
Sam opened her mouth to speak, and stopped dead, Jo's fierce glare and emphatic nod towards the door, she walked out. Sam meekly followed.
"He's sedated, not deaf. And since I am guessing that Stu is the topic of conversation, I didn't want him any more distressed than he is already."
Sam bridled slightly at Jo's frosty tone, and was about to speak, when a voice came from behind them.
"They said at Sun Hill that I would find you here. What's up?"
At Phil Hunter's dulcet tones, Jo's eyebrows snapped together in a straight line. "Enough."
Another voice cut in, "Where is he?" Jo turned round, Ant was standing there. Looking terrified and devastated in equal measure. She moved to take his hands.
"Jo?" Ant's voice shook with suppressed emotion. "Oh god, Jo??"
"Ssshsh... go in, he needs you." She gave him a quick hug and pushed him into Stuart's room.
Phil and Sam watched in silence as Ant moved over to the bedside and took Stuart's limp hand in his, pulling it up to kiss the back of it gently.
Jo pushed open a side room door, where they could at least have some privacy. Sam and Phil followed her. She pushed the door firmly shut behind them. Turned to glare at both of them. Both of them equally guilty in her eyes, of a lack of understanding and just the plain milk of human kindness.
Sam looked at Jo's angry expression and hostile posture and knew that whatever it was, Jo would defend Stuart to the end, she had the look of the mother wolf about her. Jo sighed inwardly. She couldn't really blame them, for not seeing, or interpreting the evidence.
"Did it never occur to you," she said to Sam, "that when you went steaming in to Stu's territory that there may have been reasons why Anthony Monks only dealt with Stu?"
Both Sam and Phil looked confused. "No." Sam said. "It didn't. Anthony Monks was an asset which we had to exploit."
"Oh I see." Jo turned to stare out of the window, through into the ICU where Stu was fighting for his life, where the man who loved him was sitting by his bedside praying that he had the strength to recover. Of course, they couldn't possibly know about Stu and Ant, but that didn't make what they had done, right. "Once again, you steamed in without knowing anything, and when it all went to hell in a handcart..." her voice wobbled, "Stu and Ant were in the crossfire."
A glimmer of a memory came to Sam in that moment, Stuart and Anthony Monks, a look, a word, the fleeting touch of fingers. Suddenly it was adding up, something that had puzzled her at the time.
"They were friends?" She hazarded, unable or unwilling to make that final connection.
"Oh I think you and I both know that Stu and Ant are much more than that!" Jo looked at her sideways.
Phil, silent until then, cottoned on quick, "you mean that Stuart and Anthony Monks..." he trailed off.
"Stu and Ant are lovers. They are also in love. When this whole thing blew up, it tore them apart, it was just too dangerous. So they split up. It nearly killed them to do it, but what you were doing could have got both of them killed if they stayed together. Then along you came with the brilliant idea of using Stu's mystery contact to set up the undercover operation..." she looked at their incredulous faces. Angrily, she dug in her handbag, for the few pictures that she carried around everywhere, almost throwing the little album at Sam. "Look for yourself if you don't believe me. Work it out."
Sam took the offered book, it was very small, no more than eight or ten pictures. "Stu can't leave these lying around anywhere, so I look after them." Sam opened the cover, Stu's handsome face smiled up at her, he looked relaxed and happy, as did the man pressed close to him, they had their arms around each other and were smiling for the camera. She had no difficulty recognising Anthony Monks. Each photo was similar, Ant and Stu, happy, smiling for the camera, clearly very much in love. The last two pictures took Sam's breath away. Far more explicit, Stu and Ant were naked, pressed against each other, they were kissing passionately and in the final one, their bodies spooned up against each other, Stu kissing the back of Ant's neck, their expressions clear indicators of the strength of their relationship and their mutual need.
"Stuart's gay?" Phil's expression of confusion and delight nearly wound Jo into an explosion.
"Bisexual actually." Jo snapped. "If you need the correct label."
"Well..."
"Well what? I suppose it's perfectly okay for me to be gay. You're comfortable with that. But Stu being gay, suddenly that's a threat to you. Doesn't Stu deserve the same consideration?" Angry tears spilled from Jo's eyes. "I was with him, he was happy. For the first time in his life he had found true love and true happiness, and then along come DS Phil Hunter, and DI Sam Nixon, and it's all torn to shreds again." Her voice throbbed with distress. "You might as well know all of it. He and Ant decided that they couldn't be together because of this investigation, and it nearly broke both of them having to say goodbye, but they did it. Now Ant and I have to pick up the pieces, put him back together again, if we can." she paused, her voice breaking, "because if either of you had stopped for just a moment and listened to what you were being told, we wouldn't be in this position." She looked down at the floor a moment, feeling angrier than she ever had in her life before. "Stu's in critical condition. He may die." She looked up at each of them in turn. "It does your heart good to know that all of this might just be for absolutely nothing!"
"I..." Sam trailed off, she didn't really know what to say.
"Hasn't that just been the problem all along, Sam." Jo's voice was bitter. "It was always all about you. Never poor Stu. It didn't matter to you what Stu wanted, or tried to do for you, because let's be honest here, whatever he could have done or would have done for you, it would never have been enough. You dumped him remember."
It was like watching a train wreck itself, Sam was powerless to resist the accusation, and her heart rent in two as she acknowledged the truth of it, she had misread Stuart Turner every step of the way, put Phil before him, even while she was still in a relationship with Stu. She had shoved him away and hurt him.
She turned to stare through the window. Ant was sitting in the chair by Stu's bed, holding Stu's hand carefully in his as though he had hold of something infinitely precious. She could see Ant was talking to him, and she prayed with all her heart that whatever he was saying, it would get through and Stu would fight. He was tough, he could survive, but he needed to want to, and she felt nothing but pain that she might have been the one who had given him cause not to want to live.
Ant sat next to his lover and held his hand. He wasn't a praying man, religion had kind of passed him by, but he prayed with everything he had. "Stu, you have to come back to me, and I don't care about risk, I'm never letting you go again." He reached out a shaking hand to caress Stu's cheek. "I love you. Please, come back to me." He bent over the limp hand held tightly in his and kissed it, tears pouring down his face. "I'm begging here, and I'm not the begging kind. Please, darling." he whispered.
Hours passed. Jo worried about both of them. Ant refused to leave Stu's side even for a moment, and Stu was responding to treatment, but he was still very seriously ill, and danger was everpresent. She put a hand on Ant's back and gently stroked up and down. "It may be hours yet, Ant."
"I know." He looked up at her, "but I can't leave him again. I just can't." Jo nodded, too full to speak. Her hand slipped up to Ant's shoulder, and she hugged him to her. Ant rested his head against her shoulder, and they stayed like that a long time, willing the man who they both loved to come back to them.