Update!
This should be updated each Monday with a bit of luck, and you can check out when the others will be updated in my bio :D
Hope you enjoy and reviews would be lovely! -Sophie x
A blast of freezing cold air hit Connie like a slap to the face as she turned the corner and onto her road. She kept her head down and pulled her woolly hat over her ears, letting the wind trail its icy fingers through her hair as she trudged through the snow that had fallen that day, work bag firmly over one shoulder which she gripped tightly. Her other hand clutched a woven supermarket bag, concealing a shiny new pack of razors under a layer of coffee and newspapers.
Having no car was a nightmare; it was currently in the garage awaiting a new brake system, the old one of which had given up the previous week. This meant the clinical lead had swapped her heels for snow boots and walked the short way to the hospital and back instead.
This meant another hour or so a day she spent in silence. There was never anyone around when she walked to work, and she usually left so late there was no-one coming back either. Just the one solitary figure, battling against the cruel force of nature as she threw down her fury unto the world.
But this soldier was engaged in more than just one combat. A battle that went unseen by passers-by and un-noticed by her colleagues.
Since she joined Holby City's emergency department, Connie had lost all sense of friendship she once had. She never saw any of her old colleagues, her new ones didn't take to her in the slightest, and she didn't have anyone she'd label as a "friend" outside of work.
On top of that however, she'd lost all sense of family too. Her father had died, her mother was already gone and Grace was sent to live in America with Sam. That loss hit her hard; it knocked her confidence so much that she had toppled over, mental state crashing after her into millions of tiny shards and leaving the clinical lead in the most vulnerable state she had ever found herself in. Her thoughts became less of "I can, I will, I'm going to…" and more "I wish, what if, why…", leaving her mind reflecting the season's gloomy weather and her heart in the same state as her mental well-being.
Connie Beauchamp was engaged in a battle with herself, with her thoughts and her mind and her actions, and this led to rash decisions with disasteruous consequences, as you're sure to discover as our story goes on.
…
In a similar way is Holby's clinical nurse manager, our very own Rita Freeman. She too was walking to and from work, though that was a regular occurrence. She no longer owned a car; she had been caught drink driving too many times and had her license stripped from her. Instead the small blonde now walked, and she hated every minute of it, especially in winters like this. Her nose would go red, her ears would ache and she would go virtually numb from head to toe.
Though the latter she didn't seem to realise anymore. As soon as Mark was convicted, she knew she'd never be the same woman again, and that sparked her descent into what soon became a landslide with no signs of stopping. Things got very, very bad; each night would be spent drinking herself into a stupor, and each day trying to mask the insistent hangover that became a regular occurrence.
Each time she felt herself getting better, her mind beginning to see the sun through the clouds, something would come along and stir up a storm; in this case, it was Connie.
Rita had no idea what the clinical lead's problem was with her. All she seemed to do was get at her, biting at her conscience like a yappy little puppy, until she evoked some sort of reaction from the feisty blonde. However she was beginning to get to the end of her tether, her resistance crumbling and exhaustion growing. She no longer had any fight in her, and had begun to think more and more about stopping for a white wine in the pub near her street, or picking up some vodka on the way home- just something to brighten her day, something to look forward to.
This is where we find her now- hunched over from the wind carrying a blue plastic bag containing two clinking alcohol bottles. They repeatedly swung against her legs, as if a constant reminder of the sheer desperation that had led her to that shop, to that isle, to that shelf, and how weak and mentally exhausted the woman had become.