Chapter 3
Jac was alone in the staffroom, making herself a coffee. She was thinking about work, patients but really she was trying not to think about him. Since she had emptied her heart on Sahira, she had felt a bit happier, not much but it was a start. Jac's coffee had finished cooling down, and she sat down at the table, nursing the drink. Jac laid down her head on the table in front of her, thinking about him: the first time she saw him, him in the lockdown, him after Harry was born, happy memories of him. Then one memory swam in front of her eyes. "Come away with me." He had said, no! This particular memory hurt way too much to think about, even as she tried to rid it from her vision, he spoke again. "I love you too." The memory had skipped to the end, the heart-breaking conclusion, Joseph telling her that he loved her, just before he had left Jac in tears.
Michael and Sahira walked in, talking in hushed voices. "What's up the Termi-Naylor?" Michael quipped. Jac had been resting her head on the table. "Have you been crying Naylor?" Michael asked, this time with actual concern in his voice. "No!" She said, frantically trying to wipe the tears away. "Yes you have! What's up?" Michael was getting more annoying than normal. "Just shut up and get on with your job!" Jac snapped back.
She kept thinking she saw him everywhere, the back of his head there, his eyes there, but it was never him. She clung to a hope that one day, when Harry was older, he would come back, but then her other fears came back. What if he doesn't want me in 5 years' time?What if, what if, the thoughts reverberated around her head. She had to cling to a bannister to keep her balance as the memories came flooding back but this time she shoved them forcefully from the forefront of her mind. "Jac, you're wanted on Keller; they've got a patient with heart complications." Johnny said, as he walked up the stairs, towards her. "You alright Jac?" "Will people stop asking me if I'm alright?" She shouted at Johnny.
She had managed to finish her shift without thinking about him again. She climbed onto her motorbike and drove away from the hospital. She loved being on the bike, all her fears and worry's and memories evaporated into nothingness, but not today. The memories were to strong today, they wouldn't go away. As she sped down the road the memories came back. Getting drunk and sleeping with him, thinking she was pregnant, him kissing her outside maternity 1, and all the other small memories of him she held. Without realising it she had got home. She jumped off the bike and went into the house.
She sat there frozen. She had been rooting around in her draw for a post-it note when she had discovered a photograph. She was in it this time, with him. They both look happy; they'd made each other happy. It had been taken after Harry's birth and he was in Jac's arms, tightly bundled up in a blanket. She hadn't thought about that day for a long while. Faye had gone the day before and left Harry with his father and Joseph had brought Harry round to her house. They had gone out in the garden for some reason or another and then Joseph decided to take a photo of them, his little family; but Jac had ruined his dream of a little family, wife, son, dog as he had put it. Not a day went by when she thought about what could have been, what, if she was brutally honest, should have been, but she had been too scared, too scared of what might of been.
