A/N: 1am. Again. Oh well :) again, I find this chapter kinda odd but then I'm quite tired so just ignore me! Thanks again to everyone who has read and reviewed - always much appreciated :D

Sarah x

Serena sat up at the sound of footsteps at her bedside; Michael was sitting down next to her. "I wanna keep you in overnight," he told her gently.

She buried her face in her pillow. She could decide if she wanted to stay or not. Eleanor needed her at home, but she knew the risks of not staying. "I'm fine," Serena grouched into the linen of the pillowcase. "I need to go home."

"No good at home if you drop down dead, Serena," Michael pointed out. It wasn't likely to happen, and it was a major exaggeration on his part, but he was right. She had battered her body saving Hanssen, and if something were to happen at home it would most likely escalate. Here, at least, she was surrounded by qualified nurses and doctors rather than one teenage girl with a tendency to panic when things turned nasty.

"If you admit me, Michael, I will hang you from the sixth floor window and allow Jac Naylor to castrate you. Do I make myself clear?" she demanded. He looked a little taken aback by her aggressive reaction.

"Be a good girl now. Hanssen's staying."
"Hanssen's only got one kidney," she snorted. "He's not going anywhere very fast."

"Neither are you," he reminded her with a nod down to her foot. "Come on. One night. Just for me?" he asked, putting on the mock puppy dog face of his.

"One condition," she sighed. "You keep a leash on Satan. If he winds me up I will not be responsible for my actions," she warned solemnly. In truth she was not on such bad terms with Edward, but he knew her too well. He knew her well enough to know how much Hanssen's crash – the fallout of it – affected her. She didn't want to answer to him.

"He's only making sure you're OK," reasoned Michael. "He cares about you. You know that, don't you? He's trying to be your friend."

She didn't want Edward as a friend. It was either mortal enemies or doing something she would later regret. And right now, 'mortal enemies' sounded like the better of the two options. "I know that. It's complicated, Michael."

Michael snorted. "Serena, 'complicated' is just a word people use to say, 'If I tell you, you won't approve so I'll say it's complicated and hope you leave me alone.'"

"Yeah, that's pretty much it," Serena smiled at him. "Anyway, he's on shift so he'll have plenty to do." She knew that wasn't entirely true. Edward had to be here as he was the on-call anaesthetist but, really, it was a night-shift and there wasn't going to be much to do between surgeries, which tended to happen only when urgent. In essence, the man was free to come and annoy her, probably with the best of intentions, if he wanted. "Just let him do what he wants," she concluded with an inward sigh. "He always does anyway."

"So you're letting me admit you for the night, then?" he checked.

"Feel free to imprison me in your hell hole," she grinned, trying to make light of the situation. She glanced over at a sleeping Hanssen. "He's gone all morbid," she confided in Michael. "All that 'what if' nonsense."

"What did you say to him?"

"That I was going to slap it out of him."

Michael laughed. "He'll come out of it," he said confidently. "I guess he's just shocked. He did nearly die. Bound to shake him."

"I don't know," she sighed. "I just don't like it when he talks like that. He's Hanssen. He's not meant to say those things." The truth was that she had never seen him, until now, as breakable. He had always been the robot-like being in her eyes, either unable or unwilling to show any vulnerability, humanity or humility. But now she wasn't so sure how she saw him. "Just ignore me," she smiled. "The drugs are going to my head."

"OK," he replied. "Go back to sleep and I'll go fill out all the bureaucratic crap." She gave a quiet laugh and flopped her head back onto her pillow; she was utterly exhausted. It had been a long day. She laughed Hanssen's worries and thoughts away but in truth she was thinking similar things – what if she hadn't got to him in time? What if, God forbid, she hadn't even stopped? What then?

She didn't tell Michael for fear he would send her up to Psych, but every time she attempted to sleep, she saw it all over again. Or more specifically, she saw what could have happened. What she had seen the first time around and what she hadn't. Her mind kept trying to fill the gap between the car disappearing and her seeing it lying in the field, and every time the car fell down the hill a different way.

She watched as the car skidded and Hanssen tried to brake it steady, but it did no good. Suddenly it lost its traction and fell backwards out of sight.

She was scrambling down the hill, falling over herself, slamming into anything and everything in her path, breaking her ankle...and then she was trying to wake Hanssen. And he wasn't responding. He should have responded by now. She felt dread wash over her as she cautiously put her fingers to his neck. Nothing.

She started to shake in the knowledge he was dead and her mind went blank as to how to help him. "Come on, Serena," she berated herself quietly, but it didn't make anything easier. It didn't make an answer magically appear in front of her. It didn't make Henrik Hanssen come back to life in front of her. He remained cold and pale, unmoving and departed.

She was in the placid surroundings of a dimly lit Keller ward; she felt hot water on her cheeks and wiped it away hastily. She looked up and sighed. Edward was sitting next to her. "I was going to wake you up," he explained his presence. "Nightmare?"

Reluctantly she nodded, not wanting to admit she was shaken by all this. "I'm fine," she whispered.

"You sound like Hanssen now," Edward pointed out with a smile. "It's alright to be upset, you know. He's not the only one who went through a trauma." She squirmed uncomfortably, not liking how Edward had always been able to see through her. He brushed her hair out of her eyes and it was only because she was too exhausted that she allowed it. "What you did was a very brave thing."

"No, it was human," she argued quickly. "It was either that or drive five or six miles to get help and then find him dead when I got back," she reasoned.

"If you say so," he smiled. He reached out and took her hand; she looked down at their joined hands. For once she didn't doubt that he was actually trying to comfort her with no strings attached. Why she was trusting him, she wasn't quite sure, but she needed to trust someone, and he knew her. She wasn't quite sure if that was a blessing or a curse; it meant she couldn't tell him she was fine because he knew she wasn't.

"What would you have done?"

"The same as you, probably," he admitted. "Do you regret it?"

"Of course not!" she retorted quickly. "I just...I don't know," she sighed. She couldn't explain what it was she was feeling. The way she kept looking over at Hanssen, listening to hear he was still breathing...what had she turned into if she was actually worrying about Henrik Hanssen, a man she spent half her time trying to work around? "I told him not to dwell on it all, but I'm doing the exact same thing, aren't I?"

"It's only natural, Serena," he reminded her. "A car crash is a big thing. Especially one like that. Saw the car on the news. How did he even survive that?"

"I have no idea," she answered honestly. "It's Hanssen. When does anyone know how or even why he does things?" Edward laughed. "He'll be OK," she sighed doubtfully. "He always is."

"Unless this is the one time he's not," Edward said.

"Oh, thanks for that, my little ray of sunshine!" she sleepily snapped at him. "Nothing like putting my mind at ease. Morbid old git," she accused. He just squeezed her hand, no longer making light of anything. "Is Eleanor OK?"

"Yeah, she's staying over with Gabby," he replied. What was she doing? Going soft? Or was it that she was just too exhausted to care? "Worried about you, wanting updates every half hour. I told her not to come in. I know you don't want her to see you in a hospital bed."

She smiled sadly to herself. "Thanks," she whispered. She suddenly felt tired and wounded, unable to sleep without a hundred visions of unfulfilled possibilities making it impossible to get any peace. It spilled out in the form of tears, something that was very rarely induced emotionally in her.

"Hey, hey, don't cry!" he exclaimed quietly. She wiped the water away with her free hand but it didn't stop. "It's OK," he tried to reassure her. He looked slightly frightened and she knew why – she rarely ever really cried, and when she did she made damn sure nobody got to see it. She glared at him to try and deflect from the weakness she felt spreading inside her. She glanced around Edward to see if Hanssen was still sleeping. The man was so still he looked dead, which wasn't helping matters in Serena's mind.

"Sorry," she half-laughed at her own vulnerabilities. "Bloody pathetic."

"No, it's not pathetic," he contradicted her instantly. "You've watched a colleague crash his car, had to go and get said colleague out of the car and practically carried him up a hill to your car so you could get him to a hospital before he died! You've had the day from hell, Serena."

"Well, when you put it like that..."

"You know I'm right," he smiled at her.

"Don't push it, Edward," she warned him, keeping her voice deadpan so she would be taken seriously. "Why are you being nice?" she asked suspiciously; it was the same question Hanssen had asked her earlier and now she understood why he had asked it. It was unnerving when someone she were on far from good terms with was so kind to her. She imagined this was how Hanssen had felt when she had started talking more civilly than usual with him.

"Arguing wouldn't be good for you," he pointed out reasonably. "Just goes to show, we don't have to be bickering all the time. We are actually capable of a civilised conversation."

"Funny," she sneered at him, but she ended up smiling anyway. She was a bit shaken to find there were still silent tears, probably induced by stress, exhaustion and confusion, still pouring down her cheeks.

He gave a relaxed laugh. "Hey, I'd better get back to work. AAU theatre in ten minutes. Try and get some sleep, OK?" She nodded and he ruffled her hair lightheartedly, just as he used to do when they were younger, before making his way to the lifts.

She soon found herself staring at a sleeping Hanssen, wondering – or perhaps hoping – that he was dealing with this better than she was. He looked placid enough but she had come to understand that the water beneath the smooth surface was more murky and turbulent than it first appeared. She had only caught a glimpse or two of his quietly troubled nature, for instance, in the boardroom when Oliver Valentine had finally drowned in his own pool of mistakes, but she knew he was not as together as he appeared when shocks like this came around.

He was still quite pale and was so still it was difficult to see if he was actually breathing, and again her mind briefly compared him to the dead.

Hope this is alright!
Please feel free to review and tell me what you think!
Sarah x