With your Hand Resting in Mine

Seeing and spending time with Sam had been something he wouldn't have missed for the world, he hadn't seen him for more than six months and he looked as if he'd grown several inches and seemed light years older than the last time Charles had seen him, he simply wasn't a baby any more. No, it hadn't been Sam that had made the afternoon difficult, it had been that way because of Rebecca and although neither of them had said anything about it at all, he'd felt that he needed to weigh up every word he said in case he misled her and that had been thoroughly exhausting so it was a relief when the visit finally came to an end. The more he'd thought about her and their shared history, the more convinced he'd got that getting back together wasn't going to be an answer to anything, except maybe making his poor mum ecstatic. But his mother was going to be disappointed.

Yes, it would be the easy option, Sam would love it and it certainly looked as though Rebecca would be prepared to give things another go, well, if his mother was right anyway, but nothing had really changed. He was still married to the army, even though his immediate future was far from assured, but all being well he would still be living his life according to army regulations, he would still be at his absolute happiest living out of a Bergen, if he was honest it was all he'd ever wanted and she would still end up feeling neglected and lonely, and would then look for the same solution as she had last time, and he didn't think he could blame her.

The other complication was the increasing amount of time he spent thinking about someone else. In his heart he was slightly afraid that the way he felt wasn't real, that this admiration, liking, he didn't know how best to describe the way he felt about her, was some sort of cliché, but even as he lay thinking about the difficult conversation he was going to have to have with his mother, he was thinking about her, she was there in his head all the time, the girl with the Bambi eyes and the wicked sense of humour, and thinking about her, as always, brought a smile to his face.

His embarrassment had diminished as the days had gone on and he'd got more and more used to some of the procedures he had to endure and as the days went by and he was allowed to do more and more for himself, some of it with an acute sense of relief, he'd found himself looking forward more and more to her arrival in the evenings. Her presence cheered him enormously just by her being there, the girl who could make him laugh even when he was down in the dumps with boredom and frustration at what he saw as slow progress and when he was thoroughly fed up with the false grins and reassuringly encouraging words from others.

OG-

"I don't think that's very nice" Charles could hear her voice as she spoke to someone out of his sight and giggled, her hand on the door handle to his room. She'd opened the door slightly but hadn't come in yet or spoken to him "Me feelings are well hurt, I can't help it if I'm not bloody Mary Berry"

"Hello, had a nice weekend?" She came in with the trademark big smile on her face as if she was pleased to see him as she walked across and picked up his wrist to take his pulse "Did your wife come and bring your little boy?"

"Yup, she did thanks" His face broke into a smile that matched hers and pointed to the 'I love Daddy' message that Sam had written up the inside of his arm "His artwork"

"That's lovely" she smiled "Actually, thought it might be him wrote it, didn't think it was your wife"

"She's not my wife anymore, Molly, we're divorced, we have been for a long time" Suddenly it seemed very important that she knew what the situation was with Rebecca.

"Whatever" Molly didn't quite meet his eyes because she didn't want him to see and perhaps recognise the small flare of relief and happiness that she felt that the blonde woman with the long legs and shiny glossy appearance wasn't actually married to him after all. They'd all been convinced that she was his wife when she'd been sitting by his bedside during the worst period of his doubtful prognosis, but getting too close to a male patient was the quickest way that she knew of if you wanted to get yourself chucked out and she had no intention of doing that.

"What about you, did you have a nice day off?"

He'd had found the last couple of days without seeing her at all very long, something that had underlined for him just how much he liked her, so that it was impossible for him to hide how pleased he was that she was back. He couldn't keep the smile off his face as he turned his head and looked up at the expression of intense concentration on her face as she stood very close to do her basic checks, and thought how incredibly pretty she was even wearing hospital scrubs and without make-up.

"Yeah, we did this baking thing, you know, a fund raiser cos we're trying to raise money for Children in Need, like a "Bake off" competition thing, then we're having this cake sale today, but I don't really think it's my thing" She was now giggling in earnest "It sort of started off badly cos I read the recipe a bit wrong, read teaspoon as tablespoon, well I didn't know did I? And it sort of went downhill from there, it's a lot harder than it bloody well looks" She was now laughing out loud "One of them lot out there just said that no-one in their right mind is gonna give good money for it cos it looks more like a fruity dog turd than a bleeding cake and that it were just as well it weren't chocolate"

"That's a bit harsh, I'm sure it can't be that bad" He put his head back and began to roar with laughter.

"Yeah, it is"

"Let's have a look then"

"No, I've got enough people taking the piss already"

She was still giggling as she looked at him from under her eyelashes and caught the way he was looking at her so that she blushed, feeling the tide of colour flooding her neck and starting to creep up to her cheeks.

"Molly….."

"Nah, don't …." She couldn't let him say anything "It's against the rules"

"Sorry" He grinned and did his best to try and change the subject "They're letting me get up tomorrow to have a shower, did you know?"

"What no more bed baths?"

"Nope" He grinned "I can't wait to be up and about, to get out of this bed" He raised his eyebrows "To get out of here, get back to normal"

"Oh thanks"

"You know I didn't mean it like that"

"I'll see you later, ring your bell if you want …. you know … if you need ….. anything"

-OG-

She'd had to get out of there as fast as her feet would carry her, the way his deep brown eyes were following her around had suddenly made her clumsy and self-conscious so that she was fumbling the simplest of tasks and her overwhelming urge to flirt, to laugh and joke with him, to lean across and touch him meant that she needed to get away, none of it was sensible behaviour in the circumstances. She knew, maybe from his tone of voice or from the expression on his face exactly what he'd been going to share with her and she couldn't let him because patients sometimes imagined that feelings were something they weren't, it gave them something else to think about when they were stuck in bed hour after hour, but those feelings disappeared as soon as they got back to their real lives, so why on earth was she imagining this was any different? Anyhow, nurses weren't supposed to think like that, they were supposed to be immune, but she was thinking about him far too much and she needed to stop and to stop dreading the inevitable day when he was discharged.

-OG-

"Hey, come on, it's a nightmare, you're okay, come on Charles, its Molly, come on wake up"

He could hear her speaking to him telling him over and over again that he was dreaming but he couldn't answer so that it felt like that day when he could hear them talking about him before he regained consciousness. It wasn't a nightmare, yes okay, it was a dream but it was a memory, a frame by frame film of the mission on that bridge in Afghan, the memory that had been missing. The dust, the smells, the farmer, the dead goat, Smurf waving his gun around, the shouting, his shouting, the pain in his leg and then the agony in his stomach, it was all there and then the black void. It had all returned with a vengeance, but in his sleep, it was exactly what had happened and he could remember every detail with complete clarity.

It had been way after midnight when it had started and at first they'd thought that something had gone wrong, that he was suffering some sort of complication, and that he was in pain, the same sort of pain that he'd had when he was first admitted. He was calling out and thrashing around so that Molly had rushed in and put the light on, then as she turned to check him she'd seen that he was pouring with sweat but that he was still fast asleep and that he could neither see nor hear her even though his eyes were wide open. Wherever he was in his sleep he was obviously in the throes of a very bad dream, a nightmare.

She put one hand on his wrist feeling his pulse as it raced under her finger tips and then, and strictly against all the rules, she put her other hand gently on his face and stroked his hair back from his sweat soaked forehead, murmuring all the time that he was okay, that he was safe and that he had to wake up and have a drink, that it was her and that it was a dream.

-OG-

"Can you stay for a bit?"

"Course"

The lights were on and he was sitting up sipping a drink, now wide awake but still feeling slightly disturbed and unsettled even after she'd wiped his face and hands and changed his sweat soaked top and bedding. He'd protested that he could manage to do all that for himself, well except for the bed but she'd ignored him and had carried on wiping his face with the warm damp cloth. He'd woken with a start to find her stroking his hair away from his forehead at which point she'd laughed guiltily and said she needed to stop in case someone came in to see how he was and whether he needed any meds but had carried on doing it anyway. He'd turned his head pressing towards the hand that was on his face and had tried his level best to smile to show her that he was alright, to wipe the worried expression off her face.

"Don't look so worried, I'm okay, you were right, it was just a dream"

"That's s'posed to be my job, telling patients not to worry, that they'll be okay"

"I thought we were friends, I mean we did already know each other before I got stuck in here as a patient, didn't we? Well, maybe knowing each other is a bit of an exaggeration, but we had met before"

"Yeah and that went fabulously well, didn't it?"

"Sorry"

"It were me that was pissed out me nut, not you" She looked at him with a slight grimace on her face as if she was asking him a question, her memories of that night were somewhat hazy to say the least "It were the first time I'd been out since my life went to shit, since twat-face" She paused "I sort of lost count and got a bit rat-arsed, then I dumped on you, so I don't know why you're saying sorry, should be me" She shrugged, still smiling at him "Mind, I bleeding paid for it after, I had a hangover for two whole days, had to come to work with a little bloke still beating the inside of me nut with his hammer"

"It wasn't you, it was me, I mean, I wasn't drunk but my life had gone to shit as well and I was taking it out on you, and I'm sorry"

"Was that cos of your wife?"

"Mainly" He ran his fingers through the curls on the back of his head, curls that were now much longer than a standard army length "I wanted to find you afterwards to say that I was sorry, but I didn't even know what your name was, just that you'd got eyes like Bambi and as far as I was told you worked in a supermarket somewhere, no-one even knew which one" He picked up her hand, twining his fingers through hers "It was a matter of luck bought me here, Lady Luck was smiling on me for a bloody change"

"Really? You absolutely sure about that? Don't seem that lucky to me to get yourself shot … and I haven't got eyes like Bambi"

"Yes you have, and don't argue with me I'm the patient, alright maybe I wasn't lucky to end up in here, but it was Lady Luck that bought us back together"

They smiled at each other still holding onto one another's hands, fingers entwined.

"Charles, I'm sorry, but I can hear them calling me cos we're quite busy, so you okay now? You really should get back off to sleep if you can"

"Go, go on, go, I'll be fine now …" He stroked the back of her knuckles before letting go of her hand "Come back later if you can, if you're not too busy"

"Don't worry, I will"

-OG-

"You will look after yourself won't you, you'll do as you're told 'n that?"

"Are you going to miss me?"

"Nah"

"That's what I thought" He looked at his mother who was standing waiting by the door with his bag in her hand, ready to set off for Bath "Mum, do you think you could you wait outside for a bit please? Would you mind? I just want to talk to Molly for a minute before we get off"

It was the day he'd begun to think would never arrive, especially during the dark days at the beginning but once he'd been allowed up and about and had begun physiotherapy, his progress had been rapid and now a part of him was dying to get outside into the fresh air and to get in the car and go home, but there was also a big part of him that was reluctant, that didn't want to go.

"Molly? As I'm not a patient anymore"He gave her a smug smirk "If I asked you if I can take you out for lunch, or even dinner, what would you say?"

"Dunno, try me and see"

"Miss Dawes, would you have dinner with me on your next day off? So that I can say thanks for making all this bearable"

"You don't have to say thanks to me I was just doing me job and where would we go, what with you in Bath and me here?"

"Bath, I'll buy you a train ticket and the house is more than big enough for you to stay over, or if you don't want to stay at my parents I can book you into a TraveLodge or something?"

"I can buy me own ticket thanks, God you're bossy, I think I liked you better when you was at my mercy in that bed" She giggled at the raised eyebrow and involuntary smirk that spread across his face "Stop it, you know what I mean"

He leaned forward without warning, cupped her chin in his hand then kissed her gently on the cheek.

"Oi, what are you doing? You trying to get me the sack or some'ing?"

"I'm just saying goodbye …..and thank you, I think you're fucking awesome"

"Thank you" She smiled then wrinkled her nose at him "And I will miss you …..a bit"

-OG-

A/N: Thank you for your feedback it keeps me going! I was trying to show that in successful relationships the so-called 'power balance' shifts backwards and forwards between the two people involved, that having someone 'in charge' all the time isn't always the best way, but I don't know if it's worked, I may be too close to it to see.

Part three – starting with Chapter 5 will show them moving on to the next phase and I hope it will be ready to go on Monday. Hop everyone has a nice weekend. I have to walk Lily now while it's not raining, she needs far more exercise than I do, but only if it's NOT raining, she doesn't DO rain..