About ten days later, Serena stands at the end of a bed on Keller, observing Dr. Digby dealing with a patient, the junior doctor is much improved already from the last time she observed him. It doesn't take too long and after speaking with Digby, a few quiet words of feedback, she turns back up the ward. She can see Ric Griffin and Chantelle Lane both looking at her and talking, stopping as she draws nearer.
"Were you two talking about me?" Serena asks, only half joking.
"Can you blame us?" Rics answers, his smooth answer forcing an unexpected smile from her. It would be all too easy to start flirting back and reluctantly Serena lets it go. There's been an attraction between the two of them since she arrived in Holby but there's never been a right time and in front of the wide-eyed nurse is certainly not the right time.
It's a shame really.
"Well in that case I'll leave you two old women to your gossiping." Serena heads back to the office, hoping that neither of her colleagues hear her stomach rumbling as she goes.
A little while later, Serena's attention is held by the work in front of her and the feeling of hunger has receded. She's becoming quite used to constantly feeling hungry, in some ways, it's becoming a comfort to her, a reminder of what she's trying to achieve.
"Hey, I got you a sandwich, I noticed you hadn't had any lunch yet." Ric ambles into the office.
"You didn't need to." Internally Serena is grimacing, she doesn't want to eat anything but can't think of a reason that Ric would accept for not accepting the food.
"It's no big deal," Ric answers, a little too casually for Serena's liking, "I was getting one for myself and it made sense to get you something at the same time. Ham ok?"
"Well, thank you for looking out for me." She forces a smile to her face.
"My pleasure, Serena." He smiles at her, not able to hide the hint of worry when he looks at her. Serena isn't sure what to make of his comment and pretends to ignore it and the peculiar blend of relief and concern doesn't escape her notice as she opens the plastic packet.
Nibbling at the one corner of the tasteless sandwich, Serena feels like sighing as she mechanically chews; she has no desire to eat anything and would like nothing more than to bin the food, however, she needs to let Ric see her eating, Serena can't be certain but she thinks that he is starting to suspect something is wrong.
"Ric!" An all too familiar voice calls out from her left at the doorway and she looks up, taking the opportunity to put the barely touched sandwich back into the plastic wrapping, next to the untouched second half, "the young guy out there, dark hair, glasses. Digby is it? Anyway, he needs a hand talking a patient into providing a blood sample." Ric nods his understanding and leaves the office, walking past Edward who waits until they're alone before stepping inside and shutting the door behind him.
Serena watches his progress across the office and can't decide whether she hates her ex-husband for pointing out the obvious or is pathetically grateful for not keeping her in the dark and letting her know how everyone else sees her.
How fat she is.
"What do you want, Edward?" Irrespective of her feelings about his comment, the comment, Serena is still less than impressed by Edward's arrival and continued presence at the hospital. By this time, Edward has made his way over to her desk and perched himself on the side, moving her carefully ordered files to create himself a seat.
"Are you going to eat that?" He tilts his head to indicate the abandoned sandwich and Serena shakes her head and pushes it towards him, grateful to get rid of the thing. Edward dutifully obliges and almost inhales the sandwich, the food disappearing in two or three mouthfuls before he starts on the second half which disappears equally quickly. Serena shakes her head, he looks like a man who hasn't eaten in weeks.
"You didn't even check what was in it." Serena frowns as the final piece of her lunch is consumed and Edward just grins at her, a trademark expression and one which once had an effect on her. Not any more.
"There was no need," Edward shrugs, "I've known you for thirty years – you've got great taste, Rena." Serena rolls her eyes.
"Not in men." She responds tartly but either Edward ignores it or misses her comment, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He then twists around awkwardly to discard the plastic wrapper, somehow managing not to fall off the desk as he drops the plastic packaging into the bin.
'It's not fair', Serena thinks as her gaze runs across her ex-husband's body, that Edward can eat and drink and whatever he wants but not put any weight on, maintain a similar weight to when they met in their mid twenties whereas Serena has apparently ballooned in that time, enough to draw an unfavourable comparison to a porcine muppet. She is careful to look away before Edward can turn around and see her and think that she's ogling him.
"Did you actually want something other than my lunch?" Serena asks in a tone which would unnerve 99% of hospital staff, her voice sounding brusque even to her own ears but again Edward appears unconcerned – apparently 13 years of marriage and nearly the same again in a fraught post-divorce state of cold warfare has inured him to any threats in her voice.
"Can't I just sit and talk to you?" His grin is back and his blue eyes look amused.
"No – I'm too busy." She deliberately picks up a pad of paper and starts writing in it, as if to prove her point.
A warm hand makes its way into Serena's field of vision, trapping her right hand and rendering her unable to continue writing, Serena looks up and glares. "Not even to reminisce about old times?" Serena tugs her hand free and folds her arms across her chest, leaning back in her chair so that he can't touch her.
"Don't make me answer that." Evidently this time Edward picks up on the emotion behind her words and he swallows his initial comeback, looking thoughtfully at her for a few seconds before he speaks again.
"Ok." Edward holds his hands up in an odd parody of surrender. "I did have a reason to see you."
"Go on..." Serena warily responds, ready to tell him where to stick his next sentence if it starts with 'I need a favour'.
"To get you to come to this party-"
"No. I'm busy." Serena cuts him off straight away before he can get going. She isn't sure whether she's on call that night but she can always change the rota so that she is. "I'm working, anyway."
"Take the evening off." Edward suggests as if he'd expected that answer, in a casual manner which has always grated against Serena's nerves; her ex-husband's belief that planning isn't necessary, that going through life winging every situation that he finds himself in is just fine.
"And deprive some poor sod who actually wants to go?" Edward shrugs again.
"You're the boss, you can do what you want."
"That's not how it works. If there's nothing else, nothing sensible, bugger off Edward, I'm busy." Edward shrugs again and Serena briefly wonders when he picked up this habit – she's never known him to shrug as much as he has done in this exchange.
"I'll try again later." He picks himself up off the table and heads towards the door.
"Save yourself the time," Serena responds without looking up, "don't bother."
The next day, Ric interrupts the comfortable quiet of their office and he throws his pen down onto his desk, stands and stretches. "I've had enough of that at the moment – I'm going to get some lunch, want me to pick you something up?"
"No thanks – I've already eaten." Serena declines and the lie is out before she can think. It takes Ric all of half a second to reply but Serena holds her breath, waiting for him to catch her out.
It doesn't happen.
"If you're sure." Ric roots around for his wallet and leaves and Serena sighs in relief.
She leans forward, ostensibly reading the file in front of her but in reality, Serena is deep in thought – she doesn't need lunch today, she doesn't need the calories, she sneaks a look down at her midriff and sneers, there's plenty to spare.
...
She had lost over half a stone in the first ten days of her new diet which surprised her; although intellectually, Serena knows that most of it is fluid but she's becoming rather fixated on the numbers her bathroom scales are telling her.
To her frustration her weight begins to plateau and over the next few weeks, in an attempt to continue her weight loss, Serena finds herself venturing into the gym at the Holby leisure centre once or twice after work and immediately feels out of place. After a couple of weeks, Serena finds herself too tired to go to the gym after work and she begins to skip it. In fact, Serena finds there's something almost comforting about the sense of failure when she doesn't go to the gym or when she eats a meal; the presence of the snide voice telling her how fat she is keeps her eating in check.
Serena simultaneously avoids and seeks out her reflection; hoping to see some weight loss but knowing she won't, the woman staring back is still too fat. She knows and accepts that she's never going to become a 6 stone supermodel – she just wants to lose some weight, so she doesn't draw comparisons with a pig.
One night after Edward managed to upset her yet again, Serena stalks through the house in a foul mood and in a fit of pique roughly opens up her kitchen cupboards goes through them, throwing away the food she doesn't need. She supposes that normally Serena would have opened a bottle of wine by now but after looking up how many calories there are in a bottle of wine one lunchtime, Serena has resolved not to drink until she hits her target weight. The purge of food leaves her with next to nothing but she feels better for having done it.
As she heads to bed that evening, ignoring the almost constant feeling of hunger, Serena refuses to accept that there's anything wrong with what she's doing; she is a doctor after all, she knows what the signs of eating disorders are and tells herself that she's still in control of all of this.