Thanks again for reading, and I hope you all like where it's going so far.
Serena finds herself sitting on her sofa in her living room, her knees tucked in and her face in her hands. She is shocked. She never thought she would see that child again. Her child. But everything fits and there's no denying the startling resemblance she shares with Shayna. Even Ric sees it.
She looks up when a warm cup is pressed into her hands – hot chocolate – and biscuits are paced gently on her lap. Why is Ric still here? Why hasn't he gone by now? She thinks that this is a mess he would prefer to keep out of but he sits down next to her on the sofa, ready to hear her out. She notes that Edward would be long gone by now; if it had been him she had said that to, she wouldn't see him for dust.
"You're going to have to elaborate a little bit, Serena," he prompts her. She stares at him blankly as she tries to string the chain along in her mind with little success. She knows what happened. Of course she does. But explaining it to another is a totally different story. How can she put into words the feeling of having her daughter ripped from her, and of her being the one to do it? "Why do you think Shayna may be your daughter?"
"She grew up in care," she choked out. "Her mum left her a letter explaining why, and the reason why...it's so...so..." she chokes out. She can't even begin to describe just how haunting it is to hear her own reasons relayed to her. "It's what I did," she finally manages to say. "I'm certain of it, Ric," she confesses. "I mean, knock off fifteen years and she's practically my doppelgänger." She scans Ric's face and expects disgust, but what she finds is something she's never noticed before. What she finds is that he feels something for her that isn't just friendship.
He reaches out and she feels his hand on her face; it's her need for someone to love that drives her to lean her cheek into his palm slightly. "You're not making any sense," he tells her. She's trying to make sense. She really is. But when she begins to speak, she can't say what she's thinking. It's like her thoughts are lost in translation. "If you were Shayna's mother, you would have been a teenager when you had her."
She closes her eyes and tries to clear everything else out of her head. Edward's stupidity, Eleanor's absence, her mother's failing health, her relationship with Ric...at this present moment, it's all irrelevant. All that matters is Shayna, and the fact the she, after thirty-two years, has managed to find Serena.
"I had a baby when I was sixteen," she whispers. He looks shocked and she can fully understand why. She knows she doesn't come across as someone who would allow herself to get pregnant at such a young age. "There was this boy, Alan," she begins. "And I fell head over heels for him when I was fifteen. I was young and I was stupid. I know that. But I fell pregnant with Shayna when I was sixteen and I resolved that I would be a good mum to her. I resolved that I would be a mum and not the doctor I planned to be."
The shock doesn't leave Ric's face but she sees understanding creep in to mix with it. "What went wrong?" he asks her.
"Alan..." she sighs, her voice so soft that she doubts if she can be heard. She takes a sip of her hot chocolate and let the warmth flood through her stomach. "He tried to smother Shayna in her crib when she was three months old. I caught him and stopped him and he turned on me," she recounts. She can feel for a moment his hands on her wrists and the outside air hitting her back as she struggles to remain on the right side of the second story window. She remembers she had no choice but to scream, and her dad had come and tore Alan off her.
"Why?" he asks her. "Why would he do that?"
Serena shrugs. "I didn't stick around to find out," she admits. "My dad kept him at bay while Mum and I found somewhere to move to. I realised that Shayna would be safer to be separated from me; I was easily traceable, and Alan's name wasn't on Shayna's birth certificate. So I gave her up because I knew she would be safe. I couldn't guarantee her safety if I stayed with her," she explains. Her throat is tightening with tears she fails to shed, her head pounding with the tension of having to tell him what happened. "I did it because I love her too much to put her in danger."
She can see the confusion in his eyes. "And your parents agreed to all this?"
She nods her head. "They knew the score. They knew that Alan would eventually try again and that he wouldn't be able to find Shayna is I put her in the care system with no trace of his name."
"And did he try again?"
"A year later, I was walking home from my friend's house and he cornered me," she says. "He was drunk so I was faster than him. I managed to duck him and run home. We moved again not long after, and that's the last I've ever heard of him." She feels his fingers move on her cheek, caressing her skin lightly.
She watches him process it and, to her utmost relief, he seems to accept her mistakes and their good intent. He takes the mug and the biscuits from her and places them on the table and he guides her to her feet. "If she is your daughter," he begins quietly, "then she's obviously looking for a relationship with you." He's holding something back but she's too relieved to question it; he doesn't hate her, and it's more than she could hope for.
"And how do I know she's mine?" Serena frets quietly. "I can't exactly say, 'Oh, hey, Shayna, I know we're in the middle of a busy general surgery unit but are you by any chance my long-lost daughter?' It would sound insane!"
"It's better than this," Ric points out fairly. "But you're more worried that you're right." Of course, as always, he sees through the superficial to the depths of her fears. "Oh, come here," he sighs. His arms are soon tightly wrapped around her, and she presses her face into his neck. She is surprised he's reacted this way. Surprised, but very much thankful.
Shayna finds herself on a new ward. AAU. She and Serena have been posted down there in the height of a busy spell the regular staff cannot handle alone. "This is madness," she comments to Serena. "It's like a...I don't even know what it's like." She glances around at Harry Tressler and then back to Serena. "And if Mr. Up-Himself Tressler looks at my chest again, he's going to regret ever crossing paths with me."
Serena laughs and says, "That's my girl." It freezes Shayna to the spot to hear that, but she can still smile to herself. "Welcome to the insanity of AAU. Just be thankful Michael's not here to add to the fun." She looks around at Serena and their eyes lock. They both know now, even if neither can break through the fear and say it. "You're due a break, Shayna," Serena reminds her.
"Um, yeah, I'll sit down for ten minutes but I'll stick around since it's so manic." Serena smiles and walks away, patting Shayna's shoulder on the way past. With a huff, Shayna steps around Harry and sits down at the far end of the nurses' station. She pulls from her pocket her mother's letter, now creased and worn, and reads it yet again. She knows it by heart but she still reads it until she's only analysing the penmanship. There's already, even when she was sixteen, the beginnings of the dreaded doctor's handwriting, scrawled in some places. It seems to have been written in a rush but the grammar and spelling remain perfect.
She reads the words 'I love you' over again; they are used four times in this single letter, and Shayna could never doubt the words her mother uses.
She hears nearing footsteps and hastily folds the paper back into her pocket. It's Mary-Claire Carter who speaks behind her. "Everything alright, Shayna?" she asks.
"Yeah," she smiles. "Serena just made me take a little break."
"Serena is watching your back?" Mary-Claire exclaims quietly. Together they gaze across the room at the consultant, who tends to the girl in bed eight, her purple shirt loose across her shoulders and back and her stance proud. "That's a new one."
"She seems nice," Shayna defends her quickly.
"Just never cross her and you'll be fine," the Irishwoman chuckles softly. "Do you want a coffee?" she offers. "I'm going anyway and you've been on the go non-stop. Just don't tell Harry. I'm not running after snobby doctors all day." The comment makes Shayna laugh as Mary-Claire walks away without another word, seemingly accepting she wants caffeine.
She watches Serena yet again, and it astounded by how quickly she gets through her patients. She's Ric's opposite in terms of the speed at which they work, but they seem to compliment each other in a very strange way. Serena approaches and gives Shayna a list of tests to run on the patient. "Watch yourself. She's got a big mouth," Serena advises caution.
So she wanders over to the fourteen-year-old girl in bed eight and rubs alcohol gel into her hands. "Alright, Carrie," she smiles at the young blonde. "I just need to take your blood."
She begins to feel for a vein but she is halted in her tracks. "Get your horrible, ugly hands off me," Carrie snarls. Shayna looks up; she's used to her hands getting strange looks and stares but it hurts to hear such venom over it, and from such a young person. It makes her stare at the backs of her own hands, scarred from beyond the wrists right up to her upper knuckles. She's always hated the scars he has left her with, but there isn't a single thing she can do about it.
"It's only skin," Shayna asserts. "I got badly burned nine years ago. That's all it is," she adds, deciding it might be best to be open with the girl.
"I want another nurse," Carrie coldly replies. "Preferably one whose hands work."
"My hands function perfectly well," Shayna finds herself arguing. It's in vain, and she knows it, but it's not something she finds easy to bow down over. "Just because they've got scars, that doesn't mean I can't do my job." But Carrie only glares at her, and Shayna suspects it's partly attention-seeking venom; despite that, she's not in the humour to put up with remarks about her scars, so she snaps, "Fine. Have it your way. You can wait until Nurse Carter comes back."
It's typical immaturity and it doesn't normally bother Shayna much, but here, where she is meant to be making a new start, she doesn't like that the scars are permanent, and they cannot be hidden like so many other things can be.
She storms away to the nurses' station and carelessly dumps the small tray on the desk before she sits down and stares at her hands for a moment. It isn't fair that she bears scars while the one who inflicted them has nothing to show for his years of abuse. "Shayna?" Mary-Claire's voice rings out five minutes later. "Everything okay?"
Serena approaches too and says, "Have you got Carrie's bloods sent to the lab yet?"
"Not yet," Shayna admits. "Mary-Claire's going to have to do it instead." Serena raises an eyebrow at her and Shayna sighs hopelessly. She raises her hands and faces the backs of them towards Serena and Mary-Claire. "She doesn't trust that my hands are capable of drawing blood." She watches expressions of outrage cross their faces and it's Serena who reacts first.
"How dare she?!" she half-shouts.
"Ser-"
"No, you're a good nurse and I won't have that sort of disrespect on my ward," argues Serena before Shayna or Mary-Claire can speak.
"Look, I get this sort of thing all the time," she reassured them. "Don't worry about it. She's just an immature little kid." But Serena turns on her heel and Shayna calls after her, "No, it's not worth the hassle." Serena doesn't listen and keeps going, and Shayna starts to panic. She doesn't want a big deal made over it. But Serena's a quarter of the way over already.
"I told you, Shayna," she replies. "I won't have it on any ward I'm running."
"Serena, it's fine," she calls out again, running after her. Serena's nearly at Carrie's bed, her walk furious as she refuses to listen to her wishes. "No, don't! Mum!" she shouts at the top of her voice, after failing to catch up with her as she tries to dodge through the hectic unit.
She only realises what she's done in her state of panic when Serena freezes and the busy ward is suddenly silent.
Reviews and comments always welcome.
