Author's Note: I should probably point out that I am not a doctor, have never been one, have never trained to be one. My medical knowledge is entirely work-based first aid which is pretty much along the lines of 'if it hurts, stick a plaster on it'.
Any medical inaccuracies are therefore mine (and possibly Wikipedia's!). Feel free to point them out though.
There may be some similarities with a current plot line on Holby, that is accidental and not by design. I did spend a bit of time wondering whether to keep it in or not but have decided to.
Enjoy.
Chapter 7
After several weeks of skipping meals and eating less every day, Serena looks into her bathroom mirror with an angry disappointment. The scales tell her that she has lost nearly two stone and yet when she looks into the mirror, there isn't any change so far as she could tell. All Serena can see is ugly fat.
"You can be Miss. Piggy."
Edward's comment seems to follow her around and haunt her when she is at home, the long hours until her next shift seem endless with nobody else to speak to and nothing else to do but think. In response, Serena starts to spend more time at work to counteract the almost constant loneliness and try to silence the voice which never ceases in its criticism of her failure to lose weight. The lack of food is starting to take a toll on her, recently Serena has had to be careful when she stands up, more than once she's felt light-headed and nearly stumbled.
Thankfully she's been on her own when it's happened until one afternoon when having spent the last hour and a bit focused on her computer screen, for once able to maintain some semblance of concentration. Serena had stood up out of her chair and as she does so, large black spots invade her vision, she suddenly feels unbalanced and dimly aware that she's about to fall over. She grabs at the edge of her desk and she takes a couple of deep breaths, eyes closed until some form of equilibrium is restored and the thumping pressure in her head recedes.
"Serena!"
After a couple of seconds, she becomes aware of Ric stood next to her, she blinks a couple of times and looks at the concerned expression on her colleague's face. He has his arm around her and Serena tries not to flinch but instead pulls herself away lest he feel some evidence of her shameful secret beneath his hands.
"I'm fine, Ric." She laughs the incident off, sheepishly admitting that she's just dehydrated. "I got so caught up in all of this that I hadn't realised. It's nothing, honestly."
"Sit." Ric isn't convinced and his hands on her shoulders push her back down into her chair, Serena doesn't fight him, she hasn't got the strength to. "Right, stay there." He disappears out of the office, ignoring her call that she isn't a puppy to be ordered around.
He returns a couple of minutes later with a cup of tea and a glass of water and Serena can't bring herself to be angry with him; he might be an old-school dinosaur with the top speed of a glacier at times but despite their differences, she can't deny that he really does care for her. She smiles through his questions about if she's okay and gives him a deliberately vague answer about being caught up in a project for Hanssen and the board.
"Thank you for looking after me." It's been longer than Serena would care to admit since anyone did something as benign as make her a cup of tea and show an interest in her well-being and she is trying her best to ignore the small lump in her throat which is threatening to form in the face of Ric's simple kindness.
"Any time, Serena."
"You didn't have to."
"No, but maybe I want to." Serena doesn't want to read too much into Ric's answer and she smiles briefly over the cup of tea at him before sipping. She feels better when it's finished and tells her colleague as much. His unconvinced smile lets her know she isn't off the hook and she's afraid that he's noticed something she doesn't want him to.
Over the next few days, Serena can no longer ignore the fact that her energy levels have fallen through the floor and her sense of fatigue gets worse by the day. Her attention span and patience are shorter than she can remember them being for years and her emotions are all over the shop; if she didn't know better, Serena could be forgiven for wondering if she was pregnant.
After an elective surgery one morning, Serena is sat, partially dressed, on the wooden bench in the changing room on Keller, almost slumped back against the upright and eyes closed. The door is locked so she isn't concerned about anyone coming in catching sight of her still too-fat body but she is feeling absolutely drained of energy; Serena used to be able to do several elective surgeries in a day and keep coming back for more but this morning's routine hernia has pretty much wiped her out.
She just needs more energy.
Opening her eyes she forces herself to get dressed and discard the raspberry ripple shapeless wonders that Keller uses. Serena used to hate them, the way they emphasised how fat she was but now she's almost grateful to them, they hide her changing body shape well enough. Nurse Carter may have noticed Serena's weight loss but she doesn't want anyone else to start asking questions so she sticks with her usual, large, flowing shirts. As she stands in front of the mirror, carefully reapplying make-up to her face in an attempt to cover the dark bags around her eyes, Serena contemplates how to restore her energy levels, eating more isn't going to work, it isn't an option because she still hasn't reached her target weight yet.
But once she has reached her target weight, Serena has promised herself that she will start to eat properly again. However, she's quite a way off yet but she needs something to get her through the days without her lack of energy and focus putting patients at risk. She has been drinking black coffee by the gallon but that seems to be having less and less of an effect these days and she'll have to think of something soon.
…
A couple of days later, Serena is down on AAU in the office, trying her best to block out the sound of a patient with possibly the lowest pain threshold of anyone she's ever met in her career bleating at the nurses again.
"Can't you prescribe me something?" The irritating, whiny voice continues and Serena rolls her eyes. "I'm dying of agony here." This time, Serena gets up to shut the door to the small office she shares with Michael Spence when she works on AAU, thinking uncharitably 'if only you were, it'd be a damn sight quieter'.
Serena manages to sit in the delightfully quiet office for all of two minutes before the door is opened and the patient's voice invades her all too brief respite again. Serena grinds her teeth at the interruption.
"What is it?"
"Sorry to bother you, Ms. Campbell, would you have a word with Miss. Pierce?"
"No need – I can hear her perfectly well from here." Serena grumbles at the Irish nurse before capitulating. Reluctantly she follows Mary-Claire out onto the ward and aware that her patience is next to non-existent these days, takes a deep breath before closing the distance to bed four.
"I'm dying, Doc." The plaintive voice just irritates her.
"Somehow I doubt it." Serena's far from enthusiastic response goes seemingly unnoticed and the patient launches into a laundry list of medical woes which makes Serena want to pinch the bridge of her nose. She is waiting for the first mention of breathing difficulties and she will happily refer Miss. Pierce up to Darwin to let Jac Naylor sharpen her claws.
"What about something to take the edge off my nerves?"
"No and certainly not before your surgery." Serena looks around, not entirely sure whether she's looking for divine inspiration or just a pillow to smother the woman lying in front of her. However the solution to her question saunters onto the ward and Serena calls out to Edward. It's not often that Serena can refer to her ex-husband as being the answer to her prayers but today he fits the bill.
Edward struts over and Serena is looking forward to seeing the permanent shit-eating grin wiped off his face as he attempts to escape. She turns to Miss. Pierce and introduce her ex-husband. "Miss. Pierce, this is Mr. Campbell, he's going to be the consultant anaesthetist for your operation and will be able to talk you through any of your concerns. Edward." With a nod to her ex-husband, Serena steps away and heads back across the ward.
It isn't until she's shut the office door again that she allows the smirk to turn into a full-bodied laugh. Collapsing into the chair she vacated only a few minutes earlier, Serena feels drained already and it's only mid-morning – the feeling of exhaustion creeping up on her earlier every day. Not for the first time, her mind turns towards trying to find a solution – food is out of the question – something needs to change and soon.
Serena is rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hands when the idea comes to her and she stops rubbing, her eyes taking a second or two to focus as she roots around in one of the desk drawers until she finds what she is looking for.
A prescription pad.
…
Serena slams the front door behind her and leans back against it feeling wiped out. Not only has the lack of food over the past few weeks depleted her energy store and left her running on empty, all the adrenaline of the last hour has dissipated, leaving her to feel worse than ever.
Blinking slowly, Serena mechanically withdraws her Holby General Hospital pass from the left pocket of her coat and hangs it up so she won't forget it in the morning. She then unwraps her scarf and hangs that up, followed swiftly by her coat and boots. Only then does she reach into the right hand pocket of her coat, cold fingers closing around the source of this evening's anxiety.
Serena had stepped out of the dark and chilly night, the wind giving the darkness a wintry edge and into the bright warmth of the late-night Chemist. Furtively checking the aisles to make sure she doesn't see anyone she knows, Serena makes her way over to the prescriptions counter, one hand gripping the slip of paper, the other hand tightly clutching her NHS ID card in her pocket until the edges of the plastic leave marks in her skin, out of sight.
As the queue had slowly moved forward, Serena's anxiety grew, what she is doing is so wrong that she is just waiting for the pharmacist to take one look at her and know exactly what she's doing. By the time she got to the front of the queue, Serena was almost shaking as she handed over the prescription form but the pharmacist barely spared her a glance and a couple of minutes later she was leaving, back out into the cold night.
Sat now at a chair in the kitchen, Serena stares at the drugs in her hand and turns the packet over, allowing the paper bag to flutter to the floor. Suddenly aware of how serious everything seems to have become, Serena makes a pact with herself, she'll use them over the next few days to get her back up and running again but after that, she promises herself that she'll only use them when she really has to.
There is no way she is going to allow herself to become dependent on them.
…
Within days Serena is feeling much more like her old self – the tablets are a Godsend and her energy is back to her usual levels. For the first time in what feels like ages, she has felt confident enough to schedule back-to-back surgeries and she'd sailed through them. Admittedly they were both routine slicing and dicing but it's a weight off Serena's shoulders that she hadn't been aware of carrying.
Her patient safely back onto the ward, Serena scoops up her iPad from behind the nurses' station and engrossed in the data on the screen, she crosses the ward and steps into the office she shares with Ric. Something out of the corner of her eye catches her attention and Serena looks up and she sees Ric stood next to his desk, looking concerned.
"Ms. Campbell," another familiar voice from behind her belonging to the tall, immaculately suited hospital CEO makes her jump, she hadn't spotted Hanssen. "We have something of a problem..."
"What kind of problem?" She asks warily, glancing between the two male consultants, inching towards her desk.
The Swede's expression is inscrutable as ever which makes Serena nervous as he and Ric solemnly stare at her although she does her best to hide her reaction. As the seconds tick on, Serena's mind starts to conjure various possibilities of what they are about to say to her.
AN2: Ooo-err!
