A/N: You'll probably all hate me by the end of this chapter so I apologise in advance. Thank you, as always, to every person who reads and reviews - it's always much appreciated!
Sarah x
Henrik woke with a start and glanced at the screen of his phone – no messages or missed calls, and it was after four in the morning. With a sigh he turned over to see if Serena had finally managed to sleep more than four hours for once; she was out of it completely. Her pale arm was hanging over the top of the blanket. He pressed the back of his hand onto her moonlit skin to find it cold to the touch and so gently put it under the duvet, pulling the covers up to her chin.
He tried to remember how he went from being the pillar of solidity to almost crying in his wife's arms, but it was mostly just a dark blur of pain. He hadn't meant to let it all go like he had done, but he had been stupid to believe he could completely disguise it from her. She saw through him when it was needed.
Serena stirred. "Henrik?" she murmured.
"Yes?" he replied. She was obviously not conscious – she didn't answer him. She started to become restless, and he realised quite suddenly that she was dreaming. He hoped it was not one of her debilitating nightmares. It was impossible to wake her and when she eventually did wake up she was always a quivering wreck.
It quickly became apparent that, whatever it was, her dream wasn't pleasant and he tried in vain to wake her. "Serena," he said gently, not really expecting to get anything coherent in response. From experience she always dealt with it better when she was close to him so he put his arms around her soft body, his chin resting on the top of her head. There was nothing he could do but wait until it stopped.
He had become accustomed to the occurrence, if not the effects, of her nightmares. The severity varied. There were nights she had just about screamed the house down in her sleep, scared to death of whatever was haunting her sleep. She never spoke of what she dreamt, but he realised that a lot of it was probably to do with the fact that the night she was raped was still a blank her mind was trying to fill in, giving her probably fictional horrors in her sleep.
It was nights like these that he was given a blunt reminder that his wife was still trying to fit the pieces of herself back into the right places, and the crying and the screaming reminded his the pain it caused her when she tried to force the pieces together the wrong way. In sleep she was uninhibited, her mind not functioning enough for her to hold anything back. It was the way he had come to measure how much pain she was in. If she screamed, she was in agony. If she actually cried like she was doing now, it was beyond agony. Lately the dreams produced more tears than noise.
Before he could do anything to stop it, she was crying into his chest, still asleep, while he just held her tight into his body. Maybe this was his use in life. If he could not help his children then he could at least hold the fractured pieces of his wife together. Was she exaggerating last night when she had said she would not have still been standing without him? Had she actually been so damaged that she hadn't been able to see a way that she could have lived while she was dragged through hell and back?
He wondered whether, had he not resolved to help Serena, whether Anya and Eleanor would still have a mother now. He had thought she was doing well all these years but, unknown to him until now, she was depending on him. She trembled in his arms; he should have known. He should have known that when she went quiet it was because she was barely coping.
"Henrik...where are you?" she whispered.
"I'm here," he answered her, though he doubted she heard him. He kissed her hair and repeated, barely hearing himself, "I'm here."
One of her arms moved until it was tight around his waist, unconsciously pulling herself into the safety of his arms. He did not attempt to wake her – there was no point. It never worked and it seemed to cause her more distress to be woken by force. He waited for an ear-splitting scream that never came; instead she continued to shake and cry with no control over what her unconscious but overrun mind commanded her body to do.
He stroked her cheek with his fingertips. Sleep was meant to be peaceful, but her face was contorted in anguish. "I love you," he told her gently. He always found it easier to say these things while she slept. There was some security in knowing that she probably couldn't hear him, and that if she did hear him she would write it off as a dream. "When Jac gave me your diary and I read it...I can't see why you didn't just tell me how you've been feeling. I would have understood. I would have done all I could to help you. You shouldn't have to be afraid of hurting me just because I'm weak."
"Henrik..." she whimpered.
"Shh," he hushed her gently.
"Henrik," she said more urgently. "Henrik!" She startled in his arms and he knew then she was awake. "You're alive," she breathed, and he felt her relax a little.
"Of course I'm alive," he replied, slightly amused by her words but still a bit anxious about what exactly she had dreamt. He knew she was not going to tell him – she never did – but he could tell that whatever it was had left her shaken.
"Sorry."
"Don't apologise," he said to her. "Don't apologise, darling." He could feel her bury her face into his chest. He stroked her hair absentmindedly, thinking back to last night. He had pretty much fallen apart on her. He had always tried to make sure she never had to carry more than she could hold, and he had burdened his own issues onto her already overladen shoulders. "If anything, I should be apologising to you. I shouldn't have told what I did."
"Hey!" she exclaimed. "Don't you ever say that again. It's about time you started telling me these things. How can I help if you don't tell me?"
He smiled to himself and squeezed her tight.
A familiar ringtone shattered the silence. "Hello?" Henrik answered.
"Henrik, you'd better get back here," Jac Naylor was saying urgently. "Anya's contracted a lung infection." Immediately Henrik sat bolt upright. "They've had to put her on a ventilator."
He got out of bed and picked up his trousers. "We'll be back in about an hour or so."
"OK," Jac replied. She sounded absolutely exhausted. "Jonny's with her just now. Sacha's looking after Flora so we'll both be here when you get to the hospital."
"Thank you," he said, hanging up the phone. He hadn't had to tell Serena to get up – she was already half-dressed. They dressed in silence before hastily packing their bag and checking out of the hotel.
It was only when Henrik was driving out of the car park that Serena finally managed to ask, "What's happened?"
"Anya's contracted a lung infection," he repeated Jac word for word. "They've had to put her on a ventilator," he added, and the last word caught in his throat, making his stomach turn slightly as he was assaulted internally by dread and fear for his daughter. He heard Serena choke quietly and instinctively reached over and squeezed her leg lightly.
"Our daughter...is on a ventilator," Serena whispered; Henrik knew to say it aloud was how she made sense of it, a method he believed Jonny had taught her. "We shouldn't have come out here."
"It would have happened whether we were there or not," he reminded her fairly.
"I know," she sighed. "I know."
It was still dark and Henrik was going too fast for the road conditions. He had to consciously remind himself to take the pressure off the throttle, reminding himself that Anya's parents were no good to her dead. He tried to be optimistic but there was nothing left to be optimistic for; what if Anya made no kind of recovery from the infection? What if she was actually too sick for Flora to save her.
He hadn't even cut the engine when Serena jumped out, pulling her coat tightly around her as the thick blizzard swirled around her. The glow of the street lights around them brought the fear in her face out; she looked positively terrified. As soon as he was within reaching distance of her, she grabbed his hand and pulled him into the building, legging it to try and get to Anya marginally faster.
They stumbled, out of breath, onto Paediatric Oncology and Henrik could see Jac waiting for them. "She's in Intensive Care while they get her lungs into better shape," the redhead explained. "It's set her back. They have to wait until she recovers from this before they can transplant the bone marrow. Hopefully, with the right medication, it won't too long but she's really in a bad way."
Henrik sighed when he heard what he expected to. Part of him had hoped Jac would have told them it was nothing too bad, that she was going to be OK, but the realistic part of him knew that Anya having a lung infection with her immune system so weak was serious.
The trip up to ITU seemed to take forever and a day, each step dragging in quarter-time. He just wanted to hold his little girl's hand and tell her she was going to be OK, even though he didn't know if it was true and she was unconscious anyway. Even running up the stairs took a lifetime to complete before they were standing outside ITU, his shaking fingers pressing in the code he used so often and thought nothing of until now.
From the door he looked over to see Jonny sitting next to a bed where a tiny figure lay swamped in white sheets, fragile and helpless as a machine did most of her breathing for her. Her dark hair lay stark against the white pillow and her pallid face. It was not the same girl Henrik remembered singing and dancing with. This girl was a ghost of his daughter, broken and weakened by a disease. He was her father and he could do absolutely nothing to help her.
Jonny stood up and said, "She fell ill really quickly. One minute she seemed alright and the next she couldn't breathe." Henrik was transfixed by the sight of his daughter crushed down by her own lungs. "We didn't know whether to tell Eleanor so we left that decision up to you. It's just gone six and my shift starts at seven, so I'd better go and get in my scrubs," he added, reminding Henrik that Jac and Jonny were not only his friends but part of the basic running of the hospital.
He was vaguely aware that Jonny had hugged Serena and patted Henrik's arm comfortingly when he hesitantly took a step towards the bed, unable to tear his gaze away from Anya. When he had said to Serena that Anya was as sick as she was going to get, he hadn't thought that an infection could have taken her so quickly and so effectively. He was a doctor; he should have known there was the possibility of this happening. But the paternal part of him had battered down the idea, too cowardly to deal with it.
He sat down where Jonny had risen from and took Anya's tiny hand in his. He didn't speak. He couldn't speak.
He felt Serena's head fall against his shoulder and he instantly put his free arm around her, pulling her into his side while they both silently willed their daughter to have the strength in her to survive.
Hope this is alright!
Please fee free to leave me a review and tell me what you thought!
Sarah x
