A/N: Sorry for lack of update yesterday, it was my birthday! Anyway, onwards with this...
Zosia stalked half way down the street before remembering she had absolutely no geographical bearing as to her whereabouts. She had too much pride to go crawling back to Jac's with her tail between her legs and she concluded there was little point trying her housemates again, it would be like sending them orienteering without a map. With the deepest of sighs Zosia pulled out her phone and called Guy.
Within 10 minutes, her fathers shiny Jag pulled up to the curb where she awkwardly waited, scuffing the toe of her boot against the pavement. She could see the look on his face before she even got in the car, it was audible enough over the phone. Not of concern as one might expect from a father collecting his stranded daughter, but of a smug satisfaction that he was right.
"Listen, before you start I don't want to talk about it. Could you please just take me home." Zosia frowned the instant she sat down, fidgeting with the seatbelt and staring straight ahead.
Guy watched his only daughter's obvious discomfort with a self righteous 'I-told-you-so' grin. He knew a walk of shame if ever he saw one and Zosia with her damp hair and clothes from the night before was a Grade A specimen.
He honoured her request for a short distance, driving in a laboured silence until he could bear it no longer.
"So what are you getting out of this exactly? I can see why she'd be interested in you. I mean a fling with a young attractive junior doctor is definitely going to inflate her ego, but you? You'd be a fool to be that close to Jac Naylor without getting something in return. Are you back on Darwin now?"
He was met with a stabbing silence and the side of Zosia's face as she ignored him and stared ahead, her jaw visibly clenching as she ground her teeth.
"Oh come on Darling, Jac Naylor doesn't want your fluffy romance! What you just did was transactional, she won't leave herself owing you anything because that would mean she wasn't in complete control. I told you, she's got no heart."
If her father hadn't been driving, Zosia probably would have punched him. She was already furious at Jac for demeaning her intelligence and this accusatory insinuation of nepotism was personally hurtful. Jac had shown her far too much affection for this to be simply 'transactional' and Zosia took great pride in her educational and career achievements being awarded on merit. Hard work would shape the path of her career and nothing else.
"And I told you, I don't want to talk about it!" She settled for slamming her fist dramatically against the expensive wooden inlay interior on her fathers dashboard. Shy and mild was she no more, to prove your weight in medicine Zosia was beginning to learn one must be fierce.
"Can you pull into that garage. I need a cigarette."
"I'm not sure, as a medical professional, that I morally support that?" Guy queried.
"I am both an adult and a Doctor. I don't need your permission to make bad choices."
Guy begrudgingly pulled over. He refused Zosia permission to smoke in his car so instead he parked up and watched as she sat on a grassy embankment away from the petrol pumps and struggled with shaky hands to light her cigarette.
Guy pondered what had happened to his little girl. When had she become this bad tempered, cigarette smoking lesbian? It was true they had not been particularly close of late, but Zosia's behaviour was way out of character. He spared a brief thought for Anya, his late wife would want him to look out for her no matter how adult she thought she was.
Once back on the road, Zosia distractedly gnawed at the skin on her thumb. "Dad, you won't tell anyone will you? She'll get into trouble."
Guy drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. It was clear to him that Jac Naylor was entirely to blame for his daughters unplanned career detour and current negative state of being. What father wouldn't want to put an end to this frankly embarrassing poisonous relationship and steer his child back on track?
"Please." A childish desperation laced her voice. He was instantly transported back to his precious four year old daughter, her tongue still tripping between Polish and English as she climbed into his lap and begged his forgiveness for clumsily knocking over his scotch glass, looking up at Anya who stood in the doorway with big terrified eyes for reassurance.
"Why are you so keen to protect her? You mean nothing to her Zosia and you deserve so much more than that."
Zosia was momentarily touched by his concern but quickly dismissed it as false. "That is irrelevant and absolutely none of your business but can you please just keep this to yourself?"
Guy acquiesced, pulling up outside Zosia's shared apartment. "It's not too late you know." He reached out to stroke her face and she flinched.
"For what?"
"To end things with Jac and go ask out that nice consultant with the blue eyes."
Zosia wordlessly got out the car and forcibly slammed it shut. Fuck Guy Self.
Her attempt to sneak into the flat unnoticed by her housemates spectacularly failed when her anger decided she wasn't done yet and slammed the font door too.
She shook off the wide eyed intrigued faces and questions of concern with the somewhat plausible line that she'd crashed at her fathers knowing they probably wouldn't bother to follow it up. She made her excuses and sought out the peaceful solace of her room.
Zosia waited until she was sure she wouldn't be heard and fell onto her bed with a choked sob. She pulled her shirt up over her stomach and traced her fingertips along the dark mauve spattering across her lower abdomen. The bruises spoke a universal language, she knew Jac would never be candid with her feelings but each shade of purple was an unspoken feeling, Zosia just knew it.
By the uninterested reception she received from her AAU colleagues the next morning, Zosia judged that Guy had kept to his word. She was quietly grateful but not enough to thank him. Homophobic was too strong a word to describe her father's hostility towards her relationship – if you could even call it that – but the repressive denial of her sexual orientation and insistence that she should pursue other male partners was moderately offensive and wholly deserving of Zosia's anger.
Zosia worked methodically and without issue, even earning praise from the ward manager for exceeding the bed bay targets. She received the praise with a full but hollow smile. She didn't want to be here, her skills were going to waste. Every patient she diagnosed with a cardio condition and referred for transfer up to Darwin filled her with a bitter regret. She should be the one receiving these patients on Darwin, she wanted to treat and operate and save these patients under the watchful eye of the greatest cardiothoracic surgeon around but alas she made this decision and she had to live with it.
On her break she crossed off the weeks on the calendar pinned to the inside of her locker until the next F1 rotation. In her head, this made her time left on the mind-numbingly dull AAU seem shorter and the days until she was back under Jac's tutelage all the more appealing. She vowed to burn these cursed baby blue scrubs at the soonest possible opportunity.
She wasn't alone in the staff room and the hushed grumblings of her co-clinical leads suddenly piqued her attention.
"I don't want to go to this stupid conference. It's for neuro and cardio surgeons not lowly general surgeons like us."
"The CEO was pretty clear that every department had to be represented."
"I know. But it's just going to be all about Jac Naylor and I'm not sure if there will be room for me as well as her and her ego in that room."
Zosia turned slowly away from her locker, clearing her throat. "I'll go."
Both women looked at her as if she was mad.
"Doctor March this is a conference for surgeons and consultants, it's hardly appropriate for us to send an F1?"
"Yes but it's quite clear that you don't want to go so I'll be doing you a favour! You forget that my father is a neurosurgeon, I've been familiar with these events most of my life."
The older women looked at each other, seemingly communicating through a series of raised eyebrows.
"Alright. But don't get caught, it'll reflect badly on the department."
"I'll write a report and present it to you, no one would have to know."
"Good. I shall look forward to it. Back to work now please Doctor March, your bay 3 is about to breach."
Watching Zosia skip away with a definite spring in her step, the clinical leads shook their heads, bemused. "Such a strange girl."
A/N: Reviews are love! Pls validate me :):) Gonna shamelessly plug my blog again here, its not a fandom blog but i'm more likely to reply to you there - indig0supernova :):)