A/N: Hello, my lovely friends :) I'm sorry for what I did last chapter. I seem to have shocked you all. Thank you for all your kind reviews though!

Sarah x


Serena stood paralysed. Her daughter stood drunk behind Michael Spence. Henrik stood nervously behind Serena. "Henrik," she whispered. "Don't do this to yourself."

He could not possibly be so stupid. Protecting her was one thing. Telling everyone a huge lie to spare her the heartache of telling truth was completely another matter.

The silence fell like a heavy, suffocating blanket on the room. Michael looked shocked. Chantelle looked like she couldn't believe it. Jac looked astounded, her mouth hanging open in shock. Jonny, however, was blatantly sceptical as he shared a look with Mo; the two had been best friends so long that they had their own little language Serena couldn't even understand. But there was one thing she could see from Jonny: he knew better. It was obvious.

A ringing phone shattered the silence. "Hello?" Jonny answered. "Aye, alright, Dr. Digby. Calm down...they're not picking up because we're in a meeting...we'll be down in a minute," he promised Arthur. "Mr. Hanssen, Ms. Campbell," he announced. "Your domestic's gonna have to wait. We're needed on Keller. Your patient's crashed," he explained. Serena knew which one – the one she had ordered a CT consult on earlier today.

"You stay here," she ordered a shocked, silent Eleanor. "I'll be back soon. And don't give anyone any hassle." She received no reply so added to Michael, experienced in dealing with teenage girls, "You have my full permission to shout at her should she cause any trouble. Same goes for you, Jac," she said to the redhead in the knowledge that Jac Naylor had it in her to scare Eleanor silent if she kicked off.

They ambled out of the room quickly, Serena and Hanssen striding down the corridor as she cursed his stupidity under her breath. "Oi!" Jonny shouted after them. "There's nothing happened on Keller. I got Mo to phone me."

"Oh, so that's what that look was about," Hanssen replied, coming to stand in front of Jonny. Surprisingly he was not angry at Jonny. He seemed almost grateful. Serena should have known. She'd pulled a similar stunt to save Malick's arse before, hadn't she?

"Why?!" Serena demanded.

"I'm stopping you two from making the biggest mistake of your lives," Jonny explained earnestly. "Don't lie. Lying will only get you in an even worse predicament than you're in now," he tried to convince them.

Realisation struck Serena. "You told him?!" she rounded on Hanssen, who looked rather frightened of being on the receiving end of her wrath. Momentarily she felt guilty but she was too angry and hurt for it to last long.

"I knew as soon as I saw you that morning," Jonny hastily intervened. "That baby you're carrying, Ms. Campbell, isn't Mr. Hanssen's and you both know it. Don't do this. I'm telling you. It'll end in disaster!"

"Oh, yes, because everything's just bloody peachy right now!" she shouted at him in her frustration. "Plus the moron's said it now anyway!"

"You can get out of it," Jonny insisted. "He didn't say the baby's his. He said he slept with you. Just tell the truth."

"I can't!" she almost screamed. She was suddenly aware of her tears and hastily and angrily, feeling weak and silly for crying. She felt Hanssen's hand on her back, and she looked up at his face sharply. Why was he still here? Why hadn't he abandoned her?

"Jonny's right," Henrik sighed. "It would do no good to lie to Eleanor any further. We would only be digging a hole for ourselves."

Serena felt smothered with no way out but in her heart – what was left of it – she knew they were both doing right by her. It was touching to know Jonny, who openly admitted he was terrified by her, was looking out for her before she could make an even bigger mess of her life. She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose in despair. The news that she was expecting a second child still hadn't sunk in, so how could she explain it to everyone else without lying to ease the heartache?

"They won't understand."

It was her only get-out clause.

"Jac will," Jonny piped up. "If anyone will understand, it's Jac." Serena glared at him for his input but he did not falter. "I'm asking you to trust me here, Ms. Campbell. They'll understand. They won't hate you or think you're awful or any of the other things you're afraid of. Saying it makes it real and making it real forces you to face it."

"I'm not afraid."

"Liar," he smiled gently. Hanssen was standing silent by her side, letting Jonny convince her of the things he had tried to weeks ago and she hadn't listened to him. To hear it from an outsider, from someone who had not been there, it made more sense than ever before. But he was also right: she was lying when she said she wasn't afraid. She was absolutely terrified of telling he truth. So much that, in the last month, everything everyone saw from her was nothing but a lie.

She breathed in and out, remembering what Hanssen had told her in that dimly lit office when she had succumbed to this kind of terrorised panic. She hadn't noticed she was shaking with fear until now.

"Jonny, can you give us a moment?" she asked, her eyes shut tight as she drew the strength and courage to tell the truth. For once in her life she needed to be courageous, if not for her then for Eleanor and for Henrik.

"Course," he replied. She heard the door shut behind him.

"Why?" she demanded. "Why did you do something so utterly reckless?" she asked, opening her eyes up to see his expression. After all, she was not his responsibility. In the past three days she had practically terrorised every ward of this hospital with her anger and fear, so she had no right to expect help from him.

"Because your daughter wanted an answer and it was obvious you couldn't tell her the truth," he explained, as if it was totally obvious.

"That doesn't necessitate in you putting yourself in the firing line."

"Yes, it does. It was me buying you some time. And if you had needed it I would have kept going with the lie," he confessed. That shocked her. For a man who, a month ago, couldn't stand the sight of her, he was being exceptionally kind to her when she needed him. She was not easy to deal with. She knew that. And yet he was still trying to be there for her, even though in the past few days all she had done was push him out.

"You're an idiot," she stated what she believed to be fact. "How stupid do you have to be to tell a woman's daughter, my daughter, that you slept with me when we both know you didn't?! And you make it so bloody hard for me to be angry at you right now."

"Don't be angry," he replied. "It doesn't get you anywhere. Be strong." She felt him press a kiss onto the top of her head; she knew now that whatever decision she she made about this was one he would not judge her on. She was not alone now.

She took a tentative step forward, his hand on her back with every excruciating step she took. What had she done to deserve him standing by her?

Her hand lingered only a moment too long on the door handle, showing the cracks she couldn't quite cover up. As she stepped into the rooms she felt all eyes fall onto her, most people looking shocked, some – Jac, Elliot and Michael, who had seen her façade broken – with concern. "He lied. Mr. Hanssen lied," she forced out. "We haven't slept together."

"Then why-" Jac began to ask but Serena cut her off.

"Because the man's the world's biggest moron," she said, making Jac, Jonny and a couple other laugh. "He thought he could spare my feelings if he lied so I didn't have to tell the truth." Her eyes, for the first time since returning to the room, fell on Eleanor. Silent tears were rolling down the girl's face, black tears marring her pale cheeks. "I suppose it would have come out one way or another anyway," she sighed, sitting on the edge of the table. "Do you remember about a month ago, Henrik and I went to Brighton?"

There was a general agreement throughout the room so she took a deep breathe. Breathe in, breathe out, she reminded herself. "There was an...incident. We don't remember very much. We both got knocked out and beat up. We only remember quick film cuts and can't quite piece it together," she rambled on, like saying pointless words would take the pain out of what she was trying to tell them.

"Oh, no," Jac groaned, cottoning on quickly. She sat up straighter and Serena met her eyes and knew she had worked it out. "Serena, were you raped? Is that how you've ended up pregnant?" she asked, and she seemed on the edge of tears herself. Serena made her head move up and down once, and the effort that simple movement took was unreal.

She looked over at Eleanor. Why, why did she have to burst in here like this? When this could have been done their own home, in her own time, and not front of everyone she knew, why had Eleanor done this? The usual reason – drink.

Neither of them were angry anymore. Only in agony. Serena opened her arms, knowing her daughter needed her right now. Her own emotions had to be put to one side as Eleanor half-ran around the table, stumbling behind Jac, who stood up and supported her until she reached her mother's arms.

Suddenly, Serena was the one doing the comforting. "I'm so sorry, darling," she whispered in Eleanor's ear.

"You have a rational explanation," she heard Hanssen say. "I suggest we abandon this meeting and reconvene at ten o'clock tomorrow morning." It was his unfailingly polite way of telling them to bugger off. They didn't need told not to gossip. They all knew better, even naïve young Chantelle.

"Oh-one-two-one-do-one," Jonny translated. "Got it."

Everyone bar Hanssen left as Serena held Eleanor tight. She felt a few hands fall on her shoulder in support. Whose, she was unsure, but she was grateful nonetheless. She felt Eleanor crying in her arms as the truth sobered her up and she realised what she had done. "I'm sorry, Mum," she sobbed. "I'm so fucking stupid!"

"Language," she warned, hearing a low chuckle from behind her.

"Pot and kettle, Serena," Hanssen said, reminding her of her own tendency to swear when she panicked, perfectly demonstrated from the way she treated Hanssen when they woke in that garage.

"What are you gonna do about it?" Eleanor asked quietly, gripping Serena like she was going to vanish into thin air. "Are you keeping it?"

"I can't kill a child," Serena asserted, her voice coming out in nothing more than a broken murmur. "No matter who it's father is." From the moment she had seen that positive test she had known in her heart that she would keep her child. "You understand that, don't you, Ellie?" she whispered. Eleanor's head nodded against her chest and she smiled sadly.

She felt Henrik kiss her hair lightly and reach around to squeeze Ellie's shoulder before he left them alone in a silence broken only by their tears.


Hope this is OK!
Please feel free to review and tell me what you think of it!
Sarah x