Hi :) Sorry for the very short chapter, but I hope you like it anyway. Let me know what you think with a review x

When Ethan arrived in the doorway of resus, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else, Zoe's heart sank. She made eye contact with Dylan over their patient, and a rushed exchange followed.

"Zoe, surely he can't stay, look at him."

"Dylan, I can't send him out!" Zoe was acutely aware that removing him from the situation would only embarrass him and escalate what looked like a brewing anxiety attack.

"Now is not the time to be considering how much you're about to embarrass him," Dylan hissed as if he'd read her mind. "You need to think about the patients in this room, and whether they need -"

Before he could go on, Zoe cut across him, calling across resus. "Dr Hardy, in bay two with Dr Chao, if you will." Dylan rolled his eyes at her, incredulous.

"What on earth is going on in that funny little brain of yours?"

"Quoting Sherlock at me is not getting you anywhere," Zoe retorted. "We need the extra pair of hands in here, don't deny it. And it's not as if anything is going to go wrong if he's with Lily. They're on good terms at the moment."

At the moment, Dylan thought. But the buzzing heart monitor beside his patient prevented him saying anything else.

Zoe glanced up every now and then, and seeing Ethan's obvious discomfort made it difficult to concentrate on her own task.

Ethan's hands were shaking uncontrollably, and while he waited for Lily to get him up to date on the patient's condition, he jammed them in his pockets. He counted his breaths in and out, wishing they weren't quite so fast, and that his heart wasn't beating quite so fiercely. His eyes darted around the bed, taking in details which might help him do something useful.

Lily was stressed. It had been a long day, and her shift so far had destroyed her mood completely. She rubbed her hands together, trying to analyse test results and observe the patient at the same time. There had to be something she was missing. There had to be. She rubbed her hands together impatiently, staring at the numbers on the monitor in front of her. Her eyes fell on Ethan, who was glancing about anxiously. Why wasn't he helping? Now more than ever, she needed another input. She couldn't solve this by herself, couldn't he see that?

Later, she would deeply regret what she did next. Her head would be filled with "what-if's" and "should have done's" and a stinging feeling inside her like a plaster had been ripped away without warning.

"Lily," he began, his voice trembling.

"What?" she replied sharply, not looking up.

"H-have yyou... ch-ch-ch -" His breath was coming raggedly now, and Ethan could see stars from hyperventilating. He gave up, cut to the chase, and tried to spit out the crux of his sentence. "Pne-pnem..." He shook his head. He wanted to write it down, something, anything that might help, because he thought he knew. But then -

"Ethan, for God's sake! Get it together! You're in resus, lives are depending on you, hurry up and speak, or get out!"

Defeated, humiliated and feeling about two inches tall, Ethan knew everyone had heard. Resus had gone deathly quiet, and against this backdrop, he could hear every breath, every tick of the clock, every minute beep of the monitors around the room. His fight-or-flight mechanism was in overdrive, but he could do neither. He was rooted to the spot and was powerless to stop his eyes filling with tears. He wanted to clamp his hands over his ears and curl up into a ball. Inside he was closing down and speeding up at the same time, and he knew that didn't make any sense. He was frozen to the spot, the world moving around him like those disorienting montages in films when everything seems to blur uncontrollably. It all suddenly came back into sharp focus, when Zoe's calm voice cut through the fog like a knife.

"I need a porter over here to take this patient upstairs. Dr Keogh, can you take over in bay two, please? Ethan, take a breather, and Lily, my office, now."