Ethan stared at the tv, not really taking in the evening news at all.

Lily knew his mind was elsewhere. She put her hand on his knee, and wasn't surprised at all when he didn't slip his hand around hers, as he would have done ordinarily.

"Will you be alright?" she asked. "I know I'm only taking Will upstairs to bed, but if you don't want to be by yourself then I'll completely understand." Lily's other arm was wrapped around her son, who was sitting in her lap, only a few minutes away from sleep.

Ethan turned to look at her. "I'll be fine," he said quietly. "I think I've had worse days." His voice was low but telling nonetheless, of the day he'd had.

He was exhausted after the events of this afternoon. Mentally and physically, he was drained by the case he'd taken on. It was probably only his thirst to prove himself that had led him to take the patient in the first place: a fifteen year old female, who had been caught up in gang violence in the pedestrian precinct and ended up being stabbed in the shoulder. When Ethan had marched purposefully toward Jez and Iain, bringing the girl in from the ambulance, he had known full well that a lot of eyes were on him.

"Are you sure, mate?" Iain had asked. "You don't have to take this one."

"I'm fine, let's just get on with this, shall we?" Ethan had known also that his voice had been a little too sharp, and perhaps a giveaway of his discomfort around this situation.

But in the end, he had delivered the girl upstairs, alive and in one piece, in the company of her mother and her older brother, both of whom had been overcome with emotion that their loved one was out of the woods. Ethan had felt a sense of relief that he'd been successful, but this hadn't been without feeling slightly choked at the realisation that it could have been this way for Cal. But he couldn't afford to think like that; it wasn't fair on the team who had obviously tried so hard to keep his brother alive, the same as for any other patient. Ethan couldn't torment himself forever with what might have been.

Regardless, sitting at home that evening, alone at last in the living room, he couldn't help but pinch the bridge of his nose and screw his eyes shut. Grief was like that – sometimes it was barely there, and at other times it came like a crescendo threatening to swallow you whole.

There was a knock at the front door, which pulled Ethan out of his head at once. Walking into the hall, he called gently up the stairs that he'd get the door, while checking in the mirror that he didn't look too much like he'd just stopped himself crying.

Outside the door stood a police officer, the same one who had dealt with everything after Cal had died. She wasn't an irregular face in the E.D. either; she'd been sent to deal with several incidents in the hospital, and had spent a lot of time conducting interviews and collecting evidence after Cal's death. Ethan greeted her politely but with restraint – he wasn't sure yet whether he'd forgiven her for the last time they'd spoken, when she'd had to break it to him and Lily that there wasn't enough, or indeed, any, evidence to incriminate Scott for what had happened to Cal.

"Dr Hardy – Ethan," she corrected herself. "I hope you'll forgive me, intruding into your evening. Can I come in, please?"

"Of course," Ethan said, stepping aside to let her into the hall. He was very glad of having hoovered yesterday. The house was comfortably messy, the kind of mess that made it quite clear that it was lived-in, and inhabited by small children, at that. "Can I make you a cup of tea?" he asked.

"No, no, it's quite alright. I won't need to stay long – just… I think you should probably sit down; I've brought some news about the case – about your brother."

Ethan's blood slowed down in his veins, slowly turning to ice. He stepped back, almost falling into the back of the front door.

"Ethan, are you okay?" the police officer asked. She was acutely aware of the colour quickly falling from his face. Her intention this evening had not been to cause an innocent man to pass out in his own home.

Her voice sounded far away, but Ethan breathed through his shock and slowly he felt himself returning to the room. He blinked at the police officer for a few seconds. "Sorry, I'm fine. I am, I'm alright. It's just a bit of a surprise, that's all. Can – can we wait a few minutes? Lily – my wife – she's upstairs, putting Will to bed. I don't know if I can listen to this alone."

"Of course we can," came the gentle reply.

They waited for perhaps five minutes, before Lily returned to the living room.

Lily froze in the doorway, seeing the police officer again. Confusion first, and then fear, hit her hard. It had been a while, and she wasn't sure she liked to be reminded of her conversations with this woman.

"How are you doing, Lily?"

It took Lily a moment to realise that she was being asked about her accident. Of course she was, what else? The last time she'd spoken to this woman, she'd been in a far worse state than she found herself in currently. "I'm much better now, thank you," Lily replied, feeling unsteady as she made her way to sit beside Ethan. Automatically, their hands locked together.

"You both look so afraid," the police officer said, "I promise I'm not here with bad news. I suppose there's no point dragging it out or beating around the bush. New evidence was uncovered this afternoon, by a source who wishes to remain anonymous for the time being. This evidence incriminates Scott Ellisson sufficiently that he has been arrested and charged with the murder of Caleb Knight."

Earlier that day

Lily and Ethan were almost ready to send their resus patient upstairs, when Connie burst into the room, looking harassed.

"Has anyone seen or heard from Sam this morning?" she asked, stress evident in her voice. She ran a hand through her hair, upsetting the elegant curls parted above her right eyebrow. Whatever was happening was serious, because usually she would never bring up members of the E.D. team in front of patients.

Not one member of staff in resus spoke. There were several exchanged glances, but the one uniting factor was that nobody looked in Connie's direction. Lily looked at Ethan, and tilted her head almost undetectably to one side. Ethan looked down at once, which Lily took as an equivalent to shaking his head.

There had been rumours flying around the department since before they had arrived, and that was at seven thirty, so who knew what time all this had kicked off. But there were definite advantages to being quiet: both Lily and Ethan had heard every single wild tale circulating that morning. All of them centred around Sam, and his suspicious absence.

Connie looked directly at Lily and Ethan, whom she knew she could trust for information. "This is not the time to be quiet and respectful!" she said impatiently.

Lily knew her cheeks were turning red. She closed her eyes for a moment, clenching her hands around the side of the bed in front of her. Completely unable and unwilling to look up to make eye contact with the Clinical Lead, she began to speak. "I heard, from upstairs, that he resigned last night, with immediate effect."

After three days of being looked after, and, for all intents and purposes, thoroughly mothered, by Zoe, Dylan decided that enough was enough. He felt back to normal now, or as normal as things got inside his quite-anxiously-wired brain. He was also almost in acceptance that medication might be the way forward in dealing with the fact that his brain seemed, for now at least, to be wired more toward anxious than not. But it was time to get back to normal properly, and return to work,

"I don't understand why you're coming too," he said as they walked up the road to the hospital. "I'm perfectly capable of going to work."

Because he had improved so much from the first awful day of her return, Zoe could afford to speak to him in the same way she always used to. "But I'm not capable in the least of sitting on your boat all day, doing jack squat, that's why!" she said, pulling her box of cigarettes from her bag.

Dylan rolled his eyes at her choice of accessory for their walk. "You know, I walk to work because I enjoy the fresh air, not because I enjoy you polluting it with nicotine."

"Ah, but you missed me when I wasn't here," Zoe replied. She lit her cigarette, took a long draw from it and blew a plume of smoke into the air. It didn't surprise her that Dylan said nothing in response to this. She had missed him too. "You know, it's not all about you! I do have other friends in the department, and it'll be nice to see them again."

Walking through the front doors of the E.D., everyone was talking but it seemed that no-one was really listening.

"Noel, what's going on?" Zoe asked. She looked around – grumpy words were being exchanged by waiting patients as well as members of staff; whatever was going on was having fallout on waiting times so was quickly going to make anyone who worked here extremely unpopular as far as patients were concerned.

Noel held the phone slightly away from his ear. For all that he was stressed, it was obvious that he was trying to be kind to Zoe. "Nice to see you again, Dr Hanna. It's all a bit… Sam Strachan has gone, resigned, so we're a doctor down."

"Resigned?!" Zoe exclaimed. She supposed that she ought to be thankful that he'd waited until now to upset the balance of the department again. But still, how inconsiderate of him to leave before she'd had a chance to give him a piece of her mind, about the way he'd treated and put undue pressure on her friends.

At that moment, Connie walked over, obviously to come and question reception as to when the much-needed locum might be arriving. She was glad that Dylan was returning today: she wasn't sure how they would have coped if they had been a consultant down as well as a registrar. "Any success?" she asked Noel.

The receptionist shook his head.

Connie sighed. She turned to Zoe and Dylan. "Are you okay?" she asked of Dylan, wanting to say more but trying hard not to make him uncomfortable. Although, she reminded herself, there was little chance of that happening, when he was brushing shoulders with the other half of his double act, and under no threat whatsoever of Sam Strachan breathing down his neck. "Feeling better?"

"I'm fine," he assured her. "I will endeavour not to go crazy in the middle of your department, today."

"You did no such thing, and that's the last I want to hear of you pulling yourself apart like that. If you need to take a break, do it. We might be short-staffed, but for your piece of mind, we will cope for ten, fifteen minutes, whatever. Onwards and upwards though?" She hoped she didn't sound blasé about what had happened, because the last thing she wanted was to be insincere about Dylan's mental health.

"Onwards and upwards," Dylan agreed, although there was very little expression in his voice.

Noel was still battling to find a locum registrar, but all of a sudden, Zoe took the phone from his hand and returned it to its cradle.

"Zoe, what do you think you're doing?" Connie said, astonished.

Zoe was already taking off her jacket and removing a delicate silver bracelet from her wrist. "I thought you needed a locum?" She smiled hopefully.

Connie, slightly thunderstruck, took a moment before her face showed any sign of relief. "You haven't changed a bit, have you? Still drama first, explanations later. Are you sure?"

"Would I offer, if I wasn't? It'll make your life easier: you won't have to show a new body round the place or tell them how things work around here. You can jump through Hanssen's hoops later." Zoe seemed almost to be talking Connie into it, wheedling to get her way.

The Clinical Lead did not need much persuading. "Fine. Just don't do anything stupid. I might not have to jump through too many of Hanssen's hoops, as you put it, but I still don't want the burden of mountainous paperwork, should anything go wrong on your watch."

Zoe smiled warmly. "So, where do you want me first?"

Walking to the staff room to put her things into Dylan's locker, Zoe knew she wouldn't have to wait long for a sarcastic comment.

"How do you do that?" Dylan asked, falling into step with her.

"How do I do what?"

"How do you manage to be so damned problematic, and still have everyone eating out of the palm of your hand?"

Zoe smiled slyly. "Wouldn't you like to know!"

Dylan had thought that Connie's acceptance of him taking a break if he needed it was nothing more than a platitude; he hadn't believed or wanted to believe that throwing himself back into the deep end of the E.D. might be completely overwhelming. He had assumed there would be no better exposure therapy than just carrying on as if nothing happened. On reflection, he probably should have learned as much from the last time.

It was early afternoon, and he was striding out of the front doors without giving thought to the fact he was supposed to tell someone where he was going. He wasn't panicking, as such, and Dylan thought that maybe he should be grateful for that. But he couldn't be indebted to that fact, when, instead of panicking, he was just unbearably anxious. 'Just' in the loosest sense of the word, because if anything merited use of that word, it probably wasn't this stomach-churning, reality-bending anxiety. The E.D. had become too loud, all at once, sending his head spiralling into thoughts he couldn't handle when surrounded by people who, with the exception of Zoe, Lily, and possibly Connie, didn't care about him in the slightest. His day had not been improved by the malicious silences which still followed him like an unwelcome shadow. He wanted to shout at them, tell them that it wasn't news to him that he was probably crazy. He didn't need their obvious contempt of him to add to what he was only just managing to keep a lid upon.

It was as though his feet were carrying him on divine instruction – he couldn't think of another reason why he would find himself in this exact spot, the place where he had found Cal bleeding out on the concrete. There were still flowers and cards against the wall, and Cal's photograph in a simple frame. Dylan was glad it hadn't rained in a few days: reaching the end of what pacing could do for his anxiety, he sat down on the pavement, resting his head back against the wall. If anyone saw you now, that familiar unkind voice reminded him, they'd think you looked terribly arrogant, sitting like that, where he lay dying. It wasn't his first and of course, it wouldn't be his last intrusive thought, but it was unpleasant all the same. Dylan folded slightly, his chin touching his chest and his linked hands on the back of his neck. If he couldn't get used to working hereagain, if he couldn't make peace with what had happened, then what would he do next? In a sudden moment of madness, he wondered whether, despite his fear of flying, whether Zoe might pull some strings with Nick and secure him a job out in Michigan, far away from all of this. But he couldn't sit for thirteen hours on a likely turbulent flight. And he couldn't walk away from Holby, not really. He didn't have many people to say goodbye to, only Lily and Will, andRita, if he wouldn't be too afraid to pick up the phone and tell her that he was chickening out of everything here. But he couldn't just leave his job. Rita might have had leverage with Connie to work a tiny notice, but he didn't have that. And he had the boat to dealwith, and Alice! Who would look after her, if he decided to drop everything and move halfway around the world?

Zoe looked at her watch. Dylan had been a while. She narrowed her eyebrows, and stepped out of the ED. Looking across the tarmac, she couldn't see him anywhere. Hopefully he wasn't alone, panicking somewhere.

"Dylan?" she called uncertainly, unsurprised when no response came.

Dylan thought that he might have heard Zoe's voice, carried on the wind from the direction of the doors. He looked up, but there was an ambulance in the way. He couldn't see anything.

And then he saw something that might just qualify for the cliché of "everything."

A shirt, or was it a jacket? It was grey, or perhaps it should have been, were it not for the presence of a decaying slick of blood staining the fabric. It was hanging lazily out of the bin closest to where Dylan was sitting, and its appearance was enough to shake Dylan straight out of his anxious state and bring him back to life. He stood up, and cautious approached the bin. He looked down onto it. This area hadn't been long re-opened to the public, it had been a crime scene for a long time. And it looked as though something vital had been missed from the "scouring" which had apparently been undertaken by the Scene of Crime Officers in the weeks after Cal had been killed.

If Dylan wasn't very much mistaken, he was staring at the jacket Scott Ellisson had been wearing on the night his father died, and the night that Cal had lost his life.

Careful not to touch the jacket, for fear of somehow being wrongly implicated in all of this, Dylan walked around the bin to get a good look at the jacket. He wanted to be sure, but in his heart of hearts he had known he was right from the moment his eyes fell upon it. Hands shaking, he pulled his phone from his trouser pocket, and from his opposite pocket, the little card he hadn't been able to put down since it was handed to him by that young police officer the first time he had been questioned about what happened to Cal. It took three rings for the call to be answered – which was enough for Dylan to feel his heart rising into his throat.

"Hello? This – My name is Dr Dylan Keogh and I'm calling from Holby City Hospital. I think – I think I've found something relating to the murder of my colleague, Dr Caleb Knight."

Back to present

At first, neither Lily nor Ethan could believe what they were hearing. They sat numbly, in complete silence.

"I know it must be difficult to take in," the police officer said gently, "but you need to know that I think it would be almost impossible for Mr Ellisson to be found innocent, after this."

"Do you truly mean that?" Lily said, knowing that Ethan wouldn't be able to say anything more to this woman, not tonight.

The police officer bit her lip. "I'm not in the habit of lying about things like this."

Lily turned to Ethan, and gripped his hand. "I think it's all nearly over," she whispered. And then to the officer, she said, "I'll show you out, thank you so much for your time."

Lily had no sooner pressed the front door closed when she heard Ethan coming out of the living room. She turned around, and she could tell at once from his face that the news had sunk in. There were tears of relief in his eyes, and it was clear that he felt conflicted over whether he could smile or not. His smile was winning though. He came up to her and picked her up, lifting her off the floor before spinning her around with joy.

"It's real, Lily," he said, keeping her off the ground but leaning her slightly against the wall. "He's going to prison for what he did, I can feel it." He was almost giddied by the release that the news had brought him. He kissed Lily, and then both of them were smiling, eyes closed, immobilised by the sheer liberation of knowing that someone was going to be held accountable for the pain they had felt in these last few months.

Lily broke up the kiss, fantastic as it was. "I know it's real, now put me down, before we wake the kids up!" But she wasn't cross. She couldn't be cross with him. Not when this news seemed to have taken away the years that the stress of his brother's death had put on him.

He didn't put her down. He carried her back into the living room and dropped her down on the sofa, before flopping down next to her, his smile still wide on his face. He looked up at the ceiling, stretching his arms behind his head. "Oh. My. Goodness," he said excitedly. He took a deep breath in, and let it out all at once. He looked at his wife. "If Cal was here, he'd probably get really drunk, to celebrate."

"I don't know about drunk," Lily replied drily, "since I seem to remember several instances in which copious amounts of alcohol have served neither of us well." She raised one eyebrow, as if daring him to disagree. "However, if celebration is what you're after, I can probably offer you a glass of white wine from the fridge, and that's about as exciting as you're going to get."

"What's your sarcasm for?" Ethan asked, all innocence. "That sounds absolutely perfect."

Zoe looked up from her phone, with which she'd been reading a news update. "Dylan?" she called, knowing that he was getting changed after a shower and might not have heard her. "Dylan?" Her voice was louder this time.

Dylan opened his bedroom door. His hair was still wet, but he was fully dressed. "What?"

"Someone's been arrested and charged for what happened to Cal." She'd read the article twice, and still the news was stubbornly refusing to settle in her head.

"Good, I should think so too." He sounded bored, but Zoe knew at once that he was putting it on. "Is that all? My hair is dripping down my back."

"As if you've ever cared about that!" Zoe said, mocking him gently. "You're avoiding something, Keogh, and I will find out."

Dylan hummed in response, seemingly not caring, before he rolled his eyes and closed the door.

Zoe read the news update again. Ellisson was arrested after a vital piece of evidence was found outside Holby City Hospital, which tied him to the area and the murder of Dr Caleb Knight, who had been a registrar in the hospital's emergency department. The person who found the conclusive evidence chose to remain anonymous, however we have reason to believe it may have been another doctor from the hospital. Questions will no doubt be raised within the police force as to why it took this length of time for such evidence to be uncovered.

That afternoon, she had gone looking for Dylan, after he had excused himself from resus and taken a long time to return. She hadn't looked very far, because no sooner had she come outside, Iain and Jez had pulled up with a new patient. Could it be the case that Dylan was the one who had found this 'vital' piece of evidence? To her knowledge, no-one else had left the department at that time, and certainly no-one would have ended up in that precise spot.

She got up from the sofa and strode across the room. Banging on his bedroom door, she said, loudly and with great confidence: "Alright, Detective Inspector Keogh, the game is up. I know it was you."

On the other side of the door, Dylan froze. He felt his heart beat faster and harder. He refused to allow himself to panic over this. It was Zoe, behind the door, not a mob of journalists, not a crowd from work ready to run him into the ground. It was his best friend. And still, he found himself slumping against the back of his bedroom door, sitting against the wood to block out the world. His thoughts were swirling dangerously. He'd done a good thing, hadn't he? In finding that shirt, he had pretty much ensured that Scott would be sent down for what he did. But the fact that he had only found it because he was outside the E.D., panicking, lessened its impact significantly. A very small part of his brain was mumbling away about this being an unfair payback to Ethan for the way he had acted lately, and it was this part that Dylan wanted to silence the most. The rest was inane chatter, probably something he could deal with, but he couldn't stand his mind punishing him for something that he knew intrinsically was the right thing to do.

On her side of the door, Zoe heard Dylan sit down heavily on the floor. She tried the door again, and rolled her eyes when she realised that her friend was blocking her entry to his room in this most basic, almost childlike way. Defeated, she sat against this side of the door.

"Do you want to tell what's going on in that head of yours?" she said, loud enough that she would be heard, but careful to be gentle as well.

"Not particularly, no." Dylan replied straight away. His knees were pulled up to his chest and his head rested on his hands. Then, words were tumbling from his mouth before he had a chance to keep tabs on what he was saying. "I chose my right to remain anonymous, okay? I've seen the same report you were reading, and I guess that right has been taken away from me by some cowardly, scummy journalist. I didn't want anyone to know it was me. I've done enough, I don't want to be involved anymore. I only found that shirt because I was outside the E.D., not coping with being at work, and that completely takes away whatever valour and brilliance you've no doubt attached to me picking up the phone to call that officer."

"Dylan, stop, please," said Zoe. "Let me tell you my spin on what you just said, before you tear yourself to bits. I can't stand listening to you tell yourself that your panic in any way detracts from the fact you did a good thing today. I don't care how many mean words have crossed between you and Ethan, but I know that if he knew you were the one to put this Scott Ellisson in prison, then none of that would matter anymore. And it might be hard for you to take, but you can't help but be involved in this. You were there when Cal died, so you're always going to be implicated somehow. No matter what your brain tries to tell you, it's lying, you did what you could, the same as anyone else would have done. I'm so proud of you for trying. No-one could ask any more of you than that. But today, you went above and beyond. What you did was important, and it matters, okay?"

Still struggling to believe everything that he was being told, Dylan felt ashamed of the tear that snaked its way down his cheek. He scrubbed it away without remorse. "I wish you didn't have to go back," he said, his voice gruff but his tone indifferent; he definitely hadn't approved this sentence before it had escaped his brain.

Zoe stood up silently. "Dylan, open the door, or so help me God I will find a way to break it down whether you're sitting behind it or not."

Dylan let out a breath through his nose, almost laughing. He stood up slowly, quietly, hoping to catch Zoe out. "Well, since you asked so nicely," he said sarcastically. He finally opened the door, hoping that she might still be sitting there and might fall backwards. He was surprised to see her standing, facing him.

She chose deliberately not to hug him, because he so rarely appreciated it. "You can't get me that easily." Examining his appearance closely, she broke the best news Dylan had heard in a long time. "Who said I was going back? I haven't booked my return flight yet."

It took Zoe greatly by surprise to feel her best friend suddenly holding her in a tight hug.