As soon as I finished In Search of Trust, and while I was tying up the end of that fic, I knew exactly what would happen to 'my' Dylan and Sam following her realisation that she was at long last pregnant again. This fic is not a normal, linear story (mostly because I didn't quite want to commit to that style of storytelling this time!) but a collection of oneshots, all based on songs (I have a slight obsession with attaching music to my writing) and all set at different points in the time following the epilogue of In Search of Trust. I hope you enjoy them.

'Pro filia, vevo ego' is Latin. I won't give the translation yet (if you want to look it up, that's your call!) because I don't want to give too much away!

A/N - I've re-uploaded both chapters minus the song lyrics, because I've realised that's a big no-no! Definitely don't need a suspension of my account or worse.

Count on Me by Bruno Mars

10 weeks pregnant

"I'm sorry," Sam whispered, sitting against the bathroom wall and watching Dylan as he wrung out a flannel that he'd just run under the cold tap. He passed it over to her, and she gratefully pressed it first to her forehead then the back of her neck. It was shortly after two in the morning; they were both on early shifts that began in a matter of hours.

"Don't be sorry," he insisted.

"I didn't mean to wake you, though. You're in work early, the same as I am."

"I think you'd be within your rights to call in sick, Samantha." Oops. He hadn't intended to sound quite so patronising. "This is the fourth night in a row that you've not slept —"

"— and neither have you, and I don't hear you volunteering to call in sick," she said bitterly. "I'm pregnant, not ill." She closed her eyes and rested her head back. She heard Dylan stand up from where he perched on the edge of the bath, and felt him sit next to her. His hand closed around hers. She spoke quietly, almost weakly. "I didn't mean to snap at you. I just… I can't. This is important to me." Looking down at her flat stomach, she rested a hand on it gently.

Dylan sighed sympathetically. "This is important to me too."

He'd understood her sleepy mumble of I can't, perfectly. Until she reached that safer mark of 12 weeks, they would keep their news to themselves. However, this meant that Sam was struggling on with very little sleep and feeling unwell through most shifts, with no support except for stolen moments with him. She was apologetic every time that he stopped what he was doing, whether that was working, sleeping, reading, watching television or anything at all, to be with her when she was sick or feeling poorly — not realising that he would do it all again in a heartbeat. They'd spent too long as a couple, not doing things the right way. And they'd had one chance at this before, that had been cruelly cut short before it had really begun. Now, he was determined to be there, no matter what, for Sam and for their baby.

They sat together on the bathroom floor as Sam's waves of nausea crashed around them. Dylan felt entirely helpless: the best he could do was hold her hair back from her face when she threw up.

"I wish I could be more useful," he murmured.

She squeezed his hand, gritting her teeth and closing her eyes in an attempt to ride out the urge to vomit again. "This is enough," she reassured. She leaned on his shoulder and let out a slow breath. "Thank you."

He turned and kissed the top of her head gently. "I love you."

"Even when I smell like vomit?"

He smiled. "I don't recall it making any difference at King's."

Sam let out half a laugh. "Wow, don't you just know how to woo a woman!" She remembered the day he referred to in sharp clarity.

Dylan shrugged and held her to him. While a soft, caring gesture, it was also partially a diagnostic tool – she was no longer as tense as she'd been when trying to keep down the contents of her stomach. Unless something changed in the next few seconds, she might be alright again.

"Do you want to try going back to bed?" he asked after a while.

She nodded tentatively. "I think so. It's easing."

"I'll go and sort you a glass of water, okay?" He stood up, and held out a hand to help her do the same.

"Dylan, no, you need the sleep."

He shook his head. "It'll take a few minutes, and I need to know you're looked after, more than I need the sleep."

Sam would dispute this until the end of days, but she was powerless to argue so she nodded in agreement and returned to bed. Lack of sleep had been a warning she missed, the last time things went… amiss, with his OCD. But that was behind them. This was their future, though hopefully it would not be punctuated with dizzy spells, nausea and vomiting for too much longer.

"Hello? Ambulance service, can you call out to us so we know where you are?"

It was lucky that this call had come from an assisted living facility: it was much easier to be let into a flat by a warden, than have to beg unhelpful neighbours for a key or attempt to force entry to a house to reach a patient. A muffled shout from the next room directed them to where they were needed.

A frail, elderly woman lay on the floor by a floral armchair, embarrassment written all over her face. "I'm awfully sorry that you have to spend your morning having your time taken up by me, just an old biddy fallen from her chair," she said sheepishly, colour flooding the cheeks hollowed by old age.

"Don't be daft," Sam said kindly, "You're not taking up our time, we're just doing our job. And this morning, our job happens to be making sure you've not done any damage by slipping off that chair."

The old lady smiled. "I expect you want to know if I hit my head, what my name is and whether I know what day it is?"

Iain laughed. "You after our jobs?"

She regarded him with vague amusement. "I didn't hit my head, my name is Patsy and it's Tuesday."

"Very good," Sam remarked, nodding encouragingly and turning to the warden for a moment for medical information he might be able to share.

"And nothing of the sort, young man," Patsy went on to Iain. "I know the questions well enough to say them backwards in my sleep, that's all." When Iain raised his eyebrows curiously, she carried on, suddenly quietly proud of her story. "I was in the Nursing Corps in the War, deployed to northern France."

Iain's mouth fell open a little, before he remembered that he was there to do a job, first and foremost. "We served too, me and my colleague – in Afghanistan. Medical Corps."

Patsy nodded, relaxing visibly. "I can trust you to look after me, then?"

Sam knelt on the floor, back at Patsy's level, having overheard most of the preceding conversation. "Of course you can, nothing less than the best for you." She assessed Patsy's awkward position on the floor. "Where does it hurt?"

Though it would have been exceptional to ask Patsy purely about what she'd seen of medicine in the War, if she was prepared to talk about that, there was the small matter of the job at hand. Sam and Iain assessed her diligently, glad to have quickly gained her trust through their shared military connection.

Once she was stable and in a more comfortable position, Sam glanced around the room. A graduation photograph stood proudly on the mantelpiece, the newest of the large collection of frames around the room.

"Is there anyone who can meet you at the hospital, Patsy?" she asked hopefully.

"Oh, do I really need to end up there?" Patsy replied, not answering the question.

"'Fraid so, sunshine," Iain said. "We've got to get this hip looked at, just in case. We can't go letting anything slide, not with a lady of the War."

Patsy grew a little in her bird-like frame. "I was there on D-Day, you know?" She said it so nonchalantly, before finally answering Sam's question. "My grandson's in Bristol. He works at the university, in the history department. That's his photo up there, when he earned his doctorate."

Sam, who was reeling from Patsy's further revelation about her past, said, as soothingly as she could, "We'll get in touch with him, make sure he gets over here to see you, alright? Least we can do." She rubbed Patsy's arm comfortingly.

Sam breathed shallowly, trying to angle herself away from the smell coming from the kebab box on the ambulance dashboard. They were driving back to base for lunch, a novelty in itself, but if they didn't get there soon then Sam knew she would alert all of Iain's suspicions and her secret-keeping would be over. He already thought it strange that she'd rejected the offer of a kebab for herself, but if she threw his out of the window of a moving ambulance her life would not be worth living, not to mention such an act would be followed by questions she did not yet wish to answer.

Her stomach rolled again, and she fixed her eyes out of the windscreen, holding every muscle in her body tense and still.

Iain sensed that something was off with Sam. He assumed it was the tail-end of whatever had caused her to keel over last week, so all he wanted to do was distract her and get her back to base in time to get her blood sugar up a bit, before he was treated to a repeat performance. "Did she have a lot to say, about the war, then?"

Sam hummed thoughtfully. "Yeah, she did. I suppose at a hundred and one, she's far enough away to talk about it a bit more easily. I could listen to her for days, it's one of those things people shouldn't forget, y'know?"

"You sound like Dylan," Iain said, chuckling. "I'm surprised you weren't taking notes for him, back there."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Shut up," she said, managing a weak smile as she gazed out of the open window. It was true though, that she'd have one very jealous Dylan at home that evening, or perhaps one furious that she'd given that particular patient to Connie and not him.

"Sam, can I have a word?" said Jan, who had had quite enough of the lacking explanation of Sam's staunch disgust at what would usually have been her first choice of a quick lunch between call-outs.

Sam ran a hand through her hair and dragged it quickly back into a bun as she stood up and followed Jan to the office.

"Someone's in trouble," Iain joked in a singsong voice.

It took some serious self-control not to make a rude gesture in his direction.

"Is there something wrong?" Sam asked innocently. As far as she could think of, there was no reason for her to be called into the office. It had been a good while since she'd done something worthy of a talking-to, and in the last week especially she'd made every effort to do things exactly by the book in terms of keeping herself safe.

"You tell me!" Jan replied, her unbreaking gaze becoming piercing very quickly. "You're not eating, which is a first." She raised her eyebrows. "You've been dizzy more than just last week. You might think you've been hiding it, and you might have got it past Iain but you've certainly not got it past me."

"I – I am eating, just not… I'm fine," she insisted, realising that this would only raise Jan's suspicions more.

"Well, you're obviously not. You're not yourself at all, Sam – I've never seen you be so careful."

Sam spotted an opportunity. "Isn't that what you want, though? A good paramedic who can do the job and follow instructions without running head first into –"

"– Not if that means my team being different," Jan said pointedly. "You're not yourself at all; if I didn't know any better, I'd think you were..."

Sam looked down at her lap guiltily.

Jan's expression softened considerably. "Sam, is there anything you need to tell me?" She watched Sam's face: the young woman looked conflicted alongside hopelessly caught out. "Look, you're not in any trouble. Obviously. I was just worried about you, that's all. I'm too used to you rushing around, getting yourself into hot water at every opportunity. But if there's something I can do, as your boss, to keep you safe, then I can't do that without the necessary information."

"All right," Sam said quietly. "I'm pregnant."

Jan smiled, though Sam was still looking at her hands and didn't see. She'd thought as much, from the first delicately refused invitation to the pub.

"We didn't want to tell anyone… Dylan and me, I mean. Not until I'm twelve weeks at least." She looked up at Jan, her face falling. "I miscarried once. Ten years ago, when I was home from a deployment. No-one knew at all, apart from us. So it's not like I perfected the art of breaking the news."

"There's no great art to it, love," Jan said, her voice rich in sympathy. "I'm sorry that that happened to you. But you got through it, you've got another chance now – and you can count on me keeping quiet."
"Really?"

"It's hardly my news to share." She reached for her cup of coffee. "Congratulations, anyway. Keep me in the loop if anything changes, won't you? And tell me if you're not feeling well. There are ways around things."

Sam nodded eagerly, suddenly feeling that a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.