3.30 am. As she took in the blurred numbers spelled out in harsh green lights on the face of the clock she let out a small groan. Despite the fact that she was more exhausted than she had ever been she couldn't sleep. Every time she shut her eyes she saw his face but not how she would like to remember it. Instead she saw only the flash of fear and pain in his eyes that appeared when he realised what had happened. His expression haunted her more than the memory of the blood seeping from the wound faster than she could stem the flow and more than his cry of agony when she had pressed her hands hard against the wound in his abdomen in a desperate attempt to save him. Every detail of that day – from the admission of the man who had killed him to the moment when she realised she couldn't save him and instead put her arms around him and held his lifeless body to her – was etched on her mind. Even so, it was the expression on his face that chilled her to the bone as she fell back into a restless sleep full of nightmares.
She was talking to Tricia, giving the older woman orders, treating her as though she was a lower life form. She was so involved in the conversation that she was having that she barely noticed the commotion taking place on Keller ward until she heard Lisa's voice rise with panic. Turning in surprise she saw a sight that made her blood run cold. A patient – her patient – was on his feet and shouting for what sounded like morphine. In his hand a blade glinted sinisterly and with a sinking heart she realised that he had taken a scalpel and was using it to threaten someone. Someone who was too damn stubborn to allow themselves to be threatened. Tricia immediately forgotten she made her way briskly across the ward, her own strident tones joining in the uproar but her voice didn't sound quite like her own. On seeing who was being threatened it took on a different edge. It was tinged with fear but sounded strangely calm as she instructed the patient to put down his weapon so they could talk properly. When this didn't work she attempted to reason with him and prayed that security had been called as she watched him become more agitated. When security didn't come a horrible realisation dawned – there was not a single person present who was willing to risk further antagonising this man by reaching for the phone and alerting the relevant emergency service. Instead they all stood in rapt horror waiting for Connie to rectify the situation but she didn't know how. Out of desperation she looked to Ric, silently pleading with him to stop being so stubborn and let the man at the drugs trolley – she would rather deal with a junkie with an OD than a colleague who had been stabbed, any day of the week. At this moment the junkie lost it and the latter became a harsh reality. He jerked forward and before she knew what was happening, had driven the metal implement that he had wielded into Ric's side. She watched as he stumbled like a wounded animal and fell to the ground as his killer pulled the knife from him and held it aloft, as if it was some kind of trophy. Her legs started working long before her brain did and she found herself propelled towards him, her own wrist coming into collision with the desperate young man but the sharp pain that shot up her left arm barely registered. Within seconds she was trying to stem the bleeding but it was useless – from the blood that spurted forth from the wound in time with his rapidly depleting heart beat she could tell that the scalpel had struck lucky and hit an artery. Still she battled to help him, packing the deceptively small wound with every swab, pack and dressing that she could lay her hands on in a futile attempt to save him. As she worked helplessly she saw the last of the colour drain from his face and she realised that he really had gone. At that moment the world fell away and she took him in her arms and held him one last time, feeling him slip away from her as his body became a dead weight in her arms. It was only when Chrissie gently took him from her that she realised that the blood that covered her was not all Ric's – there was a large wound running down her forearm that she had clearly sustained in her own brief tussle with the man who was now being forcibly restrained by Mark. Looking at the blood coming from her own body and the lifeless body that lay beyond it the world started to spin.
6.30 am. The nightmare woke her with a start and she realised that she was trembling having just relieved the whole terrible day in it's entirety. As her breathing returned to normal she rolled onto her back and looked at the window, surprised, as she was every morning, that the sun continued to rise. Since his death every morning that she woke and saw the sun felt like a supreme achievement. It meant that no matter how dead she might feel inside, she had lasted another night without him. Another night without ripping open the stitches that ran the length of her left arm and allowing herself to bleed to death. She knew that the last thing that he would have wanted was for her to stop living just because he had been forced to. If he was here he'd be demanding that she went out and found herself a nice man to take her mind off her loss but it wasn't something that she could contemplate. After Ric no other man would stand a chance. After Ric she found it difficult to hold down a conversation – particularly with one of her staff – without wishing that it had been someone else that had been killed. It would still have been terrible, still a tragedy and still her fault but at least she would have had Ric to get her through it. With him beside her she could get through anything. Alone she felt as though she was constantly stumbling in the dark, making error after error has she battled to keep on moving. She hadn't always been so dependant – she could remember a time when she had relied on no one. During her marriage to Michael – back when it was a proper marriage and not just a sham that got wheeled out at the occasional charity ball where he wanted an respectable woman on his arm – had he died she would have coped. She would have been upset, possibly even devastated, but it wouldn't have destroyed her as this had. Perhaps it was the pressure of knowing that she had her own part in his death or perhaps she had loved Ric in a way that she had never loved Michael but she could see no way back to the light from the dark hell of her own mind. She felt as though she was drowning in grief and she didn't know how to save herself from going under. All she knew was that she had never felt more alone than she did lying here in the bed which they had shared without him beside her. For years she had slept in this bed alone but now it felt like her own personal prison. She wouldn't sleep – she was too worked up – so instead she got up and prepared to start another interminably long day.
7 am. A blue convertible pulled into the car park, glistening in the half-light of the sunrise but no one paid a lot of attention to it. For the gathered masses it was just another day at the grindstone but for the woman stepping from the car it was something quite different. She hadn't been back since the day the man she loved had died in her arms on one of these wards and now the idea of returning to the place where she had lost everything she had – everything that was worth having – filled her with dread. She was early for the meeting but she didn't mind. Lying alone in that large, empty bed was slowly sending her crazy and somehow being at the hospital seemed like an improvement. The moment that Diane Lloyd emerged from her car she knew that she was wrong. There was something worse than lying alone in the bed that they had shared. Seeing in the eyes of someone who had once held respect for you a look of contempt, disgust and disappointment. Despite the hurt that raged within her at the young doctors expression she couldn't tear her eyes from the other woman's face as the world moved listlessly around her. It was only when Diane averted her eyes and pointedly walked past her without a word that she realised that she was being stared at. News travelled fast in Holby – she'd forgotten just how fast – and now half of the staff had congregated to witness their fallen leader's return. Suddenly she felt a great deal of sympathy for the fish that lived a thankless existence in Michael's aquarium – her every move was being watched with an unsettling level of interest and she didn't know what to do. She couldn't go to her office – it had been taken over by all manner of people wishing to investigate the crime which had taken place on a seemingly normal Tuesday morning at the hospital. She couldn't go anywhere else in the hospital without an audience. She was stuck until she felt a firm hand grip her shoulder and she turned, knowing who was behind her. She would know the touch of his hand on her skin anywhere despite the fact that it had been months or even years since she had felt it.
'We'll go to my office' he said firmly, seemingly unfazed by her dishevelled and exhausted appearance that was a million miles away from the woman he had married. With a dismissive flick of his wrist the crowds dispersed and he walked away, taking great strides towards the lift leaving her trailing in his wake. For a moment she wondered whether today he would chose to save her career or break her career. In the next moment she realised that she no longer really cared.
