Slowly her eyes begin to flicker, the piercing sterile light gives the room an almost starkly angelic over view, attempting to lift the inanimate object from her face she's stopped by the pain scaling up her arms, into her mind and concocting in a groggy moan of discontent. Slowly a figure rises from sleep in the steadfast chair at her side, it's her husband, his face red raw from tears, his eyeballs blood shot and weepy as he rubs his face clear. Gently his hands lift the oxygen mask away, she coughs slightly, spluttering till he reaches for the glass of water, "only sips Con, you still aren't out of the woods yet," he whispers, holding the cup at just such an angle so she can sip without drenching herself.
"What, what happened?" she croaks, her voice hoarse from the stomach tube they've put down to ingest the sizeable amount of c r a p she's taken, she's physically pinned to the bed by drips re-hydrating her, blood transfusions replacing the damaging amount of volume loss. They're being careful that her heart won't give way any more, restarting it wasn't pleasant, all said and done she's in a state. It takes a few moments for her to encompass the room; another man is stood in the corner, facing listlessly out of the window to the bustling Saturday morning traffic, slowly she recognises his features, the sultry dark skin, the tightly maintained chest that she knows so well, the one thing she doesn't know is the scowl berating on his features. The frown he never wore, not once. Yet does today.
As she closes her aching eyes to the bright neon light the visions of the past few hours flood her mind in a vindictive, patchy, distorted flow. She remembers them finding her in the graveyard, the ambulance coming as she passed out from the lethal combination of blood loss and drunken intoxication, the stray memory of being in the emergency department, a number to their statistics. The rest is blank, gone, erased or never created. "Michael, what happened?" she asks again, more quietly this time, scared by his answer, worried by his lack of response.
"How much do you actually remember?" he states softly, taking up a gentle stroking motion on the vacant patch of skin on her arm, the other man is surplus to requirements, instead of sticking around to watch the inevitably kitsch admonition reunion, the unbearably sweet profession of love, he swiped his coat from the end of the bed and closes the door briskly.
"I remember loosing the case," she begins slowly, pausing to try and grasp a bigger, clearer picture of what's been happening, "you guys found me, and then it goes blank," her voice fills up with the choking noise as sobs rack her damaged body. It pained him to see her like that, without the ability to remember, it takes him back to being a student the numerous occasions that he'd come home to know little more than going out the flat door and collapsing on the floor, if he was lucky.
Letting a tear grace his desert dry cheek he cleared his throat before recounting the details "well shortly after we found you fell unconscious from the deep cut you'd made on your wrist, you were taken to the emergency department where they also discovered that you were several times over the legal limit and on the slippery slope to not making it. All said and done they took you to theatre to repair the damaged ligaments and then they moved you here to keep an eye on you," he stops to take a breath as she shakes her head in protest, loosing control is a downward spiral, start and it's a h e l l of a fight back. One that she'd only just dawned on, far from it being Mount Everest; this fight would be different; personal.
"You're not going to be going anywhere for weeks as it stands, they're not sure about the damage done to you liver, and I've managed to talk the doctors round to giving you counselling and not a psychiatric referral," he lets a kiss fall on her arm as he continues his speech, "I thought I'd lost you Connie, I thought you'd gone," seeing his tears begin to cradle in his clenched hands, filling her heart with an odd sense of overwhelm, unable to move only quantifying the anguish as the idea of him possessing something close to an emotion bore heavy on her soul. "I need some air," he concedes eventually, standing up and leaving the room quietly and swiftly.
"You've managed to break that man as well as yourself," the other man announces as his pacing grows more towards the end of the bed, not quite reaching it yet not staying as far in the distance.
"It wasn't meant to happen like this," she mutters in defeat, tired out from the antics she's been up to. Giving answers to his questions now is stupid, tiredness, rebound and too full of guilt to be clear. He knows that. She knows that yet they still continue in the painful silence to obtain some sort of answer.
"Well how the hell was it supposed to happen, were Michael and I supposed to just ignore the fact you drank yourself into a stupor a professional alcoholic would struggle to reach," his voice is vulnerable, the anger isn't there with his heart, it's more a confused rush of emotion piling up to the final effect.
"I felt bad about loosing the case," the tone suggested she was merely talking about the weather, not the near miss death had collided on her.
"Connie you could have had the decency to explain that to us, we could easily have given you space without the need to go on a self inflicted bender,"
"You think it's easy, you think it's been fun to go through all of this, because y'know life is just so much the better for having gone through this," the reply is calculated, strong for her condition and to the point.
"No, of course it's not been easy, I've gone through it all with you Connie, I've sat by your side when you've been drunk out of your skull, slicing your arms open with a razor, whilst you wretched for all your worth, I've sat through it all and do you see me on a self destruction flake out?" he's using all the might he can muster to prevent him boiling over into rage, fury and regret.
"What am I supposed to say?" she countered, making failed attempts at shuffling into a more comfortable position on the bed. He's calculating some sort of acceptable answer; something no one ever lets on about but merely lapses into a momentary daydream whilst letting the opposition squirm.
"Not a whole lot, but I think I've got something to say," he pauses, it suddenly becomes clear that he isn't going into this lightly, the crossfire of wrinkles on his forehead manifests this, rubbing chin thoughtfully he smiles in his usual way, the cover up any form of emotion type way. "Kumi sent me a letter a few weeks ago,"
"And, Ric a letter from your brother isn't much, I'm assuming it was happy news," she asks, letting her eyes glance round the otherwise empty room, landing up at the foot of her bed, a place which seems extremely interesting at this point in time.
"Actually," he stops, his fingers dance awkwardly on the folds of the covers, "the fighting in Ghana has worsened and as a result the hospital is under increasing stress and Lisa and Abra need more help than Ghana can offer,"
"What, Ric you're leaving Britain to go to a war zone where the only return ticket is in a body bag?" sounding concerned he sits himself down, rubbing the spot on her arm devoid of tape of tubing.
"Yes, I think you and I need time apart and you and Michael need to sort out where you're going, staying together or separating, not in limbo like you are now," he lets a finger creep onto the tears that well in her eyes, it hits him how much he's getting through to her, leaving her isn't easy yet it feels correct in the current situation.
"When do you leave?" she asks, shaking her head away from his affections, returning her gaze towards the end of the bed, if she were able a pinch would hopefully wake her up enough to realise it's all a bad dream.
"In a couple of days, I've got to return to Holby for some stuff and then I leave,"
"How long?"
"How long is a piece of string Connie, war over there is unpredictable, it's impossible to say," he lets a kiss fall on her arm, "It's for the best though, it doesn't mean I love you any less, absences makes the heart grow fonder and all,"
"I thought what I needed was close monitoring, not a continent of space," her voice is angry and mocking.
"You need support and time to get right back on track, stay here, get some peaceful rest, get back on form and I'll be waiting, but till then I'm not going to let you beat yourself down any more, you're more than all of this, more than drinking, harming, more amazing than all of that, me being around is stopping you. Let Michael take things over, let him help, just move on," stopping himself from going any further he let another kiss lace on her puffy forehead, the first flicker of motion reaching her fingers as he stood up, grasping them delicately.
"Don't go," she replies simply, losing any streak of being an adult in her voice, sounding like a child waving her daddy to work for the first day at the office, looking up to him as a tower of strength.
"I have to Connie, do visit when you're ready though, yeah?" his hand rests on the door handle, turning back he watches her smile, knowing she's beginning to accept it, knowing love hurts and that time will let her rekindle her sprit for life, kick something back into her passion and make her more.
"Yeah will do, and Ric," she stops, waiting for him to look back.
"Yeah?" he smiles, holding the gaze for what seems like minutes…
"Take care," he bows his head as she gives him a cheeky wink, letting the door slip quietly behind him he spies Michael in the corridor, nodding briefly before stopping, taking the first foot away from her, the hardest step he could ever make, the one that he know is right, yet wrong, yet right.
A flash of the swing door and bang, he's gone……