Jo has always had a special approach to medication. Tea is better than hard drugs, anti-histomines cure almost everything, and calpol should be taken twice a day whether you're sick or not. Just for the strawberry taste, and the bitterness after.
Mi-5 has taught her how to put plasters on gunshot wounds. In the last seven months she's broken more bones than she can name, and every month she gives money to the NHS Blood Drive, because she knows she'll probably need most of it. At this point, she's not sure whether most of what's in her body was even hers originally.
Tea and calpol and sticking plasters are the stuff of life. And painkillers. Jo has always allowed herself one painkiller for every source of pain. If she follows that theory tonight, she'll almost certainly kill herself. And yet it feels disrespectful not to devote a painkiller to each of her tears.
Mum's cancer. Dad's drinking. Adam's imminent mental breakdown. Alex, her brother, and his caustic little girlfriend. Colin's death, still. Each of those poor seven men from Cotterdam. Her own failed journalistic ambitions. The fact that she's alone in an apartment that's not even hers. And, of course, Ruth.
It is about Ruth and not about Ruth. She is only one in a long lines of faces, the lost, the broken. Someone like Harry, who's been in this job for years, she doesn't know how he copes. And now he's acting like a widower, like she's dead, or he's dead, or the universe has broken down. Jo would need an entirely separate painkiller to mourn Harry's feelings for Ruth.
But, Ruth was kind to her when she first started at Thames House. Didn't tire of explaining every tiny protocol five times, silently corrected her countless erros in the first five weeks. If nothing else, she can take one for Ruth. Just to numb the dull, soundless edge in her head, blurring her vision.
One for Ruth. One for Harry, too, then. They are inexorably linked. And Colin is deader, more firmly gone than Ruth. Fiona. Then Adam. And, none of them even compare to her own family. They are only work, albeit a close and binding work.
She slides down the counter, fingers shaking. One for her Mum. One for Dad. Alex, and it's time to get started on the nameless.
When the phone rings, she almost weeps. She drops the bottle of pills and crawls to it, tiny red-and-white tablets spilling everywhere, like blood against pale skin.
It's 3am, and he doesn't wait for her to speak. That's good. She's not sure if she could, just now.
"Jo? It's Adam. Look, could you…could you come over?"
Adam has saved her life many times. It's possible she's even returned the favour. She nods, and then realises he can't actually see her, and manages a shaky "yes".
She can hear him breathing on the other end of the phone. She knows he still thinks of Fiona, after all this time, that there aren't enough painkillers in the world. But she keeps listening to him breathe.
"Maybe…" He is more hesitant than she's ever heard him, but it doesn't matter anyway. She thinks she knows what he's trying to say.
She whispers it again the darkness, toes curling around the tiny pills. Not enough in the world, but…
"Maybe we can fix each other."
