This chapter carries trigger warnings for domestic abuse, addiction and miscarriage.

Sam stayed until Dylan had fallen asleep. It didn't take long, but it felt impossible to drag herself away. After seeing him so unusually vulnerable it felt wrong to leave him alone in what was to him an unfamiliar hospital. He was stable, but she knew that with injuries like his there was no guarantee that he would remain so, and the thought terrified her. She'd fought to save his life once, and might not be there to do it a second time. But she was so tired, and she was no longer the young, impulsive doctor able to stay by a patient's side come what may. Her responsibility was to Georgie, whom she had assured she would be there in the morning.

She was always grateful to live where she did, within walking distance of both the hospital and Georgie's school, but she was especially thankful for the short walk home when it was dark. Since leaving Tom she had been anxious about becoming another statistic of a lone woman walking alone at night. It was a fifteen-minute walk, and for all nine-hundred seconds, her house keys were clamped firmly between the knuckles of her right hand while her alarm keyring was clasped solidly in the palm of her left. It was always a relief to reach the gravel driveway of the shared house and slot the first key into the lock. Betty would tell her she worried too much, that no-one could ever get through that door who wasn't supposed to, but that never stopped Sam from locking it behind her, sliding the bolt across and checking both defences three times. Only then could she stand to head up the stairs to her own front door, to repeat the process again.

Leaving Georgie in the little spare bedroom in Betty's downstairs flat, Sam had the upstairs to herself. She wanted nothing more than to fall into bed for the few hours before normality demanded her consciousness once more, but it would be practically criminal to do so before calling Zoe again.

It went to voicemail, which in part made it easier because there wasn't the shared emotional explosion that would come from a two-way conversation.

"Zoe, it's me again – sorry for leaving a message but I need to sleep before the school run. He's not out of the woods yet, but he came through surgery all right enough. I've spoken to him, reassured him he wasn't losing it, seeing me again!" It was probably exhausted delirium that forced out half a laugh. "I just… I just needed to let you know he's okay for now. I'll call you again tomorrow, or later, whichever of those two makes sense. I hope you're okay."

Three hours of sleep was not nearly enough. Sam woke up with a headache and a buzz in her ears. Nonetheless, she found joy in the click of the spare key in her front door, and the boundless energy of her little girl skipping across the kitchen to her in stripey pyjamas at seven-thirty.

"Mummy!"

"Hold on, hold on, let me put my coffee down!" Sam said, balancing her mug on the nearest flat surface as quickly as she could before seizing an armful of six-year-old and enveloping her little girl in a tight hug. "Good morning baby, I missed you!"

"Mu-um, I'm not a baby!"

Suitably chastised, Sam corrected herself. "No, of course not. You're my very big grown-up girl, so grown up that I might have to leave you to go to school by yourself from now on, in fact why don't I start teaching you to drive?" she teased, sending Georgie into a fit of giggles. "You will always be my baby," she said seriously, kissing her daughter's forehead softly. "Now, go and get yourself dressed and I'll have your breakfast ready when you're done, yes?"

While Georgie was out of sight in her bedroom, Sam took the opportunity to go through her schoolbag, hoping she hadn't missed anything important in the last couple of days. She was hit by a stab of guilt when she realised that the reading book that tumbled out of the little blue reading record when she picked it up, carried a different coloured sticker on its spine than the book she'd seen at the end of last week. Had Georgie told her about this milestone and it had just slipped her mind? Or had she been so busy that she hadn't even noticed? It was a source of pain that the most common signature in the reading record was not her own but Betty's. The neatly ironed PE kit in its little drawstring bag by the door didn't seem like such a success anymore.

The walk to school was sunny, although the air temperature didn't reflect it. Sam held Georgie's warm hand in her own, grateful that she would still do so as they neared the school gates and she saw older children who'd never dream of holding the hand of the person dropping them off.

It was a moment of pure joy when she felt Georgie pull on her hand on seeing her best friend across the playground, but momentarily hold back in order to both hug and kiss her mum first, before darting across to join Kira. Sam smiled to herself seeing the two girls immediately skip about and play together, Georgie with her silky blonde pigtails and pink raincoat, Kira with her tight, dark curls in two puffs secured with scrunchies the same colour as her bright green glasses.

Sam was not built for the idle chatter of the schoolyard, but on the mornings she had time to wait, she made the social effort for Georgie's sake. Playground politics always found their way into the classroom and she didn't want anything to put a damper on her school experience. She gracefully accepted a party invitation on Georgie's behalf, although inwardly she knew that she was at the beck and call of the ED rota and might not be able to accompany her.

It didn't take long for Sam to be met with questions about the previous day, once she reached the ED that morning. Kat caught her in the changing rooms. The young nurse was plaiting her long dark hair and seemed very interested in the admission of a strange doctor to the hospital.

"So, what happened to that doctor?" she asked, a bobby pin clamped between her teeth. "Where did he come from?"

Sam stiffened. "Um, Holby – it's towards Bristol? Must have been over for a conference or something." She tried to sound nonchalant but wasn't sure if it was working.

"You seem to know enough about him," Kat added accusingly, one eyebrow raised.

Sam pulled her scrub top down over her head, wondering how many suspicions it would arouse if she just walked away. "I… I used to work over there. With him," she said hesitantly. She reached into her locker for her stethoscope and yawned covertly. It was going to be a long day, despite the shorter shift.

"Shit, Sam, you know him?! Man, I'm sorry, was he okay?"

"Okay?" For a moment, she didn't know how to respond. "He was absolutely mullered in a hit and run, Kat, what do you think?"

She was tired and tetchy, but without having to think about it she was also fiercely protective.

Finishing in the early afternoon should have meant going home to tackle the laundry pile, but instead Sam was drawn upstairs to see Dylan again.

"I'm sure I should make some pithy comment about buses, having not seen you in ten years, and then twice in two days," he said with a pained, lopsided smile.

Sam looked at the ground for a second. He was still the same old Dylan, a little older perhaps and a lot more battered, but still her Grumpy. "Lucky you," she countered.

"Well, if I had to be run over, then at least it was within the jurisdiction of a very fine trauma doctor."

It had been too long: she had grown unaccustomed to his particular brand of humour. It was comforting that he was still a purveyor of the very blackest dark humour, when so much was different. "Yeah, well, I learned from the best," she replied quietly before meeting his one-eyed gaze.

She could see the discomfort in his every breath, and opened her mouth to ask if he needed more pain medication. But before she had a chance, he'd already spoken and his words took every breath of air out of her lungs, forcing her to sit.

"Sam, why are you back here?"

"Well, people tend to visit people they know, if they're in hospital..." she said, trying to divert his attention.

"That's not what I meant, and you know it,' he retorted flatly.

He remembered her tired promise to explain herself. Trust Dylan Keogh to be the only human to recall anything from their first minutes off a general anaesthetic. But she couldn't bring herself to break that promise. It was Dylan, and enough untruths had passed between them in the past.

"Look, I haven't got long –" She sighed, pushing her loose hair back from her face. "I know this is only going to add to your list of questions, but I have to pick up my daughter from school, in an hour and a half."

His jaw dropped, and he swore under his breath at his involuntary reaction; it must have hurt when his face was most colours of the rainbow. "Daughter?! How old?"

"Six, just." She was sure he was looking at her differently now, making all kinds of assumptions. "Her name's Georgia – though she's Georgie, most of the time." There was so much he didn't know, that she wanted him to know although she couldn't put her finger on why. "I came to London with her… four years ago, after… After I broke up with Tom."

"She's Tom's?"

"I learned my lesson, Dylan. I never cheated again, after us," she said bluntly. "Yes, she's Tom's daughter, but..." She froze, her previous conviction fading. She wanted him to know, but it had been such a long time. "Can I still trust you, Dylan?" She rounded her shoulder and folded her arms across herself, fully expecting a typically sardonic response.

He lowered his voice, turning himself as best he could in his near-horizontal position to focus on her better. "Of course you can."

Sam took a few slow, measured breaths, willing herself not to cry before she'd even started.

"Sam?" he said softly. "What's wrong?"

She shook her head. "I need to tell you why I'm here, and it's… it's not a nice story. It feels wrong to tell you while you're like this, when we've only just met again after ten years, but I can't keep it from you either."

"If anything, my being here should make me a better listener," Dylan remarked. "Not like I'm in a position to go anywhere, so you know at least you have my full attention. Although by the sounds of it, I'd give you my full attention even if I could more freely. You don't have to tell me, but if you want to, I've got all the time in the world for you."

Sam nodded sadly. "We moved out of Holby – that's Tom and me – and we were living and working in Exeter. There was an incident at Holby, I forget whether you were there at that point, where he… he stole from the controlled drugs supply. He was self-medicating but it turned nasty in the end, he was an addict by the time we were in Exeter and he'd stop at nothing. He was found out eventually and suspended, it went all the way to the GMC. He tried to throw me under the bus, bearing in mind I was nearly due with Georgie by then."

"He did what?" Dylan said in disbelief.

Sam nodded. "Used my previous trial against me. And… it was my signature on his initial prescription. I've blocked most of it out, to be honest, it was dreadful." Her expression has become forlorn, but at a sudden memory, her eyes lightened briefly. "It was Nick who saved my career, Nick Jordan, although he put the nails in the coffin of Tom's. He spoke up about the previous incidence of theft – got me written out of the case completely, thank God, although the stress of it had already got to me by then. I had Georgie about a month early."

"I can't believe him, how could he do that to you?"

Sam felt the blood draining from her face. The Tom that Dylan knew was not the Tom she'd run away from. "The GMC struck him off – I tried to help, but I couldn't do enough, I could never do enough, not while looking after a newborn as well." She felt herself slipping away as she recalled his temper, his anger, his quick fists, as though it wasn't her own voice saying it at all. "He was clever. Once I was back from mat leave, the bruises were never visible. No-one saw a thing. None of them would have believed me, anyway," she said, shaking her head desolately.

"They might have done, Sam."

Dylan's voice pulled her back into the room, back into her own head. She blinked a few times, surprised to find them full of tears.

"They liked him, they saw me like he did – the one that got off scot-free and was allowed to advance my career as if nothing had happened. They wouldn't have listened to me."

"How did you get away?"

Sam pushed out a long breath. The worst part to tell. "When… When Georgie was just about two, I realised I was pregnant again."

"He didn't – he didn't force you, did he?"

She looked at him with wide eyes. "God, no, no! Nothing like that, no, no," she repeated. "No – he… I told you he was good at hiding bruises. No-one ever saw my stomach." Her words hung in the air as she remembered the bittersweet feeling of realising she was pregnant, followed by her terrified, anguished tears as bruises bloomed where a baby should have been safe.

"No," Dylan moaned as he realised what she was getting at. "Sam, no."

She closed her eyes, the familiar feeling of dissociation washing over her. When she spoke, it was hollow, so devoid of her usual light that despair filled all the empty space. It was impossible to describe what she'd felt that day, sitting on a train to London with a nappy bag and a two year old, realising that she was losing the baby inside her.

"Sam, I'm so sorry," Dylan said quietly, breaking the silence. "I'm so, so sorry that happened to you. I won't breathe a word – does anyone else know?"

"My clinical lead," she replied rapidly. "I needed to explain why I needed flexible working, for childcare, and… I needed to not be the only one with the information." She nodded firmly. "It's… it's not fine, but I've moved on, we're fine, I'm fine."

It wasn't really a lie.

When she felt Dylan's hand reaching for hers, she couldn't help herself flinching away as if she'd been burned. The second she'd moved she hated herself for it: his expression of horror almost rivalled her own although of course his had different reasons.

"I'm sorry, I didn't think – I should have known –"

"No, Dylan, that wasn't your fault, that was not your fault, do you understand? I'm sorry, I didn't think I was still – I didn't mean to – I couldn't help it. I'm sorry," she said, stumbling over the words. "I still – I still want to – I don't mind that you want to hold my hand," she stammered. "You just surprised me, that's all. It's okay."

Her hand was shaking when she finally placed it in Dylan's palm for the first time in more than ten years.