A new chapter, finally! A little more of Sam's backstory sprinkled into this one, so I hope you like reading it.

Seeing Dylan in near-constant pain did not become any easier for Sam, despite it seeming to be the unsettling new normal. Day after day, she inserted herself into his haze of medicated discomfort and was glad that he did not yet have the capacity to question why she never seemed in a rush to get down to the ED anymore. Her new normal was a never-ending treadmill: school run, Dylan, school run, homework, bathtime, bedtime. While he only physically took up one slot in her day, she frequently found his presence in her thoughts to be taking up more and more of her empty space. He was so unwell and there was so little she could do.

It took a week for him to return to something resembling his usual mental acuity. She arrived after dropping Georgia at school, having left him asleep the previous afternoon. Immediately she could see something about him was lighter, somehow.

"Morning. You're looking… better?" she hazarded, silently acknowledging the immense recovery still to go.

"Surprising what being able to open both eyes will do for you, isn't it?" he returned drily.

Sam broke into a little smile. "Of course!" she exclaimed. She dropped her bag where she stood and rushed over to examine his face for herself. She skimmed his bruises with a feather-light touch, feeling the reduced warmth of swelling that had finally gone down enough that both brown eyes were visible to her. She'd missed those eyes without realising it. "Still sore, though?" she checked, hesitating with her hands at his jaw for a moment as she looked more closely at his eyes.

"Do you want the list, or the file?"

Sam could've easily burst into tears there and then with the comfort of his quick, easy derision having returned at last.

Dylan's eyebrows twitched in confusion beneath stitches holding together his forehead laceration. "Are you not working, today?" he asked, straining his fuzzy memory in an attempt to recall when he'd last seen her in scrubs. But while Dylan had assumed this to be an innocent question, there was something wrong. Sam's cheeks darkened; he had never known her to blush so ferociously before. She suddenly clasped her hands before her and broke her eye contact with him to look firmly elsewhere. "Sam?"

Her head was spinning, searching for any explanation other than the truth. There was nothing else to say. He didn't deserve her lies. She stepped back from the bed anxiously. "My Clinical Lead has signed me off on compassionate grounds," she said in a tiny voice. "I'm sorry, I didn't know what to tell you, and you haven't asked until now, so I just… I didn't mean to keep it from you!" It came out in an apologetic, increasingly panicked rush.

Dylan's insides lurched, for once not due to his swirling cocktail of prescribed medications. This was the indelible stain that that monster had left on her, an irrepressible fear of doing something 'wrong' for a man. The frantic apologies, the backing away with her body turned slightly to one side either in preparation to run or as a measure for self-preservation. She thought he was going to hit her (with what physical capacity, he wasn't sure) and it forced bile into his throat. He swallowed hard. "It's okay," he said softly. "Please, please don't think that I'm in any way cross with you."

Sam cleared her throat with some difficulty. "Oh, right – of course," she stammered. Unsteadily, she crossed the room to pick up her bag where she had dropped it a few minutes earlier.

"Come here," he said softly. "I want to give you a hug – only if it's not going to make this worse – but I can't actually be an active participant in such an action. Come here?"

She let out a wobbly sigh, a tiny smile on her lips at his gentle manner. "You're not making it worse, I promise," she whispered. She had to be careful, knowing that his ribs were held together with metal plating and he possibly had more stitches in his abdomen than unbroken bones in his body, but she leaned over him and slipped her arms under his shoulders. The moment she heard a sharp intake of breath, she froze.

"No, I'm okay, it's okay," he reassured her, lifting his stiff arms to hold her for the first time in more than ten years.

The world seemed to stop on its axis for a moment, only resuming its spin when she stood up straight again.

He knew that she was balancing on an emotional precipice, but he couldn't let it lie. "You said you'd been signed off," he mused. "Compassionate grounds means – Sam, I'm sorry. Obviously I didn't mean to stumble back into your life like this, but I certainly never would have wanted to upset you to the point you can't work."

She put up a shaky hand. "No, please don't." She took a breath. "Your second trip into surgery put some things into focus and I… I'm not prepared to lose you. You're going to say I'm being ridiculous and you don't want to hear it because it's been, what, twelve years? But I don't want to lose you again." She could not bring herself to say out loud that she loved him. She had no idea whether her feelings were reciprocated; despite the immense kindness he'd shown her, she couldn't help wondering if that was just him, looking out for her like he'd always done. Some forces of habit were hard to break, she knew only too well.

Dylan was slightly dumbfounded, and in too much residual discomfort to level with her.

It did not escape Sam's notice that he held himself stiffly. "What can I do that will help?" she asked earnestly, breaking the silence that had held them in inertia. "Do you need painkillers, or –"

"No," Dylan said, his mouth moving as little as possible as he spoke. "I'm not hurting any more than I have been. It's the antibiotics knocking me sick; I can't do anything or concentrate on anything while I'm trying not to throw up!"

Sam nodded sympathetically. His frustration wasn't for her, and she could at least try to fix this. She picked up his notes from the end of the bed and despite Dylan's protests began to flip through them. She tutted. "No-one thought to start you on anti-emetics with that dose of antibiotics," she murmured darkly.

With that taken care of, she returned to the seat beside the bed and considered him closely.

"Will you read to me?" he asked. "Please?"

Sam's eyes widened. "Really?"

"Really," he replied. "I haven't got the energy to read myself yet, not to mention that close focus is hardly top of my list given the fact my eyes have only just started working in unison again."

She smiled gently. This was something she could do. Pulling her slightly battered Kindle from her bag, she rolled her eyes in amusement. "I'm assuming you won't want The House at Pooh Corner? That's what I've been reading to Georgie at bedtime."

"Actually, that sounds brilliant," said Dylan, to Sam's great surprise. "I think I've had enough drama to last a lifetime, so yes, Pooh Bear would be perfectly acceptable if you can tolerate it too."

Sam couldn't help a small laugh escaping her lips. "Who knew, my Grumpy has a soft spot for Winnie the Pooh!"

"I had measles when I was… eight, I think? My mum read me some Winnie the Pooh, while my father was out falling drunkenly into some gutter or other."

There were no words to adequately follow up Dylan's comment about his father. Sam slipped on hands around his, while unlocking her Kindle with the other. "Chapter three," she read, "In which a grand search is organised and Piglet meets a heffalump again."

The cracks began to show, the day that Sam found out Zoe had booked a flight back to the UK.

A reminder email from school about keeping up regular reading at home had rubbed her up the wrong way the moment it popped up on her phone – it might not have affected her so much, had she not just pulled out a laundry load to find a tissue had been left in a pocket, coating the whole load in little flecks of white. Her mind had already been preoccupied with the infection markers Dylan's team were keeping a close eye on, and her attention kept wandering to the inadvertent mess that had snuck into the flat while she'd been so busy looking after everything else. She worried about what Zoe would think, seeing the mess and knowing that Sam had been away from work since the day after Dylan's accident. Truth be told, in the spare moments apart from either Dylan or her daughter, Sam was finding it easier and easier to slide into a state of almost non-existence: time slipped away as she tried and failed to turn her attention to reading, housework or even watching television.

When Betty knocked on the door at two thirty, Sam's inertia had given way to frantic, disorganised cleaning. Sam answered the door with a confused expression, a damp cloth still in one hand and wavy, blonde tendrils escaping from the messy bun on top of her head.

"Everything okay?" she asked, keeping her expression as light as she could, given that it felt as though her brain was buzzing.

"I came to ask you the same question, my love," Betty said with considerable concern. "You've normally left by now to collect Miss Madam, and for the last few hours I've heard you clattering about without a moment's rest."

Sam cringed. "I'm sorry, Betty. I didn't mean to disturb you."

"Good gracious, I don't care about the noise! Make all the racket you want; it's not as if you and Georgia ever give me any trouble! I care about you, and I'm not sure you're coping well with this friend of yours in hospital."

Sam felt her throat begin to close as her whole body seemed to flush with embarrassment. Had it really been so noticeable? "I'm fine," she insisted, although a note of panic made her mouth suddenly dry. She turned momentarily to see the chaos she'd left in her wake – it would have to wait now until Georgie was home and she'd be late to collect her if she didn't get herself together sharpish.

Betty clocked Sam's eyes darting about. Poor girl, barely knew if she was coming or going. She put an arm out and touched her hand to Sam's shoulder without thinking. Sa whirled back around with an intense flinch. "Blast," Betty murmured. "I'm sorry love, I should have known better than that. Look, I'll go and collect Georgie, alright, and bring her back to you to pack an overnight bag. It's Friday, she can have a special sleepover with me tonight, no arguments. You can have a bit of time to yourself tonight, and a lie-in in the morning."

Sam was speechless.

For a moment, Sam was whisked back in time to a day she'd rather forget – a day spent in a west London A+E when it was clear the miscarriage of hers and Tom's second baby was not going to pass uneventfully in a hotel bathroom. (Granted, this had been one of her more unwise medical expectations.)

Tear-streaked with shame and pain, with a confused toddler on her hip, Sam had taken herself to A+E on foot rather than risking a taxi or bus driver who might be less than discreet if Tom worked out where they'd run to. She hadn't been in her right mind, definitely not thinking straight, which was possibly why it was so overwhelming to be met with the utmost kindness and discretion from the ED team. They knew only that she was a fellow doctor fleeing an abusive marriage, and that she was definitely losing a pregnancy in its early stages.

In the months afterwards, Sam would ask why Betty had been volunteering in a hospital so far from home. It transpired that none of her more easily-reached hospitals had room for another pair of hands, or so they said. But the near-hour of travel time had been something of a miracle in the end.

Betty had immediately offered to hold and feed baby Georgie, giving Sam one less thing to worry about as for once, medicine happened to her and around her rather than as a result of her own direction. She was a calm and willing listening ear as Sam slowly told her story: the first time she had told it in its entirety. Though she had tried to suppress her horror at what she heard, there had eventually been tears shed by both women; a sudden unbreakable bond formed by the unloading of a long-kept secret.

When Sam was admitted she was distraught, worrying only about what would happen to Georgie.

"What about my baby?" she cried. "If you're taking me for a D+C, there's no-one to come and take her – you can't call her father, it's him that put us in this situation!" She was nearly hysterical when she felt a gentle hand on her arm. It sent an unpleasant shiver down her spine to be touched by another human.

"I know I'm only a volunteer, and I know you only met me a couple of hours ago, but I will stay with you. No young woman with a story like yours is going through this on her own. I'll look after your little darling and we will both be right here, when you wake up."

The rest had been something like a fairytale – that is, if fairytales began with medical procedures that left grief and cramping in their path of destruction. It seemed that Betty spent Sam's time under anaesthesia hatching a plan. On regaining consciousness, she was presented with an offer she couldn't refuse – a safe place to live. The empty flat above Betty's downstairs one. The older woman had been looking for someone to move in upstairs – at which point Sam faltered.

"We – I can't – I – my bank account is under my name and my husband's. It's not going to take long for him to lock me out of accessing it, once he knows we're gone."

"Don't you dare worry yourself about that. I said I'm looking for someone to live in that flat, not looking for the rent. I own the whole house, makes no difference to me when you start paying any rent. Besides, you're a doctor, a decent one and this world needs more of those. The house is walking distance from King's, once you're well and you're ready."

"I don't know what to say," Sam mumbled. She'd felt a different kind of shiver, hearing the name of that hospital again. It held far better memories than the one she had left behind.

"Right now, you don't need to say anything. I've got the space, and you need somewhere for you and your little girl to recover from what you've left."

/

"You don't have to keep saying that you're fine, Sam. Not to me."

Back in the present, Betty tried hard to catch Sam's eyes but couldn't get the good look she wanted.