Jo stood in the cold, sterile room trying to remain detached as her breast was hauled around like a slab of meat by the overworked technician. She felt the woman adjust her position again, moving her arm just a little higher, her feet just a little closer. The top plate was brought down onto her breast and pressure applied until the technician was satisfied it was sufficient for a clear x-ray to be taken. She did have the grace to smile apologetically as she assured Jo that it would only take a few moments but that she would need to take a couple of views since there was rather a lot of tissue to x-ray. Jo gritted her teeth, feeling exposed and vulnerable, naked from the waist up being man-handled by complete strangers who did their best to be sympathetic but it was little comfort to her. The discomfort from all this though was chased into the shade as the weight of the plates pressed into her tender flesh. She had been warned that it was not a pleasant experience but she now understood what her mother had meant when she stated that only a man could have come up with the concept for the mammogram. Of course, Jo understood the benefits of the device but damn it was not an experience she would care to repeat, though given what she was facing, she knew she would have to relatively frequently until such a time when she got the all clear. The technician was back by her side loosening off the plate and rearranging Jo's breast so that the part which had been neglected was now squashed between the two frigid metal paddles. The whole thing seemed to take an eternity as two shots of each breast were deemed necessary, her right breast being screened purely as a precaution she was assured. Left alone to redress, Jo then returned to her bed on the Day Unit to await the core biopsy, a procedure to take a chunk out of the tumour so that a pathologist could examine it and determine if it was cancer that Jo had and, if so, what stage and whether it had spread to the surrounding tissue. Her doctor was a very soft spoken Indian man, who had done his best to put Jo at ease as he listened to her chest and examined her breast and surrounding lymph nodes. Exhibiting some of her usual dry wit, Jo had assured him he was very privileged being the only man who had ever got up close and personal with her bosom. He had smiled genially at her remark, probing with knowing digits, searching out any secrets her body might wish to hang on to. She sat on her bed, flicking idly through a magazine, as she waited for his return, wishing that they would just get on with it so she could go home and hide under the duvet.
"Lucy, hi, it's Sam. You don't know where Jo is do you? I've tried ringing her but there's no answer at home and her mobile's switched off. I need to talk to her about a court case that's coming up; the trial dates been changed and I need her to be prepared to give evidence next week." Sam rattled off her dilemma, knowing it was an imposition asking to speak to Jo on her week off but not wanting her to be ambushed when she returned to work. Truth be told, she was more than a little concerned about her good friend too, not having seen her since she was assaulted by Peter Edwards and Sam had ordered her home. They had spoken a few times on the phone but Jo had been distant and reluctant to pin down a time that they could get together.
"I don't know I'm afraid, I haven't seen her in a few days." Sam heard the hurt and resignation in Lucy's voice.
"Everything ok with you two?" The feisty blonde was genuinely concerned, having seen how happy they had been together the Sunday before.
"Jo's not spoken with you?" Lucy was surprised figuring that Sam was the one person Jo would lean on. It broke her heart to realise that she must be trying to get through it alone.
"No, why?" The hairs on the back of Sam's neck were standing on end, her senses screaming at her that something was very not right.
"We had a… I don't know what you'd call it really… she asked me to leave last Monday morning, said she needed some time and space to sort her head out. I haven't heard from her since." The pain Lucy felt at the rejection was evident in her voice, her tone raw as she insisted, "I didn't do anything but love her." The line went dead in Sam's ear before she could press for more information or comfort the distraught young woman. She stood from her desk looking out into the CID office, her gaze automatically drifting to Jo's usually cluttered desk. Making a decision, she slipped on her jacket and grabbed her car keys, searching out DCI Meadows.
"Guv, I need to nip out for a short while and chase up Jo for this court appearance next week. I'm on my mobile if anyone needs me." Jack nodded, trusting Sam implicitly. Sam practically ran from the station, desperate to get to Jo's house and make sure she was ok.
"Miss Masters, we've got the results of your mammograms back." Hours after she had arrived on the Day Unit, Jo had been ushered into a side ward where she was being shown the extent of her predicament in stark form. "As you can see, the tumour is larger than we hoped it would be. To this end, with your agreement, I'd like to do an open biopsy. This will necessitate an overnight stay but we will remove the entire tumour for the pathologists to study, rather than just a sample. Depending on what the histology shows, there is a possibility we wouldn't need to perform any further operation beyond the biopsy but it does depend on the tissue surrounding the tumour and whether there are any signs of cancerous cells present." Jo swallowed hard, the small, irregular lump she had felt was only the tip of a much larger iceberg. The whole tumour was approximately the size of a small orange, making Jo wonder how she had not felt it before, a query which she voiced to the doctor. "It will have been a very gradual growth, one which obviously remained fairly deep-seated until this recent extension." He indicated the tell-tale protrusion which had been discovered by Lucy only five days earlier. "The biopsy is a fairly invasive procedure, is there anyone we can contact for you to be with you and to bring in some things from home for you?" Jo weighed up her options, knowing that she would need at least the bare essentials if she were facing an overnight stay. She finally settled on giving them Lucy's name and number, hoping that the young woman would forgive her for shutting her out over the past few days. A nurse headed off to make the call as the doctor described the procedure to Jo in greater detail, checking with her if she had any allergies or had had a reaction in the past to any form of anaesthetic.
Lucy ended the call with the nurse, sitting down heavily on her sofa. Her emotions were swinging like a pendulum from ecstasy that Jo had reached out for her to dread at what would greet her when she went to the hospital. Snapping out of her self-indulgent thoughts, the young beauty grabbed her car keys, checking that she had enough change to pay the astronomical car parking fees, and headed out to Jo's house, thankful that the brunette had trusted her enough to let her know where there was a spare key.
Sam peered in through Jo's front window frustrated when she saw no sign of the brunette being home. She hammered on the door once more, just to make sure, calling through the letterbox to try and rouse her friend if she were indoors. With a sigh, Sam returned to her car, resigned to returning to Sun Hill without any further clue as to the whereabouts or wellbeing of her friend.
Lucy parked outside Jo's modest house, watching a car's tail-lights disappear round the corner, thinking it looked remarkably like Sam's car. She wondered if the hospital had contacted Sam too and that the blonde had already collected belongings to facilitate Jo's overnight stay but as she entered the house and found post behind the door, she dismissed that idea. She took the stairs two at a time, searching through cupboards and wardrobes until she found a holdall which would fit enough items in to last Jo's stay. Into it, she piled a change of clothes, some pyjama's, all manner of toiletries and the book that Jo was currently wading her way through when she got the chance. Lucy raced back down the stairs locking the door behind her but keeping hold of the key in case she should need it, hoping Jo wouldn't mind her presumptuousness.
Jo felt her eyelids growing heavy as the pre-med started to work, a lightness coming over her body which she had not experienced since the Sunday before. As she began to succumb to the haze enveloping her, the brunette's thoughts returned to that night, to how content she had felt as the three of them had laughed, joked and generally enjoyed one another's company. What a difference a day makes, she mentally rejoined, feeling cast adrift from that time, from that life where happiness had been within her grasp. As her eyes slid closed, weighted down by drugs and despair, a solitary tear escaped, tracing a path over the smooth alabaster contours of her cheek and settling in her hair.
The clerk minding the desk looked up in alarm as a whirling dervish hurtled through the door of the Day Unit.
"Can you tell me where I can find Jo Masters please? I received a call earlier to say she was here but was going to theatre shortly." Lucy panted having sprinted from the car, not wanting to miss seeing Jo before her operation.
"Just a moment please." The clerk punched something into the computer in front of her. "Miss Masters is due to go down to the operating theatre any time now. She's in cubicle 7 which is through this door and on your left."
"Is it ok if I go in for a moment?" Lucy asked, her desperation clearly evident on her face.
"Of course. She'll have had her pre-med by now so don't be shocked if she's a little drowsy." The woman answered compassionately, a gentle smile adorning her motherly face. Lucy thanked her and moved through as directed to Jo's cubicle. She hovered momentarily just out of sight before rounding the corner and preparing to see the woman she had lost her heart to.
Jack spied Sam as she re-entered CID. "How'd it go with Jo? Are you confident she's ready for next week?"
"She wasn't in, I'll try and get hold of her again later." Sam answered distractedly.
"Have you tried her mobile? Maybe she's gone away for a few days." Jack tried reasoning.
"Her mobile's switched off. You know Jo, she'd never turn her mobile off unless she absolutely had to." Something was still niggling at Sam's conscience despite Jack's words being an entirely reasonable explanation for Jo's disappearance.
"Maybe she had a follow up appointment at the hospital, they have fracture clinics don't they? I'm sure she'll be ready whenever she's needed in court next week, Jo's nothing if not meticulous." Jack had every faith in the committed DC wondering why his DI did not seem to share his conviction.
"Possibly yeah." Sam decided that she would test that theory and contact the hospital to ask if she was in fact at a clinic there. Jo had not mentioned having to go back for a check up but then she had been pretty reticent with any details about how she was spending her time off. Sam had thought it was because she was spending time with Lucy and didn't want to embarrass Sam by sharing intimate details with her but following Lucy's earlier call, that theory had been blown out of the water.
Lucy took Jo's limp hand in her own, gently brushing her thumb across her knuckles and reaching out with her other hand to coax a stray lock of hair away from the sleeping beauty's face. A gentle smile touched Jo's lips as she leaned into the touch. With great effort, Jo forced her eyes to open. Despite her vision swimming from the drugs she had been given, Jo recognised the face of her angel.
"You came," she stated dreamily, turning her hand so that she could hold onto Lucy's own.
"Of course I did, I always will. You don't have to do this alone baby, I want to be here for you, to help you through this, no matter what this turns out to be or how long it takes to get you free of it."
"I don't deserve you." Jo mumbled, her words slurring slightly as she battled not to succumb to sleep once again.
"Sshhh sweetheart, you just rest up now and concentrate on getting better soon. I love you Jo." Lucy felt an immense relief at the angelic expression her new lover wore as she drifted off into a cloud of drug-induced oblivion once again, satisfied that no matter what lay ahead, Jo knew she was in it for the long haul. She sat for a while longer, watching the slumbering goddess who had chosen to share her life with her. Knowing it was doubtful that Jo could hear her any longer, Lucy assured her, "it's me who doesn't deserve you darling. You're everything I ever dreamed of in a partner, I only hope I don't disappoint you." A ward orderly arrived along with a flurry of activity as Jo was whisked off to theatre to have the growth removed from her breast. Lucy was shown through to a waiting room attached to the ward on which Jo would spend the night, the brunette lucky a bed had become available.
Lucy did not think it possible for her to look pale with her Mediterranean colouring but as she caught sight of herself in the glass window overlooking the car park she was proven wrong. "Please come back to me safe and sound Jo, I love you so much it scares me." She murmured to her own reflection. As she settled herself in for a long wait, another concern butted its way into her subconscious – whether to let Sam know Jo was in hospital. She remembered Sam calling looking for the brunette detective earlier, before the hospital had phoned and wanted to put the DI out of the misery Lucy was sure she must be feeling, knowing nothing about Jo's problems. But surely this was dangerous ground. If Jo had wanted Sam to know, wouldn't she have told her? Wouldn't it have been Sam that Jo had the hospital call? Would Jo think Lucy was jealous if she didn't call and Sam wasn't there when she woke up? Would she be hurt by her not informing her best friend? Or would she be angry that she had betrayed her confidence if she did? Erring on the side of caution and hoping it would not dent Sam's opinion of her, Lucy opted to wait until Jo regained consciousness after the surgery so that she could ask the brunette herself whether she would like Sam to be told.
"I've rung around all the hospitals in the area, no one has any record of an appointment for Jo in any fracture clinic." Sam was beginning to panic, wondering where Jo was and why she hadn't been in touch. Surely the DC knew that Sam would be going out of her mind with worry if she couldn't contact her? She thought she had made it plain to her friend that she was concerned, that she knew there was something else going on but wasn't going to pressure Jo to talk until she was ready to. Had she felt cornered and run? Had Sam pushed her too hard inadvertently? She didn't think so but it was hard to listen to a rational train of thought in her panic at all the worst case scenarios running through her mind. "I'm going to phone Lucy again, see if she's heard from her. This is just not like Jo." Sam informed her bewildered boss, Jack wondering why Sam was so het up about the other woman's absence.
"She's a grown woman Sam, maybe she just wants some peace." Jack supplied, figuring that he would never work women out for as long as he was breathing.
"Have we had any reports of accidents in the area around where Jo lives? Maybe I should have been talking to the emergency departments." Sam was prowling around her office like a caged tiger, her agitation rolling off her in waves.
"Sam just try calling this Lucy person before you go jumping to any conclusions." Jack attempted to steer his DI back to calmer, more logical thinking. Sam dug out her mobile flicking through the menus until she found the number she had dialled earlier.
"It has not been possible to connect your call. Please try again later." Sam listened to the tone signalling the line had been dropped, her heart free-falling into her stomach along with it.
"Her phones switched off. Where is she? Where are they both?" Sam resumed her pacing, hoping for some sign that her closest friend was ok. Jack attempted to delicately point out a less unsavoury explanation for both phones being unobtainable.
"Didn't you say they'd had some sort of falling out earlier in the week? Maybe they're a err… bit busy… you know… making up?" Even as he spoke the words, the DCI blushed, struggling to remove a decidedly erotic image from his mind even as he harshly reprimanded himself for such thoughts.
Sam considered the possibility, piecing together her suspicion that she had seen Lucy's car pull up at Jo's as she herself drove away, her inability to reach either woman. She had to admit, it did seem a fairly plausible explanation given the besotted looks she had seen them both sharing the previous weekend. "Maybe," she conceded, slumping into her chair and hoping that the explanation proved to be accurate.