Chapter 7

"Alicia, you need to try and get some sleep, you must be exhausted," Ethan tries again. "It's practically morning, no one should pull twenty-four hours awake off shift."

Alicia shakes her head. The lights are dimmed- one of the many advantages of a private room- but still her eyes are half closed, wincing, as though it's too bright, a telling sign that she's badly in need of rest, but it's perfectly clear from her tense posture, the pain in her face, the worry, that she's a long way from drifting off to sleep. "Didn't sleep… last night… I had… police report…"

She's talking in fragments again, Ethan notes; that's never a good sign. Automatically, he glances across at her monitor; her heart rate has her bordering on tachycardic again, resps raised, but there's nothing else on her stats to explain the shift, nothing physiological…

He doesn't know what to do. He's taken Duffy's words to heart, vowed to give Alicia his unconditional friendship, but how much good can his friendship really do in a situation like this?

"All the more reason to get some sleep now, then," he tells her. "Alicia, it's alright. You're alright, you've got nothing to be worried about. I'm going to stay right here with you…"

"Aren't you on shift?"

"Well, yes, I'm on shift at eight," Ethan admits. "But Elle will stay with you until her shift finishes, I'll go and find Mrs Beauchamp, I'm going to persuade her to let me work up here this shift, so I can stay with you."

"She'll never agree to that."

"Hey, don't underestimate my powers of persuasion," he teases her, but she shakes her head again.

"We must be so… understaffed… there's me, Bea…" she trails off, shudders. "She won't, Ethan. She won't."

"Let me worry about that, okay? We'll work something out. You shouldn't be on your own, I'll tell her you shouldn't be on your own."

"She'll just… phone Mam and Dad…"

"Alicia. Alicia, there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to wait until you're ready to tell your parents." He's firm now, gentle but firm, because the last thing he wants to do is push her away but he needs her to understand this, he can't watch her struggle with guilt over this. "You've been in an RTC, you've been assaulted, you've had a traumatic evening by anyone's standards. There's no pressure. If you change your mind and you want us to call them, we can, we can give them minimal details…"

She shakes her head again. "They'll know this isn't… just… won't they?"

Ethan doesn't have it in him to lie to her, not after everything. He needs her to trust him; if she's going to get through this, she needs to trust someone, because she can't look after herself right now, not psychologically, Ethan suspects, and certainly not physically. And yet it's perfectly clear that her trust has been utterly shattered by that night with Eddie, and no part of Ethan can blame her. So much of her behaviour over the last few weeks makes sense now; she's been angry, traumatised, desperately trying to make sense of it all in her head and pushing away anyone who's tried to get too close to her because it's too painful, because what he had intended to come across as friendly gestures, looking out for her, checking she's alright, over the last few weeks have surely come across to Alicia as a potential threat.

He needs her to realise she can trust him, and he's certainly not going to win her trust by lying to her. She isn't stupid, even on a high morphine dose and traumatised and fighting sleep she's intelligent enough to know if he's lying.

"I think they'd probably realise there's more to this than just what happened tonight, yes," Ethan admits softly. "Have… have you seen them, since…?"

"I couldn't…"

"No, I know, I understand. Listen, let's just concentrate on getting you better for now, and then we'll come up with a plan for that. You don't need to worry about that right now. I'm going to go down when my shift starts at eight and talk to Mrs Beauchamp, see if we can come up with something. But that's not for another four hours yet. So try to get some sleep, okay? You're safe. The police are out looking for him, Alicia, he broke bail, it's going to be an arrest and bail set higher this time, if it's offered at all. And if he does try to come here, and he'd be stupid to, he's got to get past the police officer outside the door first. And I'm not going to let anything happen to you, okay? You're safe here."

She looks at him for a moment as though she's going to tell him something, but then she looks away instead, embarrassed, avoids his gaze. "I hate this," she says simply at last.

She's said so little, but to Ethan, it's so clear what she wants him to know.

"It'll pass. It's okay to be scared, it's perfectly understandable. You aren't going to feel like this forever."

"So why does it feel like I will?" She's crying now, openly, and Ethan's heart breaks for her.

"Because this is just the start. It is going to get better from here, Alicia, it's just going to take time. I should have… I knew something was wrong, I wish… I wish I'd been there for you, recently," he settles on at last. "But I'm here now, anything you need. It's going to get better from here, but you're allowed to feel vulnerable right now, that isn't weakness. You shouldn't feel embarrassed about that. So if there's anything you need, if you want me to wake you before I go, anything like that, you only have to tell me."

The way she looks at him in that moment, it's so obvious his suspicions are correct. "Do you mind? I know it's stupid…"

"Hey, it's not stupid. It's far from stupid. If that would make you feel better, we can do that. But get some sleep now, okay?" He grips her hand tighter, settles into the hospital chair. "Everything's fine, Alicia. Everything's going to be fine."

Ethan doesn't take his eyes off her for the next two hours, not even for a moment. Quite simply, it feels wrong to; he's promised her that he's going to keep her safe, and if that's what it takes for her to surrender to sleep willingly then it would be wrong to break his promise, wrong to look away because at the first sign of nightmares, flashbacks, respiratory distress, anything, he needs to know.

What exactly he would do were she to start tossing and turning and crying out in her sleep, Ethan isn't sure; there's a line that he won't cross, can't cross, unless she makes clear to him that's something she wants, and he knows that might be never, at the very least, won't be for a long time yet.

Thankfully, he doesn't have to worry about that. Alicia just sleeps, still, peaceful, comatose, so much so that had Ethan not been there with her, known otherwise, he would have assumed she had been given a sleeping pill.

She's exhausted, he reasons. She's beyond exhausted. No wonder, if she hadn't slept the night before, either; that was the day she had slapped Bea in the middle of the ED, he remembers now, perhaps that had been the catalyst, the point at which she had realised that something had to change.

He can't believe she's been sleeping much at all since it happened, now he comes to think of it; she's looked dead on her feet for weeks, brushed off his worrying about her with a new excuse every time that he's never quite believed but never pushed, stupid, how could he have been so stupid…

There's no point beating himself up about that now, of course. Ethan knows that.

Alicia doesn't need him to regret what's already done and unchangeable, she needs him to take action now to help her through this.

His head is such a mess he barely registers the passing of those first two hours. He wouldn't be surprised if Alicia slept well into the early hours of the afternoon, if this continues, feels considerably guilty about having to wake her in another two hours' time, but he promised her, after all, he told her he would wake her rather than disappear whilst she was asleep, and that he will do if it's what it takes to help her through this.

But he can't sleep himself; his mind is racing, raped… she was raped… Eddie… he hadn't noticed… all this time she's had to deal with him at work, all the signs were there, her asking to swap mentees, the violent outbursts and strange behaviour he realises now had almost always coincided with Eddie working alongside her, shit…

It would be wrong to sleep even if he could, Ethan decides. That's how he justifies his standing guard at her bedside, at least, squeezes her hand every once in a while, just in case subconsciously she needs a reminder that he's there, that she's safe, that no one is going to be permitted to hurt her all the time he's sat here keeping watch. He promised her she would be safe, that she could sleep because he would keep her safe, and so it would quite simply be wrong to sleep himself, leave her unprotected.

He's going to fix this, Ethan vows to himself. No, not fix; fix implies that everything can be returned to how it was before, that he can make this go away, and he can't do that, Duffy made that quite clear.

He's not quite sure what the right word is, but somehow, he's going to make this all as close to fixed as he possibly can, for her, for Alicia.

She isn't going to cope well with being discharged, he can see it coming already. That might be a while off yet, of course. He's read the notes on the stand at the foot of her bed; it's not so wrong, he tells himself, not when he wrote the first half of them and if he has his way he will be picking back up where he left as her doctor come 8am, will have to read the half overseen by Elle anyway. It's perfectly clear from Alicia's notes and the dosage of antibiotics she's on currently that she's going to be in hospital for a while yet, that her dosage is going to have to remain intravenous for the time being, hospital based. But she's going to have to be discharged long before her left arm is fully healed, at the very least, and with Bea gone she'll have no one to help her.

He's going to have to help her break it to her parents somehow, Ethan decides. Her mum, at least. She can't go home by herself with one, potentially two, bandaged arms on top of all her other injuries, that's just a disaster waiting to happen, and there's no question of him imposing himself upon her in order to help her in that respect… just the thought of it makes him blush but no, it wouldn't be fair on Alicia, this isn't about him. He doubts Alicia would even trust him, male, to brush the tangle of knots out of her hair just now, and no part of him can blame her, not after Eddie. Perhaps this is a few days away yet, but someone is going to have to start thinking about this now, Alicia is certainly in no fit state to.

He doesn't know what to do, sitting watching her sleep that night. It's the time to think; in a way it's a blessing, being here, because he can see her, because he knows she's sleeping, nightmare free, stats as normal as can be expected after involvement in an RTC, but in a way, it's a curse. The more time he has to sit and think, watching her, the more problems he's encountering, playing it out in his mind, despairing.

She doesn't deserve this. Alicia doesn't deserve this, she deserves someone who's going to cherish her, not take advantage of her as brutally as Eddie did.

Ethan doesn't know if he can bear to hear her police statement, when that moment comes. He'll have to, if she wants him there, won't fail her if she wants him there, but quite how, he doesn't know.

He doesn't even want to think about what might have happened prior to that 999 call.

He hardly even notices Elle re-entering the ward. She's been checking in, sporadically, though mostly confined to the ED now he's up here with Alicia, Ethan suspects, given how understaffed they will be tonight, Eddie was supposed to be on shift, same with Bea, before her trauma course placement came through, Alicia is supposed to be on in the next few hours…

God, this is such a mess.

Eddie has created such a mess.

"How is she?" Elle asks quietly. She seems to have more or less accepted that Ethan is practically doing the monitoring of an on-shift doctor, that it's unrealistic to expect anything less with the vitals monitor at his disposal. "Her stats look good…"

Ethan nods, weary. "She's sleeping," he says simply. "I think she's going to be out for a while. She wants me to wake her before I'm on shift, I don't think it would be fair to go back on that, after everything that's happened…" He pauses for a moment, hoping Elle will catch on. "But she's exhausted. She's going to make herself worse if she carries on like this, she didn't want to sleep, at all, I don't know if she's scared to…" he shakes his head helplessly. "She told me she didn't sleep last night, either, two nights ago now, I guess, it sounds as though she went straight to the police after work. But she's looked exhausted for weeks, I wouldn't be surprised if she's barely slept since it happened, I should have realised…"

"You couldn't have known," Elle tells him gently. "You couldn't have known it was this, Ethan, it could have been anything. You couldn't have made her talk if she didn't want to, that would have got you nowhere. She had to try and work through this by herself if that's what she wanted to do, and I know that's hard to accept. I'm going to stall the police as long as I can," she tells him. "The police will want a statement, whoever takes over when my shift ends, I'll be telling them we need to hold the police off, let her sleep."

He nods. "I'm going to talk to Mrs Beauchamp, I know we're understaffed, but… I don't think she should be by herself," he tells her, adamant; it's not Elle he needs to convince, of course, but he's rehearsing, running through it all in his head. "I can't persuade her to call her parents and I can't really blame her, I don't think she's mentally strong enough to deal with that right now and we can't force her, we can't call them against her wishes. I just think…" He trails off, suddenly aware of raised voices in the corridor outside, not quite loud enough to distinguish quite what's being said but loud enough that it's noticeable, gaining volume.

Alicia stirs, winces, face suddenly troubled.

"I'll go and see what's going on," Elle says quickly. Perhaps something of Ethan's frustration is painfully evident, despite his best attempts to hide it. "It's not even a Friday night, for goodness sake, it's not as if…"

But she doesn't make it as far as the corridor.

"I can't let you in there, you need to come with me…"

"I don't care, I need to speak to her!"

"You can say anything you want to say at the station, I cannot let you in there!"

"You don't understand, whatever she's told you, she's twisted everything!"

"Like I said, mate, this isn't the place to be arguing about this! I cannot let you go in there and speak to her, you need to leave, now, you need to report to the station now or you'll be…"

"Let go of me!"

And then the door bursts open, and Eddie charges through the doorway, closely followed by the on-guard police officer.

And to Ethan's horror, Alicia blinks, winces, then almost seems to startle herself awake. "No…"

She might well think she's dreaming, Ethan realises. Perhaps she still believes she's dreaming, that once she's awake properly this nightmare will be over, except Eddie is here, really here, stormed into her hospital room, and Ethan has failed once again to protect her.

"It's alright," he murmurs, desperate, knowing it's all over and yet it's all he can think to do. "It's alright, Alicia, go back to sleep…"

"Alicia!" Eddie bellows, struggling against the police officer. "Alicia, you have to tell them…!"

The rest of Eddie's words fade into nothing for Ethan, meaningless. All he can focus on is Alicia, Alicia now very much awake, Alicia opening her eyes at precisely the wrong moment, Alicia frozen, rabbit in the headlights, gaze firmly fixed upon Eddie in the doorway as though afraid that should she take her eyes off him for even a moment she will have to live that nightmare all over again.

It's all so woefully predictable. Ethan doesn't need to glance across at the monitor to know her resps are rising, climbing back up towards the tachycardic zone again, after all their efforts. Her grip on his hand intensifies, as though she's clinging onto him, and then she's retching, panicked, clearly fighting so hard to hold herself together in the face of this and struggling desperately, too much for her.

"Right, I need you out, now!" Elle shouts angrily. "Dr McAllister! She's in no state for visitors, I need you out, right now!"

"No!" Alicia cries, clenches her eyes shut. "No, please, I can't…"

And then before Ethan can react, she's half-leant, half collapsed, over the side of the bed and vomited, shaking, surrendered, as though in her head this is something very different and there's no affecting the outcome, nothing she can do to change what's coming next except to beg and plead and cling to hope Ethan suspects was shattered to pieces weeks ago.

"Please," she whispers, breath coming in gasps. "Please…"

Once again, I am so sorry for the delay, this week has been incrediblyintense and these chapters seem to be taking so much longer to write than chapters of my other Casualty story at the moment, it's mostly because of all the medical research I tend to do for this one, but I really did want to make this as realistic as possible. I hope the wait was worth it! I've been struggling with this one for a few days now but the Ethan/Alicia scenes in last week's episode totally turned this chapter around, those will be fuelling my writing for weeks I think. Did you enjoy the episode as much as I did?

I'm sorry too for the cliffhanger, it just seemed like the best place to cut it off. I'm sorry! Thank you as ever for your wonderful reviews, you guys are incredible motivation. And I would love to know your thoughts on this one.

Are you happy with the current viewpoint balance, or would you like more Alicia?

-IseultLaBelle