A/N: Sorry this took so long to update; I couldn't decide which way was best to go with it. The rest of my stories are having pretty much the same issues, and it's driving me slightly demented. This chapter includes Malick, Chantelle and Digby, too. Again, thank you for all your kind comments :)

Sarah x

Hanssen stepped onto Keller Ward, having been paged by Antoine Malick, who was standing at the nurses' station talking to an oddly troubled-looking Chantelle Lane. He groaned inwardly; what had gone wrong now?

"Good morning, Mr. Hanssen!" Chantelle greeted him cheerily, in a tone that, as always, contradicted the slightly gloomy expression upon her face.

"Good morning, Nurse Lane," he replied politely. "You paged me?" he reminded Malick, who was looking just as confused and pestered as Chantelle was.

"Ms. Campbell," he said simply.

"What about her?" Henrik said, worrying in a slight panic that she'd let slip about their past two evenings together. Had she told Malick and Chantelle? Were they about to tell him to back off from Serena? Despite its troubles, Henrik knew Keller was quite a tight-knit ward, where everyone, either openly or secretly, looked out for each other.

"Is she OK? This is the second day in a row her head's been up in the clouds somewhere," he explained. "It's not like her."

"What exactly are you referring to?" Hanssen quizzed them.

Chantelle answered quickly, "Well, she was in the toilets yesterday morning, and I went after her and she said she was fine but she sounded like she wanted to cry. And then she let both Gemma and Arthur in theatre with her. Two F1s, Mr. Hanssen! And then she put salt in her coffee by accident and we all know how picky she is about her coffee, and then this morning she was actually being nice to Mr. Griffin and Arthur, at the same time. She didn't even glare at Arthur when he accidentally said something about her hair being shiny! And then I lost my purse this morning and she lent me money until I got it all sorted, which she normally would never do. She bought me and Jake and Arthur and Mr. Griffin and Malick coffee, which she would never do either, and, well, she's being nice, Mr. Hanssen!" she finally concluded her breathless, rambling version of events.

"And she's not Serena Campbell if she's that nice," Malick backed Chantelle up. Hanssen didn't say anything, and Malick persisted, "Come on! Since when did Serena start being nice to F1s?!"

Malick and Chantelle, of course, were right to be worried. Normally, it was time to worry if someone was unusually unpleasant. But with Serena, there was more likely to be an issue if she was being pleasant. "OK," he sighed. "Although I don't understand why you think I am the person to talk to about this."

"I saw you get her out of the bathroom yesterday," Malick confessed. "Chantelle didn't manage it, so she obviously listens to you."

Slightly unnerved that someone had witness their exchange outside the bathrooms yesterday, Henrik answered, "I fear your confidence in me may be misplaced." But then he looked at Chantelle, and her genuinely worried expression, and he had to resist the urge to roll his eyes at her wounded puppy expression. "Alright," he groaned. "I will talk to her, but I warn you, I am no miracle worker," he added sternly to them both.

He walked away, not giving them a chance to answer him back, and decided Serena would be in her office. As he knocked on her door, he smiled to himself at her backward nature. "Come in!" she called, and he opened the door. "Ah, Mr. Hanssen," she smiled, but he saw the uncertainty in her eyes. Had he gone a step too far in kissing her last night? "How can I help?"

"I have it on good authority that you are being nice," he told her, unable to keep the layer of amusement out of his voice.

"There's no need to sound so surprised Mr. Hanssen," she retorted, relaying his own words back to him with a smirk. "I am capable of it, you know."

He went to stand at the side of her desk, looking down on her, now seeing what was worrying Malick and Chantelle. "Are you alright?" he asked her gently. "Apparently, your mind is all over the place."

"Let me guess," she drawled, her smile turning into an amused sneer. "Nurse Lane and Mr. Malick?" He didn't have to answer for her to know who had grassed her up. "Well, at least I know someone cares about me."

"Don't be silly," he scolded her gently. "You know the people here care about you. It's just unfortunate that you frighten most of them half to death," he added, and she smiled again. He had to take it in for a moment; he was only just realising that she was charming in a way he had never encountered before. "Did I upset you?" he sighed.

"What?" she asked; it appeared that he had confused her.

"Last night," he clarified, remembering her expression when he backwardly told her why he was making an effort with her, and her words after he kissed her. Her forehead leaning against her chest, laughing at his social ineptitude. The nervous sparkle in her eyes. "Did I upset you last night?"

She looked down to her fidgeting hands with a sheepish smile. "No, you didn't upset me," she assured him, still smiling like she was embarrassed, still fidgeting. Serena didn't fidget. Until now. She finally looked up at him, and what he saw was not what he had been expecting; she looked like she wanted to say something but didn't know how to put it.

He took her hand gently, trying to encourage her to spit it out. "You know I said I should be over what happened to my father?" she said.

"Yes," he replied. "I also recall that you have by no means recovered from what happened to you and your father," he said as he sat on the edge of the desk next to her.

"I don't want to talk about it," she said. "But I think I need to." Henrik smiled sadly down on her, knowing all too well how difficult it was to talk about the death of a parent at such a young age. "Maybe it keeps haunting me because I haven't talked to anyone about it. My own mother couldn't get a word out of me. I spent weeks and weeks, just shell-shocked. Too upset to go to school. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw it all again," she admitted, standing up and running her hands through her hair.

"I remember the car slamming straight into that wall. I nearly went through the windscreen, but my dad had made me put my seatbelt on. I looked around," she said, turning to face him. "And all I saw was him. Just sitting there. Steering column stuck in his chest, steering wheel bruised against him," she continued. He heard the tears in her voice that she was too proud to cry.

"I loved him," she said, and the tears finally flooded over onto her cheeks. "He was my dad, and I loved him, and I watched him die, and I couldn't help him," she finished. Her hand covered her mouth and she started to cry; he suspected this was the first time she had gone into any detail, and the first time she had consciously forced herself to relive it.

He watched her silently for a moment, not sure of what to do. She wasn't the type to embrace pity. Or kindness. Or sympathy. But he couldn't just leave her there crying, could he? "Come here," he sighed, beckoning her over to him. She glared at him, so he persisted, "Just come here."

She stepped over to him, wiping the tears from her cheeks, only for them to be instantly replaced. He put his arms around her, pulling her into a cuddle. He felt her arms wrap around him, her face buried into his neck. He put his hand on the back of her head, stroking her hair lightly. He had known this was coming. He just hadn't known when to expect it.

She was small and delicate in his arms, but still strong. "It's alright," he whispered. "It's alright."

"No, it isn't," she said into his neck. "But it's as OK as I'm going to get." He smiled at her words, her pessimism near equal to his. She stood back up, face to face with him once more, and smiled at him. "Thank you," she said. "For listening. For not telling me I'm an idiot. For just giving me a cuddle when I needed it."

"It's not a problem," he returned. Her hands fell to his shoulders, one creeping up to his neck, her thumb on his cheek. He knew where this was going, and the logical part of his brain was ordering him to stop it before it all went wrong. The other part of him, the part that was falling for the woman before him, was telling him to go ahead, because it was what he wanted.

Before he could make a decision, her lips were on his. His instinctive reaction was the one he willingly followed, deepening the kiss as he stood up, leaning down to her. As he did so, though, that doubtful voice of the cynic berated him. "Is this a good idea?" he asked her, shocked by how little air he had in his lungs.

"Who cares?" was her breathless answer as she drove him backwards into the wall, his back gently pressed against the cold, hard plaster. His answer was to follow his heart; he refused to let his head make him stop kissing her, and let a hand fall to her back, the other gentle but firm on the side of her neck.

Control was slipping away from him; it was a feeling he had not experienced in a long, long time, and he wasn't sure if he liked the idea of the self-imposed shackles being loosened – they were there for a reason. But as her arm wrapped around her neck and her body pressed against his, he thought that maybe this was a good thing.

The harder he kissed her, the faster the chains disappeared. She was taking control from him, making him free himself. He let her do so, up until the point where the sudden freedom frightened him, and he had to regain control. Instead of stopping kissing her, though, because he didn't even want to stop, he took charge, turning their bodies so that neither one was against the wall as they kissed. They were equals, and he had some degree of control.

Her hand was on his side, warm against his skin through his shirt. "We shouldn't be doing this," he reasserted aloud between smothering kisses; her breath was ragged now, and she was losing her willpower as fast as he was. Her free hand was wandering, and he acutely felt her fingers toying with the buttons on his shirt.

"Who says?" she replied. Her voice, though she was out of breath, was smug. Just as her fingers started to undo the first button on his shirt, the door flew open.

"Ms. Campb-" a young man's voice never got to finish her name. They immediately sprung apart, and Henrik looked to the door to see a stunned Arthur Digby with his hand still on the door handle.

"You didn't see a thing," Serena told him. "You weren't even here. Got it?" she glared, making the poor boy extremely nervous.

"I-I'm not good at keeping s-secrets," he stuttered, still shocked over what he had walked in on.

"You had better get good at it, then, hadn't you?" she retorted, her voice deadly serious. "Not a word to anyone. And learn to knock."

"Yes, Ms. Campbell," he agreed, walking away.

"Were you born in a barn, Dr. Digby?!" she shouted after him. To Henrik's amusement, within seconds, he returned to shut the door behind him with an apologetic look to them. She turned to Hanssen again, and he couldn't disguise his amusement. He had heard Digby was terrified of Serena. He hadn't realised just how terrified, though.

Their eyes met, and he smiled when she burst out laughing, wrapping her arms around his waist. She stretched up to kiss him, and he kissed her back lightly, just happy to see her demons were not overwhelming her like his had done to him for far too long.

Hope this is OK!
Please feel free to review and tell me what you think!
Sarah x