AN: This won't make sense if you're not familiar with the Every End is a Beginning AU. For those who have read it, it is set during the time period of 'episode' 2.09, Scrubs, though that really doesn't have much relevance to the story…

…There's a world outside your window, and it's a world of dread and fear, where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears. And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom…

MSF HOSPITAL

ALEPPO

SYRIA

Beth let herself close her eyes for a moment, taking a few deep breaths.

Telling two parents who'd walked for several hours from their home in the countryside surrounding Aleppo, too poor to afford any other form of transport, to get their son, not even two, medical treatment, that there was nothing more they could do for their son, to say goodbye, because he was on death's door, was something that one simply couldn't do without being emotionally affected.

(Her mentor, Dr Chris Garcia, told her that was, in the end, a good thing. It meant she cared. The day she stopped valuing human life like she did now…that was the day to worry.)

The mother's wail (heart-wrenching and full of anguish) cut through her thoughts, the implication clear.

It was Christmas Eve. This little boy hadn't even lived long enough to see his second Christmas.

Beth closed her eyes again, willing herself not to cry.

She couldn't cry. She had to let go, pull herself into her doctor headspace.

There were more people who needed her help. Needed her training. What she could provide for them.

She let herself grieve one moment more for a little boy, not even two, taken far too soon by measles, like far too many other children this hospital had seen.

The most innocent of innocent victims.

She took another deep breath, and when she opened her eyes again, her doctor's calm had settled across her face.

She hurried back down to the ER.

She had a job to do.

A young man (he couldn't have been any older than Beth), looking sweaty and exhausted and very, very worried, hurried into the ER, carrying a woman, probably a couple of years younger than him, who was very, very pregnant, and heaving and panting.

'Help, please!'

Beth quickly mentally went over the other patients they had in the ER (thankfully, it was a quiet night – always good in an ER– two boys with broken bones, a young woman who'd taken a knock to the head due to a structurally-unsound roof, a small girl who'd started going blind due to what was almost certainly vitamin A deficiency), and hurried over to the woman who was clearly in labour. Imminent childbirth was definitely the most urgent case, especially, she thought, as she sanitized her hands and forearms as one of the nurses directed the man to set his wife down on a gurney, given how narrow the woman's hips were, possibly due to malnutrition in her teens.

'What's your name?'

She asked in English, which was widely spoken in Aleppo, though Beth had managed to pick up a little bit of Arabic (with an atrocious accent, but understandable at least). Generally, she asked in English first, then tried Arabic.

(Faster communication meant she could do her job better.)

'Dima.'

The woman gave a low cry as soon as she'd gotten that word out, and Beth, after checking that the nurse had drawn the curtains, lifted the edge of the woman's skirt.

'Dima, I'm going to check how close your baby is…' The baby was crowning. This was either a very fast labour, or it'd taken Dima a very long time to get to the hospital. 'Okay, your baby is coming right now, I need you to push…'

As the nurse handed Dima her daughter and her husband Elias grinned proudly, Beth's brow furrowed as she performed a quick post-partum examination.

Dima had lost a lot of blood, and was still losing more. The towels that the gurney had been quickly covered with were very absorbent, yet they were saturated with blood now.

Beth pulled out her stethoscope, and asked Dima, calmly, if she could just quickly measure her heart rate. The woman nodded and passed her daughter over to her husband, and Beth pressed her stethoscope to the woman's chest.

Her heart rate was high. Far too high. She was breathing too quickly, too. And as Beth straightened up, measurements done, Dima shivered.

Beth turned to the nurse and quickly fired off instructions, which made the young couple look over at her with great concern.

'She's got a post-partum haemorrhage, probably serious judging from how fast symptoms have developed. We need to get her onto an IV, Misoprostal and a unit of blood and find a bed in the maternity ward.' Beth turned back to the young couple as the nurse hurried off to make arrangements, speaking calmly but gently. 'You're losing too much blood. We can treat this; we're getting some medicine and blood for you now…' As she explained, Beth started shifting Dima's clothes out of the way, so that she could massage the other woman's uterus. 'This will help stop the bleeding…'

A couple of days later, Chris told her that Dima and Elias were asking to see her, before they left the hospital, so Beth abandoned her breakfast and made her way to the ward where Dima had been placed.

The young woman, cheeks full of colour, was cradling her baby girl to her chest, sitting up and looking the picture of health. Her husband was smiling, completely besotted, at his wife and daughter.

She'd recovered very well, according to Chris, whose ward she'd been assigned to (he was a hospitalist; this was far more his area of specialty compared to Beth's).

The young couple smiled at her as she came into view, and before she could say anything, Elias spoke, the amount of gratitude in his voice almost embarrassing her.

'Thank you for saving Dima's life. For making sure that my daughter will have a mother.' He glanced over at the mother and daughter. 'Thank you.'

Beth smiled, but shook her head.

'I'm not the only one who helped to save her life. And…and that is my job.'

Elias simply shook his head, as did Dima, and he gestured to their baby girl.

'Dr Garcia told us your name is Bethany. So, so is hers.'

Beth actually did blush at that.

'You don't have to, I mean, I don't do this expecting anything-'

Elias cut her off with a wave of his hand.

'Bethany is a good name. Especially for a doctor. It was a village with an alms-house for the poor and where they cared for the sick.' He smiled as he turned and admired his daughter again. 'Maybe she will be a doctor too.'

The hope in his voice, in his eyes, the hope that rolled off both him and Dima, made Beth smile a little wider, and she gave a little nod.

'Maybe she will.'

It's Christmas time. There's no need to be afraid at Christmas time. At Christmas time, we let in light and banish shade, and in our world of plenty, we can spread a smile of joy. Throw your arms around the world at Christmas time. But say a prayer, pray for the other ones, at Christmas time it's hard…

AN: The beginning and end of this ficlet come from the song Do They Know It's Christmas? I'd like to say that I picked Beth's name because MacBeth (as in the Shakespeare play) was funny, in all honesty. The fact that Bethany was the name of a New Testament village where they cared for the sick and the poor was something I only found out while doing research for this ficlet, I have to admit. It is a very happy accident!

Tomorrow's ficlet: 'That, Jack, is a masterpiece! The flavours are perfectly counter-balanced to make the world's best egg nog, and you're gonna go ruining it with liquor?'

I think (I hope) it's pretty obvious who says that…tomorrow's ficlet is definitely very light-hearted!