One Year Later

Ruth walked in to the ED with Jay, having given up trying to conceal her relationship with him long ago. They'd moved in to their first home together at the weekend and had finishing unpacking the last of the boxes the previous night. It had taken ages to find a place because Ruth loved Victorian properties which had been converted in to flats whereas Jay preferred new builds with reliable water and electrical systems. Eventually, the estate agent had found them the perfect compromise – a new build which had been built in a faithful recreation of a Victorian house to fit in with the neighbours. Ruth couldn't believe how lucky she was – for the first time in her life, everything seemed to be going right.

Although both Ruth and Jay were supposed to be working in CDU that day, a major incident at a building site meant that Ruth was called to the scene as there were several very critical casualties who Dixie wasn't even sure would make it into the ED, let alone survive. Despite Ruth putting her ambition to be a surgeon on the back burner since realising how much she'd have to sacrifice for it (i.e. Jay and her friends in the ED), she did relish the opportunity to go to the real frontline of dealing with casualties. She went to the scene with Dixie and Jeff who briefed her on the incident. Scaffolding had been put up very shoddily and when the builders went up to start work, the whole thing had collapsed. At the moment, at least five were severely injured, seven were badly injured and two were dead. All the injured had crush injuries or broken bones from the scaffolding so a lot of morphine was required as well as Holby's finest fire-fighters.

Everything was going great until one of the casualties' wives turned up in a hysterical state. Her husband was not as badly injured as many of his colleagues so he was still trapped within the scaffolding. Ignoring the pleas of the emergency services personnel as well as many of them trying to give chase, she went straight in to the pile of scaffolding. Her husband was trapped in a hollow with scaffolding pipes and planks enclosing the hole. Of course, she tried to move them herself and succeeded only in rolling one of the pipes down the pile of scaffolding towards where Ruth, Dixie and Jeff were treating one of the very seriously injured casualties. It happened so quickly that they didn't hear the warnings to move before the pipe hit them.

The next thing Ruth knew, she was being strapped to a spinal board and being blue lighted to the hospital.

"What have we got?" Dylan said as Ruth was rushed in to ED. He'd been given the task of leading her treatment, given he was the only doctor with very little emotional ties to treating a colleague.

"Ruth!" Jay ran to her side and refused to leave, even when he was told he wasn't allowed to help with her treatment as he was way too emotionally involved with her.

"It hurts – my back really hurts." Ruth said quietly to Dylan trying to hide the pain she was in from Jay.

"We need full bloods and urine tests, X-Ray, MRI and ultrasound ASAP people!" Dylan said to the nearest not-Jay nurse.

Tess took the blood test immediately but it seemed an age before Ruth was taken for her X-Ray. Jay nearly lost it when Jeff was taken for his when he'd been brought in 20 minutes after Ruth and only had a broken wrist from where he'd tried to stop the pipe hitting Dixie. Dylan had disappeared after a woman with an interesting rash on her leg had been brought in so Jordan took the brunt of Jay's anger.

"Can't you see how much pain Ruth's in? Why hasn't she gone up for her X-Ray? Jeff has and he arrived half an hour ago!"

"Jay, let me have a look at her notes first – I can't tell you anything until then. You know that." As he was flicking through them, a HCA came in with the results of Ruth's test. Jordan looked shocked but tried to hide it from Jay. However, Jay was no fool and didn't miss a beat.

"Come on Jordan, please, just tell us what is it?" Jay knew he was begging but he didn't care – this was Ruth who was the patient, not some random person off the street.

"Did you know Ruth's pregnant?"

"What? No, she can't be – she would have told me."

"Jay, they've checked and double checked. I reckon she's at least into her second trimester from her hormone levels."

"I'm not … I'm not pregnant," Ruth mumbled, trying to get through the fog in her brain caused by the pain medication she'd been given.

"Ruth, you are –we did the tests twice. We still need to do an ultrasound on your abdomen to check for internal damage – we could show the foetus then too if you like."

"I'm telling you, I'd know if I was pregnant. There's no baby in there," Ruth said, indicating towards her abdomen as best as she could.

She was proved wrong, however, when the scan proved she was expecting a baby and was 26 weeks pregnant. The baby had not curled up in to the normal foetal position which was why Ruth did not have a baby bump but was basically standing in her womb. Both Ruth and Jay were in shock before Ruth started crying.

"Ruth, babe, it'll be ok. You'll be a great mum, I promise," Jay tried his best to soothe her.

"No it won't be okay. For goodness sake, I've been taking bipolar medication which specifically say don't take while pregnant and I haven't taken any prenatal vitamins so my folic acid levels will be way too low , meaning the baby will probably have spina bifida so all in all, I've completely wrecked the baby's life before it's even been born."

"Ruth, listen to me. They can pick up spina bifida in the ultrasound and it was clear – everything was clear so you haven't ruined our baby's life AT ALL. If you'd like, we can talk to Charlie about your medication though."

"Ok – I want to sleep now." Her pain medication had been making her very drowsy and Jay was surprised Ruth hadn't fallen asleep earlier.

Jay just stayed by her side gently rubbing her hand to soothe Ruth in to a deep sleep, still in shock at the news he was going to be dad in just over three months. Ruth would have to stay overnight and despite all of Jay's pleading and begging, he was not allowed to stay with her. It broke his heart to go home without her, to sit down for tea without her to cook for or chat to or to sleep in their bed without her to cuddle as he fell asleep. For the first time in a long time, if ever, Jay cried himself to sleep.

Jay couldn't get to the hospital early enough the next day. Even getting there at 8 in the morning, Ruth had already beaten him to annoying the doctors and nurses in to letting her go home early so she was already packing up her stuff as best she could with her painfully bruised back when Jay arrived. He had to use all his persuasive charms to convince her to let him pack up her possessions. When they got home, Jay even managed to persuade her to go into almost complete bed rest for the first of the two weeks she'd been given off on the proviso that he joined her in staying in bed as much as possible.

Surprisingly, Ruth actually enjoyed being on bed rest – probably because Jay spent most of the two weeks by her side. Despite that, Ruth couldn't wait to get back to work – especially as she knew she'd have to go on months of maternity leave soon. Because of the baby's breech position, she'd been advised to have a C-Section so there was no chance of Ruth rushing back to work after the baby was born. It also meant that Ruth was being monitored extra closely which gave Jay extra scans to add to the baby book he'd created.