A/N: Thank you all so much for the reviews! :D They really inspire me to carry on writing, so thank you all so much!
Is anyone else really looking forward to the Casualty episode on the 8th of January? I'm literally counting down the days; it looks really good (:
Kinda disappointed that as of yet, there is no clip on the Casualty website for it though...

Kirsty
The day before I told Adam, one of my patients was a fifteen year old girl with fractures and severe bruising around her ribcage.
"Mia?" I spoke her name softly, and she smiled when she looked up at me.
"Yeah?" I sat down on the edge of her bed and returned her smile.
"How did you say you got these again?" I asked, pointing to her ribcage.
"Oh, I was just being clumsy. I lost my footing and fell down the stairs." I raised an eyebrow.
"Right." she must have detected the skepticism in my voice, for she frowned and shifted uncomfortably.
"Why do you ask?" I took her hand, caressing it gently with my thumb.
"You know, you don't have to hide it. There are people who can help if someone at home is hurting you. I can get you a number if you want?" Mia looked down at the sheets and sighed, entwining her hands.
"Kirsty, please. It's fine, I can handle it." Unwanted sympathy dripped from my tone as I spoke.
"Are you sure?" She said nothing, and I sighed, rubbing at an itch on my upper arm. "Look, you really need to talk to someone about this." she grabbed my arm in her spare hand, and pushed my sleeve further up my arm -I'd absent-mindedly shown of the bruising on my arm when I'd been trying to scratch the itch- and smiled gently.
"Tell you what," she whispered. "I'll tell, if you tell."

Adam
Obs and Gynae confirmed what we had already presumed; Kirsty had miscarried the foetus. She was kept in overnight -something she thoroughly objected to-, and during that time I barely left her bedside. In fact, I refused to. I took her endless cups of tea, helped her to sit up when she felt she was ready, and rubbed her back to ease her aches and pains. I made her laugh.
Why? Because I felt like she deserved someone who would go to the ends of the Earth and back to satisfy her every want and need. The day her husband and daughter were brought into the ED after a car accident, Kirsty said that working with me was the only thing she looked forward to. I should have realised something was amiss among her and Warren that day, and thinking about how I could have saved her from another beating made me feel sick; because I was too wrapped up in my own feelings to realise when someone I deeply cared about needed help with her own emotions.

I would never be able to take that back, and I'd never be able to pretend like it'd never happened either. But maybe it would be the way I cared for her in the future that could lessen the hurt we both felt about the past.

Kirsty
There are few words to describe the feeling you have when you lose a child. Darkness overwhelms you, and it feels like you no longer have anything to live for. You want to cry, but it feels as if all the tears have been sucked out of you to make room for the rain that pours in your heart. It feels as if your efforts to raise your child have been dashed, and they never even mattered, because to them, you never did anything extraordinary.

That's how it felt when Nita came to the hospital and saw Adam holding my hand, saw me smiling at the terrible joke he'd just told me. She stormed through the ward, a look of outrage on her face.
"Nita!" I was overjoyed to see her, but when I took in her furious expression my smile quickly tuned into a frown. "What's wrong sweetheart?" she stood by the side of my bed, hands on hips, glaring at me in the way that only teenagers can.
"How could you not even tell dad you're in hospital?" she hissed. My eyes widened; I'd completely forgotten to call. "What's wrong with you anyway?" A million excuses raced through my mind, but could I really lie to my own daughter?
"I'm sorry love, I meant to call you. I just fainted and banged my head. It's nothing really." As it turned out, I was totally capable of it.

Adam
"Okay, do you want pasta or pizza for dinner?" I asked as I walked through to Kirsty's room. She shrugged her bag onto her shoulder and bit her lip.
"Adam, I think we need to talk about that-" I carried on talking, afraid that she would say exactly what I didn't want her to.
"I mean, we could even get Chinese if you want, but the takeaway near me always seems to take quite a while to cook the food... What do you think?" she sighed, and sat down on the edge of the bed.
"Adam, I can't come home with you." I looked up, brows furrowed.
"What? Why can't you?" she shook her head.
"Because I have to go home to my family, Adam. I'm sorry, but Nita's right to be upset. I can't just stop being a mother just because me and Warren are going through a rough patch." And with that, she walked out, leaving me with a thousand and one emotions to try and deal with.
"A 'rough patch'?" I muttered to myself. "Is that what we call abuse these days?"

I spent my evening sat alone in my living room, watching TV and drinking enough alcohol to poison my sorrows; just so I didn't have to deal with them right away. I felt too drained to even go upstairs to bed, so I ended up sleeping on the sofa.
As it turned out, that was a good thing. Because if I had gone upstairs, chances are I wouldn't have been able to hear the frantic knocking on my door at two 'O' clock in the morning. I opened the door to find guess who?
"Kirsty?" she was stood on my doorstep, shivering and absolutely soaked from the pouring rain, with a stream of crimson blood trickling down her face. She fell through the doorway into my open arms, and I quickly pulled her inside to get her out of the cold.
"I'm sorry Adam," she sobbed into my t-shirt. "I'm so sorry!" I pushed the door closed, and hugged her to my chest, stroking her wet hair and rocked her back and forth, my mind frantically searching for something to say.
"Shh... No, it's okay Kirsty, everything will be okay, I promise." She started crying even harder, my shirt clenched in her hand.
"Don't! Don't make promises you can't keep!" I hefted her up into my arms and carried her through to the lounge, placing her down on my sofa and stepping back to take in her appearance. She was pale, with deep bags under her red eyes. Her hair was matted with blood, my main major concern, and a few bruises were starting to blossom on her bare arms. She was shaking so hard- whether from the cold, or shock I couldn't really tell.
"Alright sweetheart, alright," I soothed, draping a throw over her small body. "Let's get you warmed up." I went through the kitchen and put the kettle on to make some tea, then ran upstairs to get some dry clothes and a towel. I stood at the top of the stairs for a moment, trying to make sense of things.
"Here we are," I murmured as I re-entered the lounge holding the clothes and a mug of tea. Placing the drink on the coffee table, I put an arm around Kirsty's shoulders and helped her to sit up. I gently grasped the hem of her t-shirt. "Can I?" I asked softly, and she nodded, biting her lip. I smiled in encouragement, and lifted it up over her head, immediately draping the towel over her shoulders -not before I took note of the added bruising mind-. I paused, my hand hovering over her legs. How awkward will me undressing her be for her? I wondered. She was watching me, no longer crying. I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it again. Then opened it, then closed it. She laughed, and I looked up, surprised. She had that warm, gorgeous Kirsty smile on her face, and it made my heart glow.
"You look like a goldfish doing that!" I returned her grin, and pulled her into a hug. "It's fine Adam... Just get on with it." she whispered in my ear. I pulled back, smiling again.
"Okay, if you're alright with that." she nodded as I unbuttoned and removed her jeans, replacing them with a pair of my comfiest tracksuit trousers. "There we are," I handed her the cup of tea. "Drink that all up, I'm gonna go get something to see to your head with." I grabbed the first aid kit from a cupboard in my kitchen, along with a damp cloth. When I went back through to the lounge, Kirsty had pulled my spare t-shirt over her head. She was still shivering, but not nearly as violent as she had been just a few minutes beforehand. I kneeled in front of her, and gently dabbed at the blood around the cut on her right temple.
"How did this happen anyway? Did Warren hit you?" she shrugged, setting her nearly empty cup down.
"Kind of. Well, I mean yeah, he did. Here," she touched the opposite side of her head to the one where the cut was. "I fell and my head hit the corner of the kitchen counter." I frowned as I saw the size of the cut- it wasn't too big, but it was fairly deep.
"We should really take you to the emergency room." I said quietly, but she shook her head, the desperate glow in her eyes tugging on my heartstrings.
"No, please! It's not that bad, it does hurt but apart from that everything's fine. Please?" I sighed.
"No, everything's not fine." I said quietly.
"Yeah it is! I don't feel dizzy or anything, I'm sure it's just superficial." I shook my head, regarding her with a forlorn expression.
"We both know that's not what I meant."

After I cleaned her up, we agreed that should she feel worse at any time, we were going to the hospital whether she liked it or not. Two hours of slowly rocking her back and forth in my arms later, I carried an exhausted Kirsty up the stairs and placed her in my bed, slipping in beside her. She curled up against me, nuzzling her head into my chest.
"Night, Adam..." she said sleepily.
"Goodnight, Kirsty."

A/N: Okay, I don't know what you guys think, but I had a lot of 'trouble' writing the middle bit of this chapter. Sorry if it's not much good, I'm really tired but I wanted to get this down anyway- a new year's present to you all (: . I might re-write this chapter later, because I meant for the confrontation between Nita and Kirsty to be longer, as well as the conversation Kirsty and Adam had before Kirsty went home- If I re-write it, Adam will put up more of a fight instead of just letting her walk out.
Anyway, cheers for reading, and please do drop me a review. It'll take you what, 20 seconds? :D
Oh, and happy new year to you all. Have a good one.

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