He looked through the window at the man sitting at the bedside of his daughter. He was pale, drawn, as though he hadn't slept in days, probably because he hadn't. The man reached up and scratched a jaw that was badly in need of a shave, then reached for the cup of tea on the table beside him, but at no point did he take his eyes off the little girl asleep in front of him.

'Jonny' he said quietly. Despite the fact that there was little danger of waking up a heavily sedated infant, he still whispered out of respect and habit as much as anything else. He knew more than he'd ever wanted to about sitting at the bedside of a desperately sick child and he knew that the last thing anybody needed was somebody blustering around being loud. 'How is she?'

'Y'know' he shrugged wearily 'they say she's doing well, under the circumstances, but it's too early to really tell. There was some concern this morning that she was getting a chest infection but the doctors seem a lot more optimistic now'

'Optimism is good' he replied, although he knew from bitter experience that optimism could also be badly misplaced. 'How is Jac?'

'Gone' he replied, one word that covered a multitude of possibilities, all of which struck fear into Sacha's heart.

'Gone as in…?'

'As in left. Vanished. Buggered off an hour and a half after giving birth without so much as popping in to visit her critically ill child' Jonny replied. The anger in his voice was palpable but Sacha ignored it. It was only natural that Jonny was furious. It was clear that already Jonny's world revolved around his tiny baby daughter and Jac, however unintentionally had, in his eyes, treated the baby with contempt by leaving. In Jonny's eyes Sacha understood just how unforgivable that must be right now. He also understood that Jac was suffering too, it was just in her nature for the suffering to manifest itself differently.

'Have you any idea where she might have gone'

'None' Jonny replied 'I don't much care. I doubt she'll have got far after twenty-five stitches and an epidural. She's probably sulking on Darwin'

'Probably' he agreed, although privately he doubted it. If Jac was going to break, and he feared that she was, then she'd do it far from this place. At the moment every single thing in the world that Jac cared about was contained in this one building and for that reason if he knew Jac as well as he thought she did, he suspected that she'd be as far away as she could get. The saving grace was that Jonny had a point: an epidural, a fifteen hour labour and several stitches meant that she wasn't likely to have gone too far. Her house was too obvious – she knew that it was the first place she'd look – so his best guess was that she'd gone to a hotel.

'Makes no difference to us; if she doesn't care enough to be here now then Molly and I are better off without her'

'Molly…?' he echoed, briefly considering asking whether Jac knew that her daughter had been named in her absence but immediately thinking better of it 'Pretty name'

'For the prettiest girl in the world' Jonny replied, managing to be both proud and destroyed at the same time. Then he looked up at Sacha, remembered who he was speaking to and added stricken to the list. 'I'm sorry. I didn't think…'

'It's fine' he replied. He understood that Jonny thought that baby Molly was the most beautiful thing in the world because from the moment they were born he'd felt the same about all three of his children. In his eyes no other child could compare, and nothing was ever going to change that. 'I'm going to see if I can find Jac. I know you say that you don't need her but you're wrong and she needs to be here'

It didn't take long to track her down. He'd found the right hotel on the first go – there was only one hotel in central Holby that would pass Jac's muster – but it had taken him longer to work out what name she'd checked herself in as. He'd tried Naylor of course, and after that he'd tried Burrows, Maconie, even Byrne, but no joy. Eventually he'd resorted to pulling the doctor card and described her, intimating to the receptionist that she'd discharged herself from Holby City in a parlous state and that he needed to find her before her condition deteriorated. That had done the trick because not many deathly pale redheads had limped through the hotel reception in the last twelve hours, and the receptionist was bright enough not to want to run the risk of a dead body on her premises. She'd jotted down the room number for him and up he'd gone, accompanied by a porter to let him in.

'Jac?' he whispered as he peered around the door, praying that the woman sleeping in the bed was her because otherwise he was going to have some major explaining to do.

'Sacha?' she blinked in the dim light and he shut the door behind him, not wanting the porter to join them. 'What in god's name…'

'I was worried about you' he replied, perching on the edge of the bed 'You shouldn't have discharged yourself'

'Why not. I'm fine' she replied but the wince that crossed her face as she shifted in the bed told a very different story. 'I just need to rest'

'That's as maybe but you should be at the hospital. With your daughter…'

'What would be the point?' she asked wearily 'She wouldn't even know I was there. I'd be wasting my time'

'It's not wasting your time' he retorted, fighting down a bubble of anger at the mere insinuation that any parent being with their desperately ill child could ever be a waste of time. He knew that Jac simply didn't think before speaking, and that the fact that he'd spent three weeks never leaving the bedside of his unconscious daughter wouldn't even have entered her head, but it still rankled. 'It's your responsibility as her mother'

'I'm sure Jonny is doing a perfectly good job'

'He is but she needs you both. You've looked after her for the last seven months, you can't just switch that off now she's here. For both your sakes…'

'I looked after her so well that she arrived two months early to get away from me' she snapped back 'I can't do this, Sacha. I'm the doctor, I can't be the relative'

'So what? You're going to wait until she's home and healthy? It doesn't work that way, Jac. She needs you now'

'She was starved of oxygen. She might be…' Jac trailed off, the phrase handicapped too unutterably awful to say. '… I've seen it tear stronger people than me apart'

'You're the strongest person I know' he replied, stroking her hair out of her face. 'Molly deserves to have you there'

'Molly? God, he didn't waste much time. Has he picked out her godparents, university and future husband as well?'

'If you don't like it, you can discuss it'

'It's fine. It's a nice name'

'Come and see her, Jac. I'll be with you…' he added. He owed her that much at least because in Rachel's last weeks it hadn't been Chrissie who'd sat with him at her bedside for hours on end. Chrissie had insisted that she needed to keep things as normal as possible for Daniel and Rebecca, and Helen didn't really speak to him. Nobody could ever have accused his mother of being any help in a crisis, and it was Jac who turned up every day without fail and sat with him hour after hour, despite the fact that in her condition she really ought to have been in bed asleep. '… Please?'

'Take me home' she sighed, gingerly climbing out of the bed 'We can stop at the hospital for five minutes and then you take me home'