Jac Naylor stood and waited for her coffee to percolate. She had lost count of how many mugs she had consumed in one day; it probably wasn't healthy but she didn't really care. Caffeine was her stimulant, her diesel. A fuel essential in keeping her alert during such a gruelling night shift. She mulled over the night's events so far in her head: first there was the patient with chronic liver disease that refused to sign the consent form; then there was the delay of test results from toxicology; a complication in surgery and, to make matters worse, Hanssen seemed to be stalking her. The towering, self-assured Swedish fiend who obviously felt it necessary, not to mention highly amusing, to spy on her every second of the day, assessing her progress as the new Locum Consultant on Keller Ward. The Ice Maiden was on the brink of exploding, likely to lash out at the next person that got in her way.
All of a sudden the door banged open and Jac, awoken from her reverie, looked up irritably at the midnight trespasser.
He lingered in the doorway for a short while, then slowly walked in and closed the door carefully behind him. Glinting, his cobalt blue eyes met hers briefly and then, in his typically awkward fashion, looked away again. There was something not quite right about the look he gave her; a look of defeat perhaps, of melancholy. This wasn't the Joseph Byrne she once knew. Okay he was a bit of a doormat, a bit OCDC as she had once described him, but he always used to have a spring in his step when he was with her. This seemed to have now evaporated completely.
"I need to speak to you" he murmured solemnly.
Jac, who was leaning casually against the work surface in the Darwin staff room kitchen, stood up straight, nonplussed at his grave tone of voice. A strange sensation of butterflies erupted in her stomach. "That sounds ominous", she replied nonchalantly, trying with all of her might to conceal her concern. She turned back to the coffee machine and poured a mug of the steaming, brown liquid and then returned to face her former lover, hugging the mug to her chest. "So Joseph, what do you have to tell me so urgently?"
A few seconds silence.
"I'm leaving"
Only two words surfaced from his lips. Only two words. Yet, these two words cut through her like the sharpest knife, instilling fear and despair into every inch of Jac Naylor's being.