Sitting In A Tree

Hope you enjoy, even if Sam and Dylan romantic is getting a little bit out of fashion. I'll try to update soon.

It was a late Friday night in early Autumn, and the brightly lit A&E department was once again overflowing with an assortment of minor injuries, almost all of which were caused by spending too long in the pubs, in one way or another.

Sighing slightly as she finally arrived in the staff room for a long overdue meal break, twenty six year old Kelly Sells nearly jumped out of her skin when a small voice spoke from the back corner of the room.

"Hi," she chirped brightly, (too brightly for Kelly –tired and overworked already despite having another six hours on her shift) then stared expectantly at the brunette woman.

Kelly just stared at her.

She was maybe eight or nine years old, with big dark blue eyes and long dirty blonde hair tied in two rapidly disintegrating plaits – wearing a navy blue school uniform that didn't seem to belong to any of the nearby primary schools that she knew of, and with her job, she knew a lot.

"Hi there," Kelly replied, whispering and hoping she wasn't going mad and hallucinating from stress, that really wouldn't be good for her career, "What's your name?"

"Em'ly," the small girl replied with a slight lisp, just swinging her legs slightly off the end of the giant red sofa in the corner of the room that was almost comically too big for her.

"Well, it's nice to meet you Emily." Kelly told her with a slightly forced smile, and turned to the ham and cheese sandwich she had hurriedly yet lovingly prepared late that morning and was greatly looking forward to eat, but now couldn't.

She screwed her eyes shut temporarily as she tried to force her curiosity down, but still she turned back to the small girl. "What are you doing in here Emily? Are you waiting for someone?"

Emily nodded enthusiastically, her eyes lighting up with excitement. "Uh huh. Sammy said I could wait here for a few minutes, until I can go home."

"Sammy?" Kelly was confused, was Sammy a patient, or a …

"Sammy Nicholls. She's my big sister." Her small voice interrupted Kelly's silent thoughts, and sudden realisation hit the young doctor.

That Sammy.

Kelly grinned mischievously, if internally, already thinking of a thousand and one ways to playfully embarrass her younger colleague at work with the childish nick name, that both did and didn't suit the wannabe army medic that had probably worked hard to get away from it.

"Why did Sammy say you could stay here anyway? She doesn't finish working for another couple of hours, and you can't stay here unsupervised for that long." Kelly asked, unobtrusively trying to pry as much gossip as she possibly could from the unaware little girl.

Emily raised her eyebrows, in the epitome of the 'Duh!' expression. "Dylan's taking me home. I'm staying with them this weekend while mum and dad and Jenny go on some bike ride thing in Scotland. I wanted to go, but I'm not old enough yet – I will be next year – but this year I get to stay on the boat." She uttered the last word with such glee, it almost made the older woman laugh out loud.

But then Kelly frowned – Dylan…Boat…That sounded an awful lot like … "Dylan Keogh?" The elder woman questioned, now long having forgotten her much-wanted sandwich, enthralled in the tale (and the gossip – the likes of which hadn't been seen around the department in months) that the young girl was happily telling her.

Emily screwed her face slightly and quickly in sudden confusion, "Who else? Why?"

"No reason," Kelly replied too quickly, her voice jumping a register or two as she tried in vain to conceal her own glee.

And in vain it was, for her silence lasted all of about twenty seconds before she burst out with yet another question, to fuel her own curiosity. "Are you saying that your sister, Samantha Nicholls, and Dylan Keogh, are together?"

"What do you mean?" The small girl asked, her legs swinging again, as she began to grow bored of waiting, and talking.

"Are they dating?" Kelly re-asked, simplifying it slightly for her, her anticipation fused into every word.

In response Emily only laughed, as if the idea was absurd. "They're not dating. They've been married for a month. I wore a purple dress." She said the last sentence almost proudly even as she let out another laugh, as if the older woman was extremely slow.

Kelly's eyes widened at the Holy Grail of gossip – a marriage, and in secret as well.

She opened her mouth, maybe for more details, possibly to tell Emily not to tell anyone else, so it would be her gossip to tell people, (until she told even just one person anyway – then the entire department would know in a matter of hours), when a head with long red hair popped around the door.

"Kelly! We pay you to work, not to chat. Your break finished five minutes ago." The head disappeared, as Kelly muttered a selection of choice words under her breath at the offending woman, not noticing Emily's slight giggles as she guessed the words Kelly was sort of trying to hide.

She packed up the sandwich she had been so looking forward to, and then never got to even take a bite from, and placed it back inside her locker, in case there was a miracle, and she got a break on a Friday night.

Waving her goodbyes to the eight year old little girl, who had already distracted herself with a fairly thick book from her backpack, Kelly straightened her uniform, and headed back out into the real world – the one filled with drunks and idiots and everything between the two.

She did have one incident to keep her going through the rest of her twelve hour shift though, for when she exited the all but deserted staff room, she (literally) ran into none other than Samantha Nicholls, or should she say Keogh, the blonde woman obviously checking up on her little sister, but accidently dropping the small mountain of files she had been carrying.

As they both leant down to pick them up, Kelly muttered the first line a little ditty she hadn't sung since she'd left primary school, "Sam and Dylan, sitting in a tree," before walking off, humming the rest of the tune.

Needless to say, Emily never came back to the A&E department again.

Thank you for reading, and please review, (I'd like to see if I can get four reviews for this chapter)
Mia