Hi. Another short little chapter where not very much happens - sorry! There will be longer, slightly more action-packed updates to follow. Hope you enjoy it anyway and as ever please review.
Tuesday Morning, Holby
Jac's Bedroom
Jonny came into Jac's bedroom quietly, carrying a cup of tea for her. She was, he was pleased to see, still asleep, although he knew that he would have to wake her very soon. He put the tea down on her bedside table and then carefully sat down on the bed. He looked at her, and again got a real sense of satisfaction that he had arranged things so she could have more of what, it was so obvious to him, she needed – sleep. Remembering how he had woken as usual, at 'Jac-watch' time, just after six and found her exactly where she had been when they had both fallen asleep – her head resting on his bare chest, her hand securely holding his. How he had, so gently, released his hand from hers and then, even more carefully, an inch at a time, moved his body from under hers until he was finally able to, with the utmost care, place her head back on his pillow. She had stirred in her sleep at this, perhaps unconsciously objecting to the removal of his comforting presence, but had, to his relief, not woken. And then he had slowly got up before padding round barefoot to the chest of drawers beside the door to turn the alarms on her radio off, really not wanting all his hard work in keeping her asleep to be undone by Chris Evans, or even worse, the bleeping noise she had once told him her second alarm was set to 'because you have to get up when that goes off'.
He had then had a quick comfort break, remembering, he was proud to note to put the seat down when he had finished, popped to the kitchen to put the kettle on, before heading to the hall to use the phone he had noticed there last night. He had called the ward from the lounge not wanting to take the risk that the conversation might wake Jac, but knowing that the information he would find out would be what she would want to know as soon as she did. Jil had, he was told, had a good night – settled with no causes for concern raised. And Jonny couldn't have explained how much of a relief that was for him to hear, although it would have been obvious to an outsider that he had been dreading bad news, which he would then have had to pass on to Jac. This phone call was also where the cleverest part of Jonny's 'keep Jac sleeping' plan came to fruition – he managed to persuade Gwen to stay on for an hour or so at the end of her shift, so that he could come in late with Jac. He realised that, by the time Jil went home, he would owe so many different people, so many favours he would probably still be paying them back at Christmas, but was also surprised quite how easy it had been. It seemed he wasn't the only one who had a vested interest in keeping Jac away from the ward for as long as the principle of patient-care would allow, although he was sure that everybody else's reasons were quite different from his.
He had then made himself a cup of coffee and gone for a quick shower, deliberately keeping the flow rate and pressure low to reduce the noise it made, and checking, after he'd dressed to make sure that it hadn't woken Jac. Then armed with his coffee he had sat for a few minutes in the lounge, watching BBC Breakfast with the sound muted and the subtitles on, before he suddenly got up and turned the TV off, thinking that he had enough going on to worry about in his own life, without 'hearing' about the world's troubles too. He sat down on the sofa again to look properly at the pictures Jac had been gazing at last night. Picking up the ultrasound first he recognised it as a 20 week scan picture, and remembered Jil telling him how Jac had been there for that, hiding her eyes when the sonographer checked the legs so that she wouldn't accidentally see, with her medical eye, what sex it was. He looked around the room and spotted another identical frame, with what looked like, another scan picture in – and he assumed (correctly as he later confirmed) that this was the same baby but at 12 weeks. He gently placed the picture back on the table before picking up the wedding photo of Jil – it was, he guessed, one that had been taken by Jac, because the moment that was captured there looked so natural he didn't think it could possibly have been posed by a professional. It was a close up shot, taken from the side, of Jil leaning slightly back and beaming, looking like she was just about to burst into laughter, looking, actually, like she was about to burst from happiness. He put this photo down by the ultrasound picture and looked at them for a few more seconds, beginning to realise, in a way that up until then he hadn't really appreciated, exactly what was at stake, and just how much Jac stood to lose if things didn't turn out the way they all hoped they would. And then, as if exercise could somehow make everything OK he had drunk the rest of his coffee pacing around Jac's lounge looking at the books in her bookcase, the pictures on her wall and the bits and bobs scattered round the room, before after looking at the clock he realised that, however reluctantly, he would have to wake her now. He had gone to the kitchen once again, and made her a cup of tea just the way she liked it – the teabag dunked but not squeezed, a little milk and no sugar. And then he had taken it to her bedroom, which brought him back full-circle to here – the cup of tea on her bedside table and him watching her sleep, marvelling at just how peaceful she looked, before he woke her.