Thanks for all your encouragement, hope the end works.


Coda 4

"Come on Amira, We'll be late! Nikki will miss her plane." Harry called and Nikki smiled a watery smile. She liked watching him with his soon to be daughter. "What are you doing in there?"

He followed her into the kitchen, where Amira was busy replenishing the supplies of food and drink in her backpack.

"Remember what I told you about aeroplanes and airports."

"No bombs." Came back Amira's emphatic reply. Harry left her to it.

He went back to Nikki and put his arms around her waist.

"What's she doing?" Nikki asked.

"She never goes anywhere without enough water and snacks to get her through a day, possibly two. She takes her torch everywhere too. She gets very anxious if she's ever without it. She loves that unicorn."

"She's doing amazingly well."

"I know, that's why I don't make a fuss and I quite like those cereal bars."

"You're a great Dad," she said sincerely.

"Are you ready yet?" He called again, breaking the moment.

Amira walked out of the kitchen, her back pack on her shoulders and a piece of paper in her hand.

"For you!" she said, offering the paper to Nikki.

Nikki looked at the girl's drawing, but there were no rainbow unicorns here. Instead thick black crayon marks covered the paper, obscuring most of the white. She was a little taken aback. It wasn't the usual thing for a child to draw, it didn't look like any of the drawings pinned on Harry's walls. She'd not noticed her working on it. She must have done it at the play centre earlier. She was just about to reply with a polite platitude when she noticed something right in the centre. She dropped to her knees and held the picture between them, pointing.

In the smallest space of white in the middle of the sea of angry black crayon was a faint pencil drawn tadpole person. Big round head with arms where the ears should be, but arms that seemed to reach out of the surrounding blackness and offer help.

"Abi Harry!" said Nikki pointing at the little figure in the centre of the blackness. "Abi Harry help!" she added.

Amira nodded, pleased that Nikki had seen in the picture, all that she'd drawn there. The face in the darkness with arms reaching to lift her out of the grave and bring her back to life.

"Thank you!" Nikki smiled, pulling the girl into a fierce hug. "I will miss you. You must come and see me when you come to London." Amira nodded and pointed to Nikki and then to herself.

"Same!" she stated.

"Yes, we're the same. You are a very brave and special girl Amira. Harry is so proud of you." The words Nikki realised were probably lost on Amira, but she was sure she'd understand the sentiment.

"I put in bag." Amira stated, took back her picture and scurried over to Nikki's small holdall by the apartment door.

"We're both going to miss you," said Harry taking Nikki's hand.

"Thanks for letting me come and stay, thanks for talking to Thomas and waking me up and …"

"It's time to go," said Harry sadly and opened the front door.

oOo

"Thomas said a strange thing to me," Nikki admitted as they waited to hail a cab. "He said, that you never allowed yourself to be happy and I never allowed myself to be loved. Do you think that's true?"

"I think it probably was." Harry admitted. "But now with Amira, I'm not saying it's not hard Nikki. The things I've seen and that poor girl, all that she's been through, the nightmares she has, but being with her…"

"I know. You're happy Harry. You deserve it. I'm happy for you."

"And what about you?" Harry asked.

"I think I might be learning," she admitted and turned to steal another subtle kiss before their time ran out. "Going back. It's not going to be easy."

"So stay…" Harry said simply.

Nikki looked up at him then. "You don't mean that."

"I do, I really do," She could see from his face the authenticity of his words, he may have only just discovered the truth himself, but it clearly was the truth. "But you know how it has to be."

Nikki felt like exploding a retort, Harry and his 'beeping' conditions, but the presence of Amira, and the cab pulling up, terminated the outburst.

"Nikki?" Harry began, slinging his arm around her shoulder in the back seat of the car. "When you were in that box, did you want to live?"

"You know what I did, Harry."

"You just wanted out of the box, Nikki. Did you actually want to die?"

"No."

"So don't live your life as if you do! The stupid, dangerous things you do. No one is irreplaceable at work, Nikki, no one. But that's not true in life, this year, the past few years; all those unnecessary deaths of people I care about. Do you know how many medical personnel have been killed in the Syrian conflict so far?"

Nikki shook her head.

"It's over 800! And that's just the medics! I can't hack it anymore. You know I love you Nikki, but I can't stand by and watch you blundering from disaster to disaster. It's too hard. I won't do it. I'd love to have you here with us; the three of us… We would be..." Harry shrugged unsure of the word, but kept her gaze; words had never really been so important between them. "But I will not have Amira exposed to anymore unnecessary heartache. You know what I want. It's your call Nikki. It always has been."

"You never make it easy."

"I know, I'm sorry." He pressed a kiss into the top of her hair, regardless of the quizzical look he received from Amira. "You need to go back, get yourself well and then think carefully about what you want."

"I think I know what I want…"

"Nikki, you are still in 'survivor's euphoria,' you have no idea what you want. You have to go back. You told them you would.

"I promised," Nikki added mournfully.

"The offer will stand Nikki. Why don't you do something that's dangerous in a different way? Take a chance… on us. Just think about it, please?"

A small tear escaped and began to track down her cheek but Harry was quick to wipe it away.

"I will think about it," she said. "Thank you," she added in a hushed whisper.


We sang this Matt Redman song at church whilst I was writing this and it gave me a smile. Pretty sure we weren't singing about Harry though… Chorus goes like this:

'You alone can rescue. You alone can save. You alone can lift us from the grave. You came down to find us, Led us out of death. To you alone belongs the highest praise.'