Prompt 35: "Just leave me alone."

Summary: Modern AU! Shelagh gets a call on the one year anniversary of Marianne's death.

A/N: Warning, this one is REALLY angsty. TW: assault, drinking.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

When her phone rang at 9pm and she saw the familiar "Doc Turner" caller ID pop up, she wasn't surprised. Actually, she was surprised she didn't get a call earlier in the day. She knew Patrick was dreading today. He'd spent the past couple of weeks being extremely irritable at work and then sending apologetic texts in the middle of the night. She didn't blame him at all, she just wished he could let himself be a little more open to comfort.

The two of them seemed to be on the edge of something, but honestly, she had no idea what that something was. Everyone at the hospital was speculating about why Dr. Turner was having lunch with his head nurse nearly everyday and why she also occasionally watched his son, but it was just gossip. He'd barely been widowed a year and while she knew she was hopelessly attracted to him and was pretty sure he was also attracted to her, the timing wasn't right at all. For now, she was happy to be his friend and occasional confidant and babysitter (to father and son, really).

Hopefully, him calling her now was him finally reaching out for a comforting hand.

She grabbed her phone off the side table as she turned off the TV.

"Hey Patrick, how are you holding up?" She asked warmly.

"Shelagh?" The small, younger voice startled her.

"Timothy? Does your father know you're using his phone?" asked Shelagh, now growing concerned.

"No." Timothy replied, but he sounded nervous, so she didn't berate him.

"Is everything alright, Timothy?" She asked more forcefully.

"Can you come over?" he asked, voice shaking slightly. "It's dad. I'm scared."

Shelagh's heart started racing in panic.

"Timothy, listen to me very carefully. I'm on my way, but are either of you hurt? Do you need an ambulance?" She tried to force the fear out of her voice, but she wasn't sure she succeeded.

"I don't think so. Just please come. Please!" It sounded like Timothy was crying and Shelagh doubled her efforts to get her shoes on one-handed.

"Okay, I'll be there in ten minutes, Timothy. I'm going to hang up the phone so I can drive, but I promise you, I will be there in ten minutes." She was going to break traffic laws to keep that promise if she had to.

"Okay. Please hurry!" Timothy hung up and Shelagh took a deep breath to collect herself before running out of her flat and speeding to Patrick's.

She ran two red lights and parked halfway on the curb, but true to her word, Shelagh Mannion knocked on the door of the Turner flat ten minutes later. It was opened immediately by a frantic Timothy who practically pulled her through the door and towards the kitchen. Out of the corner of her eye, Shelagh spied an empty bottle of whiskey and a broken glass on the coffee table. Oh no, Patrick.

They turned the corner to the kitchen and Shelagh had to pull Timothy back in horror. The floor was covered in shattered ceramics and Patrick was drunkenly pacing back and forth, smashing every piece of Marianne's dishware he could pry from the cabinets.

"Timothy, go to your room." Shelagh instructed gently, but with no room for argument. Timothy didn't even try to fight her. He'd never seen his father like this, but he didn't like it at all.

"Patrick?" Shelagh called out softly, inching her way towards him through the rubble. "Patrick, it's Shelagh." She reached out to grab his arm and he froze.

"Marianne?" he whispered, voice torn from drinking and crying. Shelagh's heart broke for him.

"No, Pat." she sighed sadly. "It's me. Shelagh. Marianne's not here anymore, remember?" She took his arm with both hands and tried to edge him towards the door to get him away from the shards of ceramic. His hands were badly cut and who knew how well his slippers were protecting his feet?

He pulled angrily out of her grip.

"Thatsss not funny, Marianne." he slurred. "Shouldntt joke bout those thingss."

"Patrick, please, you're scaring Timothy and frankly, you're scaring me." Shelagh tried again. "Marianne isn't here. She hasn't been here for a year now."

Shelagh reached for his arm, but he slipped and in an effort not to have him impale himself on the broken dishes, she instinctively threw her arms around him to hold him up.

"Are you tryingg to make it upp to mee?" his mood changed on a dime and he sloppily turned them so she was pressed up against the countertop. "I've missed youuu so muuch." Still convinced he held his wife in his arms, Patrick roughly kissed Shelagh until she managed to unpin her arms and shove him across the room.

"Get off of me!" she shouted, shocked, horrified, and absolutely heartbroken. She couldn't stop the tears. She loved him, she'd known that for sometime now, and she wanted him to kiss her one day, but not like this. Never like this. Not with his brain soaked in alcohol and his wife's name on his tongue, and certainly not with him forcing her against his kitchen counter.

She'd thrown him so hard that he'd slammed his head against the wall and the shock of it snapped him out of his delusion enough to finally realize who the woman in front of him was.

"Oh fuck. Sheeeelagh? Shelagh, I'm sorrrry." he cried as he tried to stumble towards her. The way she leapt back from him in fear stung more than the numerous cuts he could now feel along his skin.

"Get away from me." she warned. "Don't you fucking touch me, Patrick Turner."

"Please, I never meant tooo. I thought youuu were her." he was sobering up from the shock, but he still had to fight his way through the haze to find his words.

"I don't care who you thought I was." she spat. "You threw yourself so far down the bottle that your son got scared and called me and then you tried to-" she couldn't even say it, she was so furious. "I'm taking Timothy back to my place. He doesn't need to wake up tomorrow to this. You can text when you get your act together and I'll bring him home."

"Shelagh, please." he begged.

"I know you're hurting, Pat." she softened a bit, she really did understand that he felt like dying on the inside. "I know it's been impossibly hard, but you can't do this. You can't do this to Timothy. You have to be stronger than this."

"I can't anymore." he cried. "I can't do everything. I can't be a father, and a mother, and a doctor. I just can't do it."

"Yes you can. It just doesn't feel like you can right now." she sighed. "I'll send Phyllis around in a bit to get you cleaned up."

The hollowed look in his eyes almost made her change her mind, but she couldn't do it. She couldn't bear to touch him right now, not even to bandage him. She could barely even look at him.

"Shelagh, I really am sorry." he apologized.

"I know." Shelagh admitted softly. "But I can't forgive you right now. Just leave me alone for a bit, okay? I'll bring Timothy back around tomorrow and then I'm taking a couple days off work."

"You don't have to do-"

"Yes, I do." she insisted. "You need someone to help you and to be there for you and Timothy...and I can't do that if all I see when I see you is what happened tonight. I'll see you around, Doctor Turner."

She hurried out of the kitchen and swept Timothy away into her car before he could stop her.

"See you around, Nurse Mannion." he whispered to himself.

In the end, it was a week before they saw each other again. After a stern lecture from Phyllis and raging pain from his cuts and his hangover, Patrick took Timothy away to the seaside for a few days. It took that terrible night for him to realize that he'd never actually talked to his son about his mother's death. He'd shoved all feeling away and hidden all of his pain and in the end, it all came spilling out anyway, just with far worse consequences.

Timothy seemed back to his normal self pretty quickly, though Patrick suspected the buckets of ice cream he'd purchased during their vacation had a lot to do with that. Now, he just had to face Shelagh. He still felt ill over what he'd done. There was never going to be anything he could say that would erase the fact that he'd forced her to kiss him in a drunken rage. He didn't deserve her forgiveness, but he would fight for the rest of his life to earn it. He wondered how she was faring. All he'd wanted to do was call or text and ask, but he knew he couldn't. It wouldn't be fair. The only thing keeping him sane was the work emails he'd specifically not blocked for the week. At least something was proceeding normally.

She was waiting by his office when he came in.

"Good morning, Doctor Turner." she greeted formally.

"Good morning, Nurse Mannion." he replied. At least she was speaking to him.

They stood in silence for a few moments before she reached out her hand. He tentatively reached his own out to meet hers and he nearly stopped breathing when she took it and shook it firmly.

"It's good to see you, Patrick." she smiled and headed off to her first appointment.

It was going to take time, but they weren't lost to each other and at the moment, that was all that mattered.

35 down, 15 to go! Sorry this one was a gut punch. :(