A little while later, Jacob and Grace arrived back at the room to see Mia fast asleep, Connie sitting beside her. She turned her head as she heard them and stood, embracing Grace and looking over her head to smile gratefully at Jacob.

"How are you feeling?"

"Really good, Mum. Does this mean I don't have to go to school tomorrow?" Jacob gave a small chuckle, which was then followed by an exclamation as the coffee he was holding spilled over the hole in the lid and spilled onto his hand.

"Do you need a doctor, Jacob?" Grace turned around in her mother's arms to wink at Jacob, and he looked from Grace to Connie, bewildered. He didn't reply, but put the coffee and biscuits down on the table in the corner of the room and took the chair next to his niece's side, stretching an arm out which Grace accepted, taking his hand as he brought her to stand, leaning against his chair.

"Thank you for coming, Grace." Behind him, Connie lowered her head and smiled, watching as Jacob spoke quietly to Grace. She then heard him as he explained what she had spoken to Jacob about only hours earlier. How Mia would, after her operation, be coming to stay with them for a while. At this, she brought her head up, and stepped forward, unsure as to what her daughter's reaction would be.

Grace was silent for a moment but then surprised both of them with a nod. "I think it will do us all good to have someone young around the place."

"Oh, because you're so old?" Connie asked with a smile.

"Not me..." Grace offered, laughing when Connie swatted her leg with a magazine before releasing a long yawn she'd been trying to keep in to stop either adult saying she would need to leave. Instead though, a few minutes later she found herself lying on a mattress on the ground, her head in her mother's lap as Connie stroked her hair, both of their eyes soon shutting with exhaustion.

Jacob kept himself awake for as long as he could, alternating between watching Mia and Connie. Had the woman who'd been so reluctant to enter into a relationship with him and so quick to jump away when the going got tough, really agreed to help him raise a child she'd only just met?

...

"J-dog, wake up. We have breakfast!"

"J-dog?" Jacob questioned as he opened the eyes that felt dry and itchy from lack of sleep.

"I decided you need a nickname too, so I'm working through a few to decide what works." Grace offered as she pushed a bag of food into his hands. "Mum picked it, so it's probably healthy and tiny. Sorry."

"Where is your mum?" Jacob asked with a frown.

"Yelling at Mia's doctor next door. She paid me twenty pounds for agreeing to never repeat the words that she used when she saw him ever again." Grace bit into her apple and looked with a wrinkled nose down at the granola bar she had picked for breakfast.

...

"She needs that operation, this morning."

"I'm sorry, but we're short staffed, there is no-one able to perform that operation at this time-"

"She could lose her leg!"

She stood, hands on her hips, arguing with the consultant in the room next to Mia's. He knew who she was, most people around here had heard by now that she was in the building, and he did his best to try and keep control over the situation.

"I'm sorry, but I have no other options-"

"Oh for goodness' sake! I'll do it!"

"I don't think that's appropriate, Mrs Beauchamp-"

"Why not? I'm the best damn surgeon in this hospital currently, and I'm not a relation. I don't see a problem."

"I'm afraid I can't-"

"I think you'll find-"

"Connie..." She turned around as she felt a strong hand at her waist, and stopped speaking. "He's right, Con. You can't operate on Mia, you've barely slept-"

"Jacob, I'm fine." She shrugged his arm away, and turned back to face the consultant, who mirrored as best he could the forceful stare that she aimed at him. "Right. I want her transferred to Holby. Mia is having that operation this morning."

"Mrs Beauchamp, you don't have the authority to-"

"Oh, I think you'll find I do." Her tone was cold, and determined. She wasn't going to back down.