"It wasn't your fault" Zoe reminded him for the third time this week. "The sooner you realise this the sooner you'll be the grump we all love and know and stop sulking" . Zoe's teasing was a terrible cover up for her underlying concern and Dylan wished he could put her mind at rest but they both knew it would be a while before that happened.
" The more you say those words, the more I'll sulk" which Zoe chose to read as " I need help but I'm too stubborn to ask for it and I never know what to do with concern because I've never had it before."
Zoe raised an eyebrow and simply waited for her friend to look up from the computer screen,.
He rolled his eyes at her stubbornness. Both waited in silence, not wanting to be the first to break their resolve.
"I just don't understand why he had to leave" Dylan burst out loudly, making a passing nurse jump " He has a career here he has friends here and he had an accident but he's thrown it all in"
"He's thrown you in you mean" Zoe surmised, not unkindly as she perched in the table beside him " You can ring him you know, he doesn't stop being a friend just because he doesn't work here anymore and you know you'll always have me."
" It's nothing to do with that and why do people always say you'll always have me, it's a bit vague really" He shot back, also not unkindly "are you finished? I'm getting déjà vu"
Zoe stared at him for a minute and he could see all the things she wanted to say brimming to the surface until she settled on one.
"Dylan, I'm worried about you, there's something more to this and I don't want you feel like you can't tell me things like before" She murmured softly " You're my best friend and I can tell something isn't right"
He lowered his gaze as the gravity of those heartfelt words, settled undeservedly upon him . They sat in silence until Zoes pager bleeped.
" I have to go now I'm being paged but we aren't finished" she quipped " I'm coming round tonight to catch up with Dervla, it's been a while."
"She does miss the way you snuck her your mushrooms under the table like a four year old child"
Zoe responses was a sharp laugh as she walked out the door, leaving Dylan alone with his thoughts.
Zoe was right, something wasn't right with Dr Keogh because when Lofty walked out that door, he had taken with him Dylans confidence as a doctor.
After his very public breakdown, the thought of going into work terrified him, and it did terrify him for a few days when he returned. Gazes and murmurs followed him through his shifts, he felt like the ED was his downfall and now he had to walk through skeletons of his defeat everyday. That is until Lofty started working with him, acting as a buffer to the horrors of his past and the horrors of his future.
Now it was just him again, fighting a lone battle that Zoe really didn't need to be part of.
His thoughts were interrupted as the phone rang.