I’m still keeping to the ‘proper’ Holby timescale, so this is set between the episode that finishes with the gas explosion (whose name I can’t remember, would anyone care to tell me? My VCR didn’t tape the first five minutes of it, so I can’t even check on the episode…) and In The Bleak Midwinter. So, Ric and Diane are still staying together but not too pleased with one another (which I can get away with cos they weren’t together at all in the episode where Zubin found Kath!), and Diane doesn’t know about Kath being stabbed.

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Diane dropped the plates she was washing up, sending them clattering to the floor and shattering, as she heard Ric open the door and come in slowly. She rushed out into the hallway, concerned.

“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded, automatically helping him out of his coat and taking his scarf.

Ric looked at her, seeming preoccupied. “I… there was an emergency.” He didn’t want to tell her, he didn’t even want to think about Kath, about how she had looked, how she had lain there on that table, how she had been a patient and not his friend… He shook his head slightly and let Diane drag him into the living room, and half-push him onto the sofa.

“Sit down,” she ordered him, giving him no choice in the matter as she pushed him.

He nodded numbly, and felt his knees give way underneath him. He had spent hours sitting there, holding Kath’s hand, desperately trying to turn back time and be able to help her, before it got too far. It hadn’t worked. All that it had accomplished was to make him feel bad. He felt guilty; why hadn’t he spotted that it was Kelly? Why hadn’t he been the one to get hurt? Why had it been Kath?

“Where have you been, Ric?” Diane sat down on the footstool opposite, and glared at him. It wasn’t so much anger as worry, the reaction of being worried about what might have happened to him, what might have caused him to be late… and none of the suggestions in her mind had been good. He might have had an accident; he could have fallen down the stairs, or he could have been knocked down by a car… why hadn’t she waited to give him a lift?

Ric looked at her, a blank expression on his face. He couldn’t tell her, he just couldn’t. She looked so innocent, so carefree, so naïve… how could he ruin that, how could he tell her that one of her friends, his friends, was lying unconscious in a hospital bed? Instead, he sought around for another way to tell her. “Have you – did you, have you spoken to Zubin?”

She looked at him, confused. “What…?”

“Have you?” he repeated, insistently.

“I rang him, yeah. I was getting scared about where you were.” She blushed slightly. “He just said that you were with a patient, and that you’d probably be home soon.”

So he hadn’t told her. Well, that was only to be expected. But it had been worth a try. “Diane, I need to talk to you…”

She sat cross-legged on the footstool and looked expectantly at him. “What about?” Probably that stupid ‘moment’ from the previous night, she thought ruefully.

“It’s… it’s about Kath.” He held out a hand to her. “Come sit here.”

Slightly confused, she obeyed. “What about Kath? Is she okay? Is it Archer? Has she done something?” From the look on his face, she could tell that it wasn’t anything good. He wouldn’t look like that for something good. And, for Kath at the moment, it was bound to be bad news.

“Zubin…” Ric hesitated, wondering how to tell her. “Zubin found her, this afternoon, in Keller theatre…” He paused, but the look in his eyes forbade Diane from asking any questions. “She’d been stabbed.”

“No…” She backed away from him, moving so that she was crouching near the arm of the sofa, ready to run if the conversation took a turn she didn’t like. The expression on her face was pure shock, her normally pale face was paler, and her breathing was quick, she didn’t believe him, she didn’t, she didn’t… “No… no, Ric… Kath, no, is she… how is she?” Her hands were shaking, she noticed.

He tried to pull her back towards him; he wasn’t going to let her run this time. “She…” He stopped, clearing his throat, finding it hard to talk when Diane was looking like that, but needing to, because she was depending on him. “She’d been stabbed in the abdomen and… and in the chest. We had to remove the scalpel…”

“Scalpel… what scalpel?” Her breathing was returning to normal, but she was still shaking, feeling cold all over. She didn’t need much encouragement to be pulled towards him, towards the safety that he provided.

“She was stabbed with a scalpel…” He trailed off, seeing her face pale again.

“Is… how is she?” she demanded, wanting to know, yet not wanting to know. She knew that being stabbed would always be serious. The abdomen and the chest, he had said. Without hearing more, she knew that it was serious. The expression on his face told her that.

“She’d lost a lot of blood,” Ric began, hesitantly. “She was unconscious when Zubin found her, we don’t know how long she’d been there for…” That hurt him to have to say that. Although he was almost certain that she hadn’t been there when he had gone into theatre in the morning, he couldn’t be sure. He wished, but wished wasn’t a strong enough word, he longed with every fibre of his being to turn back time and be able to find her earlier, maybe they would have been able to do more.

“Ric, you’re scaring me.” There was an irrational fear in her mind. She didn’t dare put it into words, but what if Kath… what if she hadn’t… if it had gone badly…? “Just… tell me, please.”

“She made it through theatre…” Ric thought it perhaps best not to tell Diane that Kath had arrested – there was no point in worrying her about something that had no bearing on the future. “She’s unconscious now, still. She’s in ITU, we’ll need to keep an eye on her… the most I can say is that she’s stable.”

Diane nodded. Stable… it sounded good; if she hadn’t been a doctor then it would probably have comforted her. If she hadn’t known how many times she had told families that their loved ones were ‘stable’, only to see them die hours later. Stable was the word they used to comfort people, stable but critical, it meant nothing, all it meant was that they weren’t deteriorating or getting better. Caught in a limbo. It meant nothing.

Ric leant back on the sofa and sighed. He was still shocked. He still couldn’t believe that that had been Kath, the woman that he had seen with stab wounds to her body, it had been Kath, his friend, his colleague… she had been lying there, and he had made an incision in her stomach and he had… Without realising it, tears were forming in his eyes.

Diane moved closer to him, her eyes full of sympathy and tears. She couldn’t imagine what it would have felt like to operate on a colleague. She’d operated on Tom, but that had been different. And on Tony, but again, it had been different. She had barely known Tony, and she hadn’t liked Tom. But… Kath. This was Kath. Kath, one of Ric’s closest friends, Zubin’s friends, how could they have coped?

Ric found himself holding tightly onto Diane, probably too tightly, but he needed to, he needed to be reminded that this was real, that she was there. And, in turn, she found herself nestling closer to him than she perhaps should have done, but she just wanted to be held, to be comforted.

“Ric…” Diane spoke softly after a few moments. Some tears had spilled over onto her cheeks, and she was still shocked, but she couldn’t bear to sit in silence any longer, listening out for something inexplicably terrifying.

“Yeah?” He found himself smiling slightly, whatever the situation, at least he had her in his arms for once.

“Who… who did it?” There was a look of almost panic on her face as she asked.

Ric sighed; he had hoped that she wouldn’t ask. “I…” He paused, taking a deep breath, and tilting her chin upwards so that he could see her expression. “It was Kelly Yorke. The police are looking for her now.”

“No!” The disbelief in her face was evident. “No, you’re joking. Kelly? It can’t be!”

“I wouldn’t joke about something as serious as that, Diane.” He stroked her hair gently.

“I mean… I never liked the girl, but I never would have thought she’d be capable of…” She trailed off suddenly. “She did it all, didn’t she? Sarah Palmer, Beth Oliver…”

Ric nodded. “She did. She must have done.”

“What a bitch.” There was no anger in her voice; she was simply stating a fact. She looked up at Ric. “She had us all taken in, though. You liked her.” There was a meaningful note in her voice as she said you. She was emphasising that she had never liked Kelly.

For a moment, memories of Jess’ birthday party rushed through Ric’s head. Kelly, sitting next to him, lying on the bed, kissing him, kissing her… no. It had been a spur of the moment thing, not his responsibility, he had been stoned, and he had very definitely not encouraged her. But… how could he have kissed her? She had killed people, innocent patients. He was sickened.

“I never liked her,” Diane continued. “She just… she always seemed odd, y’know?” There was a confident tone to her voice; this was something she could cope with. She could cope with slagging Kelly off. “Always there when something went wrong, very eager to judge people…”

“To judge you, you mean,” Ric corrected her.

“I thought she liked Kath, though.” Diane shrugged, looking up at Ric. “Well, not liked, I don’t know if the spawn of Satan is capable of liking anything…”

“Diane, don’t talk about her like that… there might be some explanation…” Ric trailed off as he saw Diane’s incredulity. “What? Diane, just because she didn’t worship the ground you walk on…”

She sighed. “Ric, I’m not saying she’s the spawn of Satan because she doesn’t like me – who wants to be liked by a mass murderer?”

“Well, I’d rather be friends with one than enemies. It’d be safer.” Ric shot her a humorous look. Finding humour in the situation was their way of dealing with things. It always had been, and it wasn’t going to be changing any time soon.

Suddenly, a flicker of shock crossed Diane’s face. “She liked Kath. Oh God, she liked Kath!” She was almost shaking as she spoke, her eyes wide.

“What’s the matter with that?” Ric stroked her hair comfortingly.

“She hated me, she absolutely hated me!” She pushed her hair behind her ears, trying to distract herself. “It could have been me, I mean, if she liked Kath and she did that to her, she didn’t like me… oh God…”

Ric kissed her head. “Diane, there’s no point in thinking like that. She didn’t do anything to you, it’s okay, it’s okay…” He continued murmuring that until she had calmed down slightly.

She laid her head on his shoulder, breathing deeply. “Thank you for telling me,” she told him quietly. “It can’t have been easy.”

“It wasn’t,” he agreed. He reluctantly let her go as she stood up, stretching, her muscles stiff after sitting for a long time.

“Are you alright?” she asked him, running her fingers lightly over his.

“I’ll be fine,” he replied, smiling. “It was a shock, but it was worse for Zube.” He didn’t like to mention the guilt he was feeling, a guilt that Zubin didn’t have.

“I can imagine.” She helped him stand up, and smiled slightly. “I’m going to bed, I’m shattered.” She leant in and kissed him gently on the cheek.

“Sleep well,” he murmured, holding her close to him for a moment. As he let her go, he suddenly knew that he couldn’t let her go, not tonight. He kissed her cheek, and as she didn’t pull away, kissed her properly.

For a moment, she was shocked; it had been so long since… she struggled to put a name to what was happening, this, just… this, had happened. She let him, she didn’t mind it, she loved it, she loved him… no, don’t even go there. This wasn’t the time, it wasn’t the place… it needed to be some other time, some time when it wouldn’t just be a one-night stand, when it would be real, and it would be perfect.

“Ric… no…” she whispered, breaking away from him, seeing the hurt in his eyes. “I – I’m sorry… we can’t… we can’t, not tonight.”

“I love you,” he told her, and she knew in that instant that she had made a mistake, that it would be better never to have said anything, just to have let him… let them… do whatever, to allow it to happen, because she had wanted to, she had wanted to so much.

“I… I can’t. I’m so sorry Ric, I really am so sorry…” She clutched onto his hands as he began to walk away.

“No, it’s my fault. Just… forget it ever happened.” He walked away, leaving her to sink to the floor, tears spilling over onto her cheeks.