Text

Verb

to send (someone) a text

It started simply because she'd spent the entire shift unable to think of a certain word.

In her defence it wasn't an English word she was trying to recall, not that it mattered to him. And it wasn't that she'd forgotten the word either; it was the expression on her face as she faltered and frowned, racking her brain, and the way she'd cursed so very colourfully when her memory drew up only a blank. That was what had got him grinning like the fucking Cheshire Cat.

The continued frustration she displayed throughout the day over this absent word only served as an indication that he could rib her mercilessly about it. She was sure his teasing made the frustration all the worse – certain he was winding her up on purpose because he knew it was just making her more irritated about the whole sodding thing. Cutting in whenever she paused for breath, asking if she needed his help in remembering what word to say next. Trailing half a step behind her, reeling off words and phrases as if he'd swallowed a dictionary during his lunch break… He refused to let up even as she was stalking across the damp carpark intent on getting home and as far away from him as she possibly could.

But of course – of course – the word only, finally, came to her just as she climbed, exhausted, into bed. So she reached without thinking for her phone, plugged in and charging on her bedside table, and texted to him that irritating bundle of letters which had been haunting her all day. She knew full well that by the time morning came she would have forgotten it all over again and she was absolutely not going to give him the satisfaction of mocking her about it for a second day.

Jac Naylor
→ Kintsugi
→ that's what I meant

He responded almost immediately. Her phone buzzing in her hand before she'd had a chance to put it down, filling her ears with that irksome tone she always meant to change but never did. The speed with which he'd replied led Jac to assume his troop of toe-rags were all safely and securely in their beds, no longer causing various local authorities to go into meltdown with their daily antics. All of which amused her a great deal more than she dared admit out loud. He was probably sitting in front of his 50" flat-screen ultra-HD TV, watching some crappy football match or something. Or in bed – watching TV. Fletch seemed the kind of person who would have a television in his bedroom.

Adrian Fletcher
→ gotta admit Naylor
→ I'm seriously underwhelmed

Jac Naylor
→ what the fuck were you expecting?

Adrian Fletcher
→ cartwheels and spinning plates on a stick.
→ A bit of fanfare y'know?

Jac Naylor
→ for a single word in Japanese?

Adrian Fletcher
→ well considering how much you hyped up the word today…

Jac Naylor
→ screw you Fletcher. I did NOT hype up anything and you know it!

Adrian Fletcher
→ I aim to please
→ so it's just about fixing broken stuff
→ with gold glue?

Jac Naylor
→ something like that I think
→ Sacha kept banging on about it the other day when he got back from his shrink. I had to google it because he wasn't making any sense

Adrian Fletcher
→ I'm defo bringing this up at the Board meeting on Thursday
→ it could be the new Holby speciality!
→ rocked up to the ED with a broken arm? No problemo matey. We'll just pour in some gold glue there and you'll be good as new!

Jac rolled her eyes to the expanse of her empty bedroom. But she couldn't deny the warmth blossoming in her chest; even when he'd spent the entire day grating on her every nerve, he still found a way to charm her. So, she informed him that she was going to sleep because he was an insufferable prat.

Adrian Fletcher
→ you really mean because you need all the beauty sleep you can get right?

His text was accompanied by one of those silly winking emoji things. Just thinking the word 'emoji' made her shudder. But luckily a few weeks ago Jac had discovered that there existed a handy little 'emoji' that accurately and concisely told someone to fuck off without having to say the words.

It was Mo who, quite by accident, introduced her to that particular emoticon. Since Jac had never really left behind her teenage mind-set of being a complete shit when the mood struck her, she'd deliberately sent Mo a text that would wind the other woman up – just for the hell of it. Just because she'd been bored. Needless to say, the middle-finger 'emoji' was now Jac's most – only – used emoticon.

A few evenings later Fletch texted whilst Jac was elbow deep in the task of making cheese and pickle sandwiches – she had Sacha to thank for that disgusting development in Emma's palate. The Moana (thank fuck they'd moved on from Frozen) lunchbox lay open on the counter beside her, and it rattled wildly as her phone, somehow having ended up beneath the plastic monstrosity that had cost her more than it really should, buzzed in that annoying alert tone.

It turned out that Fletch had forgotten to tell her that Serena had left a message with him about an inter-departmental meeting first thing in the morning. Snorting to herself, suspecting that he was looking for an excuse to strike up conversation in order to stave off the boredom of a night shift, Jac refused to indulge him. She replied, saying that Serena had rung her about it over two hours ago – just as she was wrestling a stubborn Emma into bed.

Because he really had just been looking for an excuse to talk to her, Fletch suggested she try getting Emma into her pyjamas straight after dinner rather than just before bed. That way Jac might be able to avoid the tedious, yet exhausting, ordeal of getting her child to sleep every night. Apparently the act of getting pyjamas on when it was bed time caused her daughter to inexplicably become not tired. Or so the five-year-old claimed. Jac wasn't so convinced.

She wholeheartedly blamed Uncle Sacha's soft touch.

And his cheese and pickle sandwiches.

Twenty-four hours later – give or take – she texted Fletch to let him know how his suggestion had transpired. Better, she told him, but there was still room for improvement. Oh, and Sacha had now been permanently banned from participating in any way in the bedtime routine; Emma had him wrapped so neatly round her little finger that he caved to her very whim. Soft sad sap. Fletch rightly pointed out that she – and everyone – wouldn't have Sacha Levy the Human Hug Machine any other way.

Over the following weeks, Jac and Fletch didn't go a single night without participating in some form of idle chat over typed messages before they inevitably succumbed to the day's fatigue. Stories of their lives beyond the four walls of the hospital were traded more freely, secrets weren't guarded as closely, while titbits and hints were dropped without thought, revealing to the other, piece by piece, previously hidden ordeals from the dusty chapters of their pasts.

Adrian Fletcher
→ what do you mean you've NEVER made a blanket fort before?!

Jac Naylor
→ well it's hardly among the requirements for being a top surgeon is it?
→ What's the big deal anyway?

Adrian Fletcher
→ what's the big deal?
→ it were the best part of being a kid!
→ reckon my lot would turn the entire front room into a permanent blanket for if I'd let them
→come on! you never hid under the blankets all day and read story books or watched TV or played all day when you were a kid? And then your mum would crawl underneath with a plate of biscuits or a freshly baked cupcake or two?

Jac Naylor
→ my mother wasn't that kind of mother

Adrian Fletcher
→ ah. Terrible cook?

She hesitated before replying, unsure if she wanted to go down that road with him just yet; uncertain of his reaction if she did… But a bigger part of her than she cared to acknowledge wanted him to know. Wanted to share this part of her with him because he was so warm and kind and good, and he somehow made everything better. Perhaps if she told him this, if she opened this door and invited him inside, then it would become … bearable. Maybe.

Jac Naylor
→ terrible mother

Jac waited, heart pounding. Three dots jumped up and down at the bottom left of her phone screen; sometimes they'd disappear completely for a few moments, only to suddenly reappear again. She guessed he was typing out a message, then changing his mind and deleting it again. Uncertain what to say. This was a bad idea. She wished she could take it back. If he tried to placate her, if he went for some cliché sympathy line, if he displayed even the tiniest hint of pity … she might just hurl her phone out the bloody window.

Adrian Fletcher
→ good thing you don't take after her then init?

If he were there in the room with her, she would have kissed him. As it was a choked laugh escaped her lips and she smiled like an idiot to her empty bedroom. Euphoria eased the wrench in her gut that his next text caused her.

→ if you ever wanna talk about it…

Jac Naylor
→ I know I know
→ Occupational health is on the second floor

Then, because she needed him to know just how much it meant to her that he understood. That he'd, somehow, realised the courage it had taken her to make that admission to him – without her having to explain it – she added:

→ Thank you.

Indiscernibly, without either of them being aware of it happening, their texted conversations ceased belonging solely to the dark hours between work and bed. They began to bleed into the bright light of day where others could, if they were paying attention, natter and whisper among themselves about what they were observing. Talk which had rapidly spread throughout the hospital faster than a Californian wildfire. Although no one, not even the stubborn, oblivious, pair was sure exactly what they were to each other.

Lovers, some people whispered. Just friends, others insisted. Everything, Henrik Hanssen thought as he stood in the line at Pulses behind a couple of gossiping student nurses who were on a Darwin placement. They're everything to each other. He smiled forlornly to himself and wondered what Roxanna would have made of it all – she'd rather liked Jac, he remembered. Hadn't been intimidated by the surgeon's fiery personality and ice cold exterior. And she'd let Fletch stay all night at Jac's bedside, tightly gripping her pale hand, when the CT surgeon had finally woken after collapsing in her office.

That's the kind of love that lasts, Roxanna had mused aloud, watching as Fletch nodded off in the chair, his hand still wrapped firmly around Jac's as though he were afraid that she would vanish the instant he let go. Don't you think? Henrik hadn't really known what to say.

It started around mid-morning.

Quips and comments and easy conversation flowed like water through the digitalised medium of electronic communication. Yesterday it'd been while they were in their respective offices buried under mountains of accumulated paperwork, but today Fletch was trapped in a meeting with some of the other suits who ran the hospital. Which meant when she'd finished her paperwork, Jac was left to pace the quiet ward without his company. It became very apparent very quickly that she was in need of a distraction before she throttled the nearest junior doctor out of sheer boredom.

His phone hidden under the table as the Director of Research droned on, Fletch found the most ridiculous meme google could find at short notice. Double checking that his phone was on silent, he sent the image to her knowing he couldn't do anything else for another two and a half hours. Jac's reaction, he judged, would be anything between scathing contempt to complete and utter cluelessness, but either way the junior doctors would be safe for another day.

And he'd get a good laugh out of it.

Around lunchtime Jac's phone ceased being bombarded with irritating moving images and pictures with text super imposed over them as Fletch gladly announced his freedom. Unfortunately, before they could celebrate, a member of staff – probably Scary Sue from ITU – chose that moment to speak the word 'quiet' while still within range of hospital grounds. Texting her … well whatever Fletch was to her, texting him fell by the wayside after that as more pressing matters too precedence in her mind – theatre; various medical emergencies; her child being tossed out of school at three-thirty in the afternoon…

That evening, Hotel Naylor was punctuated, as it had been every evening for the past however many weeks, by the regular chirping of Jac's phone alerting her (and everyone else) to a new message from Fletch.

Sacha chose not to comment on the sudden increase in activity on Jac's phone compared to a few weeks ago. He also, wisely, said absolutely nothing about the fact that whenever a certain tall, dark-haired and bearded Director of Nursing texted, the noise emitting from his best friend's phone was very different to the noise it made whenever anyone else contacted her. A theory which had been niggling at him all week, and that he'd tested earlier in the evening by simply glancing over her shoulder as she answered a chirped alert. The name at the top of the screen told him all he needed to know.

Adrian Fletcher
→ he should have trusted that you had good reason to keep your mother away from Emma

His satisfaction that his theory had been proven correct overshadowed his guilt at intruding on what was clearly an intimate conversation. Sacha was glad, however, that she'd finally found a partner she felt she could confide in. He hid his smile the next time her phone announced it had a text from Fletch, Jac's expression one of fond amusement as she typed out a reply, and when Sacha passed by her room a few hours latter as he padded to the bathroom, he swore he heard her phone chirp.

Jac Naylor
→ I've never told anyone that before.

Adrian Fletcher
→ not even Sacha?

Jac Naylor
→ Sacha doesn't count

Adrian Fletcher
→ your secrets are safe with me

She surprised herself with her reply. I know. And she did. There was no part of her that doubted him. No part of her that didn't trust him completely and utterly and without reservation. Maybe it was because he trusted her. Had absolute faith in her, and she knew that. It wasn't just words and gestures; it was something real that went beyond anything that could be spoken.

What they had … it was different.

Eventually, their conversation dwindled as the evening wore on. The gaps between replies grew longer and time took on a surreal quality; like no time and all time had passed as exhaustion slowly won its daily battle. When her eyes could no longer remain open, Jac typed out a final message before she succumbed to slumber.

A few days later, Jac woke to her alarm blaring and four unread messages from her Director of Nursing.

Adrian Fletcher
→ you shoulda seen the other guy!
→ where did you go?
→ soooooo I'm guessing the great and powerful Jac Naylor has fallen asleep…
→ See you tomorrow xx

She still hadn't responded as she hurried her daughter and best friend out of the house at twenty-five minutes past eight. His final message played on her mind as Emma dragged her onto the playground to await the morning bell. She had thought about letting Sacha keep her company, but the suspicion that it would provide fodder for unfounded gossip – or worse, invite conversation – from the gaggle of mothers who gathered in judgmental clusters killed the invitation in her throat. Just as it did every morning. Sacha stayed in the car. To avoid the irritating small talk from the PTA mothers, Jac pulled out her phone and stared at the quartet of text messages she had awoken to, eyes fixed on those two letters that meant so much more than letters. She hardly heard what Sacha said as he pulled out of the school carpark twenty minutes later; still mulling over that 'xx'.

When she finally got to Darwin, she barely saw Fletch long enough to accept the coffee he pressed hurriedly into her hand before he dashed off. The course of his day already mapped out with nursing disaster after nursing disaster looming on the horizon, much as Hanssen loomed around corners and at the ends of long corridors. Her mind still elsewhere, Jac allowed Frieda to lead the ward round as she sipped her coffee and did her best to appear as though she was listening like a good teacher to whatever Frieda and Nicky were prattling about.

Luckily all it took was a loud shout from one of the nurses – crash trolley! – to kick start her surgeon's brain into the correct gear. Leaving Frieda in charge of the ward, Jac rushed the patient straight through to theatre, forgoing any of the scans that had just been ordered. As she scrubbed up and the theatre team assembled around her in a fury of activity, she forced any lingering thought of Adrian Fletcher, and any thought of kissing Adrian Fletcher, firmly out of her mind.

That she already knew what kissing him was like didn't help in the slightest.

Around midday, shortly after receiving a text from Sacha that she ignored, her phone chirped in her pocket announcing insistently and loudly that it had received another message. Jac ignored the knowing smirk from Frieda as she reached into her scrub pocket for the device, silently daring the registrar to make a comment about the two dissimilar alert tones. Frieda wisely chose to take interest in the blank screen of the nearest computer.

Adrian Fletcher
→ you ignoring me?

Jac Naylor
→ yes.
→ that's why I've spent my entire morning trying to keep Mrs Gilligan alive. only for the witch to die on me as soon as we got her out of theatre and into HDU

Adrian Fletcher
→ You're in the wrong job you are
→ could have made it as a comedian. Stand up – you'd of been sensational
→ Mrs G's surgery was a last resort anyway. The risks were always going to be high & I'm sure you did all you could xx

There it was again. That infuriating and confounding 'xx' … what did he mean by it? What was more, did she dare to reciprocate?

Jac Naylor
→ don't you have some crisis or other to avert?

Adrian Fletcher
→ I'm waiting for the rep from the new nursing agency to show up
→ the new CEO is pacing round the table. It sounds like a herd of elephants in here
→ it's the sound of hope and the will to live being trampled into the carpet
→ the agency bloke has probably been scared right off

Jac Naylor
→ I'll tell Hanssen how much you're missing him

Adrian Fletcher
→ you really should think about that career change
→ Seriously. Stand up
→ You'd make a mint
→ more money than you'd know what to do with. Could even by your good mate Fletch a new car…

Jac told him in highly impolite terms where, precisely, he could shove his hypothetical new car – making sure to tag 'xx' onto the end of the message.

Of course, all this daily tête à tête-ing was bound to have a downside eventually.

About a month or so after it had become a regular thing, Sacha and Jac devoured several bottles of the white wine they had bought earlier that evening from Tesco. It had been stacked near the tills with a big yellow sign saying, 'buy one get one free' and who were they to pass up such an opportunity? Emma was safely in bed, it was Friday evening, and neither had work the next day.

It was nearing midnight when Jac finally crawled into bed, the world a warm comfortable hum around her – so the decision that it was the perfect moment to have a conversation with Fletch made absolute sense … to her…

But his awe and amusement that she and Sacha had managed to devour three bottles of wine in an hour and half quickly turned to annoyance. It was evident that the consultant was far too lost to the copious amounts of alcohol in her system to hold a decent conversation. Besides, misspelled words and gobbledygook were quite difficult to translate at ten past midnight, and he highly doubted she even knew what it was she wanted to say to him anyway.

When she woke the next morning, it was to remember that she wasn't twenty-something anymore, and that hangovers were the actual stuff of living nightmares. Eternally grateful that it was her weekend off, Jac pulled the duvet over her head and groaned into her pillows. Light, quick footsteps on the landing, her bedroom door creaking open, an uncontrollable giggle; all announced the imminent arrival of Emma. The small child flung herself onto the bed in an annoying, yet somehow still endearing, bundle of energy and excitement. Jac could only smother another groan as her daughter flopped atop her and started burrowing her way beneath the covers.

Her phone buzzed somewhere in the bed but Jac wasn't inclined to begin searching for it. A moment later, Emma's face appeared in front of hers. She was clutching Jac's iPhone in her hands.

"Mummy! It's Auntie Mo!"

Jac groaned. Probably to check, for the eight hundredth time in two days, that she was picking Emma up at nine thirty for their day trip to some woods somewhere or something. Jac had only to hear the words 'take Emma out for the day' before she was immediately saying yes. As much as she adored her daughter, she valued any rare opportunity to spend a day to herself – and considering the pounding that was going on against her skull, it was a decision well made.

Especially when the doorbell rang in what felt like a heartbeat later.

Swallowing her oath, because she absolutely would not be the reason her five-year-old learned about such words, as well as the nausea that had arisen due to abruptly lurching out of bed, she urged Emma to get dressed – "warm clothes remember. The ones I got out for you yesterday. It'll be cold in the woods."

"I know that Mummy! I'm not silly!"

Jac grabbed her dressing gown from the back of the door and hurried down the stairs, showing her arms through their sleeves as the doorbell rang for a second time. Sacha poked his head out of the kitchen, rumpled t0shirt and a pair of tartan boxer shorts, coffee pot in hand, hair on end, and squinted in confusion down the hall.

He looked as rough as she felt.

"How was the wine last night?" Mo asked as soon as Jac wrenched open the front door.

"What the hell are you talking about?" she snapped.

A strange half smile crossed Mo's face and through the splitting headache and mild nausea, a chilly dread began settling over her. They stood awkwardly for a few minutes, Jac screaming internally at all the implications of Mo's comment while Mo glanced over her shoulder to where her car was parked on the curb. Mr T waved merrily from the driver's seat. Then Emma bounded down the stairs and straight into Auntie Mo's arms. She had already put her trainers on and from the looks of it, tried to brush her hair. Feeling slightly guilty, Jac took the hairbrush from the sideboard – left there for situations such as these – and ran it briefly through Emma's hair as the child squeezed her arms around Jac's middle.

She could feel Mo's eyes on her as she brushed out the knots. Feel the glee and the mirth and the silent judgement from her quasi-friend. Jac concentrated on pulling Emma's hair back into some semblance of a loose plait, only to be met with the problem of what she was going to use to secure the slap-dash hairstyle? In the end she used the hairband that had been digging into her wrist since she'd left theatre yesterday afternoon. What on earth was the woman on about? Did she have wine stains on her shirt? Did she reek of alcohol? How had Mo known?

Yelling goodbye to Sacha, Emma hopped back outside to join her aunt, already resuming her excited chatter about their planned day ahead. Mo continued to hold Jac's questioning gaze; with a crooked grin she shrugged as she accepted Emma's coat and welly boots. "C'mon, it's basic stuff Naylor!" she teased easily as she took hold of Emma's impatiently outstretched hand. "We've been through this plenty of times! Never drink and dial – or text, I guess, in your case last night!"

The earth beneath Jac's feet vanished.

There was that awful, awful, feeling of weightlessness. The kind gained from cresting a particularly steep hill when racing a mile or three over the speed limit. Or of being suspended, trapped, in a rickety roller coaster before a terrifying drop at the edge of a rundown seaside pier. Like her guts were trying to climb through her throat as the whole world fell away. That teetering moment just before the fall that was filled with the knowledge of what was to happen, and of being completely unable to stop it. Like watching a car crash in slow motion on some high-stakes TV drama.

Mo, who by now was well attuned to the subtle tells of Jac's rapid change in emotions, took her cue – and Emma – and backed away from the doorstep. "Derwood and I will give her dinner and drop her home around six?" Jac could only nod absently in agreement to the plans they'd made over a week ago. She watched, not really seeing, mind frantically trying to decipher the haze of impressions and scraps of memory from the previous evening as Emma clambered into the backseat of Mo's car beside little Hector. Jac watched until the cold air of late January had Sacha, now clad in his ugly paisley dressing gown, grumbling from the kitchen about the chill. She didn't hear what he said as she let the front door swing shut.

Her blood thick and cold like half-melted ice, Jac stumbled – staggered – up the stairs and across the landing. It was like the walls were closing in around her. Trapping her. Smothering her. Fumbling with the door handle, palms clammy and her head spinning, she wondered inf this was just the hangover from hell, or some part of her psyche screaming a warning. She was descending into panic, yet there was nothing she could gasp at to explain why. No memory from the previous evening surfacing to make sense of the feeling that her stomach was being physically dragged out of her body by a cold, wet, fist. Nothing but a vague, awful, terrifying suspicion that she'd done something incredibly, stupidly, undeniably foolish…

Bursting into her bedroom, Jac yanked the duvet back from the bed. Pillows scattered to the corners of the room and the mattress was half ripped from its frame in the frantic hunt for a slim, hand-held device that would spell out her fate. Nimble fingers brushed against cool, smooth metal. Jac sank awkwardly to her knees. Cartilage cracking, back aching, hands shaking. She brushed her thumb over the circular indent, much as one would stroke the cheek of a sleeping lover in the dead of night, and her lungs expelled their contents.

There, displayed clear as crystal on her phone screen, were words that she couldn't take back. Words that she had dared not to speak because she knew they couldn't banish that deep-rooted fear of being unlovable to her core. Of being incapable of loving to her core. A fear of all the other related matters that had to do with heart. Which, she knew, was ironic seeing as she was a renowned heart surgeon who knew the anatomy of that vital, life-giving muscle back-to-front and side-to-side and all ways it was possible to understand it. Except, perhaps, in the way that everyone else could.

Her fragile heart hammered against her ribs. A heart that was sutured together with thin strands of gold forged from the few relationships that he had, somehow, not turned to shit. Old wounds, barely healed, ached to her battered bones. White-hot blood raced through her veins and a shrill whistling echoed in her ears. Jac read and reread and read again the confession she'd made in her alcohol riddled state the night before…

Adrian Fletcher
→ well I'm off to sleep now. Goodnight xx

Jac Naylor
→ I'm in love with you
→ I'm so in love with you holy fuck

For a long time she sat cradling her phone between her sweaty hands, staring at the screen. As if by sheer force of will she could erase those messages from existence.

He'd read it.

There was that ridiculous little tick beneath the blue bubble that meant the other person had read the message, and then a label to explain, in case people were inept or just plain stupid, that the message had been 'seen at 00:12' next to it.

He'd read her declaration almost as soon as she'd sent it … and he hadn't replied.

Jac's eyes darted to the top of her phone screen. 09:36.

It had been nine hours and twenty-four minutes and he'd not replied.

Fuck.

Holy shitting fuck.

By Sunday evening, Jac was seriously considering searching for openings in cardiothoracic departments in the southern hemisphere. So much so that Sacha had confiscated her laptop to prevent her doing just that. But Sacha seemed not to fully understand.

He hadn't replied.

And she didn't dare contact him until he had.

It was getting to the point where she was checking her phone, putting it down, only to pick it back up and check it again. Sacha's merciless teasing only served to, unintentionally, cause seeds of doubt to take root, riddling her with the kind of crippling anxiety that had sent her falling apart in Fletch's arms over a year ago now. It'd been that day – when Adrian Fletcher had held her for as long as she'd needed to be held, without judgement, without anything but a steady unrelenting assurance that he would stay until she asked him to go – that Jac had known he was far, far, too good for her. she'd known she would only ruin him in the end. Yet she hadn't been able to stay away. He hadn't let her stay away…

Fletch wasn't at work on Monday.

A/N:

taken from Google -

Kintsugi (or kintsukuroi) is a Japanese method for repairing broken ceramics with a special lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. The philosophy behind the technique is to recognise the history of the object and to visibly incorporate the repair into the new piece instead of disguising it