It was a Tuesday and Jac was as stressed as she ever had been. Gaskell had insisted on her presence in theatre this morning and she had three more operations to try and squeeze into her day, plus picking up Emma by 7 from the creche, and getting through a small mountain of paperwork.
The morning was tolerably exhausting. She dragged herself through it and was grateful to see a cup of coffee on her desk when she slipped inside for a five minute break before she was dragged away to deal with another complication or to discuss surgery with another on her ever-growing list of patients.
She chugged the entire cup in less than thirty seconds, so desperate for the caffeine to enter her system and give her a boost, if only for a few moments.
"Ms Naylor, it's Edward Tanner," Frieda announced as she walked into the office and breathed out. "He says he has doubts about theatre and he wants to speak to his surgeon again."
Frieda was just as tired as she was. Wherever Jac went, Frieda followed, which meant if Jac was rushed off her feet, Frieda was just as busy. Between the two of them, the entire ward was tiptoeing around and trying not to hit any nerves.
With gritted teeth, Jac made her way to the side room in which Mr Tanner was situated, and proceeded to talk to him about every intricate detail of the operation, including how she'd done it over 500 times before and the risk of complication was as minute as tangibly possible.
One problem out of the way, only for another to arise. Jac managed to pull herself through the day like that, as if the world was a game of Whack-A-Mole and she was working towards a high score.
4:48pm. She was in theatre, leading a paediatric heart transplant and hoping that nothing went wrong. Her final surgery of the day was supposed to start at 4o'clock and yet here she was, there was no chance of her getting into any paperwork tonight, and she was going to have to call Jonny to pick up Emma.
"Jac," greeted Fletch's voice over the speakers, drawing her attention. "I get off in ten minutes, shall I take Emma home with me so she isn't stuck in the creche on her own?"
"If I needed you to babysit, Mr. Fletcher, I would've asked. Emma's perfectly fine and I am perfectly capable of caring for my own child," she snapped back and in her mind, she wasn't sure if it was the day she had had or something else that had made her react so harshly.
"Okay, I know you are. I was just thinking that it might lighten your load a little bit," Fletch offered tentatively, noticing that Jac was still focused entirely on her work and hadn't stopped her movements.
"Well, thank you for the offer but I am not your charge and neither is my daughter. We got on just fine before you came along, and we'll continue to do just fine without you," Jac bit out, hoping that he would leave rather than start a fully blown confrontation in front of the entire operating team.
Luckily for her, he stalked out of the observation bay and left her alone.
She successfully completed the procedure without anymore hiccoughs and dragged herself straight to the theatre next door to begin her final surgery of the day.
Though she would never admit it aloud, she did rush just a little. She could quite literally complete an atherectomy with her eyes closed and so it was no detriment to the patient that she may have allowed herself to work just slightly faster than usual.
It wasn't until said patient decided to crash on the table that an issue arose. He slipped into VF three times and was pulled back three times, until eventually she'd completed the procedure and he was wheeled off to post-op where Frieda was going to be on hand to resuscitate again if she had to.
By the time she was relieved from theatre, it was 7:45 and she wondered why the creche hadn't called up to ask her when Emma was being collected. Perhaps Jonny had turned up out of the blue, though it felt rather unlikely.
Opening the door to her office, she found Emma sat on the couch with a grin on her face and Sarah in her hand. She balked at the sight, the lights were off, and her daughter appeared to be alone.
"Emma, sweetheart, who brought you to my office?" she asked nervously, flicking on the light switch.
"SHUSH!" Emma shouted, giggling as she hopped off the sofa and ran towards Jac's desk, looking underneath it. "Found you!"
Fletch's head popped up and he looked ruefully towards Jac, meeting her gaze and hoping that she wasn't going to cause a fuss.
"Why don't you go and see Ms Petrenko, Emma?" Jac suggested, telling her daughter exactly where Frieda would be found and watching as the girl toddled past her and over to the staff room, waiting until she was out of earshot. "What are you still doing here, Fletch?"
"I wasn't going to leave her here now, was I! I don't know what's put you in such a foul mood but it's not fair to take it out on Emma, even if you are going to take it out on me. She would've been stuck on her own, trying to occupy herself for hours, and you know full well that I don't think of her as my charge," he told her, shaking his head at her in disapproval. "I was trying to help because that's what we do, Jac. Us two, since before all of this, since the day I became DoN, we have had each other's backs."
She pressed the door into its frame calmly, taking a couple of steps towards him but maintaining a generous distance.
"Today's been dreadful and I took that out on you. I know I was a cow, and I think after all this time, you know that at the heart of everything, I'm trying my best not to be. Thank you for staying with Emma tonight, truly, I don't know why I even said no. I think I just wanted to prove to myself that I could still do it alone."
"Of course you can. You're Jac Naylor, you could run the world singlehandedly if the need arose...but it hasn't. I'm here to help and I don't want you to think that means you've lost your independence; nobody doubts you're still capable of anything on Earth, but you don't have to do it all alone, okay?" he reasoned kindly, stepping into her space and meeting her gaze.
Jac stayed at home that night. Even if her heart knew that she was allowed to rely on him a bit, her head was convinced that Fletch was a parasite meant to leech all of her independence and turn her into a needy, irritating human being.
