Things were tense for the next twenty-four hours, and she kept Fletch at arm's length to make sure she wouldn't be distracted from the matter at hand.
She was called to Serena's office at noon the following day, where she found Frieda already waiting for her.
"Ms Naylor, so kind of you to join us," Serena drawled, watching as Jac closed the door behind her. "Why don't you take a seat so we can discuss?"
"Why don't we skip the niceties?" Jac retorted, dropping into a chair and glaring at Serena expectantly.
"Mr Rowden has expressed no desire to make a complaint. He has been added to the transplant list and frankly seems far too relieved about being alive to care whether you botched his surgery," Serena explained and Jac gave a visible sigh of relief. "However, that doesn't mean that I will be letting what happened yesterday fall under the radar. You put a patient at risk, Jac, and that is at no point acceptable."
Frieda made some massive speech about how she greatly she valued Jac's trust in her, and that she had been caught off guard by yesterday's events. The majority of the words went straight over Jac's head, she was too busy being relieved that she wasn't being dragged into a malpractice investigation.
It was only when Serena demanded to know what we intended to do in order to resolve her actions that she returned her attention to the room.
"In future, I will endeavour not to push Ms Petrenko, or any of my colleagues, beyond their capabilities. I expected too much of her and I recognise that, and I regret that I put either of us in this position."
Jac had to bite back a laugh at the way the two women balked at her. It wasn't quite an apology, but it was the closest that either of them had ever heard come from a Naylor's mouth.
"Certainly. Well, I'll be keeping a close eye on you in the coming weeks, Ms. Naylor, I don't want to see a repeat of anything close to this, you understand me?"
Whether remorseful or not, Jac refused to be chastised. She stood and left without another word.
Back on Darwin, she headed straight for Fletch's office and let herself in. He stood up at the sound of his door opening and she walked straight into him, wrapping her arms around his torso and breathing steady at the way he held her closer to him so instinctively.
He held her for what felt like an age, breaking away only to push the door shut and give them some semblance of privacy.
"What's going on? I knew something was off but I didn't know it was anything this big," he asked, concerned for her as he guided her towards the small couch and sat down beside her.
"I endangered a man's life yesterday because I was trying to push Frieda. I pushed her too hard and a patient paid for my mistake and now Frieda probably never wants to work under me again and Campbell's got her beady eye on me at all times. I thought everything was actually going alright for once but it's falling apart all over again," she admitted, ignoring the lump that was rising in her throat and forcing it back down.
Fletch took her hand in his, clutched it tightly so that she could think about something other than what had happened for a moment. It broke his heart to see her like this, to see her doubting herself so entirely, but there was nowhere he would rather be than with her in this moment.
"Frieda knows you were only doing what's best for her, she'll take you back in a heartbeat. Serena can get off her high horse if she thinks she's never had a bad day and put a patient at risk. And that patient, I know you'll do everything you can to fix whatever mistake you made. We all have bad days, Jac, you just blame yourself more than anybody else ever could."
They stayed there, sitting in silence, for a long time. The entire ward must have seen her walk in - she hadn't exactly been discreet about it - so nobody dared to interrupt the pair unless lives truly did depend upon it.
Jac eventually straightened herself up and braced herself to face the ward. It was days like these when she missed being a heartless bitch, when she could've gotten on with her day and not batted an eyelid at Frieda's infantile threats.
Days like this reminded her of how much she needed other people now. Without Fletch, she would've crumbled, and a part of her still hated that.
She returned to her office and got on with her day as usual, and when Frieda walked in to ask for her opinion on some CT results, she was almost relieved to see that everything was normal with her too.
"Frieda," Jac called, stopping the registrar in her tracks as she turned for the door. "I'm here, if you ever need a second opinion or help with a patient, or if you need to take a break sometime."
The sincerity in Jac's eyes was so rare that it stuck out like a sore thumb, Frieda gawped at her and wondered if Naylor really had been replaced by a clone. One hiccough in surgery wouldn't melt the Ice Queen, and yet here she was, with just a hint of warmth about her being.
Maybe it's Fletch, she thought, and Jac could've told her just how right she was.
