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Serena doesn’t hear a thing when it starts. In part because she’s tucked away in the scrub room, the taps open and water drumming noisily in the steel trough, and also because she’s not been one hundred percent present, today. Since the awkwardness in the lift this morning, the world has appeared to her through a fog of embarrassment, her mind set in a permanent cringe; since she feigned disinterest in the pseudo-aneurism repair, she’s been trying to stay out of Bernie’s way altogether. She dawdled at the end of her last procedure, buying herself this moment to lean her weight against the sinks and stare into the empty theatre. The theatre where last week, a few days ago, in fact, Bernie Wolfe had kissed her – had, it seemed now, performed a lobotomy with no anaesthetic, no scalpel, just her lips and her tongue and her hands in Serena’s hair. For here is Serena with no firm idea of what day it is or who is Prime Minister or whether at the age of 52 she has suddenly become a lesbian. Maybe she’s always been bi? Christ, her tongue though. Serena wouldn’t think it impossible that that part of Bernie’s anatomy could be held completely responsible for realigning a woman’s sexuality, at any age. And it hadn’t even been anywhere else yet… Serena shakes her head and dabs cool, damp hands to her burning cheeks. Breathing. It is just a matter of breathing. Of keeping calm, and carrying on.
Ha. Ahaha.
Bernie comes through the door like there’s a tiger five paces behind her – Serena is almost tempted to look, but Bernie slams it shut and pulls a tall chest of supplies across the door frame to block any sight of the passageway beyond. On another day, a day before last week, certainly, Bernie would have had to hush Serena, would have had to find a way to stem the tide of indignant demands to know just what in the hell is going on. Today, though, Serena’s mouth is moving but no sounds are coming out; Bernie fixes her with a look that says, ‘trust me’, and proceeds to pull one end of the remaining supply chest out from the wall. Some of its carefully arranged, hermetically sealed contents spill as the door swings open for a moment, but Bernie merely kicks them away, out of the tight space that she’s created between the cabinet and the corner of the room farthest from the door, into which she now pulls Serena. She presses her into this nook, putting her own body between Serena and anything else; looking her very intently in the eye, Bernie puts her index finger to her own lips to silence her.
So here they both are.
Bernie is breathless but trying to fill her lungs slowly, trying to be still so that she can listen for any sounds coming from beyond this room. The sound of a man with a gun and a grudge. She is calmer now that she’s found Serena, but her mind is still whirring with possibilities, and hardly any of them good. You don’t, you can’t, design hospitals to cope with this eventuality; there is going to be bloodshed.
Serena… well. Serena Wendy Campbell has never been more aroused in her entire life.
This is not what she’d expected from today, not after Bernie’s breezy attitude this morning. This, this is next-level stuff. Supply closets, maybe; the on-call room, of course. But throwing furniture around in the scrub room? Pinning her into this tight spot, Bernie’s breath tickling across Serena’s ear in that insistent rhythm? So this is where it’s going to happen. Oh Bernie Wolfe, you dark horse, you. These thoughts whizz through her brain in a pleasant instant; what follows is sheer and utter panic. She’s sure that Bernie is going to kiss her again, which is great, which is terrific, which is completely bloody terrifying.
“I didn’t kiss a woman in Stepney, Bernie, I was lying; I’ve never kissed a woman before and I think, I think this might all be a bit too fast for me.” These words come out of her not as words but as syllables in one very long word, rapidly whispered on a hiss. “It’s not that I don’t want, I mean, I’m pretty sure I do; I think; I’ve been thinking, I haven’t really stopped thinking” – she stops speaking when Bernie’s hand comes up to press gently across her mouth and she looks at Serena, is searching her face, frowning – not angrily, but as if Serena is an example of a species she’s never seen in the flesh before. The edge of Bernie’s palm briefly obstructs Serena’s nostrils so that when it moves away she’s panting for air. Did not think I was in to that, Serena muses inwardly.
“Serena,” Bernie starts, but finds herself at a loss as to what to say to this. “You,” she looks over her shoulder, as if somehow somebody might have snuck in without her realising, ready to press send on a recording of their conversation, “you think I’m seducing you?”
They stare at one another for a few seconds, Bernie lifting her hand away from Serena’s mouth, Serena licking her lips and recovering her breath. Schooling her features is another matter. How does one affect nonchalance when pressed hard against the wall by a woman whose tongue you’ve given at least three different nicknames?
“Ar- aren’t you?” she squeaks out, suddenly feeling exactly as she had when, in Year 10, Matthew Moran had invited her to the bike sheds… to see his new bicycle.
Bernie’s staring at her again, reading her, again; looking for something that she doesn’t seem to find. Then Bernie rests her forehead on Serena’s shoulder and takes a deep breath in. A deep breath out. Serena has concluded, somewhat reluctantly, that she has no idea what is going on, so she just stands and waits. The point at which Bernie’s hand comes up to cradle the side of Serena’s head, Bernie's thumb rubbing gently at the edge of her cheekbone, is the point at which Serena decides that all bets are off. Is she even awake? Is she, has she… she’s not dead, is she?
“Didn’t you hear it?” Bernie whispers, her mouth so close to Serena’s ear. “Them. Hear them. The gunshots?”
For a second, Serena pictures Bernie holding aloft the Pointless trophy, because honestly, almost nothing could have been further from her mind, but it’s only a second, because someone’s been firing a gun in her hospital and there is no doubt that this is a catastrophe. Only the proportions have yet to be decided.
“What?” Serena’s forgotten that they need to whisper, but her voice is practically inaudible, barely makes it out of her throat. Her eyes carry all of her other questions to Bernie, who has pulled back to look at her with soft brown eyes that would be brimming with tears if it weren’t for the sharp tug of her teeth at the inside of her mouth, her jaw working up and down in minute, almost indistinguishable movements.
*
This is a taste of Bernie’s previous, adrenaline-fuelled existence that neither of them asked for, but after an hour stood pressed into the wall, behind a cabinet, in the scrub room, and with no sounds from anywhere in this part of the building, their heart rates level off, and the proximity in which they stand starts to feel a bit awkward. Moving slowly and quietly, lifting as much as she can without throwing her back out, Bernie eases the cabinet out from the wall just enough that they can sit down behind it, their backs against the wall and their knees tucked up in front of them.
After another hour, Bernie clears her throat.
“So I’m the first,” she says quietly, not really a question, though her voice pitches up slightly at the end.
Serena is sat with her head leaned back against the wall; she lets it roll towards Bernie and smiles shyly.
“I’ve never even been to Stepney,” she answers, and when Bernie chuckles, Serena’s smile gets stronger, develops just an edge of the wicked grin for which she is known.
“But you’ve, er, you’ve been thinking about me.” Again the upward inflection, but Serena is increasingly confident that she is alive and awake and will see out the day, and she knows that Bernie cannot possibly be surprised that she has been thinking about her pretty much non-stop since they kissed. Serena shuffles around so that she’s facing Bernie and doesn’t speak until Bernie has turned her head and taken in the wry smile on Serena’s face.
“I practically had to get a porter to wheel me to my car after you’d finished with me, Bernie; did you really think I wouldn’t be thinking about you?” Bernie’s eyebrows are raised in innocent surprise but there’s a twinkle in her eyes, a hint of movement at one corner of her lips; Serena knows these tells. “Did you, er, have you, did I…”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking about you too, Serena.” Bernie looks at her, narrows her eyes affectionately. “A lot. Not, um, not all of it wholesome” – at this she hears Serena gulp – “although I must admit that I hadn’t gone quite so far as thinking that I might barricade you in the scrub room and have my wicked way with you in the middle of a shift.”
Serena’s cheeks burn red again and she takes a couple of quick breaths that turn into a tinkling laugh. “So what happens now?” She tries to sound sure, as if she’s asking Bernie how she wants to proceed on a routine operation even though she knows the answer. But she’s sitting on the floor next to Bernie Wolfe for the second time in less than a week and she’s not completely sure she’d put money on either of them still being fully clothed in 10 minutes’ time. She expects they will be, but still, she’s glad she’s been wearing matching lingerie sets for the past few days, just in case. She wonders what Bernie’s underwear looks like. What it feels like. Oh good grief, breasts. I’m going to touch breasts. Bernie Wolfe’s breasts. Somehow it only strikes her in this moment.
“Now, or when you’ve finished ogling?” Bernie’s voice cuts through the strangely insistent chorus of breasts-breasts-breasts-breasts in Serena’s head; she looks up from Bernie’s scrub top, from where the dark blue fabric rises gently over her chest, and finds Bernie smirking at her as if she can hear it all. Maybe she can, tucked in here so close together, the world beginning and ending on either side of their shoulders. Serena is at least 80 percent certain that she hasn’t been saying it out loud.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Bernie says, and Serena can barely spare the brainpower to wonder how Bernie sounds at once adorable and filthy; Bernie’s gaze drops to Serena’s lips and up again to her eyes and Serena knows now what that means, knows what’s coming – her, she is, frankly – and can only hope she doesn’t faint before it happens, because her heart is hammering in her chest and she can practically hear every last drop of blood careering through her veins, testing their resilience, their hold.
The sound of the feet of the other cabinet scraping against the floor as the door is pushed open is the worst possible sound at the worst possible time. He had better fucking kill me, Serena thinks, because if he doesn’t, I’ll kill him. A threat that might have an ounce of credibility if Bernie hadn’t launched herself forward the second the door moved, wrapping her body around and above Serena, who now found herself pinned beneath her big macho army medic in not quite the way she had hoped for. She can feel Bernie’s heart pounding against her ribs, the pulse in her wrist tapping at Serena's cheek where Bernie’s hand holds the side of her head, and again wishes for different circumstances in which to discover that Berenice Griselda Wolfe is in love with her.
“Hallo-o? Who’s in here?”
Raf. It’s Raf. Not a gunman – unless, no, no, not a gunman. They both heave a sigh of relief, almost laughing as they acclimatise to the new absence of danger. Bernie drops onto her side, beside Serena, squished against the back of the cabinet.
“Bernie? Serena?”
“It’s us, Raf,” Serena calls out, doing her best to sound as if Bernie’s lips are not, in fact, fastened to the side of her neck.
“Should’ve known you’d have the best hiding place!” Raf calls out, and Bernie moves her mouth just far enough away to huff a responding laugh.
“What’s happened, Raf?” Serena asks. Neither of them has moved, yet, except for Bernie’s hand working its way inside Serena’s blouse, so thank the lord that Raf hasn’t tried to push the door open any further. “Is everyone alright?”
“Everyone’s fine, thank god; he fired two shots to out the power on one side of the building and only found out the gun had jammed once the police had him surrounded on the sixth floor.”
Bernie’s military instincts have kicked in now and this doesn’t make any sense; she pushes up onto her elbow, her left hand drawn momentarily away from its first expedition beneath Serena’s clothes. “And it’s taken all this time to clear the building?”
Raf laughs. “They took him away about an hour ago, actually; it’s taken us this long to find you two – anyone needing surgery was taken to St James’s, so no one thought to check on this corridor.”
There’s a moment’s silence and then both Bernie and Serena erupt in a fit of giggles, the sound of the pair of them setting Raf off, too. When the laughter dies down, he shifts his weight from one foot to the other; he can’t see either of them, but he knows the sound of two pairs of lips joining together well enough.
“I’ll, er, I’ll call off the search party, then,” he calls out, getting no response. “Don’t worry, no one will be operating again today. Take your time.”
“Thanks Raf,” Serena drawls, sounding almost drunk. The feeling of Bernie’s teeth around her earlobe makes forming any kind of sound that isn’t a lascivious howl extremely difficult. They hear his trainers squeak a retreat to the ward and Bernie climbs back on top of Serena, looking at her with dark, dark eyes; she kisses her, her mouth hot and wet along Serena’s jaw, down her neck, across her collarbone. Serena wonders about the wisdom of popping her Sapphic cherry on the floor of the scrub room, behind a cabinet, behind another cabinet, behind a half open door. Christ, her tongue though.