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Serena drops her bag on her dresser and discards her keys along side with a confident flick of the wrist. She is giddy like a schoolgirl and despite the late hour, she is wide awake and full of energy.
Her conversation with Ric has had exhilarating effects on her. There is a “thing” with Bernie. It isn’t confined to the inner workings of her own mind. It’s out there. She’s told someone and now it’s real. Well, it could be real. Of course they weren’t going to speak about it again, because Bernie had taken her demeanor to mean that what they had done was not settling with her. And, truth be told it hadn’t been. But perhaps not in the way that Bernie was imagining.
The night after Bernie had kissed her on the floor of the operating theatre, Serena had been startled. Startled not because Bernie was a woman, not because it was new to her. No, those analytical thoughts had plagued her much later. At the time, the surprise had been that she’d received something she’d only ever let herself dream about when she was far from Holby halls. The enigmatic army doctor had stirred something in her from the very beginning.
Serena dug through her bag to find her phone and stepped out of her shoes. Sifting through her text messages she found the contact, Berenice Wolfe and selected it. The last message from Bernie had been from weeks ago and it had said merely “Coffee?”. She hadn’t answered it. Serena felt herself smiling and she climbed up in to her bed, still in stockinged feet and work clothes, her mind totally consumed with her thoughts of her colleague. She thought about what she could say.
>You were missed tonight.
Serena typed and pressed send before she even noticed the time displayed at the top of her screen, that read 2:23am. She cursed herself for not noticing it sooner and hoped the no-doubt sleeping woman had left her phone on silent setting.
Her phone vibrated.
She hadn’t.
Serena looked back at the display that was lit up with a new message from Berenice Wolfe herself.
>I’m sorry I missed it
Serena nibbled her lower lip and tapped the side of her phone with her index finger as she thought of a response.
>And I’m sorry to have awakened you. I didn’t realize the time.
Bernie’s response came quickly.
>I wasn’t asleep
Serena lay back against the headboard. She didn’t really know what to talk to Bernie about. They certainly had arrived in some uncomfortable territory. It hadn’t been as simple as tucking what had happened away on a neat little shelf and going back to being close friends and confidants. Flirting confidants, but confidants nonetheless. No, they’d been in limbo, between distant acquaintances and close friends and neither seemed to know how to really well and truly fix it. Though certainly today had felt like old times.
Serena stroked her phone screen, clearing away the fingerprints as she thought of what to say. Perhaps she would say, how sorry she was for making things so stifled between them. Perhaps she’d confess that this lack of Bernie in her life was making her miserable. Would Bernie want to hear it? Had Bernie actually completely moved on from the possibility of something more? There were so many things she wanted to ask Bernie, and to of course tell her. Why did it have to be complicated?
Serena drew in a deep breath and began typing. But after typing a text message that was growing quickly in size, weighted by her many confessions, she found herself unable to send it. Fear had grabbed hold of her chest and wrung the night’s high right out of it. Instead, Serena deleted the unsent text and typed,
>See you tomorrow then? Goodnight, Bernie.
There was no immediate response and with a heavy heart, Serena dropped her phone on the nightstand and began to undress.
As she closed the door to her bathroom, the screen on her phone lit up one last time:
>Goodnight, Serena.
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Sometimes, Bernie wishes she could surgically remove her brain and set it aside for the night. Tonight is one of those nights.
Her apartment is still startlingly bare, a bit of a mess really, with several boxes littering the sitting room floor. She doesn’t have much, She’s never needed many possessions. She’s used to living minimally.
Absently, she wonders what Serena’s home is like. They’ve never been inside of each other’s homes. No, theirs is strictly a working relationship with the odd drink out after particularly trying shifts. Bernie imagines it’s perfect though, with every thing in its proper place.
She’s been laying in her bed looking at the ceiling for hours and all she can manage to do is think of Serena. It was never this way with Alex. With Alex it was visceral, tangible and immediate. It was two people desperately thrown together while the world was falling apart around them.
With Serena, it’s tension and doing the right thing. It’s keeping tight-lipped to avoid disaster. It’s small glances, it’s shared moments, it’s playing it close to the chest yet heart firmly planted on sleeve. It’s desire, it’s warmth, it’s yearning. But beyond all of that, even beyond the feelings that flutter her stomach and set her nerves on edge, it’s fear. Fear that at any moment, Serena will have had enough –
Her phone beeps and it shocks her out of the depths of her quickly darkening thoughts. She squints at the display on her phone screen and the name there makes her heart skip uncomfortably: Serena Campbell.
>You were missed tonight.
To say she’s surprised would be an understatement of gross proportions. Of all people to text her, and at this hour of the morning. She had imagined Serena would have a late night with Ric, but she could never have expected something like this.
Bernie’s smile grows substantially. Serena has been thinking of her. Bernie’s fingers fly across the screen quickly. She doesn’t want to seem over-eager so she decides on:
>I’m sorry I missed it
There’s a pause and Bernie watches the screen, another smile forming when the beep sounds.
>And I’m sorry to have awakened you. I didn’t realize the time.
Bernie is suddenly worried that Serena will try not to bother her so her answer is quick and to the point:
>I wasn’t asleep
She stares intently at the phone. Indicated above the text field is the symbol that tells her Serena is composing a text and one that seems substantial in length by the amount of time it appears there. An excitement builds within her, a feeling that had once been wholly unfamiliar and has now become remarkably common where Serena’s concerned. The symbol disappears and reappears several times and Bernie is already formulating a response.
Maybe things have changed. She’s never been great at reading people but she can swear that earlier today, the talk of romance that Serena mentioned wasn’t entirely related to the french woman and her potential new courtier.
She wants to see Serena. She wonders if it would be odd to ask if it would be alright if she stopped by to talk things over. Rather than ships crossing in the night, she could suggest those ships meet at port and finally talk, outright. The mere idea of talking to Serena about the future frightens Bernie a bit but she knows that looking in to Serena’s soul-searching eyes, she will get through it. If this could be a beginning it would be worth all of the false starts and missteps. This could actually be the start –
Her phone beeps and Bernie’s eyes are on the screen in a flash.
>See you tomorrow then? Goodnight, Bernie.
Bernie’s smile fades, as her eyes scan across the brief, simple text as if searching for a deeper meaning behind the short arrangement of letters.
She’s got it wrong again.
Bernie’s stomach drops and her finger nudges at her lips, her teeth digging in to the soft flesh to distract from the overwhelming feeling of disappointment. Her eyes prickle and moisten but she blinks to clear them away. She sits a long moment in the dark of her suddenly faraway room before finally sending her response.
>Goodnight, Serena.