Chapter Text
“Touch that radio again and you'll be walking over the border!” snapped Serena.
Bernie Wolfe smiled. It always amazed her how the world could crash around Serena Campbell's feet and she would remain calm, and yet if someone fiddled with her car radio, they got their head bitten off. The lengths Serena had gone to in order to get this time away for them, though…if she didn't know Serena better, she'd have said it was deliberately sweet. She had even managed to find someone with whom Jason was comfortable to take care of him in their absence – and that was no mean feat.
The countryside flew past Bernie as she stared out the window. It was beautiful. A world away from Holby, and a universe away from Afghanistan.
And as idyllic as it was, Bernie had several reservations that had been bugging her during these long hours in the car. “What if I have problems?” she asked quietly. “What if the medication doesn't agree with me? What if-”
“You know, funnily enough, Bernie, the NHS does in fact extend into Scotland.”
This was perfectly true, but Bernie could not help but worry. This ordeal with mental illness had alerted her to her own fragility. It had reminded her that the decaying of her mind could kill her as dead as any bomb or bullet, but it would just take longer, and it would be more painful to endure. So she wasn't all too comforted that she was in a different country from her own GP. However, she was with Serena, and that seemed to make up for it. Though Serena was no professional in the field of mental health, she seemed to know Bernie scarily well. It was almost enough to make Bernie run in the opposite direction, but she had done that before and all it did was hurt them both.
There were things Bernie could not even hope of disguising from Serena. She didn't quite understand why that fact never stopped her from trying it anyway. It was almost an instinctive reaction to her hurt, to hide it from Serena, even though Serena herself had told her to stop it. She couldn't do that.
Of course, it would have been easier to cut herself off from Serena completely. It might have spared her the hassle of taking care of a woman who was big enough and old enough to look after herself. Or, at least, she ought to have been.
At present, she was on her first week of medication, while awaiting an appointment for therapy she didn't reckon could work. Talking made these things real, after all, and wasn't it better to leave them outside of her real world?
If she said that out loud, she knew Serena would protest, and deafeningly. In all honesty, Bernie knew she would do the same if Serena were the one to say that about herself, but she had a hard time holding the same care for herself as she did for Serena. She was not as good a person as Serena was. She was not as loved, because she was nowhere near as lovable. She was not worth nearly as much as Serena Campbell was.
Bernie watched the world go by, as they moved steadily northwards, and with each mile, though she ventured to the unknown, she left a little more stress behind her. It was still there and it still existed, but it existed further away from her. Maybe it couldn't be forgotten, but it could be ignored for a little while. It was almost like she could outrun her demons. She was finally running faster than they were, and they might never catch her again. She couldn't really afford to stop running, because if she did and she was caught, she would not survive again. She could not survive again.
“I hope we don't look like stupid tourists,” grumbled Serena. “Sometimes I find Scots quite difficult to understand.”
“We understand Raf well enough,” Bernie pointed out fairly.
“You've never met his brother,” snorted Serena. “Besides, Glasgow is the least of your worries. Wait until you get to Aberdeenshire and tell me you have a bloody clue what they're saying.”
Bernie smirked slightly. She had served with a young man from Peterculter, so she had learned to understand some of it from him, but he had died five years ago. She wasn't sure how much she would actually remember.
That boy had been unintelligible to half the people he served with. To anyone who spoke normal English, his choice of words was senseless, and yet words like “footery”, “bide,” and “quine” made perfect sense to him. It had been quite charming, really, even if inconvenient at times. It reminded her that the United Kingdom she fought for was so much more diverse than the little bubble of middle-class England she grew up in.
He'd only been twenty years of age when he was killed in action. In fact, he had only been a month short of his twenty-first birthday. She could recall trying to save him, desperately trying to stem the bleeding and repair his liver, but it was never going to work. It didn't stop her from thinking she ought to have done more, though. That she ought to have done better. When she had returned home, she had gone to a memorial service in his honour, and met his parents and two sisters. She had awkwardly accepted their thanks and gratitude for her efforts in saving him, for having his back on the front line. She listened to them say how highly their son and brother spoke of her, all the while feeling like their praise was undeserved. She felt she had been lying to them, cheating them into thinking she was a better person than she was.
This idea of being brave wasn't real at all. In the conventional sense, she was brave. She went to war. But that wasn't enough for her to be a brave person. Brave people didn't crumble once they were out of the warzone. Brave people did not cower away from the idea that someone so amazing had fallen in love with them. Bernie was courageous unless it was a physical or intellectual battle. If it were an emotional or psychological war, she was the biggest coward she knew.
Why had she never recognised that before? She had been cowardly enough to settle into a marriage she had never been entirely sure she wanted. It was never a bad marriage, but it wasn't what sixteen-year-old Bernie had hoped for. Back then, when she still thought courage was a trait dominant in her, she had hoped she'd be brave and come out, and be free to marry whomever she happened to fall in love with. But she had not been brave. She had caved quite easily, and settled for marriage to Marcus because, when it came to dealing with everyone she knew, it was the easiest and simplest thing she could have done.
All this mess, because she was a coward.
“Bernie?” Serena said, quietly. “Bernie, are you alright?”
Bernie looked around, and she realised too late that tears had spilled over onto her face. She hastily wiped them away, not particularly keen on explaining them, and smiled at Serena.
Serena did not smile back. Instead, she remained silent, but pulled into a small service station near Carlisle. “What are we doing?” Bernie asked cautiously.
“Getting something to eat. I'm starving. Plus, it's time for your medication,” she added; Serena had been keeping an annoyingly close eye on Bernie and, though she completely understood why, it didn't make it any less irritating that there was nothing she could get past Serena at the moment.
Bernie sighed and got out of the car. “I'll drive from here to Edinburgh,” she said. “You'll need a break.”
Serena said, “Thanks,” and led Bernie inside, where they sat down and looked over what they could eat. Bernie was not very hungry at all, but she knew Serena would be the first to point out that she definitely needed to eat, because hunger could only add to her risk of depression. It was something Bernie believed that Serena must have learned the hard way, and it was possibly why she was so averse to letting herself become too hungry, even now.
Bernie pondered that, as she ate a cheese and ham toastie. She did not ask Serena about her experiences. It had been so long ago, in a different era in her life, and Bernie didn't want to drag it up and cause her pain. That didn't mean she wasn't curious – she most definitely was – but she was not going to hurt Serena just to satisfy that curiosity.
“Why were you crying?” Serena finally rounded on her, while tucking into a bowl of cock-a-leekie soup and a plate of bread.
Bernie looked down at her own food and decided to avoid answering by opening up her bag and taking out her box of medication. She silently put the pill in her mouth and swallowed, hoping in vain that Serena would forget by the time she was able to speak again. However, Serena reached out and took Bernie's hand in hers, trying to get her to open up. “Serena...”
“Bernie, please,” Serena gently urged her. “How do you expect to get better if you never tell anyone what's wrong?”
“You don't want to know.”
“I think you'll find I do.”
Bernie stared at her, wondering what was going on in Serena's head right now. She must have believed this was helpful, but her reasoning was unclear to Bernie. After all, Serena was the one who stood by the value of “good old British reserve.” Didn't that apply here?
And just like that, the argument played out in her head. It wasn't even really an argument. Bernie knew exactly what Serena would say if she brought up her belief that reservedness could be a good thing: “Not if it's going to get you killed.”
This fear Serena had that Bernie would end up dead was unsettling. It meant that there was a level of emotion Serena had attached to her that she had not known before now. That moment in the waiting room of the medical centre echoed in her mind, and she could not help but wonder if loving her was bad for Serena. Deep down, of course, Bernie knew that was barely a question; she was almost certain that loving her was bad for Serena. The problem was that no matter how hard she tried, how much she held back her own feelings for her best friend, she had no success in pushing Serena away. She had pretty much given up on that tactic – Serena was too stubborn for it to work.
So, for Serena, so that she didn't spend the whole day wondering and letting it eat her up, Bernie answered the question. “I served with a soldier from Aberdeenshire,” she explained, her voice only a murmur. She was slightly amazed Serena could even hear her. “He spoke Doric. Drove half of us crazy, but he couldn't help it. That was just how he spoke and there wasn't much we could do but learn to understand him the best we could. We always called him Furry Boots. Unoriginal, I know, but it kept us laughing.”
Serena gently smiled. “I see. Do you still keep up with him?”
“He was killed,” Bernie said tonelessly. “Five years ago.”
“I'm sorry,” Serena answered immediately, as Bernie had known she would, with a tight squeeze of her hand.
Unable to accept the condolence, mostly because she still felt she had not been good enough to save him, Bernie shrugged the kindness off. “It is what it is.”
She said no more about the matter, and Serena seemed to acknowledge that the discussion was closed, so they finished their food in silence. On the way out, laden with a bottle of cola and a chocolate bar each, Serena handed Bernie the car keys.
Bernie climbed into the driver's seat, glad for the distraction that focusing on the road between Carlisle and Edinburgh would bring her.