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'Are those the only choices?'

'Aren't
they?'

'What about time? I'm a huge believer in time.'

'I'm not,' he answered shortly. 'Bronny's death cured me of that. Sometimes there
isn't
time.'

'But hasn't time healed the grief for you at all?' she asked, confused as she connected his words with what Charlotte had reported that morning. Lord help him, did he still ache for Branny that much?

And if he does, she thought with a pang, what does that mean for me?

'No, no, you've misunderstood,' he answered. 'I'm talking about
before
she died. The sense that time was this precious commodity and it was just
running out,
and we had a lifetime of things still to say to each other, and—' He stopped. 'Why are we talking about this now?'

'Because...because— I'm sorry.'

'Don't apologise. I want to talk about it. With you. Because you were there...' He hesitated, and there was a faint questioning intonation on the last word. 'I suppose,' he added. 'I suppose that's the reason. But not now. Some time when we can do it properly, with no sense of being rushed.' He laughed. 'Which is exactly what I was talking about. It would be really nice to feel that it didn't have to be like Sam, and like Branny—so rushed.'

They reached the accident and emergency department and separated. After a quick goodbye to Lucy, Malcolm headed straight for his office, feeling as if the day had already been a long one. He'd dropped Ellie off at Jenny's extra early this morning, and got an hour of administrative work under his belt before taking a break and doing some real medicine—following up on patients who'd passed through the department this week and overseeing the more serious cases admitted over the past few hours.

One patient had died in the early hours of the morning before they'd been able to stabilise his condition, and Heather still looked pretty shattered about it. He saw her standing over by the storage shelves that flanked the open area where trolley patients were initially seen, and if she was actually doing something productive, it wasn't very apparent. She seemed to be staring into space, and she was twisting a finger in her hair like a little girl.

'Come into my office for a minute, Heather,' he suggested, detouring in her direction.

She looked up, focused her gaze and nodded. Two tiny spots of colour flooded into her cheeks. She knew exactly why he wanted to see her.

'You're going to tell me it wasn't my fault,' she began eagerly as soon as the door was half-closed behind her. Malcolm rarely allowed himself the luxury of closing the door completely. 'And I
know
that, but it's still horrible. He was a young man! Only thirty-two. A weightlifter and a boxer. An athlete, in other words. Incredibly fit, and with a wife and a young child.
Why,
Malcolm?'

'Hereditary factors, I expect. Diet? Just because he was fit, it doesn't mean he ate well in terms of fat intake, and so forth. To be honest, I also suspect there was long-term steroid use as a factor in this case.'

'The risks of steroids are pretty widely known...'

'It doesn't stop some people, Heather, you know that.'

They talked about the medical issues for some minutes more, then Heather circled back again to her own feelings. Not that he blamed her. She had a very natural need to talk it out, and nothing she said was inappropriate.

'I can't shake it off. I don't
want
to shake it off. Isn't it important just to
...pause
a little in my life?'

'Yes, Heather, yes, if that's how you feel.'

But before he even finished speaking he saw that she was crying, and so he did the natural thing and took her in his arms. She went willingly, and buried her face in his shoulder. He didn't like the feeling. She was like a persistent cat who was determined on a particular lap for its evening snooze. It almost felt as if she was
burrowing.

'Oh, Malcolm,' she whispered, her breath coming in jerks. 'Oh, Malcolm, is it always this hard?'

A hell of a lot harder! he wanted to tell her. He knew what he was supposed to do, and every bit of sense and
logic and practicality in him told him to do it. Kiss her on the forehead, at the very least! Then ask her out. Dinner tonight, after work, 'to talk it out'.

So easy. So obvious. And clearly what she wanted. They were both single. She was attractive. They had a lot in common.

The first words began to form in his mouth and he found himself looking down at the top of her head as if it were a target, planning the spot where he'd plant the kiss. There, maybe, where her parting was.

Then the sounds of the busy department outside began to impinge. He didn't even have time to disentangle the different strands. Voices. A cupboard opening. The plastic sigh of the swing doors. A laugh that he recognised.

And he knew he couldn't do it, that he'd never be able to do it. It wasn't a question of time, of getting to the end of some metaphorical road named The Grieving Period. He'd reached the end of that road some time ago. The basic fact remained. He just wasn't attracted to Heather Woodley, and he couldn't imagine that anything would ever alter that.

Gingerly, he released her, gave her a last pat on the shoulder and said, 'Better now? Go and mop your face, then try and get back to work. It helps.'

'Thanks,' she answered. 'You've been so good.'

No, I haven't. I've only given you a fraction of what you wanted, he thought. I'd apologise for that, only it would only make things more awkward...

He said aloud, instead, in a bluff, breezy sort of tone, 'All part of the job.'

Then, very deliberately, he turned away so he wouldn't see the disappointment in her face.

* * *

The first Friday in March, the end of Lucy's third week in her new job, was humming along much like any other—until lunchtime, that was.

'I had to come in because I broke my crutch,' the patient said. 'Wouldn't have had to come in if I hadn't have broken my crutch.'

'It's lucky you
did
come in,' Lucy said.

Lucy didn't know quite what tone to take with this woman, and was a little on edge. There were some glaring signs that she didn't like in the least, and she knew that Wendy Boyle, who was on triage today, had felt the same. It wasn't the dyed brown hair, growing out at the roots to reveal two inches of grey, or the pitted, leathery skin. It wasn't even the layers of unkempt clothing, rank with the smell of stale cigarette smoke, which suggested that this woman lived a marginal existence and was possibly homeless.

No, it was more the look in her flecked golden eyes. Intelligent, but fearful and restless.

Alphonsine de Crespigny was the name the woman had given, although she wasn't able to produce a Medicare card to prove it. The name seemed unlikely. She was obviously mentally ill. The question was, could she be a danger to herself or to others? If so, she needed to be admitted to the acute psychiatric ward, but Lucy suspected that she wouldn't take the idea well.

It wasn't encouraging that the only problem Alphonsine perceived in her own condition was her broken crutch, battered old thing that it was, and Lucy wondered about her need for crutches in the first place. It looked to be purely to take the weight off painful legs, particularly the left.

The wounds on her legs didn't fit an obvious pattern that would have suggested their cause. Possibly, they were a combination of more than one injury, as well as ongoing neglect. Wendy Boyle had peeled away a few of the makeshift strips of bandage on the right leg, taken one look at what lay beneath and had sent Alphonsine straight back here to the open area of the unit where Lucy had been working all this week.

On a busy day, this patient might have gone into a cubicle and had to wait her turn, but on this Friday afternoon, just on lunchtime, things were quiet in this section of the department, and it was the cubicles which were overloaded with a succession of minor problems.

Alphonsine had refused to removed the bandages on the right leg completely, and hadn't let Wendy touch the left leg at all. As she sat on the trolley on a fresh white sheet, she was busily trying to adjust them and get them back into place, hissing and cursing unintelligibly as they stuck to the oozing, encrusted wounds.

'How did you hurt your legs?' Lucy asked.

'I didn't.'

'Then why are you wearing the bandages?'

'They're not bandages. They're leggings. To keep my legs warm.'

'But it's summer, Mrs de Crespigny.'

'I've got bad circulation, haven't I? And I'm not Mrs de Crespigny. I'm La Comtesse.' The way she said it stressed that it was a noble title.

'Well, it's warm in here, so I'll have to take them off because I need to see—'

'I just need a new crutch.'

And so it went on for several minutes, back and forth. Lucy managed to get the bandages off the right leg, and was horrified at the full extent of the infected wounds she saw. It was impossible to guess at their origin, or how long they'd been there. Clearly, they were getting worse. They would have to be debrided and thoroughly cleaned, and a course of broad-spectrum antibiotics started.

And then Lucy discovered that the right leg was the minor problem. When she finally persuaded this odd woman to let her look at the left, she saw at once that it was grey and pale below the knee. Painful, too. This was the real reason for the crutches, which La Comtesse refused to acknowledge. The smell of cigarette smoke now provided a telling clue. The woman had peripheral vascular disease, and a clot had formed in her lower leg, giving it that tell-tale grey and lifeless appearance.

Lucy felt sick. She'd need a doctor to confirm the diagnosis, but she really wasn't in any doubt. La Comtesse had gangrene, and was going to have to lose her leg below the knee. Breaking such news to a mentally ill patient and getting her prepped for immediate surgery wasn't going to be easy. Her stomach rumbled. It was a quarter past one and she was overdue for lunch. That didn't matter at the moment. She was due to go for her break when Kerry Anderson got back, but Kerry was late for some reason.

She heard Wendy on the phone out in the waiting area, and one of the interns, Jeff Curtis, in a side office complaining about something to Brian Smith. There were several more staff closeted with patients in the cubicles, but there was no one actually in sight at the moment. It was one of those unnatural hiatuses which would soon come to an end, but for the moment it was disconcerting.

'What's your problem?' Alphonsine demanded suddenly. She must have seen the horror in Lucy's eyes. 'What is your problem,
mademoiselle
? You're not thinking you're going to admit me, are you? I'm not getting admitted! That Ward 16, I know that place...'

She swore and lunged up from the trolley where Lucy had got her to lie. Equipment went flying. She yelped about the pain in her left leg. Lucy had begun to try to debride the more superficial and less severely infected wounds on the right leg, buying time as she tried to assess the best way to talk to this patient about her more urgent problem. Should she get a doctor immediately? Heather Woodley? Or Brian Smith? Malcolm? Or should she attempt to build a better rapport first?

With Alphonsine's sudden, violent movement, these questions became irrelevant, and suddenly it wasn't the patient's welfare that consumed Lucy's mind but her own. Alphonsine de Crespigny—what an unlikely, ridiculous name, like one of little Ellie Lambert's dolls— had pushed Lucy back onto the trolley with an almost unnatural show of strength and was pinning her there with a little black gun pressed into her cheek.

Was it real? Lucy had no idea. It
felt
real. Cold and heavy and solid. Was it loaded? It wasn't a situation in which you took chances. Her breathing was coming in rapid, shallow pants, and all she could think of was Charlotte...precious Charlotte, innocently busy at school and mercifully knowing nothing of this.

Or nothing
yet.

I will not die! I can't take the risk that the gun's a toy, or not loaded, and I
cannot
let her shoot me!

So she simply lay there, trying not to shake, trying not to say or do or even
think
anything that could possibly impel this mad woman to pull the trigger on her little toy. She was treating it like a toy, sliding its cold snub nose across Lucy's cheek, making a clicking sound with it. Lucy was sure now that it was real. And did that clicking sound come from the trigger?

This is ridiculous! she thought. People were wrong when they said, 'I didn't think it would ever happen to
me!'
That's not how this feels. But how did my life go from being so safe and normal one minute to being so fragile and under threat the next? That's how it feels. Sheer astonishment that it could be so sudden. It was just an ordinary day! There ought to have been a
signal!
Oh, as if that matters now...

I
cannot
let her shoot me!

Coming
back from his lunch-break, such as it was, Malcolm was aware, as Lucy had been, of the unusual quiet in his department.

He did a quick head count in the waiting area on his way through. A dozen people, but at least half of them were the friends and relatives of patients, not the patients themselves. He glanced into a couple of the open cubicles and saw Heather Woodley suturing a gashed hand and Anna Seaman questioning an elderly man about his symptoms. A junior nurse, Lisa Fellowes, was assisting Heather.

Jean and Alison, today's front desk staff, were on the phone. There were a couple more closed doors with the sound of voices behind them. Finally, as he neared his office, he looked along to the trolleys at the far end, which had been completely empty fifteen minutes ago when he'd gone off for a sandwich.