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he comes round.'
    She rolled her eyes at Lucy as she left the room, but she was smiling at the same time. 'We really didn't know what you lot had sent us this one for,' she said, deliberately speaking loudly enough for Sam to hear. 'We weren't convinced he was going to be here long enough to warrant changing the bed linen. But listen to him!'
    Sam laughed with some effort, then turned at once to Lucy and wanted to know, 'Who the heck are you?'
    'You weren't in a fit state to remember,' she agreed calmly. 'I work in the emergency department, where you got admitted on Monday.'
    'Oh, OK.'
    'Yeah, we're the ones who had to guess what was wrong with you because you'd decided not to provide us with any little hints, like ID or a medical alert bracelet,' she told him cheerfully.
    'Yeah, well, I used to, but I lost it,' Sam growled.
    He seemed a little taken aback by her frankness, but she saw no point in letting him hide from the truth. This young man reminded her of some of the lads who passed through the casualty department of Brewarra Base Hospital. Country boys whose prospects seemed to them to be shrinking in a changing world. Angry, because they were scared. Belligerent, because they didn't know how to ask for help. Denying what was wrong, because maybe will-power would be enough to make it go away.
    Lucy had decided some time ago that the tender treatment didn't work with these people. They didn't like a spoonful of sugar with their medicine. Instead, if you just kept on giving it to them straight, they eventually responded. It was usually a simple matter of time. They grew up. They worked out what they wanted, and what was possible. You couldn't rush the process.
    She asked Sam casually, 'Planning to get it replaced?'
    'I'll get to it.'
    'Soon, OK? It isn't obvious from the outside that you've got spina bifida, and the association between that and latex allergy is a pretty recent discovery.'
    'Like hell it isn't obvious I've got spina bifida!'
    'It could be a spinal cord injury, or a degenerative condition,' she pointed out. 'Until we saw the scarring on your back, we weren't sure.'
    He shrugged. 'Does it matter?'
    'You tell me!' she suggested lightly. 'I expect it would matter to your parents and your friends if you were ever in another situation like Monday, and there were doctors treating you who didn't know your history and so didn't know what to do. It was lucky Dr Lambert happened to have treated you before.'
    She didn't say any more, and was a little afraid that she'd said too much already. He might chew on it a little after she'd left, but would he digest it?
    Hearing a voice in the doorway, she turned and got caught in the captivating fight of Malcolm's grey-eyed gaze. Her body reacted straight away, heating up as if an infrared lamp had suddenly switched on overhead.
    They both jumped into an explanation at once.
    'I had a minute, so—'
    'I got here a bit early, and—'
    Then they laughed. 'Same impulse,' he said. 'You should be flattered, Sam.'
    'Flattered?' He blinked.
    'We only follow up on the really interesting patients,' Malcolm explained, the dry humour evident in the little tucks at the corner of his mouth. 'The rest we consign to the questionable care of the staff on the higher floors, once we've done the dramatic, life-saving bit down below.'
    'So what makes me interesting?' Sam growled. His speech was still slow and a little unsteady, but there were no obvious signs of brain damage. He had been extraordinarily lucky.
    'We're taking bets,' Malcolm teased, with a grim edge behind the humour. 'How long before you get brought in again, because you've developed Chiari symptoms and you've ignored the fact that you can't breathe or swallow properly, or because you've got slack with self-cath and with check-ups at your doctor's, and you've got infected urine backing up into your kidneys.'
    'Are you saying I shouldn't be living on my own?'
    'I'm saying that if you live on your own you've got to look after