WE ARRIVE AT THE HOSPITAL to find Mae is out of the ICU and ensconced in Myerton General’s only VIP room, complete with a wall of windows, a small kitchen, and a comfortable seating area near the patient’s bed. There is no nurse in the room at the moment but she has no lack of medical care, as the chief of trauma surgery is sitting by her bedside monitoring her condition assiduously. She is still pale from the blood loss, a condition that I am familiar with from Helen’s incident of a few months ago.
Helen crosses the room to her and, carefully maneuvering around the tubes, gives her a gentle hug. I do my usual friendly in-hospital gesture of patting the patient’s foot before shaking Martin’s hand.
“Good to see you both,” Martin says. He waves us to the couch and pulls out his phone to se
