Lying there on the bed was a pitiable figure.

Soaked in sweat, bright red in the face, was a little girl of around eight or nine. She was completely covered in red dots. Cormac looked at her, telling himself not to let the horror show in his face. A Filipino woman was sitting by her head with a rag she periodically soaked in iced water, wringing it and placing it over the child’s forehead.

He moved over.

“Hello . . . Titania,” he said, worried he’d pronounced it wrong. “Hello. I’m Cormac. I’m a nurse and I’m here to see how you’re getting on.”

In response the child burst into tears. Cormac gently took her temperature, then looked at the mother.

“Have you been giving her the ibuprofen?” he said as gently as he could.

“No!” said the woman. “She’s my child! I think I know what she needs! I’m treating her homeopathically!”

“I think that can be very useful,” said Cormac, who thought nothing of the kind, “when given in conjunction with other medicines. And when it comes to beating back a fever, ibuprofen can really help.”

“Well, you would say that,” hissed the woman. “You’re part of Big Pharma.”

Cormac wished that he were and Big Pharma would top up his salary once in a while. The woman’s calm, beautiful expression had gone; she now looked tight-faced and pinched.

“Are you giving her plenty of fluids?”

“Yes!” said the woman triumphantly. “This is Kona Nigari”—she held up a fantastically complicated-looking bottle—“it’s collected from a Hawaiian spring and is the purest water in the world. We get it flown in specially. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for our precious Titania.”

She smiled beatifically at the child, but made no move to actually comfort her.

Cormac wiped the girl’s forehead with a cloth, propping her up a little.

“You’re going to be fine,” he said to the moaning child. “It’s just not very nice for a little while. But soon you’ll be able to watch Hey Duggee again.”

“Actually we believe screen rays are dangerous for children,” said the mother in a sharp voice. “We don’t believe in them.”

Cormac was reasonably sure he’d seen the husband on his phone downstairs but didn’t mention it. Instead he made notes on the form, saw that her temperature was down a little and that she was probably on the mend. But seeing a child suffer for no reason was almost more than he could bear.

“And afterward,” he couldn’t help asking—it was his duty—“when she’s well, will you consider vaccinating against other diseases?”

“Well, she can’t get measles again,” said the mother as if he, Cormac, were being quite the idiot.

“No,” said Cormac. “But you would maybe want to consider rubella?”