“We can . . . get her into Joan’s,” stammered Lissa. “There are supplies there. I could . . . I could take a look.”

Lennox looked at her. “You don’t know how to treat a cat,” he said roughly.

“No, but . . . I can stop her pain,” said Lissa, and Lennox calmed down a bit.

“How?” he said, as Nina rushed in to take little John off his dad, with Carrie hurrying behind her, and Lennox took off his jacket and bundled the poor creature inside it.

“It must be the same weight as a baby,” said Lissa, opening the big manse door and then the surgery. She pulled out a huge swath of medical paper and placed Joan’s files onto the floor, then put the paper over the top of them. Lennox kept the animal covered with his jacket, but it had quieted now and was making the occasional soft whimper, which they both recognized as being distinctly worse. Lissa scrubbed her hands quickly and put a tiny amount of morphine in a syringe, frantically doing the arithmetic in her head. It slid in easily as she found a tiny vein in the creature’s groin, grateful for the amount of times she’d spent taking blood on her various placements.

Then, once the large cat had fallen asleep, she took a look at what they were dealing with. She palpated the cat’s stomach—she knew absolutely nothing about animal biology, but it wasn’t firm or feeling like it was filling with blood. Neither was the heartbeat thready, although it was fast—“Google cat heartbeat,” she told Nina, who immediately complied. There was a leg that was patently broken—there was no plaster of paris on-site, but she could certainly improvise a splint until they could get her to a vet.

The most important thing, though, was the shape of the cat’s face. The skin had been ripped away; you could see sinew and bone underneath, and her ear was hanging off. It was a mess. Lissa looked at it carefully. It reminded her of working A&E, in fact. Underneath the fur, it was just skin and sinew and muscle, after all. Nothing she hadn’t seen a million times. She looked at it for a long time.

“What?” said Lennox.

“I reckon . . .” She retrieved the stitching kit.

“Whoa,” said Nina. “Are you really going to stitch up that cat?”

Lennox still looked dubious.

“She’s not in pain right now,” said Lissa. “I mean . . . I could have a go . . .”

“Fix my damn cat,” came a voice from outside. “I’m holding Margaret until the police come! I’ve just made a citizen’s arrest.”

“I’ll go calm her down,” said Nina. “Also I don’t want to watch this part; I’ll faint and it’ll be disgusting.”