‘Did you, though?’ He narrowed his eyes. Lowered his voice. ‘You were tired. You should have finished your shift. You chose to stay—’

‘You asked me to!’

‘You could have said no.’

The words hung between them.

Mum’s eyes were bloodshot, ringed with dark circles. She looked awful, but she could never look as awful as Connor felt in that moment. His relationship with his girlfriend was irrevocably altered. His relationship with his mum irrevocably altered. In his mind, she was no longer someone he could rely on and he felt furious at her for that, for shattering his sense of childhood safety as much as anything else.

‘If she dies, it’s your fault. Some fucking doctor you are. I should have known better than to ask you to look after Hailey. Just look at Kieron! You can’t even save your own son. You couldn’t even save your own—’

‘Stop. Please.’ Mum held up a hand as though she could prevent the vicious words from reaching her but it was too late. Connor had said things that could never be unsaid. Mum had immediately resigned and he’d felt even worse. He had so much to apologize for. So many people to apologize to. He had tried to start with Hailey.

‘I write to Hailey sometimes,’ he tells Mr Marshall now, thinking of the ‘I have a confession’ messages he’d send on Facebook Messenger despite knowing she can’t read them, can’t answer. ‘I tell her I’m sorry and I tell her that if I hadn’t asked Mum to operate she might have been okay. The accident was my fault and the operation was too. I asked Mum to be her surgeon.’

Mr Marshall shakes his head. ‘We could hardly have left her with a broken femur, could we?’

‘Suppose not. But…’ Connor doesn’t know how to express all the things he wants to say. If he’s honest with himself, it isn’t only the guilt of knowing it is all his fault that has kept him away. He’d watched victims of strokes on YouTube. Seen drooping faces, slurred speech, jerky movements, and he couldn’t handle seeing his beautiful Hailey like that. Despite Mum’s concerns that Hailey might not wake up, she did and Connor had felt a skip of elation before Mum explained that she was unable to talk or walk. There would be a period of time where she’d improve but she couldn’t predict to what extent. What lasting damage there might be. He’d come once. Stood outside of the house, hand fisted, poised to knock, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

‘Will she get any better?’ Connor asks.