The hospital was supportive, people move about in medicine all the time and they don’t want to lose their staff. They didn’t want to lose me. After I’d finished my residency, I was pregnant with Kieron and then after my maternity leave I returned to the hospital.

Mostly, I love what I do, but sometimes it’s harrowing. It isn’t all hip replacements and sports injuries or degenerative diseases that we’re understanding more about every day. We treat people after near fatal accidents, repairing their musculoskeletal system, giving them back their mobility even if we can’t fully take away their pain. Last year I operated on a little boy with a tumour near his spine. I’d thought of my boys then and it was the hardest surgery I’ve carried out, but it was a success and those successes stayed with me.

Until Hailey.

Life is so fragile. If I’d stayed with her things might have been different. Her life, in my hands.

Catherine’s life was never in my hands, she was taken away from me. This theatre is where she was born. This hospital is where she died. I could have saved her, I know I could. It seems right that this theatre is where Kieron will be given back his health, his life, by me.

I really can’t trust anybody else with the life of my child. I had once before and the first, and last, time I held my daughter she was cold, still, silent.

I begin to hum ‘Hush little baby’ and I am singing to her, to Kieron, to Connor and Hailey and my cheeks are wet but I don’t know why I’m crying.

I pick up a scalpel. It’s been months since I held one but it still fits perfectly into my hand.

I can save them all.

Chapter Eighty-Seven

Aidan

Aidan watches the light bounce off the scalpel as Lucy twirls it around in her hand.

Catherine.

The rawness of loss never fades. His only daughter, his little girl who will never grow. He’ll never see her graduate, marry. Will it be the same with Kieron?

‘I know you miss Catherine – we all do,’ he begins.

‘Do we? We never talk about it?’

‘That doesn’t mean we don’t care. I think about her every single day. Connor visits her – I’ve often seen him coming out of the cemetery – but this isn’t the answer.’

‘What is the answer? Taking a chance with Kieron’s life?’

‘Waiting. It’s all we can do. If we don’t find a donor and his condition deteriorates even more then…’

‘Then he’ll be too weak to operate on. Now he’s strong enough.’

‘Ryan is someone else’s child. Melissa’s child. She’ll—’

‘It’s not like he’s going to die. A lobe of his liver. He’ll be fine.’