‘Everything OK in here?’ Molly slipped her head in.

‘Yeah,’ I said, quietly.

‘You been drinking, hun?’

‘No, no, it’s blood,’ he lied, rubbing down the wine stains on his shirt.

I held up the empty bottle of wine and she laughed.

‘Got any lift? Jeez, I need some.’

‘’Fraid not,’ Alex said.

But then he remembered the second bottle and handed it to Molly and she twisted off the cap with her teeth, placed a chair beneath me, and left the commode out on the corridor.

‘So sorry, so gross,’ she said.

She poured into two plastic cups. ‘Cheers, darl,’ she said, handing me one, and let her glass down to me.

‘Sláinte!’

She was still shaking.

‘We’ll git you moved, we’re going to move you to ICU shortly now. Gawd, some night, huh?’ she said.

I nodded.

‘ICU’ll be the best place for you, hun.’

‘Please,’ I said, ‘let me go, please, Molly. I can’t spend another night in here. Tell him.’

Molly leaned forward and kissed me on the side of the face. She downed her wine in one big gulp and threw the empty cup in a needles bin.

‘Naw, ya can’t,’ she said. ‘Naw one could. Or should.’

And just like that I was free. But I was always free. Alex just needed approval and inebriation. Molly instructed Alex to ring her when he needed to, and told me it was really great to have met, then she told Alex that a husband should always do what his wife says, darl/hun, and walked out. He was wild-eyed and daft but he had an order now, from someone else.

He plonked me back on the commode after convincing security to let him onto the Ward for one last time, and grabbed my things – headphones, books, Santa’s grotto, care package, kidney dish – and stuffed it all in a large green refuse bag. He pushed me along the corridor as I drank from the second bottle of wine. And he hurled the bag over his shoulder.

Claire Hegarty came along the corridor and stopped abruptly when she saw me. ‘Why are ye all out here? Have they not sorted you another room yet? Dreadful,’ she said, eyeing the large sack. ‘Where did you get the wine? Am I missing a party? Awful what happened the window. Very worrying, but did I not say something would happen, did I not say it? Luckily, I was flat out, I’d have gotten a terrible fright. Daddy’s still asleep down there. They’re waiting to move him, but there’s something up with … a machine. He’s not –’ she broke off – ‘stable. To be honest, the whole thing is making me all anxious. I hate leaving him in there … alone.’

‘Hegs is still on the Ward?’ I said, concerned.

‘Oh, yes, sure this is twenty-first century Ireland. Disgraceful.’

Her energy was frightening.

‘Well, we’re going to head on,’ Alex said, slurring a little. He began pushing the commode along the corridor; we didn’t need to listen to Claire Hegarty in the real world, and she sensed it, then tottered along beside us.