Harriet squatted at Rosie’s side, no mean feat in the heels she was wearing. “I think she’ll be fine. She tends to bounce back quite quickly, even when she’s come in this poorly. Knowing her, she’ll probably get a HDU bed for the night and be well enough to go home in another day or so.”

“Really?” Rosie pushed upright, struggling to reconcile Harriet’s optimism with Jem’s current condition. “What does the mask do?”

“It stops her from getting exhausted, and it prevents her airways collapsing as she breathes.”

“In a nutshell?” Rosie said, suspecting there was a lot more to it than that.

Harriet smiled, graciously conceding the point. “Yes, in a nutshell. Now”—she pulled a small trolley closer and uncapped a nasty little needle—“I’m going to run your blood gases. Once I’m sure you don’t need to be in the cubicle next door, I’ll get someone to examine whatever you’re hiding beneath that rather grim scrag of carpet.”

“It’s curtain,” Rosie said, still eyeing the needle. “And it’s just a scratch.”

“Mm-hm. Am I correct in assuming you’d like to stay in here with Jem?”

“Yes.”

Harriet turned Rosie’s uninjured wrist, evidently preparing to draw the blood sample, but instead of jabbing it she held it in her hand. “Let us do what we need to do, then. She’ll probably be asleep for an hour or so. You can have a shower and get changed and still be here when she wakes up. How does that sound?”

“It sounds good,” Rosie admitted.

“Excellent.” Harriet shifted her fingers, feeling for the pulse at Rosie’s wrist and readying the needle. “Brace yourself, Officer Jones. I’ve been told this stings quite a bit.”

* * *

In Rosie’s experience, the best police partnerships were formed around the basic mandate of always having your mate’s back. When she’d messaged Kash to ask for clean clothes, he’d gone beyond the call and brought her fresh underwear and a flask of his mum’s curry as well.

“The foil has chapattis in it,” he said. “Take it home if you don’t feel like it now.”

“I will. Thanks, Kash.”

“How is she?” Never comfortable around the ill, injured, or dead, he had retreated to the foot of Jem’s bed.

Rosie stroked her thumb across the back of Jem’s hand. She didn’t think they were at the hand-holding stage yet—hell, they hadn’t even arranged their date—but the last time Jem had woken, she’d wrapped her fingers around Rosie’s and promptly fallen back to sleep. Rosie hadn’t dared to move since.