“Your what?” Jem followed Rosie’s gaze to the chunk of rebar still protruding from her thigh. “This? What the hell for?”

Rosie smiled. “Memento.”

“Of the day you almost drowned?”

Jem assumed it was the ketamine talking, but Rosie shook her head, her expression clear and adamant.

“Of the day we took our chance,” she said.

Chapter Twenty-two

“Ow.”

Even smacked off her head on a concoction of general anaesthesia and morphine and who knew what else, Rosie regretted trying to roll onto her back.

“Stay on your side, Rosie.” Jem’s flat instruction suggested she’d been saying this a lot. “You had five inches of metal stuck up your—oh, hello.” Her tone brightened as she realised Rosie was actually focusing on her.

“Hiya.” Rosie pulled a face at the reediness of her voice and was relieved to be offered a sip of fruit juice rather than water.

“Not too much, you’ve been puking all morning,” Jem said, easing the straw from Rosie’s lips.

“I have? What time is it?”

“Almost ten.”

Rosie scrubbed at her cheek with fingers still pruney on one side and battered on the other. Her addled brain was sluggish at joining the dots, but when it had, she narrowed her eyes. “Jem?”

“What?” Jem said, all Bambi-like innocence. She was dressed in multiple layers of normal clothing rather than pyjamas, but the oxygen tubing beneath her nose somewhat gave the game away.

“Why aren’t you in bloody bed, that’s what?”

Jem pushed her chair back. “I’ve been in bed.” She gestured to the adjacent bay and the bed with its rumpled sheets. “Then I asked nicely, and Katya let me get up.”

“Katya? Your nurse from last time?” Rosie frowned; she was apparently still missing a few dots. “Okay, fill me in from the top.”

Jem pinched a handful of grapes from a stash beyond Rosie’s limited field of vision and popped the largest into her mouth. “What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked around it.

Rosie stared at a blank bit of wall, filling it with images of rising water and darkness and Jem, clearly terrified but trying not to show it.

“Hey.” The soft word came with the gentlest of kisses, pulling her back to the hospital room. Jem stayed almost nose to nose with her, cradling her face with warm hands. “Sorry, that was a stupid question.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Rosie’s mood improved as everything else suddenly slotted into place. “I remember you kissing me upside down.”

Jem laughed. “Okay, well, that’s the most important thing. The rest of it isn’t quite so exciting. You had an op to sort your leg out, I spent a few hours in Resus, and we were both admitted onto Respiratory because they need to monitor you for secondary drowning, although you’re not showing any signs of that.”