‘So shhmy di e ellim?’ asked Sam, propped up in his bed in the rehab wing of the Gibber’s Creek Hospital, with Jed sitting on the bed next to him and Nancy in her usual armchair.

Sam wore a shirt now, with shortie pyjama bottoms hidden under the bedclothes. Jed had been unable to bear the sight of the pyjama tops after nearly a year of his coma, and now another since he woke.

His recovery had been slow and erratic, flickers of consciousness at first, each period growing longer. Yet he improved every day or, rather, he improved for four days, or seven, then went backwards again, his words slurring even more, unable to use his hands, perhaps, or move his legs and, for one terrifying day, seeing the factory around him, even though he knew Jed’s voice and was able to answer her to tell her that he knew where he really was, no matter what his eyes saw.

But he was conscious all day now or, rather, slept much of the day, but it was natural sleep. He could swallow again, and slowly feed himself and speak, though it tired him to talk too much. He could even push a walker to the bathroom, though the stamina to walk by himself was still far off.

Dr Rogers and his father and even Scarlett’s professor had invited various experts down from Sydney. Each gave a different diagnosis: undiagnosed meningitis after his surgeries, with the brain swelling slowly and unevenly reducing; or perhaps it had been hypoxia from those terrifying minutes when he ceased to breathe, lack of oxygen causing brain damage — but since then the brain, being flexible, had made and was still making new neural pathways.

He might have suffered a long-lasting concussion, or even cardiac arrhythmia triggered by blood loss, so that when his pulse slowed too far he lost consciousness again.

And though each expert was eager for Sam to be taken to Sydney for further tests to prove their varied diagnoses, all, when pushed, agreed that diagnosis would not change the outcome. All too gave the same prognosis: they simply did not know what would happen. Sam might continue to improve, or he might not. He might live to a hundred and four, or his injuries might have left a weak spot in his brain, his lungs, his heart or another vital place in his body. A burst blood vessel might mean sudden death.

They simply did not know.

Jed found this almost as hard to accept as his initial injury. She’d had certainty then, or at least probability. Sam would still be lying there when she came back each day, alive, perhaps, or dead. It was even harder to leave him each night now, in case he slipped away from her again. She kept looking up from her notes as Nancy spoke, checking that Sam was conscious, attentive, happy.

Alive.