Oh, Coop, I love your great-grandmother.

Joley is suddenly beside her. Avril, it’s nearly three.

I know. A yearning glance back at the bed. I know, I’m going. And thanks, Joley, thanks for every blind night. I know I’m not supposed to be here so late. You’re so kind, all of you, to let me stay.

Both of them hear the noise. Like artesian water trapped within granite. Like subterranean pain.

Joley gives her a grim kind of smile. A way to go, perhaps, but he’s on his way. She picks up Cooper’s chart and writes.

Cooper is coming back! The little girl with the albatross feather turns around, to see if he is following her.

Avril is elated. Afraid. Panicking.

He’s feeling it now, isn’t he. The pain.

We’re on to it. Joley is fiddling with the line, tapping a syringe.

What’s that?

Slow-release analgesics. He’ll be on these continuously now. And ketamine, opioids, when we do the dressings.

Just words.

There are two kinds of pain, background and acute … Joley stops what she’s doing, rests a hand on Avril’s shoulder. Look, I know it’s hard to stay positive but this is the best Burns Unit in the Southern Hemisphere. We know what we’re doing, you know?

Avril tries to smile and manages something that misses the mark.

Before she leaves, she leans in to Cooper and whispers. Hear that, babe? The best Burns Unit in the Southern Hemisphere.

His foot moves. That noise again, from the depths. Calm, Avril, breathe.

Follow the little girl, babe. Meggie’s with you now.

17

Laura

Avril comes back from the Ladies’ looking uncharacteristically pastel in a clean shirt of Laura’s. Thanks for this, she says, putting a plastic washbag on the floor.

Deodorant, toothbrush, soap and washcloth, moisturiser for Avril’s sallow skin. But no cigarettes, Laura suddenly realises. Not that she wants to encourage her, actually, but she should have thought to ask. It just never occurs to her.

She looks at Avril’s too-long fringe, usually spiky but lank now from being clutched and twisted in her fingers, pushed back by her palms. Not much she can do to help there. But Avril won’t go home now, not now, not until. And Laura can’t blame her for that. She wants to be here if Cooper wakes. When, she corrects herself. When Cooper wakes. His brain undamaged. To all of this.

Avril has the exercise book again, holding it carefully by the edges.

Reading this, it’s hard to believe she left school before she was fourteen. Did she ever go back? TAFE? Uni?

Laura shakes her head. It wasn’t like that back then. Not for women. But I remember she was always reading. She smiles.

What?