Mrs Stein sagged against her pillows, her breath leaving her in a slow exhale. “I see.” She stared out her window, lucky enough to have a view of the ocean, just visible from this height.

Cora wondered if she was thinking about the last time she’d actually dipped her toes in the salty water, the wind whipping her hair around her face in a dance. The times she’d taken her three small children to the beach to watch them kick up sand and create castles they could destroy with one quick motion, then rebuild as easily as a dream.

Or how she wouldn’t do that again.

Wet eyes stayed focussed on that window. “Thank you, love.”

Cora knew a dismissal when she heard one. Grateful, Cora left the poor woman contemplating the way her next years of life would play out under the constant, repetitive routine of overworked and understaffed carers.

Nurses bustled down the hallway, and Cora slipped past unnoticed, leaving her discharge notes on the desk for whoever found them. Tracing the maze of hallways she could now walk through blindfolded, Cora looked at her watch and, of course, slammed into someone very solid and very warm.

“Christ!”

That voice. God she didn’t need that right now. Did it have to be Frazer? That woman stared daggers at her all day, and all Cora could do back was return them in the hopes that she looked half as threatening. Which she was fairly certain she didn’t, because that wasn’t something Cora had ever really mastered.

Sparking green eyes focussed on her. “You do know you’re in a hospital and should probably watch where you’re going?”

Yeah, Cora really didn’t need this. She’d already started at stupid o’clock for the meetings her husband insisted they attend and insisted she support if her department wanted any funding. There’d been telephone calls with angry family members and from various wards whose resources were stretched too thin, asking if Cora could somehow work their patients into a suicide prevention programme that was already full or asking to change a denied request that was completely out of her hands. Her favourite coffee bar was closed, and instead, she’d drunk dregs from the coffeehouse where good coffee went to die. The stuff in her cup tasted faintly of burnt metal.

Finally, Cora said, “Yeah, I’m sorry.”

Some of that spark cooled. Frazer crossed her arms and leant against the wall. “I should have been paying attention too, I suppose.”

Cora’s eyebrows shot up. The arrogance; it was up there with Alec’s. At that thought, a retort slipped out before she could stop it. “You suppose?”

A toothy grin answered her and Cora wanted to roll her eyes.

“Well,” Frazer said, “remove the suppose.”

When Frazer wasn’t glaring at her, she looked less like an angry viper and more like a snake lain out in the sun. Mildly less terrifying, but arrogant in her safety due to the fangs that lashed out so easily.

Frazer barely ever said anything to her, but it was clear enough she hated the way Alec never helped Midwifery and Obstetrics. Which wasn’t completely true. He helped it as much as he helped most. His funding wasn’t endless.