“Actually, I’m here for Creative Writing.” Esther closed the door behind her and searched the room for a seat that didn’t exist. “Esther de Groot? I was approved for this module at the start of term.”

“I see.” Dr. Cordoba raised eyebrows as shaggy as his hair. “And yet this is the first time you thought to attend?”

It was unusual for anyone to forget Esther, but she wasn’t exactly rocking the usual full-gothic aesthetic (although her leggings had a token ram-skull print).

“Actually, I came to the first seminar, but I’ve had some, er, personal issues . . .” Her voice trailed off as something clicked in Dr. Cordoba’s recall. His eyebrows dropped, and a look of mystified horror washed across his face as he no doubt recalled her paper. “. . . issues that have since been resolved,” Esther continued. “No more drama for me.”

“Well, the drama department’s loss is our gain, I’m sure.”

Esther laughed exactly one second before she realized it wasn’t a joke.

When Cordoba started talking once more, Esther sat down gratefully in a chair that one of the boys had pulled in from the side of the room and took stock of the people sitting around the U-shaped arrangement of tables. A couple of people she vaguely recognized from the Prose lectures looked at her with all the welcome that antibodies might bestow upon an invading virus. Someone she and Ed Gemmell referred to as “Thesaurus Boy” for the ridiculous way he phrased questions during lectures gave her a nervous smile, and next to him . . .

Esther’s heart stopped.

It was a long walk back from visiting her CAS patient, Mrs. Doherty, but Susan had missed the bus, and it would be quicker to walk than wait for the next.

Also, walking would mean she didn’t have to spend any more time with the student she’d been paired with. Milo was the sort of person who thought he knew everything and didn’t shut up about it. Susan had been forced to endure ninety minutes of him going on about the various genetic factors linked to gestational diabetes instead of listening to Mrs. Doherty, who actually had gestational diabetes. As Susan had to point out to Milo when Mrs. Doherty had left the room to make them a cup of tea, the point of students visiting patients wasn’t to pontificate about their clinical knowledge but to interview the patient about what it was like to live with a diagnosis.

It was supposed to be a civil warning but had ended with Susan threatening to give Milo a taste of what it might be like to live with a diagnosis of having been punched so hard in the testes that they retreated back into his body cavity.