I look up from the chart. ‘God, it is amazing, you know,’ I say with feeling, remembering the windmills emerging from the ocean. ‘I’ve never seen anything quite like it.’

‘Good enough to write about?’

I smile. ‘Definitely good enough to write about.’

He looks around. ‘Do I really only have the two patients?’ he asks. ‘There’s no one else to see?’

‘You’re pretty quiet,’ I explain. ‘I guess because you’ve been away and everything.’

I wish suddenly that he had every single patient in the hospital, and that the round could go on for days.

He pushes his scrub cap back onto his head, signalling it’s time to return to the operating theatre.

‘I believe this might be our last round together,’ he says lightly.

‘I know,’ I reply. ‘And to think we’re spending it here in Sydney when we could be in Lund!’

‘Maybe another time,’ he says, catching my eye as we stand there in our scrubs at the end of the ward. ‘I’m sure stranger things have happened.’

You’ve got no idea, I think.

I watch him walk away, a blue blur returning to the fluorescent lights and open brains, and take a big breath.

‘You know—’ a nurse moves to stand beside me ‘—I’ve never known Jack to round so much. On some terms you never see him. He’s really made an effort this term.’

‘He has?’

‘Admin must have had a word with him,’ she says knowingly. ‘He’s been in their bad books for years.’

I walk home from my last day of neurosurgery feeling cheerful. The feeling lasts all the way until number 19, when I enter the house and hear Estelle say, ‘Yeah, so, I’m totally screwed.’

I find her in the living room, talking to Max and Winnie.

‘The eternal optimist strikes again,’ I can’t resist saying as I throw myself down next to her.

‘Estelle really is screwed, though,’ Max points out. ‘Even more than me, and I’ve got a criminal record.’

Estelle glares at him. ‘Thanks, friend.’

I shoot Max a look. ‘I thought you were going to stay at your mum’s.’

‘I was,’ he explains, ‘but she started on at me about paying her rent and how I eat too much of her food. I just needed some time out.’

Whenever Max gets stressed, he vanishes to his mother’s place. He likes the home-cooked meals and the cleanliness. He usually stays until she starts hassling him about paying rent, which is when he reappears at number 19.

‘You do eat too much food,’ Winnie pipes up. ‘Where’s that chicken I made the other day, for example?’

Max looks irritated. ‘God, don’t you start,’ he snaps. ‘Just give me a fucking break, okay?’