He motions me over. I sit down next to him. I’ve fantasised about the two of us in bed together after dark, but this isn’t exactly the scenario I had in mind.

‘Sorry, I didn’t say hi before. I felt kind of awkward and I didn’t want to … bother you.’

‘That’s okay,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t sure whether I’d see you again.’

I turn my head to face him. ‘I’ve been really worried about you,’ I say.

He looks surprised, and touched.

‘How are you?’ I ask.

He laughs. ‘How do you think? Kitty, I’m so fucking over this.’

I see the expression in his eyes and I know what it means because I’ve seen it before, many times. I’ve seen it when jabbing people’s veins to put in cannulas or take bloods. I’ve seen it in the emergency department palpating someone’s abdomen. I’ve seen it in the anaesthetic bay before a person is sedated. I’ve seen it in Estelle that night in the ward in Wingabby when the baby died, and I’ve seen it in myself when I look in the mirror.

It’s the bone-aching weariness that I’ve only ever seen inside a hospital, and in the eyes of two groups of people: patients and doctors. He’s flipped a coin and, impossibly, it’s landed on both sides.

‘I bet.’

Our eyes meet.

‘You look tanned,’ he says. ‘Have you been away?’

‘It’s fake,’ I confess.

He grins. I blush.

‘I might go away, though,’ I tell him. ‘I’m thinking France. Maybe next year, when I have some money.’

‘Have you been before?’

I nod. ‘I love the south especially. The food, the people, the wine …’ For a moment I’m lost in memories.

‘I should have spent more time in Europe,’ Dr Prince says almost wistfully.

Being stuck in a hospital bed allows plenty of time for brutal reflection. The impossible question reverberates around my head: what is it that we recall when we are dying? Would it be the last operation we couldn’t complete, the tumour we didn’t get to excise? Or would it be a beach we never walked along in the south of France, the wine we didn’t drink, the love we didn’t make?

The people we didn’t make love with?

Perspective: the most bitter pill of all to swallow.

The thing between us—whatever you want to call it—hovers in the air. Our eyes, which are just eyes and have no special significance, meet, and I swear just for a second neurosurgical research means nothing and the door blows open and I stare directly into the man’s soul.

‘My wife really likes the south of France,’ he says suddenly, looking down at the bedsheet.

I nod.