A sudden panic.

“Of course they are.” Were they? They both stared hard at the boys’ chests but it was difficult to tell. She tickled them in turn until they cried, voices twining together, so similar to each other, the two sounds in parallel like twisting strands of DNA.

“Yes, they’re breathing.”

They laughed nervously, relieved, as if they’d come close to something unspeakable but not close enough to say what it was. The ground was shifting under them. What would life look like, now?

* * *

The anaesthetist came and poked Lauren in the swollen ankles with a pointy white plastic stick. She dangled her legs so he could test her reflexes with the hammer end. She could feel it fine. It was a relief to be paraplegic no longer.

“You should be able to get up now,” he said. “The nurse will come along soon to remove your catheter.”

She’d miss that catheter. For months she’d been up seven or eight times in the night to empty her oppressed bladder. She quite liked not having to think about it—not being at the mercy of yet another uncontrollable bodily function.

“When can I go home?” She was sweating in the dry heat, the skin on her lower limbs stretched shiny with the swelling. Why was the heating even on in the summer? The hottest summer Sheffield had seen for forty years. Apart from anything else, what a waste of money.

The anaesthetist looked at her notes.

“Well, I can safely discharge you once you’ve moved your bowels.”

“Moved my—”

“Bowels?” The doctor smiled indulgently at her.

She’d understood, but the term was unfamiliar. Not much mention of bowels in her former life sculpting moulds for garden ornaments. No one ever ordered bowels cast in concrete with a fountain attachment for their garden pond.

Though the talk was of catheters and bowels, she bathed in the doctor’s easy confident manner and was sad when he went away again, leaving her trapped in her little family unit, her perfect four. Patrick made a little whistling sound at Lauren as she gazed moonily at the doctor’s retreating back.

“What?” she said.

“I thought you went for tall men.”

She laughed darkly. She was thinking of that moment again, when the needle went in and the pain went away and the anaesthetist carved a place for himself in her heart, made of gratitude and respect and a little bit of girlish adoration.

* * *

“You should have a walk around now, check that everything’s working fine.”

The nurse had taken out the catheter only ten minutes before and Lauren felt slightly aggrieved by the abruptness of the suggestion—one moment a bed-bound dependent, the next dragged out and forced to march around, quick smart hup-two-three. She hadn’t used her legs at all in twenty hours. They needed time to think about it. No part of Lauren liked being expected to perform at short notice.

She planted her two fat bare feet onto the cool vinyl floor, feeling the many specks of grit on its surface. The nurse gestured to Patrick to take the other arm.