Fatigue rolled over Lauren, pressing her down into the hard mattress, pulling on her eyelids, stinging her eyes.

“I feel like I’ll never sleep again.”

“Oh, but don’t worry. It’s not forever, it’s only for a few weeks. Then the sleep gets better.”

This seemed impossible. “Really? Only a few weeks?”

“That’s what Mother said. I slept through the night at six weeks, apparently.”

“You did?”

“And, if you come home, you’ll have all our own bedding, our own loo. I’ll be there to help.”

Lauren felt the tantalising pull of normality, but she was a patient now. It was her duty to lie there and be treated. She’d been institutionalised, in two days flat.

“I want to. But I’m not sure I’m ready. I think, maybe I should stay, just for a few more days …”

Patrick took hold of one of Lauren’s hands, where a drip needle attachment was taped in place. “Lauren, honey. It’s a big deal, having a baby. Having two at the same time is huge. But. You’ll be better off at home. I don’t like the idea that you were here, all alone, seeing things and losing it in the middle of the night. You need to be where I can make sure you’re OK.”

Lauren was thinking about the emergency, the bleed. If she’d been at home then she might have died. A tear dropped onto her front. They seemed to come so easily. “I think I might need to stay here,” she said, thinking: near the drugs. Near the doctors.

“You hate hospitals. And, no offence but, you stink. No one’s looking out for you here. Has anyone even offered to run you a bath?”

She hadn’t thought about the bathroom. She couldn’t go back in there. Just hearing him mention the bath caused the fear to rise again. It put her straight back to the night before, when she’d been sitting in the bathtub, rocking her two babies under the strobing strip-light as the locked door was opened from the outside and a dark figure came towards her. No no no no get away get away from me. She’d screamed and screamed. But it wasn’t her, it wasn’t the disgusting black-tongued woman, it was a nurse and behind her a man in a green uniform, then there were others, crowding into the small room, more nurses, and a doctor, but she kept screaming, searching the shadows behind and between them. Where is she? Where’s that woman, the one with the basket? Get her away from me, I’m not going back out there, I’m not, I’m not—

“There’s no one there,” someone kept saying. “Look, see for yourself.”

The crowd opened up, various people stepped aside so there was a clear view. She looked and looked, through the open door into the bay. Things kept happening in her peripheral vision. Near the ceiling, something was hanging from sticky feet, reaching long fingers to curl through the gaps in the air vent, but when she looked straight at it there was nothing there, only a shadow, a cobweb. A trash bin became a squatting demon when she looked away, then became a bin again when she looked back. She knew she was breathing too fast because the nurse kept saying, “Breathe slowly, Lauren,” and her heart, her racing heart, she thought it might burst.