I grasp his hand, as if that will make it easier for him to understand me, and start to talk, and soon I’m telling him about everything that’s happened to me since he was injured. About Tanya and me, about how, unknown to her, unknown to anyone, I had to kill Station Chief Smit. He’d not only been guilty of some of the most disgusting crimes imaginable, he was also blackmailing me to keep quiet by threatening to reveal a secret about Tanya’s past which would have destroyed her. I tell him about how our relationship went south after that because every time I looked at her all I could see was Smit’s dying look. How I forced myself on, how seven months later the PTSD hit, how I’ve somehow come through it all and was on the cusp of getting out for good and yet here I am once again. I also tell him about my houseboat, how someone torched it and I don’t know if it was just an act by a random lunatic, or something more, something aimed at me.

When I’ve finished, drained, nothing left to say, I sit there with the beeping machine.

I’ve told him everything. But it doesn’t feel cathartic. I give his hand a final squeeze and then let go. I’m at the door when I realize there’s one thing I didn’t tell him.

I hesitate, then walk back, lean down and whisper in his ear.

I’ve missed her. I’d been with Hank longer than I’d thought, and by the time I get down to the radiology department and request to see her I’m told she’s just left. I race through the hospital hoping to catch her before she leaves. Someone at the main entrance who knew her said she’d walked out a few minutes before me. I’m panting as I rush outside, trying to guess which way she’d gone. I catch sight of a woman in a nurse’s uniform heading towards one of the many bike racks by the parking garage. By the time I get there she’s bending down, unlocking a fold-up bike.

‘Stephanie Dekker?’

She looks up, a soft enquiring smile on her face and dimples on her cheeks. Her brown hair is cut short, streaked through with blonde accents. There’s a red patch of skin on her neck which she absentmindedly scratches, then catches herself and stops abruptly.

‘Yes?’

‘Nellie de Vries gave me your name.’

Clearly the name doesn’t mean anything to her. She starts unfolding the bike.

‘Dr de Vries, she works in Paediatrics?’

‘Oh yes. She’s the one whose husband …’

‘That’s the one. Have you got a minute?’

‘Depends on what it is,’ she says, tightening up the last hinge clamp with a grimace. ‘I’ve got to pick up my son from school in twenty minutes.’