Paula forced herself to spin away, turn her back to him. She crossed her arms across her chest, holding one wrist down with the other in order to fight the deep-seated impulse to save a patient. Over and over, she reminded herself this action was being done to save Rochelle and her little boy. This was saving innocent lives from almost certain danger. To hold steady to this course, she conjured up the image of Rochelle and Brody huddled in the corner of the consulting room, while Ferguson thrashed on the bed.

After a minute, maybe more, he flung his arm out, knocking a metal basin onto the floor with a loud clanging noise. Anyone in the practice might have heard that.

Paula swung open the door of her consulting room.

‘Need some help here! Patient in cardiac arrest. Li-Kim, can you get the—’

‘I’ll grab the defib,’ said Li-Kim.

‘Jemma, ring the ambos.’

By the time Li-Kim wheeled the practice defibrillator into the consulting room, Paula was making a show of doing CPR.

The two doctors worked on Ferguson for five minutes, until the paramedics hurried into the surgery. Paula rattled off a quick handover: ‘Sixty-two-year-old man, had a fall during a dizzy spell, history of hypertension and cardiac disease, untreated.’

Then Ferguson was rushed out the door on a gurney.

Paula and Li-Kim flopped back against the doorframe, out of breath.

‘Do you reckon he’ll make it?’ asked Li-Kim. ‘Didn’t look good.’

Paula only managed a vague noise in her throat.

‘You right, hon?’ asked Li-Kim, squeezing Paula’s shoulder.

‘Uh, yeah. Well … you know …’

‘Yeah, stuff like that always throws you off. Want me to ask Jemma to move the rest of your appointments?’

‘No, no. I’ll be fine.’

Paula sat back at her desk and saw that Ferguson’s medical file was still open on the screen. She added a few notes.

Came in with a minor hand injury after a dizzy spell led to a fall. Discussed the need to take prescribed hypertension medication and to follow up on cardiac tests previously ordered. Patient is reluctant to do so.

She looked down at the keyboard to see her hands were still trembling. She had no idea if Ian Ferguson would survive.

The smell of the half-eaten banh mi in the bin drifted up, suddenly overwhelming her. She lunged for the metal bowl that had fallen onto the floor and vomited into it, bringing up her stomach contents, then retching up bile, then dry-retching with painful spasms.

Eventually her guts settled and she mopped at her mouth with tissues, shivering a little from the chill of the sweat on her face.

EIGHT