“Then that would be emergency surgery. That’s in another building. You can get a map in reception.” She dipped her spoon into her soup. Both the woman and I jumped when Jep slammed his palms down on the counter.

“We’re not going to try to find our way to reception to get a goddamn map! Get off your duff and take us to the right place immediately.”

She was a massive woman, but one of those people who astounded logic because she shouldn’t be able to heft even one of her pillared thighs, but who instead moved like a cheetah. I had to run to keep up. We jogged for what seemed miles until we came to a room bordered in stiff, foreshortened green sofas. “Wait here,” she said. Then Andy and Amelia were with us.

“He’s still in surgery. There are two ophthalmologic surgeons. They got here right away. It’s his left eye. It’s pretty bad. But they said they would give it their best. The nurses said these guys are amazing.”

“His eye...? What?”

“It will be a while yet.”

“What happened to his eye? Did something go wrong with the machinery?”

“Thea, there was a fight.”

We listened as Andy pieced together what had happened. From what he heard, a kid not much older than Stefan hit him in the back with a two-by-four, knocking him down. Stefan stood up, waiting for the guy to say something, but the kid just walked away. Andy heard Stefan say, “Man, what’s up with this?” The kid’s reply was something like, you don’t want to get going with me, I’m not a girl. Stefan asked him to say it again, to his face. In reply, another guy charged him. Stefan knocked that guy down. There was a melee, six or seven people scuffling, some on Stefan’s side, some on the other guy’s. A few of them, not Stefan, picked up boards and swung away. Evidently, one board had a nail in it and the nail went into the outside corner of Stefan’s eye. “Which was good, I guess, that it didn’t go right into the middle...”

“Which is the good part?” I said. Andy’s face was all concern and kindness, and I knew enough to see that a workplace injury with possible criminal charges was going to cost him time and money, not even reckoning the cost of Stefan’s surgery. “That board with a nail in it, that was no accident.”

“Let’s deal with all this later,” Amelia said. “Let’s just wait until we can talk to the doctors.”