Jax looked at the chaplain, his chubby cheeks flushed red, appearance almost comical, and chuckled. The light laugh caused heavy pain.

‘Ahh,’ Jax groaned, a blazing piano suddenly pressing on his chest, crushing and burning at the same time. ‘What the—?’

He began to hyperventilate.

‘Relax,’ Martin said, reaching out and placing his soft hand on Jax’s forehead. ‘Shhh. Take a long, slow breath. That’s it. Good. Now gently let it out.’

He lifted his hand from Jax’s head and placed it on his arm.

‘You have broken some ribs,’ the priest said as he gently patted. ‘You need to take it easy.’

Jax gritted his teeth and swallowed the pain. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

Martin told Jax that he had been attacked in the gym. Hit in the head with a dumbbell, or at least that was the surgeon’s guess, given the size and the shape of the piece of skull he’d had to remove. Immediately knocked out by the blow, Jax had then dropped the weight he was lifting – 160 kilograms – onto his sternum. The priest told him he was lucky that none of the five ribs that were broken had punctured his lung. But not so lucky that they didn’t have to replace his sternum with steel.

‘You may have some more explaining to do when you go through the metal detectors,’ Father Martin said, after also telling Jax about the steel plate in his head. ‘But aside from that, you will be fine. It could be a lot worse. The surgeon was astounded that your brain wasn’t damaged. He only induced the coma because of the pain.’

‘Coma?’ Jax gasped. ‘How long was I out?’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ the priest said. ‘You don’t need to worry. Ju—’

‘No! How long?’ Jax interrupted. ‘I need to know.’

‘I’m not sure,’ Martin said. ‘A couple of weeks. Two, maybe three.’

Jax ignored the pain as he sprang forward and grabbed for Martin’s wrist. For his watch.

‘The date,’ Jax barked. ‘What’s the fucking date, you imbecile?’

Father Martin stood up and backed away. As the colour suddenly drained from his usually rosy cheeks, he remained silent, simply staring at Jax, with his mouth agape.

‘Sorry,’ Jax said as he slumped back onto his pillow, ‘I wasn’t . . . Sorry, I just need to know the date.’

The chaplain did not need to look at his watch.

‘The twenty-fourth of December,’ he said quietly, before turning and walking off. ‘Merry Christmas,’ he said, without a hint of joy, as he pushed his way through the double doors and left the hospital wing, his elegant leather-soled shoes clicking softly on the linoleum.

One day and counting. . . .

JAX ripped the tangle of wires from his chest.

‘Fuck,’ he said as the ECG next to his bed wailed. An alarm.