These worries were then compounded from another front when his son broke an arm badly in two places from a fall at a skating rink. It required an operation, and Alex all but vanished in his free hours. Lucy understood, but it was a blow; and within the confines of their present relationship, she couldn’t talk to him and find out how he was. They had no private time, between the onlookers at the hospital and the curfew that descended by the end of his working day with his return to his little boy. It was an absurd paradox: he was more involved with monitoring her immune system and the possibility of her new heart being rejected than anyone, but it returned them to an entirely professional relationship when their personal bond wasn’t quite established. She thought the opportunity for closeness might be gone altogether. Her humor fought back against her fate, but the strain finally got to her, hitting her nervous system. Having ignored dwelling on it too much before, she now became aware, after the fact, of all the horrors she’d been through, the brushes with death the year had contained. And someone she was just learning to trust enough to possibly start caring for seemed to be withdrawing from her.

She succumbed to a series of terrible headaches, depression, and bad dreams peopled with hostile faces. She would awake in panic, feeling as though she were being watched by someone she wished to hide from. So she was admitted again for a further series of tests.

Now it was December 22, a gray Monday, and it looked as though she was staring at Christmas in hospital. At least, on the plus side, she might see Alex. He’d been away in late November at the other hospital with his research students, and was up in Cambridge last week. She joked with Grace that she’d forgotten what he looked like and wondered who was feeding his cat—but she lacked the levity she affected, feeling like a little girl abandoned. She was back to square one. He was her very kind—but presently very absent—consultant, Dr. Stafford. The man, Alex, was elsewhere, perhaps at his ex-wife’s house with their son. But at least she still had the key as a talisman, and she clung to it fiercely.

“It definitely isn’t that bad.” Simon had descended on the monotony of her hospital room with Grace and a pile of books for her, and he immediately registered her crestfallen face.