“Mm. Good choice. You need a taste for decaffeinated now.” He showed approval. “No dairy’s good, Lucy. I imagine the dietician will be in to see you late tomorrow. You’re no stranger to low fat, I know. Don’t forget low sodium now too. And the prednisolone raises your glucose level, so we’ll be monitoring your blood sugar very carefully.”

“And I can’t eat grapefruit, either, because of some drug or other.” She was teasing him; he’d told her all of this before, and she’d listened to him very carefully.

“Sorry! Not everyone holds on to these things. It’s a lot to take in.” Alex laughed genuinely, and was glad of the sound. “Yes, grapefruit is banned because of the cyclosporin. But you studied ballet for years, didn’t you? I don’t think you’ll give us trouble with your eating habits. And you could put a little weight back on.” Lucy was still painfully thin.

“Good morning to you, Lucy King. Well, it’s gone noon, actually.” A masked Mr. Azziz had appeared silently at the door in a sterile white coat, rather than his familiar blue. “Do you feel as though you’ve traveled to the Emerald City and returned with a new heart and the courage of a lion?” Every word was so succinctly pronounced that it gave him a permanent tone of beneficence.

“Good afternoon, dear Doctor-Wizard. I feel…strangely mellow.” Lucy was sunny with the attention from her two favorite people in the building. It dwarfed the sense of physical hiatus she was experiencing. Light filtered through the small window in the intensive care unit, becoming prismatic, like the colors in her patched quilt. A message from the goddess of the rainbow, perhaps, that she was on her way back toward life. She said with surprising control: “I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was.” The words presented themselves.

Alex and Amel Azziz looked at her very seriously; then the senior surgeon smiled, and turned to his immunologist.

“Dr. Stafford.”

Alex was instantly aware of unspoken sympathies. From Azziz’s look, he knew everything.

But he said simply, “Good to see you. Come and have a word, when you’ve a minute.”

Alex just nodded, and the surgeon turned back to Lucy. “Well, now. I will leave you to get some more rest. I think you can come out of the intensive treatment unit tomorrow morning—you look far too well to be in here! But take things gently; you have been all around the world, in a manner of speaking. I’ll be in my office, Dr. Stafford.” Though his words to the two of them had been characteristically unhurried, his physical self now vanished like an apparition, the door wafting the flowery scent again.