The automatic doors parted with a soft sigh, and the hospital took her in.

  Warmth first. Then sound.

  Monitors chirping in uneven intervals. Shoes squeaking against polished floor. A trolley rattling past, metal complaining softly. Voices layered over one another—low, clipped, purposeful. The smell followed: antiseptic sharp enough to sting, cut with something human underneath. Sweat. Plastic. Toast, faint and burnt, drifting from somewhere it shouldn’t have.

  Linda clipped her badge on without looking and stepped straight into motion.

  At the nurses’ station, a voice was already climbing.

  “—no, I said paeds, not minors, there is a difference—”

  “Morning,” Linda said.

  The word landed like a hand on a shoulder.

  The voice stopped.

  Ruth looked up from the screen, relief flashing before she masked it. “Thank God. Can you—”

  Linda followed her gaze without asking.

  The junior doctor stood stiffly beside the desk, lanyard too neat, irritation packed tight behind professional politeness. Behind him, half-hidden by the curtain, a boy sat on the edge of the bed, legs swinging, counting the tiles on the floor under his breath.

  Linda clocked the breathing first. Too shallow. Too fast.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  The doctor opened his mouth.

  Linda lifted a hand. Not sharp. Just final. “I’ll take it,” Linda said, already logged in as shift lead.

  She crouched instead, lowering herself until she was eye level with the boy. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Linda. Can you tell me where it hurts?”

  The boy blinked, surprised to be addressed like that. He pressed a hand to his chest. “Here. When I breathe in.”

  Linda nodded, already listening. Colour good. No cyanosis. But the shoulders lifted too quickly, like he was bracing for something.

  “Okay,” she said. “You did the right thing telling us. We’re just going to listen to you for a bit.”

  She stood and turned to the doctor. “Chest pain in paeds comes with protocol.”

  “I don’t think it’s cardiac,” he said, a beat too quickly.

  Linda smiled.

  “I don’t care what you think,” she said, pleasantly. “I care what the child is telling us. Let’s follow the steps.”

  There it was. The flicker of uncertainty. Good.

  The doctor nodded and stepped back.

  “Ruth,” Linda said, already moving, “obs on Bed Four. Page respiratory. And tell triage we’re holding two walk-ins.”

  Ruth was gone before Linda finished speaking.

  Linda stayed with the boy while the monitor was attached, while the beeping settled into a steadier rhythm. She didn’t rush him. She didn’t fill the space with noise. When his breathing slowed, she mirrored it without comment.

  “You’ve got a good counting voice,” she said lightly, when she caught him whispering numbers again.

  He shrugged. “It helps.”

  “Yeah,” Linda said. “It does.”

  When she finally straightened, someone was waiting.

  A woman stood just beyond the curtain, coat still on, hands clasped together like she wasn’t sure where to put them. Too neat for the room. Eyes red, smile fragile.

  “Linda?” she said.

  Recognition took a second. Then landed.

  “Hi.”

  The woman stepped forward and pressed a small gift bag into Linda’s hands before she could react. Tissue paper rustled.

  “I just wanted to say thank you,” she said quickly. “For yesterday. If you hadn’t—if you hadn’t acted when you did—”

  Linda instinctively pushed the bag back. “You don’t need to—”

  “Please,” the woman said, voice shaking now. “He wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t.”

  Linda hesitated.

  Then she accepted it, fingers closing around the handle like it weighed more than it should.

  “Alright,” she said. “But next time, just go home. Get some sleep.”

  The woman laughed, breathless. “I will.”

  As she turned to leave, she added, softer, almost embarrassed, “Your daughter’s lucky.”

  The words slipped in sideways.

  Linda nodded once and turned away before they could land properly. She tucked the bag under the desk, out of sight.

  The morning moved on without waiting for her.

  A toddler screamed until Linda made a balloon from a glove. A teenager refused to speak until she sat beside him long enough that silence became less threatening than words. A man raised his voice at reception and learned quickly that it wouldn’t help.

  “Sir,” Linda said, eyes level with his, voice flat. “You can lower your voice, or you can leave. Those are your options.”

  He lowered it.

  By midday her feet ached, and her coffee had gone cold again. She didn’t notice until she took a sip and grimaced.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket.

  She ignored it.

  It buzzed again a moment later.

  Linda stilled, just for a fraction of a second, then turned toward the handwash sink instead, scrubbing her hands harder than necessary. Soap slid away, clean and obedient. Systems worked when you followed them.

  At reception, she paused.

  “You alright?” she asked.

  Maeve looked up from the phone, rolling her eyes as she covered the receiver. “If one more person asks me why waiting exists, I’m switching careers.”

  “You’d hate anywhere else,” Linda said.

  Maeve grinned. “Probably.” She studied Linda for a beat. “You okay?”

  “Yes,” Linda said automatically.

  Maeve raised an eyebrow.

  Linda exhaled. “I’ve had tea.”

  “Reckless,” Maeve said. Then, quieter, “Shout if you need anything.”

  “I always do,” Linda replied.

  Another alarm sounded down the corridor. A call for clean linens. A child laughed somewhere, high and sudden.

  Linda turned back toward the ward, already reaching for gloves, already steadying her voice.

  Whatever was waiting at home could wait a little longer.

  For now, she was exactly where she knew how to keep people safe.

  ———

  The phone rang while Linda was halfway through re-checking a drug chart she already knew was right.

  She stared at the screen for a fraction of a second too long before answering.

  “Linda Harper,” she said, her voice already clipped into place.

  “Mrs Harper, this is Hawthorn Ridge Secondary. I’m calling regarding an incident involving your child.”

  Something in her chest tightened.

  “Which one,” she asked.

  There was a pause — brief, careful.

  “Skye Harper.”

  Linda closed her eyes. She didn’t correct them. She never did.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “There was an altercation at lunchtime. Skye stepped in during an incident with another pupil and was struck. Another child was injured — her friend Ben. Minor injuries, but—”

  “Is my child hurt,” Linda said.

  “Yes. Bruising. The nurse assessed her. She’s shaken.”

  Bruising meant hands.

  Hands meant escalation.

  “And my older daughter,” Linda said. “Alice. Was she present.”

  “She was on site, yes, but—”

  “So she was there,” Linda cut in. “And this still happened.”

  “Mrs Harper, Alice is a student, not—”

  “I understand exactly what she is,” Linda said sharply. “Thank you. I’ll deal with it.”

  She ended the call before they could offer reassurance she didn’t want.

  For a moment she stood still, phone still pressed to her ear, listening to the dead line.

  Ben Hartley’s face rose unbidden — pale, greyed, curled inward on the trolley yesterday morning. The clean drop in vitals. The way the room had narrowed until there was nothing but numbers and her hands.

  Luke had stepped in for him.

  Luke had been hurt.

  Her phone buzzed again, as if nudged by her thoughts.

  She didn’t check the time. Didn’t consider whether Alice would still be at school. She hit call.

  It rang once.

  Twice.

  “Hi, Mum—”

  The sound of her voice — too light, too normal — snapped something loose in Linda’s chest.

  “ALICE HARPER, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

  The words came out harsh and fast, like they’d been pressing against her ribs all afternoon waiting for a crack. She started pacing, boots squeaking against the floor.

  “Luke was in a fight — a fight — and you weren’t watching him, you weren’t there, you never help, and now he’s hurt because you couldn’t be bothered—”

  She could hear voices on the other end. Laughter. Movement. The outside world continuing without consequence.

  “Mum, I—”

  “You’re eighteen years old!” Linda said, louder now. A nurse looked up from across the ward. Linda didn’t stop. “You’re meant to have some sense! What were you doing all lunch? Laughing with your friends while your brother—”

  “I’m not Skye’s babysitter!”

  The words landed hard.

  “I’m not her parent! I can’t be everywhere—”

  Linda stopped pacing.

  Not her parent.

  “Don’t you dare raise your voice at me,” she said, her own voice shaking now. “After everything I do to keep him safe—”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Just—” Alice’s breath hitched. “Just fuck off!”

  For a moment, Linda forgot how to breathe.

  The word didn’t sound like anger.

  It sounded like distance.

  “You do not get to speak to me like that,” she said, her voice breaking into something sharp and unfamiliar. “Do you hear me—”

  The line went dead.

  Linda stood there, phone buzzing uselessly in her hand, heart slamming so hard she felt it in her throat. Around her, the ward kept moving. A trolley rattled past. A child coughed. A monitor chirped — faster now.

  She thought, briefly, absurdly, of taking off her gloves and walking out.

  The thought scared her enough that she shoved it away.

  “Linda?” Ruth said carefully. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Linda said too quickly, stuffing the phone into her pocket. “Get me the obs on Bed Seven.”

  “I already did,” Ruth said. “They’re borderline. Maybe we should—”

  “I said get them,” Linda snapped, already pulling on new gloves.

  Ruth stepped back.

  Linda moved harder than she needed to. Adjusted straps that were already secure. Re-asked questions she’d already heard answered. Her voice lost its warmth, sharpened into command.

  A child flinched when she touched his arm.

  “Don’t,” Linda said automatically. “You’re fine.”

  He wasn’t.

  Another nurse hovered. “Linda, do you want me to take over for a minute?”

  “I’ve got it,” Linda said. “I’ve got it.”

  Her hands were shaking. She scrubbed them at the sink, too rough, skin burning under the water. Soap slid away, clean and obedient.

  A sharp clatter cut through the ward — a tray slipping, a cup smashing against the floor.

  The sound hit her like a blow.

  All at once everything pressed in — the lights too bright, the beeping too insistent, the smell of antiseptic thick in her throat. Luke’s face again. Small. Bruised. The echo of Alice’s voice, that single word tearing something open.

  Her breath came wrong. Too fast. Too shallow.

  “Linda,” Maeve said, suddenly there, hands steady on her arms. “Hey. Look at me.”

  Linda tried to speak. Nothing came out.

  “You need to step away,” Maeve said gently. Not asking. “I’ve got your patients.”

  “I can’t,” Linda whispered. “They need—”

  “They’re covered,” Maeve said. “And so are you.”

  Linda let herself be guided into a chair, shaking, hands clenching and unclenching in her lap like she didn’t know what to do with them. Her breath hitched, tore, refused to settle.

  “I just need them to be safe,” she said, the words spilling out before she could stop them.

  Maeve didn’t argue. She just stayed.

  Somewhere down the corridor, a child laughed — high and sudden. A phone rang. A door swung shut.

  ———

  Maeve stayed until Linda’s breathing slowed enough to stop scraping.

  Not comfort. Just containment.

  The ward didn’t soften for her — alarms still chirped, shoes still squeaked, a child still cried down the corridor — but her body edged back inside itself, the way it always did when she remembered rules.

  Ruth hovered in the doorway, careful. “You feeling steadier?”

  Linda nodded once. “One left,” she said. “Then I’m done.”

  Ruth handed her the clipboard. Their fingers brushed. Ruth didn’t comment on the tremor she definitely felt.

  “Go home after,” Ruth said. Not advice. Instruction.

  Linda didn’t answer. She was already reading the name.

  Bay Twelve sat apart from the rest, tucked into a pocket of deliberate quiet. The curtain was half-drawn. The light inside was warmer, filtered, chosen.

  The woman in the bed looked too composed for the place.

  Hair pinned neatly back. Cardigan folded with care across her lap. Skin pale but calm, eyes sharp and present in a way Linda didn’t often see this late in treatment.

  She looked up as Linda approached, smiling like she’d been expecting her.

  “Hello,” the woman said.

  Linda checked the wristband. “Mrs Marlowe.”

  “Margaret’s fine,” the woman said lightly. “We’re past formalities.”

  Linda pulled the curtain a little further closed. “How are you feeling?”

  Margaret considered the question. “Still here.”

  Linda checked obs. Pulse steady. Oxygen acceptable. She listened to her chest — breath sounds thin but consistent — and flicked through the chart.

  “And your latest scans show remission,” Linda said.

  Margaret laughed softly. Not bitter. Amused. “That word.”

  “It’s a good one,” Linda replied, automatically.

  “It’s an optimistic one,” Margaret said. “Not always the same thing.”

  Linda paused, then moved on. She didn’t debate patients on hope.

  Something was wrong with the date on the obs chart — a number transposed. Linda frowned, corrected it, felt the flare of cold awareness: she would have missed that an hour ago.

  “Something’s happened,” Margaret said gently.

  Linda didn’t look up. “What makes you say that?”

  “You’re holding yourself very tightly,” Margaret said. “Like someone who doesn’t trust the floor.”

  Linda exhaled through her nose. “Children,” she said. “They have a way of... shifting things.”

  Margaret nodded. “I have a grandson,” she said. “He was trouble before he could walk properly. Always climbing, always stepping in when he shouldn’t. Never satisfied with the world staying as it was handed to him.”

  Linda’s chest tightened. “Sounds familiar.”

  “He doesn’t accept endings,” Margaret went on. “If you tell him something’s done, he hears it as an invitation to change it.”

  “That’s not how things work,” Linda said.

  Margaret smiled. “No. But it doesn’t stop him trying.”

  The words brushed something raw.

  “That reminds me of Skye—” Linda stopped herself. “...Luke.”

  Margaret didn’t flinch. She reached out instead, her hand light but steady over Linda’s knuckles.

  “Some people hear more than others,” Margaret said quietly. “I’ve always been one of them. Not voices. Just... patterns. Threads.”

  Linda’s instinct was to withdraw. She didn’t. Not yet.

  “And as a mother,” Margaret continued, her voice lowering, “I’m sorry.”

  Linda’s jaw tightened. “For what?”

  “For—” Margaret interrupted herself before she could say more. “...just please take care of yourself in the days ahead.”

  Linda drew her hand back, gentle but firm. “Margaret—”

  The curtain shifted.

  A man stepped into the bay carrying flowers.

  He wasn’t young, exactly — but not quite old either. Dark hair, neatly kept, threaded faintly with grey at the temples. His posture was relaxed, but his eyes were watchful, measuring the room in a way that suggested habit rather than anxiety.

  He kissed Margaret’s cheek with careful affection. “You behaving?”

  “Always,” Margaret said. “This is my grandson. Elias.”

  Elias turned to Linda and held out his hand.

  His grip was warm, firm. There were old scars along his knuckles — pale, settled — and something about the way he stood suggested he’d learned long ago how to take up space without announcing it.

  “Elias,” he said. His voice was calm, low. Older than his face.

  “Linda,” she replied, too quickly.

  Elias’s mouth curved slightly, like he’d noticed but wouldn’t comment. “You look after her.”

  “I try,” Linda said.

  “She does more than that,” Margaret said. “She runs the place.”

  Linda snorted. “I don’t.”

  “You do,” Margaret insisted.

  Elias smiled at that, but his eyes stayed on Linda. “It suits you,” he said. “The decisive thing.”

  Linda felt a flicker of something unwelcome — interest, recognition — and immediately shut it down.

  This was not a moment she had room for.

  “And you?” she asked. “What do you do?”

  “I do security work,” Elias said. “Bit of this, bit of that.”

  The word landed strangely. Not threatening. Not reassuring either.

  Linda noticed the way he held himself — not stiff, not casual — like someone used to waiting for things to go wrong.

  “Busy job,” she said.

  “Sometimes,” he replied. “Sometimes very quiet.”

  Linda glanced at his hand again. The scars didn’t match the story neatly. He followed her gaze and didn’t hide them.

  “Work hazard,” he said, unbothered.

  He looked at her a moment longer than necessary. “If you ever need help with anything... or just company when things get loud—” He stopped, eyes flicking briefly to her left hand.

  The wedding ring caught the light.

  Elias nodded once. “Right.”

  Then, softer, “Coffee as friends, then. Next time I’m in town.”

  Linda hesitated. “I’d like that.”

  Elias stepped back, giving her space without being asked.

  Linda finished the exam, wrote the notes, re-grounded herself in routine. When she drew the curtain aside, she felt his gaze on her again.

  This time, she didn’t look back.

  As she walked down the corridor, she glanced once over her shoulder.

  Elias wasn’t watching her anymore.

  He stood close to Margaret now, his expression altered — not dark, not cruel — just weighted, like someone carrying knowledge they wished they could put down. Margaret touched his wrist, grounding him.

  The moment passed.

  Linda turned away, the scent of lilies lingering as she headed back into the ward, unaware that years later she would recognise that face on a flickering screen and realise this had never been a coincidence at all.

  ———

  Linda’s hand was already on the lanyard when the doors to the staff corridor swung open and a shadow fell across the strip-light glare.

  “Linda.”

  The voice had the clipped shape of authority without theatrics. Linda turned.

  Matron Kelly stood there with her coat still on, hair netted, eyes tired in the particular way of someone who’d been keeping other people afloat all day.

  Linda swallowed the first response — I’m off — before it could make a fool of her.

  “I’m done,” Linda said anyway, because it was true. “I’m late.”

  “I know.” Kelly didn’t apologise. “I wouldn’t stop you if it wasn’t important.”

  Something in Linda’s chest tightened. She thought of the clock, then the school gates, then the phone in her pocket like a small, bruised animal.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Kelly stepped closer, lowering her voice as a porter pushed a trolley past with a bin liner that smelled faintly sweet and wrong. “We’ve got a high priority in paeds. Unstable. The team want you.”

  Linda let out a breath that didn’t feel like hers. “Why me.”

  “Because you don’t panic and you don’t let other people panic,” Kelly said. “Because you’re good with mothers. Because the kid’s crashing and the mother’s... losing it.”

  Linda looked at the lanyard in her hand. The motion of taking it off felt suddenly like betrayal.

  “I have to pick up—” she started, then stopped. The name jammed behind her teeth like something she didn’t want to taste.

  Kelly didn’t push. She simply waited, as if she knew Linda would do the thing she always did: choose the patient in front of her, because patients didn’t get to be optional.

  Linda slid the lanyard back over her head. “Where.”

  Kelly was already turning. “Resus two.”

  The corridor to paediatric ED was a long, bright tunnel where everything echoed: footsteps, alarms, the raised edge of someone’s voice. Linda walked fast enough to feel the sting in her calves, and still it felt too slow, like the building was dragging her backwards.

  At the double doors, a junior doctor met her with a laminated clipboard held like a shield.

  “Linda, thanks for coming.” His eyes flicked to the name badge on her chest, then away. “It’s—”

  “Start with airway,” Linda said.

  He blinked, then caught up. “Airway’s patent for now. Breathing is laboured. O2 sats dropping despite high-flow. HR one-sixty. BP low. We think sepsis, possibly meningococcal, but we’re not sure. GCS fluctuating. Mum brought her in. Rapid deterioration.”

  A child. Female. The word mum landed like a weight.

  Linda pushed through into Resus two.

  The room hit her with its usual violence: white light, hard surfaces, the smell of chlorhexidine and fear. The child on the trolley looked too small for the equipment attached to her. Mask strapped over her face. Tiny chest rising unevenly. A rash blooming darkly along her neck like someone had spilled ink beneath the skin.

  And at the head of the bed, the mother.

  Not screaming. Worse. That thin, strangled sound people made when the body couldn’t decide whether to be sick or sob. Hands hovering over the child’s hair, not quite touching, as if touch might tip the whole thing over.

  Linda stepped in and made her voice calm on purpose.

  “Hi,” she said to the mother, as if this were an ordinary Tuesday. “I’m Linda. I’m going to help.”

  The mother’s eyes snapped to her, wild and hopeful and furious all at once. “She was fine,” she whispered. “She was fine this morning.”

  Linda nodded like she believed her. She did. Children did that. They were fine until they weren’t.

  She turned to the team. “Two wide-bore cannulas if you haven’t already. Blood cultures before antibiotics if you can get them, but don’t delay. Fluids. Call anaesthetics. I want theatre on standby.”

  The junior doctor stared a fraction too long. Linda didn’t soften.

  “Go,” she said.

  Movement started. That was the gift of clarity: people stopped drifting. Ruth appeared at the edge of the room, sleeves rolled up, eyes back on task. Maeve hovered near the doorway, ready to plug gaps.

  “Linda,” Ruth murmured, slipping in beside her. “IV access is poor. She’s shutting down.”

  “IO,” Linda said immediately.

  A pause. A flicker of someone’s uncertainty.

  Linda met the doctor’s gaze. “Now.”

  The mother made a sound — a soft, horrified “no” — and Linda shifted half a step closer to her without turning away from the child.

  “It looks brutal,” Linda said quietly, for her, not the room. “But it works fast. We need fast.”

  The mother clamped a hand over her mouth. Tears slipped down her cheeks and didn’t stop.

  Linda watched the needle go in. Watched the flush. Watched the monitor refuse to be kind.

  “Antibiotics in,” someone called.

  “Fluids running,” someone else.

  “Anaesthetics are on their way,” Ruth said.

  Linda kept her hands steady by forcing her mind to stay on numbers. Sats. Rate. Pressure. The way you did when you couldn’t afford the luxury of imagining futures.

  She felt her phone in her pocket as if it were buzzing, even when it wasn’t. The earlier call existed somewhere behind her ribs — the dead line, the hung-up silence — trying to climb back into her mouth.

  She shoved it down.

  Focus. Not now.

  “Her BP’s still dropping,” the doctor said.

  “Second bolus,” Linda snapped. “Prepare for intubation.”

  The mother’s knees buckled. Maeve caught her before she hit the floor and guided her to a chair. The mother clutched her own throat like she was trying to stop the air from leaving.

  “Please,” she whispered at Linda. “Please.”

  Linda didn’t promise. She never promised.

  She just kept moving.

  When anaesthetics arrived, the room shifted again — a new gravity, a new authority — and Linda fought the instinct to step back. She didn’t. She stayed at the child’s side, talking softly to her even when the child couldn’t hear.

  “You’re doing well,” Linda murmured, as if breath could be negotiated. “Stay with us.”

  They moved the child to theatre with the kind of urgency that was almost ritual: bed brakes off, lines held, doors shoved wide. Linda walked with them until the theatre doors shut and the child disappeared into a place Linda couldn’t follow.

  Then she stood in the corridor and realised her hands were shaking.

  Ruth appeared beside her with two paper cups. One smelled faintly of instant coffee. The other was water.

  Linda took the water. Drank too fast. Felt it hit her stomach like a stone.

  “She’s stable enough to operate,” Ruth said, trying for light.

  Linda managed a tight nod. “Good.”

  Ruth’s mouth twitched into something like a smile. A small victory held between them, fragile as a soap bubble.

  It lasted all of three seconds.

  Ruth’s phone buzzed.

  She looked at the screen, frowned, and stepped a little away to answer. Linda didn’t listen on purpose, but sound travelled in hospitals. It always did.

  Muffled voices. A word that wasn’t a word, just noise — radio crackle, sirens behind it. Ruth’s posture changed first. Shoulders going rigid. Colour draining.

  The phone lowered a fraction.

  Ruth’s face turned white.

  Linda’s throat tightened. “Ruth?”

  Ruth didn’t answer. Not at first. Her eyes were fixed on something down the corridor that wasn’t there.

  “Who is it,” Linda said, sharper than she meant to be.

  Ruth swallowed. Her lips moved, stopped, then tried again. “Linda... you need to sit.”

  The instruction landed wrong — like earlier, when Maeve had told her to step away — but Linda’s legs obeyed anyway. She sat on a plastic chair that creaked under her weight, as if the hospital itself disapproved.

  “What’s happened,” Linda said.

  Ruth shook her head once, tiny. “I’m going to get Maeve.”

  “Ruth.” Linda’s voice cracked on the name. “Tell me.”

  Ruth’s eyes glistened. “Just... stay there.”

  She walked quickly, almost running, down the corridor.

  Linda stared at the tiled floor. Her mind did what it always did in crisis: tried to build a system out of chaos. A list. A protocol. Something she could follow.

  If it’s Simon—

  If it’s the school—

  If it’s—

  Her phone felt heavier in her pocket with every breath.

  Maeve returned first, then Matron Kelly, both of them moving with a seriousness that made the air tighten. Their faces were arranged into neutrality the way people arranged sheets over bodies.

  Kelly crouched in front of Linda, lowering herself to eye level.

  “Linda,” she said gently.

  Linda hated the gentleness. It meant there was nothing left to order.

  “What,” Linda said. It came out flat. “Just say it.”

  Kelly inhaled, slow. “We’ve had a call. Ambulance en route. Hit and run. Child.”

  Linda’s mouth went dry.

  Kelly’s eyes didn’t leave hers. “It’s your youngest.”

  The corridor swam.

  Linda’s mind reached, panicked, for the safe name — the one she used like a lock. The one she thought might keep things from changing.

  “My—” she tried. “Luke—?”

  Kelly’s expression didn’t shift, but something in it softened, like grief had stepped closer. “They identified the child from the sister. Alice’s with them. She’s shaken. They said—” Kelly’s throat bobbed. “They said there was no pulse on scene. They’re working.”

  No pulse.

  Linda’s body made a sound she didn’t recognise. Not a scream. Not a sob. Something small and broken, like the sound of a kettle pushed too far.

  Her hands came up to her mouth as if she could hold the words in.

  Regret landed first, sharp and immediate: the lanyard. The corridor. The decision to stay. The belief that systems could be trusted.

  Then guilt. Then rage. Then fear so large it hollowed her out.

  “Ten minutes,” Kelly said, and touched Linda’s arm. “We’re taking you to resus. It’s better you’re there.”

  Linda tried to stand. Her knees didn’t agree. Kelly and Maeve helped her up anyway, one on either side as if she were suddenly the patient.

  As they walked, people looked up. The ward’s face changed around her. Conversations stopped. Someone’s hand lifted to their mouth. Nurses — her nurses — watching with that horrified recognition only parents had, as if they were seeing their own worst phone call put on a body.

  Linda moved through them like a ghost.

  She passed a bay where a mother sat with her child — the one from earlier, the one she’d saved — and the woman’s eyes filled as she pulled her child closer, pressing her lips to his hair as if it might be taken.

  Linda couldn’t look away. Couldn’t look at anything else either.

  It felt like walking the Green Mile. Not because she was going to die.

  Because she was walking toward a room where she might learn she already had.

  At the doors to resus, Kelly leaned close. “Linda. Breathe. Just keep breathing.”

  Linda stared at the glass and saw her reflection: pale, eyes too wide, mouth trembling. A woman who thought she could control fate by controlling language.

  Her lips parted.

  And something in her broke open at last — not as a political stance, not as a correction, but as a raw, animal truth.

  “Skye,” Linda whispered, the name coming out like prayer and apology together.

  Not loud. Not brave. Just real.

  Maeve’s hand tightened around her arm.

  Linda swallowed, eyes stinging, and forced the next words through the terror in her throat — a promise she didn’t know if she’d be allowed to keep.

  “Hold on,” she whispered, as if Skye could hear her through walls and distance and whatever had already happened. “Please... just hold on. I’m here. I’m coming. I’m—”

  The doors swung open.

  And the sound inside rushed out to meet her like a wave.