‘Says the man who just saved her,’ Tori muttered. ‘Let’s try to keep her alive until I finish. We can do the moral debate later.’

‘Right.’

There was silence while she worked on. Becky had faded into the background, assisting both of them, deeply relieved, Tori guessed, to be freed from a task she hated. There was so much they’d done in the past six months they’d all hated-including putting down more animals than she wanted to think about.

How to explain that after so much death, one life became disproportionately important. This little one she was working on didn’t have a name. Or…she shouldn’t give her one. She should not be emotionally involved.

Only, of course, she was emotionally involved. Koala Number Thirty-seven-the thirty-seventh koala she’d treated since the fire-belonged in the wild, and Tori was determined to get her back there. She would win this last battle. She must.

Thanks to this man, she just might.

Who was he?

She was finishing now, applying dressings, having enough time again to pay attention to the man at the head of the table. He was watching the monitors like a hawk, his face fierce, absorbed, totally committed to what he was doing.

Inserting an endotracheal tube in a koala was always dangerous territory. If you went too deep there was a major risk of traumatising the trachea and extending the tube into bronchus. She hadn’t told him that. There hadn’t been time, but he’d seemed to know it instinctively. How?

Maybe he was a vet, or maybe he did paediatric anaesthesia. Sometimes she thought paediatrics and veterinary science were inexplicably linked. Varying weights and sizes. The inability of the patient to explain where the pain was.

Who was he?

She was finished. Another check of the monitors. Pulse rate eighty. Blood oxygen saturation ninety percent.

Koala Thirty-seven just might live.

She couldn’t help herself; she put her hand on the soft fur of the little koala’s face and bestowed a silent blessing.