As Tori was wounded.

Have you had it happen to patients? Tori’s question was still out there, and maybe talking medicine was the way to go until she had herself together.

‘Not often,’ he told her, ‘but yes, I have. That it hasn’t happened often means I’ve been lucky.’

‘As opposed to me,’ she said grimly. ‘I’ve lost countless patients in the past six months.’

She looked exhausted to the point of collapse, he thought. Had she slept at all last night?

When had she last slept?

‘Your patients are wild creatures,’ he said, and he felt as if he was picking his way through a minefield, knowing it was important that she talk this out, but suspecting she could close up at any minute. ‘My patients are the moneyed residents of Manhattan. There’s no way a rich, private hospital will cause them stress, and there’s the difference.’ He hesitated. ‘Tori, let me dig for you.’

‘I can do it.’ She put the little dog down and grabbed the spade again.

‘Can you?’

She closed her eyes, gave herself a minute and then opened them. ‘No. This is dumb. I accept that now. The ground’s one huge root ball. I’ll take her down the mountain and get her cremated.’

‘But you don’t want to.’

‘Just…just because I named her,’ she whispered, hugging the spade, while the little dog nosed her boots in worry. ‘I wanted her buried here. At least the edges of the bush here are still alive. I wanted her buried under living trees. Does that make sense?’

‘It does,’ he said, strongly and surely, and before she could protest again, he took the spade from her hands and started digging.

She was right. The ground was so hard it would be more sensible to cremate her. Only there was something about Tori that said this burial was deeply important on all sorts of levels. So he put all his weight behind the spade and it slid a couple of inches in. Slowly he got through the hardened crust to the root-filled clay below, while Tori watched on in silence.