‘Just a bruised knee. And I want to know what’s going on inside.’

‘Doc Henry’s looking after his father.’

‘Sam’s OK?’

‘I dunno,’ Ted admitted. ‘All I know is they haven’t called me to shift him to a slab yet so that’s gotta be a good sign.’

Abbey grinned. Ted was a wizened Korean War veteran who’d been a semi-invalid ever since. Lonely and miserable all his life, when Abbey had offered him the job as ward attendant he’d been astounded. ‘Who, me? I couldn’t do anything like that in a pink fit.’ It had taken all Abbey’s skills at persuasion to have him give the job a go.

Since then Ted had been Abbey’s most loyal employee. He lived in a tiny apartment at the back of the hospital and the hospital was now his world. But there were no greys in Ted’s world. There was black and white. Dead or alive.

Sam was alive.

‘You want a trolley?’ Ted asked her dubiously, eyeing her huge white leg, and Abbey shook her head.

‘No, but a wheelchair would be good. And a hand backwards out of this car.’

‘No sooner said than done.’ A minute later Abbey’s wheelchair was spinning down the corridor to Intensive Care.

Sam was definitely still alive.

Ted pushed the ward door open and Abbey looked in with some trepidation, to find Sam Henry looking to see who’d just entered. When Sam saw Abbey his face puckered into a white-faced smile.

‘Hey, Abbey… ’

‘Sam.’ Abbey shoved the wheels of her chair down to push herself over to the bed. She took Sam’s hand in hers. It was clammy and cold but he was alive, and for the moment that was all that mattered.

In the last few years Abbey had leaned heavily on Sam Henry for advice and friendship. In fact, Sam had become almost as important to Abbey as his son had once been.

‘What on earth are you doing to us now?’ she asked gently.

‘Damned heart,’ Sam whispered, ‘but Ryan’s here.’ The old man looked up at Ryan, standing beside his bed, and there was no mistaking the pride and love in his voice.