‘Yeah, tell me what happened then.’ Ryan straightened and started walking again-and Abbey frowned. It was a strange sensation, being wheeled by Ryan Henry.

Concentrate on Ted…

‘Well, a couple of months after the hospital opened we had an awful car crash down near the beach,’ Abbey told him. ‘Ted was first on the scene. When I got there with the ambulance Ted had hauled a couple of kids clear before the car burst into flames. There were a couple of others dead inside. Ted coped-in fact, he coped a lot better than I or the ambulance officers did. And I saw a side that he’d kept hidden for years behind a wall of misery. So I offered him a job.’

‘Abbey, he was a street bum…’

‘No. He was a lonely old man without friends and family and without an aim,’ Abbey said roundly. ‘People like your mother classified him as a bum while he was ill and desperate, and the label just stuck. Ted didn’t drink. He just didn’t know what else to do with himself but sit on park benches and look desolate. And if he looked unkempt it was because he couldn’t see the point of being anything else. He’s not unkempt now.’

Silence.

Oh, dear. Abbey bit her lip. She’d just criticised Ryan’s mother-again. She and Ryan were doomed not to be friends any more, Abbey thought miserably. Then she looked up as the night sister approached.

‘Sister?’

‘I was just wondering,’ the nurse said, and smiled shyly up at Ryan. ‘Dr Henry, are you going home?’

‘I thought I’d check our jellyfish victim once more, then take Dr Wittner home and go on to sleep at my father’s,’ Ryan said brusquely, still mulling over Abbey’s words. He motioned to the phone on his belt. ‘Call me if you need me.’

The nurse hesitated. ‘But…’

‘Ryan, when I have someone in hospital with heart problems I don’t go home,’ Abbey interjected. ‘And the jellyfish toxin is still a risk, despite the antivenom. So, as you’re now doctor in lieu of me…’