EM WOKE to afternoon sunlight.

The feeling was so novel that for a moment she thought she must be dreaming. Then the morning’s events came flooding back, and with them came emotions so complex she had trouble taking them all in.

First there was Charlie’s death. Despite his age, there was a sensation of emptiness and grief which she needed time to absorb.

Em tried hard to stay dispassionate but, as the only doctor in a small country town it was impossible. And she’d known Charlie all her life. Em’s parents had died when she was tiny. She’d been raised by her grandfather, and Grandpa and Charlie had been close mates.

With Charlie’s death had gone one of her last links to her childhood-to memories of weekends fishing in Grandpa’s old tub of a boat, or sitting on the pier baiting hooks while the two men yarned in the sun-or having them make her endless cups of tea as she’d studied her medical texts while they’d gossiped easily over her head.

She’d loved them both. Grandpa had died two years ago, and now Charlie had gone to join him.

She’d miss Charlie so much.

And now there was Jonas…

She was so muddled in her thoughts. She’d lain down for a few minutes and two hours later she was waking to confusion-the intermingling sadness of Charlie’s death, the tension of the lump in Anna’s breast…

And the thought of Jonas.

Why did he keep overriding everything else? He was just there, a lightening of the dreariness of her awful day, and the sensation was so novel that she let it dwell.

Well, she let it dwell for all of thirty seconds. Then she rose, rinsed her face, gave her mirror a good talking-to for being lax enough to allow another doctor-about whom she knew nothing-to take over her duties.