Marc tapped his fingers on the desk, pretending to be busy for the benefit of anyone who might want to talk to him. It was dawn, and he was nearing the end of his shift, but that meant nothing in an A & E department. Despite it being a quiet night so far, there was still time for someone’s misfortune to ruin his day.

“Dr. Ramsey?”

“Yep.” Marc glanced up from his notes to see a junior doctor hovering. “What is it?”

“Could you check a finger laceration for me? I think it’s okay to tape, but there’s some numbness in the tip.”

Marc sighed and logged out of the doctor’s area on the department computer. Another case would mean more paperwork, which meant it would take longer to get his shit done before he could take Jamie home from the 8 a.m. appointment he’d managed to secure him.

With Jamie on his mind—like he had been most of the night—Marc followed the junior doctor to the cubicle and forced himself to focus. The young woman had her hand splayed out on the treatment table, her finger wrapped in a thick bandage. Doctor mode kicked in, and Marc peeled back the dressing, and examined the wound. “This needs stitching,” he said. “And you’ll need to see a nerve specialist if the numbness doesn’t improve.”

The young woman blanched. “Will I get full feeling back?”

“Hard to say. We’ll stitch you up and refer you on, but while some nerve injuries can heal on their own, it will probably never be quite the same.”

“Is there a specialist who can look at it before I have stiches?”

Marc shook his head. “You have movement in the joint, so we know it’s not a major nerve. All we can do in A & E is repair the wound and refer you back to your GP to treat any residual numbness.”

The woman seemed perplexed that there were no finger specialists available to treat her at sunrise, but Marc wasn’t in the mood to commiserate. In the field, he’d have glued her up, handed her weapon back, and sent her on her way. At home, the twenty minutes he spent demonstrating wound repair to the junior doctor was a luxury.

At the end of his shift, he was finishing up his paperwork when the triage nurse came to tell him that someone was asking for him at the front desk. Jamie. Work forgotten, Marc instructed the junior doctor on his last patient’s aftercare plan and hurried through the department to the reception area.

Jamie was waiting by a vending machine, hands in his pockets, bottom lip firmly trapped between his teeth.

Marc came up behind him and took his arm, then led him to a quiet corner. “How did it go?”

“Exactly how you said it would. The shrink said I have OCD and gave me a prescription. He also made me an appointment to come back and start a course of CBT, which he said might help with my addiction management too.”

Jamie’s face gave nothing away. Marc spied the green prescription note poking out of his pocket and gestured to it. “Can I see?”

“If you like.”

Marc plucked the note out of Jamie’s pocket and studied the drug that the psychiatrist had prescribed. “It’s a mild antidepressant, and the dosage is quite low. Are you going to take it?”

Jamie shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not an addictive drug, but I don’t know if I can put it in my body without losing my shit.”

“How did you take heroin?”

“What?”

“Heroin. You injected it, right?”

“Um . . .” Jamie swallowed thickly. “Yeah, you know I did.”

“This is just a tiny tablet. It won’t feel the same.”

“Won’t it?”

Marc glanced at the drug again. “This type of medication takes a while to be absorbed and take effect—a few months, at least. It’s nothing like the instant gratification you’re afraid of.”

Jamie hummed absently.

Marc squeezed his arm. “What about the rest of it? When does the CBT start?”

“A week. Apparently getting referred by you puts a rocket up the usual waiting times. I’m not complaining, though. I think I’m ready to deal with this now . . . I wasn’t in California. I was so focussed on staying clean—on surviving, you know?”

“And you did survive. Time to start living, eh?”

Jamie smiled, and Marc’s twelve-hour stint on his feet faded away. Over the last week or so, they’d wound up in bed at every opportunity, but more than that, their eccentric routine had solidified into a life that Marc could hardly remember not living. Jamie was there when he woke up, and when he went to sleep, and Marc couldn’t imagine it any other way.

“Is your shift over?”

“Just about—” The pager on Marc’s hip went off. “Shit. That’s a blue call.”

“A what?”

But Marc didn’t have time to explain. The code on the pager indicated that the air ambulance needed a trauma specialist for an emergency call. “I’ve got to go. Are you going to be okay?”

“Of course. Are you? Do you need me to do anything?”

“No.” Marc was already backing away. “Go home, or whatever you need to do. I’ll find you later and we’ll talk it out properly?”

Jamie nodded. “Call me when you’re done and I’ll meet you wherever you want me to be.”

It was the best promise that Marc had ever heard. His prosthesis was starting to pinch, but as he raced to the nearest phone to touch base with the air ambulance control centre, he felt no pain. Just a few more hours, and he’d have Jamie in his arms for the rest of the day.

* * *

“What’s your name?”

It was the third time Marc had asked the young man sprawled out on the train tracks, but this time he got a flicker of a response. Green eyes fluttered open and finally found focus.

“That’s it, buddy,” Marc pressed. “Look at me. My name’s Marc, I’m a doctor with the ambulance service. We’re going to get you up and into the chopper, but I need to ask you some questions first, okay?”

The young man blinked. With his jaw in such a mess, Marc took it as a cue to continue. “What’s your name?”

“Ludo.”

“Ludo?”

The young man blinked again and gestured weakly to his pocket. Marc followed his direction and retrieved a battered wallet from his jeans. The driving licence identified the young man as Ludovico Giordano, an Italian name for a lad whose hair was as light as Jamie’s was dark. “All right, Ludo, mate. Looks like you’ve taken a bit of a tumble onto these train tracks. They’re not live, so don’t worry about being electrocuted, but you’ve busted yourself up pretty bad. Do you remember how you fell down the embankment?”

“Bridge.”

It took Marc a moment to compute the implication of the young man’s hoarsely whispered word, then he glanced up at the disused bridge that crossed the tracks. “You fell from the bridge?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember how?”

Silence, but Marc couldn’t tell if Ludo was hiding something or had simply lost the strength to talk. Either way, Marc’s main priority was to get him on the chopper as quickly and painlessly as possible. The police would do the rest.

It took an hour to stabilise Ludo. His ankles were broken, his pelvis fractured, and Marc suspected that he’d lose his spleen once they got to a hospital and the surgeons assessed him. Poor kid. Had he jumped? Marc couldn’t say, but whatever had landed him on the train tracks, his recovery was going to be long and incredibly painful. If the spleen injury doesn’t kill him on the flight.

It didn’t, but it was touch and go, and the helicopter diverted to a closer hospital when Ludo’s blood pressure dropped too low for Marc to manage in-flight. Marc delivered him safely into the hands of the waiting trauma team and then searched out the doctors’ lounge to ring Jamie. The call went straight to voice mail, like it often did if Jamie was in an NA meeting, but the line went dead before Marc could leave a message.

Antsy to get home, Marc wandered outside to find a cab to take him back to the Chesterfield and his car. On the way, he checked up on Ludo to find him already on route to have his ruptured spleen removed.

“Good call,” the department consultant said. “Another five minutes in the air and he’d have been DOA.”

It was an odd comfort. To know that Ludo would likely pull through was relieving, but if Ludo had jumped and truly wanted to die, had they done him any favours by saving his life?

The doctor within said yes, but the cynical soldier was more pessimistic until Jamie’s face filled Marc’s mind, eclipsing Ludo and taking his place on the operating table. There must’ve been times when had Jamie believed death to be easier than living, perhaps there still were, but what hope would he have had if those around him—Zac, Liam, and Marvin—had thought the same?

The notion was terrifying, and drove Marc into motion. He jumped in the first cab he saw and directed it to the Chesterfield. Halfway home, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, expecting a message from Jamie. But it wasn’t Jamie, it was Nat, and the message filling Marc’s screen stilled his heart with a sucker punch so deep his vision turned black.