Thicker Than Water

Short for Felix.’

‘Oh.’ She looked only slightly mollified. She stood up, briskly, as if she was suddenly conscious of other things she ought to be doing. Her break must have ended long ago. ‘Well, you can carry on calling me Nurse Ryall. It shows respect.’

‘Good enough,’ I agreed. ‘And since you’re the expert, can you do me one other favour?’

‘Possibly.’ Her tone was cold. The playtime remark had gone badly awry. ‘Depends what it is.’

I gave Nurse Ryall another one of my rare and precious business cards, having palmed one from the pocket of the paletot earlier.

She took the card, but she looked disapproving. ‘Why?’ she demanded.

‘Because it’ll be another fact,’ I said. ‘And I’m collecting them.’

‘Wide range of wounds,’ she scoffed. I took that as a positive sign: she wasn’t saying no.

‘So sue me,’ I said, with a comic shrug. ‘I bet you don’t know anything about medieval grimoires.’

‘I can see what’s in front of my face, though.’

Her breasts were on a level with my eyes. ‘Me too,’ I said.

‘Don’t push it, Castor.’ She dropped Nicky’s printouts onto my tray table with an audible thud. The top sheets sloughed off in a loose concertina.

‘Thanks,’ I said, sincerely.

‘You’re welcome. And thank you too, I suppose. At least now I know that I’m not going mad.

‘Yes, nurse.’

‘And I should get over to casualty, or I’m going to be on report.’ She started to walk away, got halfway to the door and then turned back.

‘You didn’t pick me up on the almost,’ she said.

‘Almost what?’ I asked."

"‘I said almost all the cases on your printout were incised or puncture wounds,’ she said. ‘But the odd one out is a big one.’ She clearly wanted me to ask, so I obliged - mainly to make up for the earlier off-colour innuendo.

‘Big in what way?’

‘It’s Mark,’ Nurse Ryall said. ‘Mark thingumajig. Mister Seddon’s stepson. You said he fell, didn’t you? From high up. So that’s a crush injury.’

As exit lines go, it wasn’t all that punchy, but it left me staring at the door long after it swung to behind her.

Wounds. Points and edges. And one long, lonely fall to the ground. Or two. There would have been two if I hadn’t stopped Bic from stepping off the ledge the other night.