And the bag slipped in my hand.
"Told me what?"
And behind him one of the nurses looked at the floor.
And I understood, standing there, that every person in that corridor knew something about my husband that I did not.
"Dev. Where is Laurie?"
And he took a breath.
And he reached for my arm.
Where my husband was.
Two floors up, in a blue polo shirt, pushing a trolley.
He has not been a surgeon at St Jerome's since the twenty-second of November, 2024.
Eleven months.
He resigned. Not dismissed, not struck off, not suspended at the point he went — he resigned, in the November, while the process was still going on, which is a thing people do and which his union advised him against in writing.
And since the February he has been a volunteer in that same building. Three days a week. The bereavement service. Tea and biscuits in the relatives' room, and the trolley on the wards in the afternoon.
