He had always wanted kids. Some nurses didn’t. Working in a paediatric ward could do that, sometimes. It was hard to see families on their worst days. On helpless days. On days when you could do nothing but say ‘I’m sorry’ over and over again. Rory had seen a lot of frightened parents in his time. Sometimes he thought that having a kid was like keeping your heart outside your chest – open, exposed, at the mercy of the world.

So you did little things. You put tinsel on ECG machines. You sprayed non-toxic snow on all the windows. You kept a smile on your face no matter what. You pretended everything was normal and the universe made sense, in the hope that you might somehow make it true.