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I take the glass back. I make him lie down.

I make soup again, a different one, with ginger this time, which I have read is useful. I bring it to him in bed on the tray. He eats half of it. I consider this adequate and do not say so.

In the afternoon I sit in the armchair in the corner of the bedroom and work and he sleeps and the Amsterdam November does its grey quiet thing outside and I am, I find, entirely content to be exactly here.

By Tuesday evening the fever appears to be breaking.

I know because I check at seven and it is 37.8°C and Patrick's eyes are clearer and he is sitting up of his own accord for the first time since Monday morning. He looks at me with the expression of someone who has returned from somewhere and is reacquainting himself with the world.

"I feel human," he says.

"You look better," I say.

"I feel…” He thinks about this. "Actually hungry."

"Good," I say. "I'll make something."

"Jan," he says.

I look at him.

"I stayed," I say.

"Yeah," he says.

I look at him. At Patrick, sitting up in our bed with the full-open face, the one that has no management in it at all.

"I'm going to make you eggs," I say. "You need protein."

He looks at me for a moment longer.

"Okay," he says. Quietly.

Wednesday Patrick is better.

Significantly better. The fever is gone. The colour is back. He has had a full night's sleep and a proper breakfast and by nine o'clock he is sitting up in bed with his laptop, which I note and do not comment on.

By 10:00 he asks if I have any painkillers for his headache.

I bring them.

By 11:00 he mentions that his throat is still a bit sore.

I bring him tea.

By 12:00 he says he is feeling a bit cold.

I bring him a blanket.

By 12:30 he asks if there is any of the soup left.

"You said you felt better," I say.

"I do feel better," he says. "I feel better in a way that still deserves soup."

I look at him. He looks at me with the expression of someone who is testing a theory and is fairly confident about the result.

This is simply Patrick — the person who needs to be held and fed and told he is beautiful and given soup when he asks for it. And the thing I have discovered, standing in a kitchen in November heating soup for the third day in a row, is that I don't mind. Not mildly, not grudgingly. I genuinely don't mind. I would make the soup a hundred times. If necessary, a hundred and one.