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"Yes, but next time remember the croissant."

The drive home takes twenty minutes, but the whole thing passes in a haze and I don't remember any of it. Daniel has the gate open before I've even come to a stop. I pull up on the gravel and sit there for a moment with the engine ticking before I can make myself go in.

Finally, I force myself out of the car and go inside. The house is warm and smells of coffee—the Italian roast he has shipped over, because God forbid that a Novak be caught drinking instant or cheap drip coffee like the rest of us common mortals. It's ground fresh at quarter past seven every morning, on the dot, because he can't do a single thing without a schedule attached to it. I stand in the hallway with my keys over the bowl, and my fingers won't cooperate.

"Good morning, wife."

He's at the bottom of the stairs in his shirtsleeves, cufflinks in, jacket over his arm, I imagine on his way out to bury half the city and threaten the other half. He says something back—some remark about the hour, or the state of my hair, the opening move in the game we play across this hallway every single morning—and I want it.

That's the pathetic truth. I stand here gripping my coat and the one thing I want is to be home getting the attention of an undertaker. Even insults will do.

"Morning," I manage.

And then I've got nothing else. I don't even hear the rest of what he says. There's no juice in me this morning, so I hover with my keys in my hand.

That's what gives me away. He’s seen me in this catatonic state before, but I don’t even have the energy to give him the middle finger or turn my back to him. I got nothing today. Absolutely nothing.

Not even tears.

He sets the jacket down on the banister and crosses the hall to me.

"Manon. What happened?" All humor is out of his voice.

I don't answer him in the hallway. But before I turn for the stairs I look at him properly, and that's a mistake, because there's no game on his face this time. He's looking at me like he understands exactly what losing a patient does to me. It's happened in front of him before, and those times I managed to hide it, to bury the hurt so deep behind a wall of ice that he'd never find it. Not today. Today the pain is on my face before I can catch it and tuck it away. So I look away, and go upstairs.

I get to our room, shut the door, and start on my scrubs. I pull the top over my head and drop it on the floor, which I never do, then sit on the edge of the bed to deal with my shoes and find that my hands won't obey me. I just cannot switch off. I fumble with a lace like it's the most complicated thing I’ve ever done.

Laszlo opens the door and comes in. I should tell him to knock, but there's really no point. He crosses the room and kneels down in front of me without a word. Gently, he moves my hands aside and unties my shoes, first one and then the other, and sets them side by side by the bed. Then he stands me up with a hand under my elbow and finishes undressing me in silence. He takes off my bra, my pants, my underwear. I don't even care at this point; this man has seen me naked already, and I'm too tired to argue. He drops all of it on the floor, which is unusual for him.

"Go and get in the shower," he says. "As hot as you can stand it."

"I can do everything myself." My voice comes out wrong. "Get out, Laszlo. I want to be on my own."

"No."

He speaks quietly, without any of the usual edge. Whatever's in his voice, it isn't a command and it isn't a game—it's something I haven't heard from him before, and I don't have the strength to work out what it is.

I'm too tired to fight him properly, so I give up and walk past him into the bathroom. I turn the water as hot as I can tolerate, then get in and stand under it with my hands flat on the tiles and my head down.

It's only then, with the water loud and my face where he can't see it, that a few sobs finally break out of me. It isn't crying, exactly. It's my whole body letting go of something it's been gripping hard all night.

I hear the shower door open, but I sense he doesn't get in. He stays on the other side of the glass, close enough that I can see the shape of him through the steam, and waits, without saying a word.

"She was nine," I tell him. "The girl. Nine years old. And I did everything right. Every single thing in the right order, and she died on my table anyway with my hands still inside her." I press my forehead against the tile. "So don't tell me I did all I could. The scrub nurse already tried that on me this morning and I wanted to break his jaw."

It takes him a while to reply, which I’m glad he does. Then he says, "Your first was a teen boy."

I lift my head.

"Just under seven years ago. When you were still a resident. You assisted with the surgery." His voice comes through the glass, so calm. I'm a grown woman and a surgeon, and yet I find it soothing. "You lost a boy of nineteen on a December day, a Tuesday I believe, at two in the morning. He'd come off a motorcycle on a wet road, and there was nothing anyone could have done for him. You knew that better than anybody in the building, and it didn't make the slightest difference to you."

My hands come off the tiles. The water is still running over the back of my neck and I've stopped feeling it.

"You came out to your car at two-forty-five," he says. "You got in and didn't start the engine. You put your head on the wheel and cried like there was no one left in the world who could see you."

"How do you know that, Laszlo?" I ask, though I don't know why because I should already know. He was watching me already back then.

"Because I was forty feet away, in the dark, with my lights off." He doesn't soften his voice. "I already knew who you were. I'd seen you once, months before, and I hadn't been able to put you down since. I had a man keeping an eye on you—where you worked, whether you got to your car then home at night in one piece. I told myself that was enough, that I only wanted to know you were safe." He pauses. "That night it wasn't enough. I wanted to see you with my own eyes, so I sat in that parking garage and watched you come apart. The thing I wanted most in the world was to rush over to you, open your door, and tell you it wasn't your fault. Comfort you."