Rain was drumming hard against the windows when the midnight-to-8am rounds begin at the Victoria Royal Infirmary hospital. Inside the ICU, twenty year old Helen Harland was asleep in her hospital bed, floating on a Percocet lake of cool light.

Helen was having the most beautiful dream she'd had in years. She and the light of her life, three-year-old Scarlett-rose, were in Grandmas holiday home's swimming pool. Scarlett-rose was in her frilly pink swimsuit and sparkly pink fairy wings, slapping the water, sunlight glinting off her long blonde curls.

"Simon says... kiss like a butterfly, Scarlett"

"Like this, mammy?"

Then the mother and daughter were shouting and laughing, twirling and falling down, singing out, "wheeeeeeee," when without warning a sharp pain pierced Helen's chest. She woke with a scream-bolted upright- and clapped both of her hands to her breast. What was happening? What was that pain? Then Helen realised that she was in a hospital- and that she was feeling nauseas again. She remembered coming here, the ambulance ride, a doctor telling her that she was going to be perfectly alright, not to worry.

Falling, nearly fainting back to the worn old mattress, Helen fumbled for the call button on the oak counter at the side of her bed. Then the device slipped from her grasp and fell to the floor. It banged against the side of the bed with a muted clang. Oh, God, I can't breathe. What's happening? I can't get my breath. It's horrible. I am not perfectly alright.

Tossing her head from side to side, Helen swept the darkness of the hospital room with her eyes. Then she seized on a shadowy figure at the far edge of her vision.

She knew the face.

"Oh, th-thank God," she gasped. "Help me, please. It's, it's my heart." She stretched out her hands, clutching feebly at the air, but the figure stayed looming in the shadows. "Please," Helen pleaded. The figure wouldn't come forward, wouldn't help. What was going on? This was a hospital. The person lurking in the shadows worked here. Tiny black specks gathered in front of Helen's eyes as a crushing pain asphyxiated her. Suddenly her vision tunnelled into a pinprick of white light.

"Please, I'm begging you, help me, I think i'm-"

"Yes," said the figure in the shadows, "you are dying Helen. It's beautiful to watch you pass."

Helen's hands fluttered gracefully like tiny birds wings beating against the sheets. Then, they were very still, almost porcelain like. Helen was gone. The shadow came forward and bent low over the hospital bed. The young woman's skin was mottled and bluish, clammy to touch, her pupils fixed. Her pulse was absent. She was showing no vital signs. Where was she now? Heaven, hell, no where at all? The silhouetted figure retrieved the fallen call device from the floor, straightened the young woman's long blonde hair and the collar of her gown, and blotted the spittle from her lips with a tissue.

Nimble fingers lifted the framed photo beside the phone on the bedside table. She'd been so pretty, this young mother holding her baby. Scarlett-rose. That was her daughter's name, wasn't it? The lurker placed the picture back on the bedside table, closed the patient's eyes and placed what looked like dull heavy pennies on each of Helen's eyelids. The two coins were engraved with a caduceus- two serpents entwined around a winged staff, the symbol of medical profession. A whispered good-bye blended with the sibilance of tires speeding over the wet paths five floors below on Leezers road. "Good night, princess."