Prologue

He'd been called to the room where prisoners received visitors. He wondered who was visiting him. No-one had visited him here not even Wilkes. He knew they'd never seen eye to eye but he'd at least bailed him out when he was arrested. He may not have been grateful then but he was grateful now for those last few days of freedom before his sentence.

Billy and Diane had come to the trial to support him but he hadn't seen them since. They hadn't visited him once. He'd even had to get his own lawyer to defend him in court. Unlike everyone else the hospital lawyer wouldn't assist him. It was almost like he'd been sentenced from the start.

He held onto the fact that he was innocent of pre-meditated murder even though he'd been sentenced twenty years for it. He'd only removed a couple of clamps because he though there had been one too many. He didn't think it would kill him and he had no idea the victim had been the teenager who shot and killed Alan Birch. He hadn't meant to kill him.

He remembered the last time he'd seen everyone at the hospital. That whole speech about them being a family had been far from the truth. If they had been they'd have come to his aid. Instead they left him to fend for himself. He'd always felt like the black sheep of the hospital ever since he'd made the mistake and performed a hernia operation instead of an appendectomy.

When he sat down behind the glass he saw Maggie with a little boy in front of him. He'd been thinking a lot about her recently and wondering what had happened to her when she left the hospital. It wasn't like he could chase girls here and she was the one who had meant the most to him. He'd just been too scared to fall in love. He'd seen what it had done to his parents. They hadn't even insisted him and he wasn't surprised. They probably thought this was where he was going to end up. They'd never really been supportive of him going into medicine.

"Maggie," he said surprised.

"Hi Danny," she smiled slightly trying to keep spirits up. She'd never fallen out of love with him even when he had wanted to sleep with anyone in a skirt. She hadn't been able to to believe her ears when she heard he was in jail for pre-meditated murder. It wasn't like him at all.

"What are you doing here?"

"I have someone I want you to meet..." she answered nervously. She had no idea how he was going to take this but she really wanted him to meet him. He was after all his dad. "This is your son, Colby Daniel O'Donnell," she added stroking her two year old son's hair.

"He's mine..." he answered surprised. He could see from Colby's face he was his but why had he never known? If he had he'd have tried to do whatever he could for him. Now there was nothing he could do for him. He'd lost his freedom.

She nodded. "That's why I left the hospital. I was pregnant."

"Oh Maggie, I'm so sorry you had to go through this alone and that there's nothing I can do now. I would have tried to be there for him."

"You can still be there for him."

"How?"

"He can visit you here and you can talk to him. You can be in contact with him."

"I'd love to have contact with him."

She smiled back at him. "Can he have your surname?"

"Of course."