7. 01/02/2015 St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney

No matter where you were, Ruth pondered as they walked through the front doors for the umpteenth time, hospitals were all the same. Impersonal, sterile, slightly battered around the edges, full of despair but also full of hope. She had got to know them well, for various reasons, in the UK, Cyprus and here and at all scales, from the small to the massive, but they all felt the same. This time around, at least, the experience hadn't been all bad.

The first time they had come here the place had been like, in fact was, something on the front line of a war somewhere. The worst of the casualties had already started to arrive by the time she and Harry had got there with their own victims. At first the staff had assumed they were some of the injured as they were in such a mess but Harry had immediately put them right and they had been regular visitors every day since.

They were supposed to have been home by now but the events of Australia Day had put paid to that; moving out of their luxury hotel on Tuesday morning (they would forever treasure the memory of their return to that hotel the evening of the blast when they were greeted with uniformly horrified expressions and a parting of the other guests reminiscent of the biblical parting of the Red Sea. Exhausted, they puzzled mildly over the reaction until they arrived at the bank of elevators and saw their reflections where the sight of their clothes, stained darkly with dried blood, reminded them that they weren't looking exactly spick and span. For some reason they had both found it funny and had fallen into the lift, laughing weakly, to the bemusement of others nearby) they had found a much cheaper serviced apartment up near Central Station where they had the joy of sleeping with ear plugs because of the constant tooting from trains plunging into the subway opposite but were much closer to the hospital.

As they threaded their way through the endless corridors to the wards, occasionally greeting or being greeted by staff members with whom they had come to be familiar over the past few days, they quietly reflected on how that had changed since Monday as well. When they had returned on Tuesday morning they had stopped in first at the surgical wards to see Brendan who, to their surprise, had been sitting up in bed looking remarkably chipper for someone who had been partially scalped by a piece of shrapnel and was suffering from a fractured elbow along with minor burns and bruising from the blast. Surrounded by his family he had grinned at them and called a thanks to Ruth for her speedy work in slapping the skin flap back on his skull and otherwise making him comfortable (she and Harry had, unlike almost everyone else in the vicinity, ran towards the centre of the blast once the shock-wave was past; although there were many other injured they had their own priorities and she had taken Brendan and Lucas while Harry had made a bee-line for Ilian. Brendan was conscious, lucid and covered in blood but Ruth had quickly realized that his wounds were reasonably superficial so had laid the skin flap back in place to minimize infection, sat him up and helped him find a position for his arm that was slightly less than excruciating and then turned to her former work-mate) before airily introducing the woman in her late forties who had stood up when they had peered through the door and was now approaching them with a wide, relieved smile. So, finally, they had met Ruby Walters.

After a brief chat they had moved on to the intensive care unit. As the closest hospital to the events and renowned around the country for their trauma skills, St Vincents had received the most seriously injured, among them Lucas. Although Brendan's tackle had effectively saved his life he had still taken the brunt of the blast with resultant burns, bruising, shrapnel wounds to the head, shoulders and chest and a broken wrist and collar-bone but the thing that had the doctors worried was the massive crack to his head that he had taken from hitting the concrete footpath. He had been unconscious when Ruth reached him so she had put him in the recovery position and tended to his wounds as best she could. He had been kept in an induced coma for twenty four hours while the medical staff had closely monitored him for any signs of swelling or bleeding in the brain; it had proved unnecessary in the finish but he had still been out to it when Harry and Ruth arrived so they had stayed outside, contenting themselves with a look through the window to ensure that he looked about as well as could be expected under the circumstances.

Finally had come the visit they were both dreading yet desperate to undertake: Ilian. Harry now had another day of blood and a desperate fight to save a woman in his life to haunt him… as before, on the Estuary, he had gone into automatic pilot when he had caught sight of the blood only this time it had been too much and too fast: Ilian, although otherwise apparently unharmed, was sprawled in an ungainly manner on the bright green grass, bright red blood staining her skin and her clothes and the ground around her. Recognising what was happening he had run, faster than he had for years, to find his fears realized. A piece of shrapnel from the exploding pram had sliced the femoral artery in her leg and she was bleeding out in front of him; without thinking, he had knelt next to her, jammed his fist into the wound in her thigh and pushed as hard as he could to stop the flow and shouted for an ambulance. She had groaned and turned bleary eyes on him; smiling lazily she had murmured a throaty,

"Hello, Harry," before wincing in pain and uttering a salty curse. "Do you always treat your women this roughly?"

He had smiled grimly at her, relieved that she was talking but desperately worried. If he couldn't stop the bleeding…

"Only the ones I care about."

Her laugh had been barely audible.

"I must be really special, then…"

Her voice had faded out and her brilliant eyes had closed; after a moment he slapped her face, first gently then with more force.

"Come on, Ilian. Wake up. I didn't lose Iona; I'm not about to lose you, either."

Her eyes opened again.

"God, is that your seduction technique? No wonder I prefer women!" She reached a hand up to touch his cheek, weakly, before it flopped back to her side. "I still wonder about that mouth of yours, though!" Her black humour in the situation suddenly threw him back past the Estuary to a man on a rainy street in London whose life ebbed away under his touch: Ilian and Jim would have got on famously, had they ever met. Smiling crookedly back at her he had responded,

"If you promise to not die on me I might let you try it out one day!"

"Promises, promises…"

At that point a flotilla of ambulances had arrived and squadrons of paramedics descended on the injured, including two who dropped to his side and, after a rapid briefing from him, taken charge. He had been infinitely relieved when they had quickly got her onto a stretcher and began to work on stabilizing her; looking around, he saw another group of medics working with Lucas and Brendan and others swarming all over the park. Exchanging glances with his wife they had immediately understood and, without further words, each had accompanied their friends to the hospital in the ambulances.

Ilian had been worked on all the way there with Harry surprising the paramedic by his skilled assistance but once they had arrived at the hospital she, along with Lucas, Brendan and several others, had disappeared behind swinging doors which were denied to the public and the older couple had finally had a chance to stop and take stock of what had happened. Falling into each others arms they had both wept, with relief and grief in equal proportions, until a triage nurse had come to treat them, their blood-stained clothing making him think they were injured. After that had come half an hour of scrubbing in an attempt to clean up and then endless cups of tea and coffee to help pass the equally endless hours of waiting. It was only spiced up by dealing with a terrified High Court Judge who had arrived while Ilian was still in theatre and had panicked when she had walked into the war zone of the Emergency Department and saw their bloodied clothes, until Ruth had managed to calm her down. Then it was back to more waiting until they knew that their personal trio had made it through their various surgeries and onto the wards…

The next morning they had arrived at the door to Ilian's room in the intensive care unit only to find their access blocked by a small, ferocious and very protective grey-haired woman of about Harry's own age. Putting a hand out she had ordered, blue-grey eyes fierce,

"No entry without clearance. Turn around and go away."

There were two police officers inside, behind her, watching closely; tantalisingly, they could just see the end of the bed but no more. Having worked out what the unknown woman was although not who, Harry and Ruth were about to turn around and leave when Ruby, accompanied by an Asian man, approached.

"It's okay, Lorraine. This is the couple who saved our people, Nathan's former work colleagues from London. They're safe."

That was how they met Lorraine Curtis and, finally, Wisnu Haryanto. Lorraine and Ruby granted them access, putting them on the visitor's list but, after a quick glance into the room where Ilian was lying motionless, buried under tubes and wires with an exhausted Meg asleep on a trundle bed, they had all turned away and gone to the cafeteria, where the English couple had found out just how close they had come to losing Ilian.

Wisnu had rubbed his hands over his face, weariness making him hollow-eyed.

"She came within an inch of not making it, you know. She had almost bled out – if it hadn't been for you she would have – and needed multiple transfusions." He stirred his tea in a desultory way. "Then she went into cardiac arrest in the operating theatre. Twice. But they brought her back." Harry had remained impassive but Ruth, acutely attuned to him after so many years, knew, and silently reached out to take his hand. Neither of them had needed this but her husband in particular, who had lost so many and so much over the years, most certainly had not…

That had been then. Now, five days later, they were on first name status with some of the staff and things had improved beyond recognition. Brendan, young, fit, shorn of his beard and with his swollen scalp almost returned to a normal appearance, had already been discharged – they had bade him farewell two days ago – and Lucas was ready to go today so they had ducked in to see Ilian first for a last catch up before they themselves hit the road towards the far north again.

Moved out of ICU the same day that Brendan had gone home and after two days of being held in an induced coma, she was now in her own quiet, private room and, on this Saturday, had almost fully recovered her ebullience and energy, to the extent that she was now restless to get out and go home herself. After spending some time letting her grumble about how the medical staff were insistent that she stay to recuperate for a couple more days – and Meg was agreeing with them! – she settled down and fixed them with a suspiciously bland look.

"I've got an update for you if you like."

Harry and Ruth raised eyebrows at each other before he asked, equally bland,

"We would like. About what?"

"The death toll."

It had been horrendous. Fifteen dead, including Alsoswa's two children and Khorasani's unborn baby with twice that many badly injured. Coming so soon after the events of the Lindt Café the city and the country as a whole had been badly shaken and, over the days since, had been torn between deep soul-searching and recriminations. The funerals had already started but there had been no more deaths over the past couple of days. Until now, apparently.

"It's gone up by one. Abdul-Rahman." The one who had so appallingly beheaded the young police-woman, leaving her five year old daughter motherless, and literally shredded a pair of young exchange students with a weapon the likes of which had not been seen on the streets before anywhere on the planet. When that had come out Ruth, and even Harry, had been sickened and disgusted but, sadly, not really surprised. Harry had been aware of the technology for years but, the last he had heard, the Australian developers had been bought out by the US military so he had never expected to see it in the hands of terrorists on the streets of Sydney. At least the police-man had survived, the very sharpness of the cane knife allowing surgeons to reattach his arm with, so far, no major problems. Neither of them felt the slightest bit of sorrow for the former Englishman's death, or for the savage beating he had taken off the Army vets that had very nearly completed the job that the sniper's bullet had started, but they were curious about the news as, from all reports, he had been recovering.

"Really," Harry stated drily, waiting for her to expand.

"Mmm. He died early this morning. It's all a bit mysterious and unexpected because he seemed to have been getting better but he just upped and croaked. You'd almost think he'd been offed but that can't be the case because he was under police guard all the time and no-one went in after dinner."

As her words, apparently innocently puzzled, tailed off the steel behind them and the flash in her eyes told the truth. The law enforcers had delivered their own form of justice for their slain colleague.

"Sad," Ruth commented, as disinterested as Ilian's words apparently were. Because of Brendan Abdul-Raman was extraneous to the investigation anyway, although it would have been useful to have got something from him. If they could. And at least it saved the taxpayer the cost of keeping him in prison for the rest of his useless life.

"Not really," was the other woman's response. "One more piece of scum washed off the streets. Speaking of which, ISIS have claimed responsibility."

Harry snorted.

"They would. Is there any proof?"

"No." Ilian's reply was almost a sneer. "But that pond-slime will claim everything they can. Including this. Bastards." She straightened up on her bed, wincing at the pain from the bruising and fractured rib in her back that she had sustained when she had hit the ground from the bomb blast. The shrapnel wounds and burns on her face and upper chest were starting to fade but, like Lucas', would leave an interesting patina for the rest of her life but none of it was dimming the glow in her eyes. "Speaking of bastards, there's still no trace of Feysal. It's starting to look like he's got away although whether he's still in the country or not is anyone's guess. No-one's spotted him leaving by any official means but... It's the same with some of the peripherals. We've rounded up most of them but there are one or two whom we're still trying to identify. Who it was driving the stolen cars that dropped Bolzaar and the women off, for starters."

They all sat around in silence for a few moments, pondering. Ruth was hopeful that the noose was tight and that Feysal was still in the country but Harry and Ilian were more pessimistic. They were both of the opinion that he had probably scarpered the same day as the attack: in fact, Harry was cynical enough to suspect that the man had never intended to hang around at all and presumably had his departure organized long before, showing just how much he actually cared about his unfortunate wife and child. The sod was probably in Syria already, truth be told. He said as much and Ilian gave him a measured look, silently pleased that she wasn't the only one thinking that way. In fact, only yesterday she had told Ruby to get a crew onto checking all departures from the airport from an hour after Feysal had disappeared: they already had a few possibles. She wouldn't mention it now, though, no point.

Ruth, who knew how these things worked and had been following the press coverage, finally asked,

"How is the political side of things, or don't I ask? I've been noting the manoeuvrings and recriminations getting well into their groove for the past couple of days."

Ilian rolled her eyes.

"Grim. It was the bloody Attorney General and a couple of his mates who put the kybosh on us pulling this mob before they could do anything, now butter wouldn't melt in their mouths and the shit sure as hell won't stick to their Teflon-coated hides. They're already trying to shift the blame, of course, onto us for screwing it up but unfortunately for them they've got Hope and the new DG to contend with so they won't be getting away with that: we know where all the real bodies are buried, after all, if they're stupid enough to continue to push it." She sighed. "No doubt some hapless, disposable bastard's head will roll as a sacrifice to the baying hounds of the press and the slavering jaws of a populace who hate us on principle without knowing the first thing about what we actually do for them. It's the side of the job I hate the most, you know. The politics. But then I don't need to tell either of you two anything about that, do I?"

They had paid the ultimate sacrifice because of politics, despite everything they had done for their country, but in a strange way it had liberated them into a life they could never have imagined, a life that they now would never give up; she just hoped that, no matter how her career turned out in the long run, she could only emulate their happiness.

A tap at the door drew attention; all eyes turning that way, they saw Lucas standing in the doorway, a slight woman with a shock of white hair behind him. Hazel. After greetings and introductions were exchanged all round Lucas announced that he had been officially discharged and that Hazel was here to take him home so he had come to bid them all farewell for the moment. Ilian, despite her apparent enthusiasm, had been looking tired for the past few minutes so they didn't hang around, the older couple leaving her with the invitation to come up and spend some time with them to recuperate, an invitation she accepted with alacrity and an obscure comment about "being on a promise" which Harry would explain to a laughing Ruth some time later. Some days parked up in a roman villa in the tropics with her feet up and in good company around whom she could say anything appealed immensely.

The quartet didn't move fast as Lucas was still stiff and sore all over, like his boss, but nonetheless it was only a couple of minutes before they were all back out the front in the shade of the veranda. The day was sunny but still cool with a light southerly wind blowing and adding to the unusual chill; at this hour on a Sunday morning the area was quiet, with few people around although they could hear the yells of some children playing in the park over the road. They stood, chatting, for a little longer but there wasn't much extra to say so, sooner rather than later, they were bidding each other good-bye. Hazel made a crack about taking Nathan home so he could deliver an explanation; he exchanged looks with Harry and Ruth before saying,

"It's okay, she knows."

"Well, 'she' knows what he does for a quid but that's about it," the 'she' in question added, "but it's about time he started telling me a bit more. And don't worry, my grandmother spent three years behind enemy lines in France in the war, living under assumed identities, terrorizing both the Vichy French and the Nazis by blowing things and people up and, occasionally, killing them in cold blood. And yet she was the loveliest, warmest, most gentle person I've ever known. I don't know what any of you have done but I don't imagine it to be too much different."

The older couple were impressed by her pragmatic take on things but still wondered how she would take it when she found out absolutely everything about Lucas and his past – if he had any sense he would drip feed it to her but whether he ever made it to Dakar or not would be entirely up to them. The old Harry wouldn't have, had he been in Lucas' position, but the new one probably would. As long as Hazel turned out to be Lucas' Ruth…

Hazel had used her contacts within the hospital – she had done part of her physiotherapy training there and still occasionally did locum work for them – to pull a parking space in the staff car park so they parted at the entrance with warm affection and promises to catch up in person more often, including also taking up the older couple's offer of somewhere to recuperate, and then went their separate ways. The Subaru was parked further up the road and they had just reached it, with Ruth fishing the keys out of her handbag, when the younger pair went past in Lucas' Hilux with a toot and a wave. Another street, another car vanishing around a corner but this time, unlike in Cairns a couple of years before, after Capricorn Downs, this time the parting was happier and far more positive. And it wasn't raining.

"How do you think they'll go?" Ruth asked as they got into the car. Harry knew she wasn't talking about the drive back to Siding Bay.

"I think they'll be fine. I doubt there's too much that will come as a surprise to Hazel and she will be the steadying influence he needs. Which he will need if there's going to be a step-daughter in the mix." They grinned at each other at that prospect. Overhead a kookaburra burst into raucous laughter from its perch among the green and Harry suddenly winked at her. "Home, James, and don't spare the horses!"

A/N: That's all for this one. I would like to thank all of you for reading and a special thanks to those of you who have reviewed as the feedback is always greatly appreciated.