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sufficient to tear the heater from its wiring and interrupt the current.
    The fear of permanent damage or disfigurement to his hands made Jamieson ignore the pain and the fact that the heater, although now disconnected was setting the bathroom carpet alight. He tore at the handle of the cold tap and held his hands under the flow, his body juddering violently from the combined effects of shock and pain.
    There was a knocking at the door but Jamieson continued to sit in the bath holding his hands under the torrent of cold water.
    'Are you all right in there?' a muffled voice inquired.
    Jamieson could not reply for his teeth were chattering as his whole body continued to tremor.
    The knocking grew louder as did the voice. 'I say! There's a smell of burning. Are you all right in there?'
    Jamieson tried to force his lips into the right shape to speak. He managed a croak but then improved on it with agonising difficulty and managed a weak cry for help.
    The door flew open as a shoulder crashed into it and a thin man with red hair looked in on the scene in the bathroom. 'Good God!' he exclaimed as his eyes took in the wiring hanging out of the wall and the smouldering carpet. The man used a towel to protect his hands and lifted the heater up to dump it safely in the hand basin. He quickly trampled out the smouldering carpet and came to Jamieson's aid. 'How bad is it?' he asked, trying to get a better look at Jamieson's hands.
    Jamieson shook his head as if to indicate that he did not know.
    'Let me see' said the man.
    Jamieson withdrew his hands slowly from the flow and the man turned off the taps. Jamieson prepared himself mentally for the surge of pain he felt sure would return to his burns in the air but was mildly surprised when it was not too bad. It was painful but certainly not the agony of second degree burns or worse.
    'I think you've got away with it,' said the red haired man examining Jamieson's hands gently. Jamieson, still in partial shock, found himself concentrating on the man's profile. A hawk like nose, hollow cheeks and the very fair skin that invariably went with red hair. In this case the residual scars of bad teenage acne compounded the problem.
    'Mainly superficial, you must have got your hands under the cold water in time,' said the man.
    Jamieson nodded. He had flashback to childhood when he remembered playing on a rope swing by the river. At one point he had slightly lost grip and slid down the entire length of the rope, using his hands as a brake. The rope burns on his hands might have been serious had it not been for the fact that his fall had ended in the river and the sudden immersion in cold water had saved him from lasting damage. It was a lesson about burns treatment that he had never forgotten.
    Jamieson closed his eyes in relief as a sudden wave of tiredness hit him. The red haired man saw the signs and said, 'I think we better get you over to the hospital old son. You've had a bit of a shock ... if you'll excuse the pun.' He picked up the towel that was lying on the floor beside him and put it around Jamieson's shoulders before helping him up.
    At this point both men had overlooked the fact that, although the heater had been disconnected from the wall, the wires that serviced it were still live and protruding from the conduit channel at the back of the bath. As the red haired man helped Jamieson to his feet Jamieson's thigh brushed against them and once more, mains voltage shot through his body to throw him violently over the side of the bath. He landed in a heap on the still smoking carpet. The red haired man, protected by the dry towel he had been holding between himself and Jamieson, fell to his knees beside Jamieson and cursed his own stupidity between profuse apologies.
    The relief that knowing his hands were going to be all right had removed a great deal of the worry from Jamieson's mind, in fact, so much so that, as he lay on the floor looking up at the look of anguish on the red haired man's