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dots on a piece of black cardboard and a pair of white stick figures floating in the middle of it all: me and Cam. We were holding hands, our splayed fingers crossed like lattice.
    Cam had put the picture on the fridge at home.
    I’d left it there for as long as I could stand it, then threw it out.
    It was a nightmare.
    I couldn’t even look at it without feeling the black at my back, threatening to rip the air out of my lungs and boil the moisture off my tongue.
    Lucy had painted it like a dream, but it was a nightmare.
    I don’t think Lucy noticed the picture was gone, but sometimes I caught Cam looking at the white space left behind and then looking at me.
    * * * *
    I liked to sneak off in the middle of the day to play cards with Mike Marcello. Back on Defender Three, Doc called that patient aftercare. Here, they called it bludging. They were half right, but it was more than just laziness that made me ditch work to hang out with the kid. Who the hell else did he have? I stashed my mop behind a door, made sure no nurses were watching, and slipped into his room. I found him sitting on the edge of his bed, his legs tangled in his sheets and his bedpan halfway across the floor.
    “Arrett!” He sounded like he was choking.
    “Hey.” I crossed the floor. Got a hand on his back and leaned him forward a little. “You breathing okay?”
    He nodded, a high-pitched whimper rising in him.
    The source of his distress became apparent soon enough. His legs were wet. The mattress and sheets were. He’d pissed himself.
    “Don’t worry about it,” I told him. Marcello’s catheter had only been taken out a few days ago, and he was still having trouble adjusting. “It happens a lot. Particularly when guys are on strong pain meds, you know. You can sort of sleep through the warning signals, and by the time you wake up, it’s too late.”
    “Orry.”
    I slapped him on the back. “It’s not even a big deal.” I stood back and retrieved the bedpan from where he must’ve kicked it in his panic. I set it on the cabinet beside his bed. “You want me to take you to the shower?”
    The remaining side of his mouth jerked up slightly.
    I showed him my palms. “Hey, none of that. I’m taken, remember?”
    “Ee-yot.” Idiot. But he let me untangle the wet sheet from his legs and help him to his feet. I walked him across the hall to the shower room and left him there getting clean while I went back to strip his bed.
    Actual patient contact wasn’t in my job description anymore, but it had been once. Back when I’d been a trainee medic, I’d actually liked looking after people. I’d liked being useful. If there was anything I missed about the black, it was that. For a couple of hours a day when I was working in the med bay, I’d felt like more than I was. Not just some dirty reffo from Kopa. Not just some invisible dumb fuck of a recruit. Someone else. Someone who wasn’t Brady Garrett.
    I hauled the sheets off Marcello’s bed, then headed to the nearest supply closet to get some fresh sheets and some spray to clean down the plastic mattress. I checked on Marcello on my way back.
    “You okay in there?”
    “Es!”
    I went back to his room and remade his bed. My hospital corners were as crap as ever. I could almost hear Doc’s gravelly voice behind me: Call that rat’s nest a bed, do you, Garrett?
    I missed Doc as well. He always said I needed the occasional clip behind the ear to keep my attitude in check, and I think he was probably right. I mean, there were plenty of assholes in my life now who’d line up for the opportunity to smack me in the head, but none who counted for shit. None that I respected. None that I loved.
    Doc had always been more than my boss. He’d looked out for me, and he’d done it without making a big deal out of it or making me feel like he wanted something in return. He’d called me son , and I’d needed to hear that word so badly at that time in my life that I’d ached for it. He’d made