I can't help thinking that you are the most important, they will fight in a foreign country for you, they will drown for you, they will burn in the fire.

I, alas, can never reach you.

And if yesterday was war – Emily gets out of bed, shattered with lead. Her arms and legs are disobedient, her head is buzzing, every bone threatens to break at any movement. The clock reads twenty past seven, the time she has allotted for sleep running out all too quickly.

Everything is so familiar and gray, unchanging, unnecessarily stable-even the dust between the blinds lies exactly as it did before. The actions, reduced to automatism: to get out of bed, take a shower, pour a cup of coffee; to glance at the calendar – there are a couple of days before the rent is due; to try to collect my thoughts – to glance at the empty bag, to throw things into the backpack, to drink a diluted dark slurry, remotely resembling a normal drink; to go to the misty Trinity Street.

Except the nasty swamp turtleneck smells like Clark – and Emily feels like a neurosurgeon somewhere near her: menthol, lemon, and iron.

Crammed into the farthest corner of the bus, Emily cradles her backpack and closes her eyes, going back to last night.

There they sit – half-dead, as if on burnt grass, staring with unseeing eyes at the sky – black, starless, bottomless. Sitting there, stilettoes under their ribs, broken bones, glands between their vertebrae; and Clark speaking, barely audible, not in his own voice, or, conversely, in his own, real, not artificially icy, not eternally ironic:

– How I hate all this.

Emily does not specify what; she is afraid to do anything at all; she knows: one move and Clark will fly away, disappear, dissolve; she is a damn bird with chains on her wings.

Clark warms up, becomes softer, lighter; he thaws, relaxes his head on Emily's shoulder, closes his eyes.

And as she buries her fingers in Clark's hair, the scent of her shampoo lingers on the tips of her hair.

And then she shakes Emily off, like shaking off useless, irritating dust; stands up sharply, slaps her palm against her palm, straightens her shoulders-a snow queen, a grin, a piercing look; tilts her head sideways and, her lips open, spits out an ice cube:

– I think it's time for you to go home.

And everything collapses again – or builds like a wall, brick by brick, bloody blocks, impenetrable, monolithic, marble; Emily nods, mutters "goodbye" – and walks out.

She is in so much pain that her stomach cramps and her mouth becomes unbearably bitter; but the sun persists in warming her pocket, as if to remind her that even people like Clark know how to feel.

The familiar gray building of London Royal Hospital unfriendlyly greets her with bustling corridors and the smell of buns in the break room.

That Lorraine isn't at work, she realizes immediately.

It's not because the door to the neurosurgeon's office is shut tightly; no, it's worse than that-it's wide open, as if Clark had just stepped out a minute ago.

Except that both robes are just as they were left yesterday, and the broken glass is still catching the reflection of the frowning sky in its shards. Things around Emily are scattered in chaos-folders mingled with crumpled papers, pens and pencils lying around, a fallen electronic clock counting down gently.

The white cloth, dirty and crumpled, is crumpled in the middle of the office, and Emily somehow picks it up first, as if it might still be usable for something; but reason tells her that professional cleaning is needed here, and the nurse simply unclenches her fist, letting the robes fall to her feet with a soft rustle.

Behind her she hears footsteps, keys jingle, a lock clicks; Emily feels the bitter smell reaching her through such a distance and panics: if Moss sees her here, he will fire her right away, for no reason, and he won't give a damn about Clark.

But luckily, the trouble passes her by, scorching her breath-the head of neurology slams his door on the inside, and the main corridor is quiet again.

Emily exhales.

– This place needs to be cleaned up. – A heavy hand rests on her shoulder.

She shudders in surprise and turns abruptly; her brown hair, loosely tied up in a bun, falls in locks and bobby pins to the floor with a metallic clang.

Gilmore, who remains perfectly calm, yawns frankly:

– We're working with Neil today, and you're still with me on general plannings. – Another yawn. – Why are you looking at me like that? I slept for six hours," he mutters.

Emily expects Riley to say something about the mess.

Or ask what happened here.

Or ask her to get someone to clean it up.

But instead, the surgeon glances at her wristwatch and asks a single question:

– Didn't you take our schedule…?