Chapter 46- Don't try me

Sage was there, but not in bed, when she walked into the room past the security guards who had been there when she left. Her brief flurry of irrational panic subsided when she saw the figure standing in a narrow open door that was a tight squeeze for a broad-shouldered man plus a portable drip stand.

In her absence, the bulky dressing had been removed. In its place was a narrow, almost transparent strip that showed the full extent of his repaired wound. Sophie was relieved by what she saw. The man who had operated had clearly been as good as the nurse had claimed. Her professional eye could see beyond the bruising and swelling that made his face unrecognisable, and she knew that the healing process would fade the livid, raised red scar to silver.

The professional in her saw a good job; the woman in her saw not ugliness but pain, and she winced, her empathy shifting uneasily to dismay. What she was feeling went beyond normal empathy. It wasn’t even guilt that she felt; it was more... T