"James—"
Her breathing came through before anything else did, fast and broken and wet, the sound of someone who had been crying long enough to have stopped noticing.
Behind her, the noise did not belong to their house. Trolley wheels ran over a hard floor. A monitor beeped somewhere close by at a steady interval. Feet went past at speed, more than one pair, and further off a voice said something over a tannoy that he could not make out, and somebody nearer told somebody else to step back from the doorway please.
"Mum." His own voice came out strange. "What's happened?"
She tried. He heard her take the breath for it, and heard the breath break in the middle, and the first words came apart before they reached him.
Then she got it out.
"It's Nyra."
James's hand closed on the phone hard enough to hurt.
"What happened to her?"
