Maeve arrived at St Brigid’s wearing one boot, no bra, and the expression of a woman prepared to sue God for breach of contract.
The second boot was in the footwell of her taxi. She discovered this at the hospital entrance, when the automatic doors opened with saintly indifference and the driver called, “Miss, your shoe!” across three lanes of ambulance bay traffic as if she had misplaced a beloved child instead of a left ankle boot from & Other Stories.
“Keep it!” Maeve shouted.
“I don’t want it!”
“Neither do I at present!”
A paramedic glanced at her stockinged foot, then at her face, and wisely decided there were darker battles being fought. Maeve crossed the wet pavement with one heel clicking and one foot slapping, her phone clamped in her hand, her hair dragged into a clip that had surrendered somewhere near Harold’s Cross. February rain clung to her coat. Her lungs had forgotten how to behave.
At reception, a young man with kind eyes and the deadened posture of someone twelve hours into a twelve-hour shift looked up. “Can I help?”
“Finn O’Rourke. I was called. I’m his—” She stopped.
The word lodged behind her teeth like a fishbone.
His what? Ex-wife? Former emergency infrastructure? Woman legally no longer required to know whether he had a concussion, a catheter, or a pulse?
The receptionist filled in, “Emergency contact?”
Maeve laughed once. It came out wrong. “Against my explicit administrative instructions, yes.”
He blinked.
“Sorry. Stress joke. Bad brand fit.”
He typed. “Relationship to patient?”
“Complicated.”
“I only have a drop-down.”
“Of course you do.”
“Spouse?”
“No.”
“Partner?”
“No.”
“Family?”
“Depends which aunt you ask.”
He glanced up again, sympathy beginning to form. Maeve hated sympathy from strangers. It made her want to become efficient enough to frighten them. “Ex-wife,” she said. “But apparently still the person everyone rings when he gets himself flattened.”
“Right. If you take a seat—”
“No.”
He paused.
“I’m not being difficult,” Maeve said, though she absolutely was. “I was told accident, head injury, currently being assessed, and then your colleague said someone would speak to me on arrival. I have arrived. I have arrived asymmetrically, but I have arrived.”
The receptionist looked at the single boot again.
“I was in a hurry.”
A woman behind her whispered, “Is that Finn O’Rourke’s wife?”
“Ex-wife,” Maeve said without turning.
The whispering stopped. Then immediately resumed, softer but more thrilled, because Dublin did not waste pain when it could make a podcast out of it.
Finn had been in the public eye long enough that privacy around him had the texture of wet tissue. He hosted The Morning Line now, three days a week, all polish and empathy and carefully rolled sleeves. He had moderated leadership debates, interviewed grieving parents without turning them into spectacle, and once gone viral for dismantling a tech billionaire with the phrase, “That’s a lot of syllables for refusing responsibility.” People loved him because he seemed like the man who would remember your name. Maeve knew he remembered because forgetting felt like a moral failure to him, and Finn collected moral failures in private the way other men collected watches.
“Ms Callaghan?” A nurse appeared at the side door. “I’m Aisling. Come with me.”
Maeve followed before anyone could develop another opinion.
The corridor beyond reception smelled of antiseptic, coffee, and the metallic fatigue of institutions that never slept. Her stockinged foot chilled against the vinyl floor. She had the absurd thought that Finn would laugh when he saw her. Then the thought punched through into terror: if he could laugh, he was fine.
“What happened?” she asked.
Aisling walked fast. “Road traffic incident near the quays. He was a pedestrian. Conscious at scene, confused when brought in. Laceration to scalp, possible concussion, shoulder injury. CT is clear for bleed so far, but he’s being monitored.”
Maeve stopped breathing on the word clear and started again on so far.
“Was anyone else hurt?”
“Driver shaken, minor injuries. Gardaí will speak to him later.”
“To Finn?”
“When medically appropriate.”
Medically appropriate. Maeve hated phrases that pretended to be furniture when they were knives.
Aisling slowed outside a curtained bay. “Before we go in, he’s asking for you.”
“Because I’m on the form.”
“No,” Aisling said, with the careful mercy of someone who had seen too many people arrive too late. “Because he’s asking for Maeve.”
That should not have moved anything inside her. The marriage was over. The practical contracts had been severed. They had signed documents. They had divided art. She had won the green casserole dish and lost the good lamp because her solicitor had insisted one could not litigate emotional lamp value.
Still, her name in his mouth under hospital lights remained a door.
She stepped through it like a fool with one shoe.
Finn lay propped against pillows, a white dressing taped near his hairline, his right arm in a sling, his face drained of its television warmth. Without the camera’s light, he looked human in a way that hurt: stubble at his jaw, mouth dry, lashes dark against skin too pale. The monitors beside him made small, officious sounds. His left wrist wore a hospital bracelet.
Of course it did.
Maeve saw it and nearly swore.
Finn opened his eyes. For half a second there was no defence in him at all. No charm. No timing. Just relief, naked as a bruise.
“Mave,” he said, because pain had sanded the middle out of her name.
“Don’t you dare sound fond,” she said.
His mouth curved. “You came.”
“I was summoned by the state.”
“The hospital.”
“An institution with clipboards. Same family.”
His gaze dropped, slowly, to her feet.
“No,” she said.
“You’re missing a boot.”
“I’m aware.”
“Was there a struggle?”
“I abandoned it for speed.”
“Heroic.”
“Temporary. I intend to bill you.”
His smile trembled. The tremor scared her more than blood would have. Maeve moved closer, because every cell in her body had been trained by years of loving him to reduce distance when he hurt.
Then she remembered herself and stopped at the chair.
Aisling checked the monitor, asked Finn two questions, and told him not to perform. Finn looked offended.
“I don’t perform.”
Maeve snorted.
Aisling hid a smile. “I’ll give you a few minutes. Press the bell if pain worsens, nausea returns, or he tries to charm himself into discharge.”
“I’m immune,” Maeve said.
Finn looked at her. “Are you?”
The nurse left. The curtain swung shut. The hospital sounds softened into the background: wheels, distant voices, an alarm quickly silenced. Maeve folded her arms so she would not touch him.
“You didn’t change it,” she said.
His eyes closed.
“Finn.”
“I know.”
“I asked you in the hallway. Moving day. I said today.”
“I know.”
“Do you understand the level of administrative violence I am about to commit?”
“I deserve some of it.”
“Some?”
“Most.”
“All.”
“Fair.”
That took the air out of her. He was meant to dodge. Finn dodged like a dancer, quick and elegant and infuriating. A Finn who did not dodge left her nowhere to put the anger except where it belonged.
“You scared me,” she said.
He opened his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“No. Don’t do that properly. I’m not ready.”
“Do it improperly?”
“Preferably.”
“I’m sorry in a way that still leaves you room to shout.”
“Better.”
Silence settled, thin but not empty. Maeve looked at the hospital bracelet again. White plastic. Black text. A little clasp. A ridiculous object to carry so much history. She remembered fixing the printer tray years ago, remembered Finn saying Official as if a bracelet could bless what they had not yet named. Now the bracelet made him a patient and her a clerical ghost.
“What happened?” she asked.
He swallowed. “I was crossing by the quay. Van came through the amber. Or red. I don’t know. I remember lights. Someone shouted. Then ground.”
“Were you going to work?”
“Early recording.”
“You don’t record Thursdays.”
His eyes flicked away.
Maeve’s anger sharpened. “Finn.”
“I was meeting someone first.”
“At six in the morning?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“A source.”
“You’re not a crime reporter.”
“No.”
“You host a morning current affairs programme with a lifestyle segment about air fryers.”
“Only Tuesdays.”
“Finn.”
He winced, whether from pain or her tone, she did not care. “There’s something going on at Harbourlight.”
The name hit the floor between them.
Maeve went very still.
Harbourlight Media was his old station, her old station, the place they had met, fallen in love, married half the staff to the other half, and eventually left under separate clouds. Harbourlight had been swallowed last year by Liffey Lane Studios, where Maeve now ran unscripted development with a budget knife between her teeth and a reputation for making impossible shows merely difficult.
“What kind of something?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Try again.”
“A package was sent to the studio. Not to me. To you.”
The room seemed to tilt. “What?”
“I found out last night. Someone in post flagged my name because there was an old staff list in the paperwork. Your current office didn’t know where it came from.”
“My office handles threats every week. People send things because they hate a documentary, or a presenter, or women with microphones. Why were you involved?”
“Because the package contained my hospital form.”
Her mouth went dry.
Finn looked at her, all the old timing gone now. “The original one. From the day you became my emergency contact.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I thought so too.”
“Medical forms aren’t lying around in production archives.”
“No.”
“How do you know it’s real?”
“Because it had your handwriting on the back.”
Maeve remembered the back of that form. She had written the councillor’s mobile number on it because she had run out of notebook pages. Then a line under it: Finn O’Rourke — eyebrow; reckless; do not feed after midnight.
She had forgotten that. No, she had buried it, which was not the same thing.
“What else was in the package?”
Finn looked towards the curtain, as if privacy might be listening. “A note.”
“What did it say?”
His voice dropped.
“It said, ‘Some people never update the person who saves them.’”
Maeve’s phone buzzed before she could answer.
Liffey Lane Studios flashed on the screen.
Then a second call cut across it: unknown number.
Then a text arrived from her assistant, all caps and no punctuation, which meant apocalypse had entered the building wearing a visitor lanyard.
MAEVE PLEASE CALL ME. THE PACKAGE IS ON THE NEWS.