“What?” “Why?” Mal and Freya spoke over each other.

“I need to operate,“ Simon repeated. The original scans were inconclusive, but when I used the hospital imager …” He paused, watching Freya unconsciously press the palm of her hand into the crease of her hip, as if just the thought made it hurt. “Anyway, this allowed me to see what had happened.”

“And?” Mal prompted. “Simon, please.”

“After Wing’s men … hurt you, there must have been an infection in the bone, the head of the femur to be precise. That’s the long bone that runs down the thigh …”

Freya nodded. “I know what it is, doc. Go on.”

“I didn’t pick it up at the time because of the damage to your pelvis. The breaks meant I could only stabilise –”

“I remember.” She shuddered slightly, the trembling communicating through to Mal. Neither of them was likely to ever forget the aftermath of what Wing did, the weeks of pain and anguish, let alone the emotional mutilation.

“The point is that I couldn’t examine that area too well.”

“But you gave Frey antibiotics. I remember that too,” Mal said.

“I did. And they cleared the infections. The problem is the damage this particular one did.”

“Damage.”

Simon crossed to his screen, bringing up one of the scans on it. “There are microfissures in the bone, invisible without the use of the imager, and even then only on a particular view.” He ran a finger down a network of bright red lines. “If we hadn’t found it, if I hadn’t been looking, it could have blown without warning.”

Mal stared. “Blown?”

“More or less exploded. Any undue force or pressure and the femoral head could have shattered into fragments.”

Mal’s grip on Freya was tight, but it tightened more. “And if that had happened?”

“There’s an artery runs …” Simon stopped. “It would have been bad.”

“But you caught it,” she said, forcing herself to breathe.

“Yes.”

“So that was causing the limp.”

“No.”

Mal and Freya exchanged glances. “What … there’s more?” she whispered.

“It’s your body,