He was searching for a description so to cut to the chase I prompted, 'Punishment?'

I'd been beaten more times than I could count – with a hurley, an iron bar, fists, boots, and always with intent, so you could say I knew about that item. The shooting was like my Oscar, my highest pinnacle, all the others just building to the main event. The only slight deviation being, I wasn't the one who'd been shot.

Throw in the hammering from alcohol and you had the obituary card near complete. I'd picked the right word.

'Precisely.'

I figured we were done and got ready to leave.

He said, 'Alcohol is not conducive to the healing process.'

I tried, 'I don't think the kid is going to be hopping out for a pint any time soon, do you?'

He scowled – good word, that, a testament to my self-learning, fat fucking lot of good it did me – and snapped, 'Sarcasm is not really warranted. I didn't put the poor boy here and I'm doing my very best for him.'

Yada yada.

I wanted to shout, 'Do frigging better.'

He asked, 'Do you talk to him?'

'What?'

'We don't know for certain, but it's been shown that talking to a comatose victim helps the visitor, if nothing else, and who can say? Maybe he can hear you.'

What a load of bollocks.

I asked, 'What do you suggest – the football results, how Man U are faring, that Giggs is playing out of his skin? You think that might snap Cody out of the coma?'

God, I was so angry, a rage that threatened to engulf me.

The doctor caught it, said, 'You'll know best.' And strode off.

I know it was unfair, but, as they say, he was there and an easy target. Part of me wanted to call him back, apologize, but, nope, didn't do it.

When I got outside, I breathed a sigh of relief and muttered my old familiar mantra: 'This calls for a drink.'

I looked up at the darkening sky – summer was definitely done – and muttered to the God I no longer trusted, 'Couldn't I just have one day on the piss, and not have a hangover?'