“Allo,” I said groggily into the phone bythe bed, looking around to see if the blonde girl wasstill there. She wasn’t, just a note o... the pillow whichI crumpled up without reading and threw it onto thefloor.“You awake?” Steve’s Australian drawl sounded in my ear.“Of course,” I lied. “I’ve been up for hours.”“Bullshit,” he said succinctly. “Ingrid will meet you onthe terrace at one. Don’t be late, Em.. I do provide wound care to my patients, but I am more of an educator for the family members who perform the wound care daily to make sure they are doing it correctly and to identify if any infection is present. There are times when I do see a patient daily but that is based on several factors such as severity of the wound, special equipment that has been ordered and finally how a patient is paying for treatment. Not to bore you but like most things in life, in healthcare if you have the money. Shirley's legs were absolutely world class. I glimpsed narrow ankles. Her calves and thighs were slender and slightly muscular. Just the way I liked them.The evening and the wine must have dulled my senses. It didn t register until much later that she had not asked which radio station - that Shirley might know more about me than I realized at the time. The thought of what I must do the following week, and how painful it would be, intruded for a moment, then I rejected further contemplation of. Of course, I wasn’t most people — my body was used to regular strenuous workouts and being pushed to the limit, and my metabolism ran like a runaway freight train at the best of times. Even taking this into consideration, the nutrition the hospital had been pumping into me hadn’t been as effective as the thousands of calories I consumed daily. Later we estimated I had lost close to twenty percent of my lean mass as my body cannibalised itself to make up the loss of fuel.If the removal of the.