It was over, the trepidation and the fear and hesitancy had all built up and been washed away by the exam - and now I walked across a field on the way home, away from the hospital and its examiners and simulated patients, away from the ECGs and plain film radiographs and blood test results that showed heart failure with Kerley B lines and primary hypothyroidism with macrocytic anaemia. I knew I was going back to Northampton tonight, to be ready to watch major thyroid cancer surgery and complete the tasks left in the workbook. But now, right here and now, with the sun in my face and the grass below my formal shoes, I was giddy as a child, I wanted to dance, I wanted to sing, I wanted to scream and shout for all the free time I had between now and when the bus came for me, to take me back to the world of operations and chemotherapy and ward rounds, of workbooks and signatures and reflective essays, of resits and exam results and degrees.

That evening in the field, I didn't do the things I wanted to. But I was glad, estatically and madly glad, which I hadn't been for a long, long time.