Sam was a doctor, and it was hard for him not to immediately panic seeing this. He couldn't forget he was Justin's uncle here when Justin was confiding in him like this, and lock himself into doctor mode. He couldn't hit the nurse call button either to get Nathan right in here to get these wounds cleaned and treated. The one on Justin's stomach was a complete mess, and Sam didn't even need to look at it closely to see it was the source of the septicaemia. All around the wound, the skin was red and inflamed. The wound itself was weeping and deep. Instead, he was going to have to try to juggle two roles here, because even if Justin had a lot of broad spectrum antibiotics being fed into his system via IV here, they had to treat the source if it was this bad.

"You're not a failure, sweetheart. I know that might be hard for you to hear and absorb, but this isn't failure. This is a symptom of an illness, and I know your dad would really want to know. He's on your side, mate. You're a team. He won't want you fighting this alone. That looks really sore, Jus. Will you let me clean it up for you and have a closer look? I'll try to be as quick and as gentle as I can, I promise," he said softly. It had to be extremely painful. Justin hadn't said when he did this, but it didn't mattered. What mattered was he did, and it was badly infected. It needed to be cleaned and dressed. It would probably need ongoing redressings for a little while until the infection cleared. This could have killed him. But that was the last thing Sam was going to say to his nephew right now.