His fluoro shirt was visible a few seconds before the automatic doors whirred open, and he entered from the long dark night. As he stumbled across the shop floor, I almost reached preemptively for a sharps kit. As he reached the counter, he fumbled for his phone, dark eyes searching the screen. His gaze lifted to mine, focusing some seconds later.

"I... need... some... formula. ... For newborns." He slurred, before squinting hard at his phone and naming a brand.

Unfazed, I toddled over to the baby section and fetched the request, with a "No worries". Meantime, he'd begun to rant. About his girlfriend. About two hours of text-messages. About the baby crying.

"Plus, " he says, clearly now with a full waft of XXXX assaulting my nostrils and eyes, "I'm maggot."

"This is the one you're after?" I confirm, gently.

His pupils accommodate to the shelves behind me, and then to the behind of the leggy shopgirl, as he dumps the cash on the bench.

"Sooo, theeen... what time does your lady friend... get off?"

"You'll have to ask her yourself," I say with a wry smile. I'm met with a forty-five second string of abuse littered with F-bombs, C#$&'s and racial slurs.

I can be pragmatic about abuse; it happens in the health services. The sick feeling, biting like an ulcer in my gut, wasn't because I'd been sworn at, nor because my assistant had been abused. It was for the girlfriend, and the newborn.