Next to me, the mother begins to sing to her little girl, ‘Hush little baby’, a lullaby. A promise. And the sound of it triggers a memory. Once I had sung that song myself.

I begin to cry properly, not sure who I am crying for: Mel and Fergus, me and Aidan, Connor, Kieron, Ryan. I cry for us all. I can’t wind the clock back, make everything the same as it was, but oh, how I long to.

‘Don’t say a word,’ she is crooning next to me.

The tissue pulls at my skin as I drag it across my cheeks, trying to force myself to breathe slowly, pull myself together.

It will be okay. It will be okay.

But the soft voice in my head is drowned out by a harsher one.

Are you sure?

Carefully, I take Kieron’s hand. We are a four. A family of four and our unit is the most important thing, but I picture the despair on Fergus’s face, his sense of loss that reached out and brushed me with its fingertips and I am haunted by all of the things that are out of my control.

Get better, my darling, please.

I clasp Kieron’s hand between mine. He stirs. I’m holding him too tightly.

But I can’t let go.

I won’t.

The first sign I have that something is wrong is when Mr Peters wants to speak to me and Aidan away from Kieron’s bed.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he begins. ‘The results of Kieron’s latest liver function test since his sepsis aren’t… aren’t what we’d want. I was hoping not to have to say this for a good few years but he was lucky to pull through sepsis. Patients with such compromised immune systems often don’t, but there has been some damage.’

Fear crawls up my throat along with the questions I’m terrified of knowing the answer too.

‘You. You believe…’ I swallow hard. ‘It’s time to put Kieron on the transplant list.’

‘I do. Yes.’

Aidan gasps. Mr Peters shifts his gaze over to him, he doesn’t look at me as he continues to speak.

‘I understand this is a shock.’

And it is. Although I’ve been expecting it, the bottom drops out of my heart. My world. I can feel the tremble of Aidan’s hand in mine and I can’t tell which of us is shaking, probably both of us.

‘How long is the waiting list?’ It is Aidan who finds his words first. Whirling around my mind are things that can go wrong while we wait.

‘I can’t give you a timescale, sorry.’

Hot tears are forming behind my eyes, spilling down my cheeks.

‘But…’ I clear my throat, but my voice is still quiet. ‘You could move him up the list?’

‘Lucy, no! That would be unethical. Immoral. I could lose my job.’