Between treatments, I’ve sung to her softly, and we’ve read from the Anne of Green Gables paperback we keep in her hospital backpack. We’ve been given a bed in one of the main A&E wards so that the doctors can observe Tabby before discharging her.

As I read to her, my gaze keeps drifting to a little girl in one of the bays across from us. She’s probably a couple of years younger than Tabby. I’m not sure what’s wrong with her, but she was vomiting and crying in pain earlier. She’s happier now, thank God, but the thing that grabs my attention over and over is the two parents flanking her. Her mother and father sit on plastic chairs on either side of her bed like two adoring guardian angels. They haven’t left her side. As I watch, they interlace their fingers on her lap, and the gesture is so tender, so natural, that I have to look away. Those three are thick as thieves, and it couldn’t be any more obvious.

It’s not that I want someone here for me. I’m an A&E expert by now, and I’m used to being the grown-up, to acting like I’m not falling apart without having anyone to rub my back and tell me it’s all going to be okay. But it’s not fair that a little girl as brave and amazing as Tabs should have to make do without a father figure in her tough little life.

It’s not fucking fair.

Fucking Joe.

The only silver lining is that I’ve had no time at all to ruminate over being fired. I had a text from my colleague Jake—You can appeal this, you know—but I’m too damn exhausted, as the adrenaline vacates my nervous system, to even consider that option. I’m too overwhelmed with emotion to have any capacity for the financial worries that I know are waiting to flood my brain.

Right now, my only focus is the frail little girl on the bed next to me. The colour has returned to her cheeks, and that terrifying blue tinge has faded for now. Miss Lewis told me when I arrived that the dance they’d been rehearsing for their assembly wasn’t even particularly high energy, and the knowledge terrifies me.

I don’t need a doctor to tell me what I already know, but a paediatric cardiologist swings by and pulls me aside just to ram home the incontrovertible truth anyway.

‘The ECG has shown a further deterioration in her pulmonary valve,’ she tells me gently. ‘We spoke to her cardiac team at GOSH. I understand she’s waitlisted for a valve replacement surgery, but not until November?’

‘That’s right.’

November is six months from now, and the doctor’s grimace says it all.

It’s too far away.