Kat offers me a chair. I don’t sit.

‘Are you okay?’ she asks. There’s no mirror to check and see what she sees, but if my face looks anything like my chest feels… ‘Please, take a seat,’ she repeats. This time I do as I’m told. She crosses her ankles, rests her elbows on her knees and leans in. Dark brown hair drops forward and she pushes it back behind her ears. She has studs in, tiny gold ones like Mum’s. ‘Thanks for coming, Mr Woods. My name is Kat, I’m the ward sister.’

‘Is she okay?’ I demand, impatient with her pace, uncomfortable in this room. ‘You rang me. You said you had a lady here. My mum? Is she okay? Please tell me she’s okay, because I don’t think I can do this again.’ I stand back up, pacing the room, its four walls closing in.

‘She’s fine, it’s fine, goodness, I’m so sorry, Mr Woods.’ The words pour out of her. ‘I didn’t mean to alarm you.’ The nurse blushes. ‘I don’t think it is your mum. There’s really nothing to… Can I get you a drink?’ She stands, trying to catch my eye. She takes off and adjusts her glasses, searching my face, reaching for my arm, squeezing it gently. Her hands are soft but certain, and there’s something in her touch that calms me down. ‘I don’t believe this is your mother, Mr Woods. We don’t believe she has any family, in fact. To be honest, it’s complicated.’

I let out the biggest breath, rubbing my eyes and stretching out the stress in my arms. I feel like I’ve just had the worst kind of sugar rush. And then my mobile phone beeps:

‘Sorry I missed your call, phone was on silent. Will be home in an hour or so. Call round when you get chance if you like. Mum x’

Fucking hell.

Breathe.

She’s okay. She’s okay.

I drop back into my chair but it still hits me like a truck: the room, the smells. The rush of ice-cold blood when you realise. Technicolor memories fight my relief that Mum’s okay. That today won’t end in that ultimate nightmare again: when you wake up one morning and your world is normal, everything seems fine, until the unexpected, the unspeakable, happens. And you go to bed that same day having lost a brother. The tick of a second that spins life 360 and though you’re back in the same place, everything has changed. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, before or since. It wrapped up with me standing in a family room, almost identical to this, wondering how to silence the sobs of a parent who’d lost a part of her, her child, her reason for getting up each day. The child she’d nurtured as a baby, as a teen, as a grown, complex man who never quite knew where he fit in life. I’d stood with her in my arms, crumbling as I tried to hold her up, without knowing if I’d ever understand my own, supremely physical pain. A pain that remains, tied up. Bubble wrapped.