“Listen,” I suggested. “I’ll go in on my own, but only if I can stay for as long as I want and you wait for me in the cafeteria.”

She gave me a hug. I could sense how much she wanted to say yes, and how ashamed this made her feel.

My mother hasn’t always been like this. There was a time when she worked as a photographer and traveled to war zones. She was afraid of nothing—of nothing and nobody. But then something happened. That thing was me, an accident, and everything changed. Now she sneaks through her own life, as if she’s constantly trying to duck out of harm’s way.

“Please, Mum,” I said, “I’m almost fourteen. I’m no longer a kid.”

My mother ended up going to the cafeteria, and I went up alone to visit the second floor and the man who became my father because my mother slept with him once during what she refers to as an “embarrassing moment.” She’s never told me where and why it occurred.

Sheila Walker has already forgotten me as I make for the lift and take it to the second floor. The first thing I have to do there is put a smock over my school blazer, disinfect my hands and lower arms, and cover my mouth and nose with a white oval mask.

The brain center’s intensive care unit is like a large, brightly lit warehouse. There are beds along three long walls—A, B, and C. Rails run just below the ceiling, allowing blue curtains to be pulled around each bed to form a separate cubicle. On a raised platform in the center of the hall are several counters equipped with computer monitors and controls. Doctors sit there watching screens or making phone calls. Every patient has been assigned his or her personal nurse.

It resembles a refugee camp, because the coma patients aren’t called by their names, only by a combination of a letter and a number. “A3, glucose level falling.” “B9, restless.” None of them is real anymore. My father is C7. One of the “zombies.”

On my first visit, the right side of his head had been shaved and then daubed with orange iodine tincture. Lengths of white adhesive tape had been stuck on his face to hold the breathing tube in place, and his skin was blue, green, and purple—the colors of night, strength, and dreams. When I entered the ward, I felt as if liquid concrete were oozing into my stomach and hardening with every breath. That lump of concrete has been inside me ever since.