Everyone slips away until it is just me, my fingertips on Adam’s door handle, steeling myself to go inside and when I do, disappointment bites. There’s still the flash of the monitor. A nurse stationed in the corner. My eyes fill with hot tears. It’s ridiculous I had harboured an expectation that it would be different here. I’d felt a bubbling hope under the surface of my skin that perhaps moving him would trigger something. That now I’d have found him sitting up in bed, reading. The lamp blazes – and I hate myself for all the times I’d complained that he was keeping me awake. Our last row was only a few days before Adam had booked our holiday.

‘The light’s too bright. I’m trying to bloody sleep.’ I had sat upright, shielding my eyes.

‘I can’t read without it. Sorry, I won’t be—’

‘Why can’t you just buy a kindle like normal people?’ I had made a show of thumping my pillows, throwing myself back down with a sigh.

‘I like the feel of a paperback in my hand.’ He had turned the page.

‘You wouldn’t get that bloody rustling with a kindle either.’

‘Christ, Anna. Next you’ll be saying I breathe too loud.’

I had muttered under my breath.

‘Is there anything I do lately that doesn’t irritate you?’ Adam had snapped.

I had remained silent and when Adam slammed his book onto his cabinet and clicked off the light, I had lain rigid with anger long after he’d fallen asleep. I had thought I hated him. I had thought I didn’t love him anymore.

‘I’m so sorry.’ I crawl over the safety rail on the bed and lay beside him. ‘I’ll make everything better, if you just wake up.’

We need to learn to communicate again; my session with Eva has taught me that. I try to remember the us that used to talk for hours. Lately we’d passed Grandad’s coin back and forth instead of using words. I loved the sentiment behind it but it made us lazy. It made us think that was enough.

It wasn’t.

I have been unhappy these past few years. That hasn’t always been the case throughout our marriage, but in this moment when I try to think of Adam, remember why I fell in love with him, this is the Adam that now comes to mind. The one with tubes and wires, skin as pale as the sheet he lies upon. But still, I want him back. Surely things will be different now I’ve had a glimpse of life without him?

Will they? Will our problems have magically disappeared?