As we pulled up outside A and E, a nurse not much older than I was at the time, hovered. She already knew my name. Her long hair was scraped back and tied into a neat ponytail, as indeed I think my own might have been at the time. She wore glasses with frames, which whilst perhaps more fashionable than my mum's design wise, were every bit as thick. As I stepped out of the driver’s cabin, she spirited me away from my mum, taking me from the biggest moment of my life. Did she understand what this was? Had the impact of such moments been lost to her over the years through repetition? It was the sense of choreography I disliked the most. I know she was doing her job but it all seemed a little automated.

As she led me through a series of doors, I glanced back to see my mum being wheeled away into the resuscitation unit underneath a red waffle blanket with a deep honeycombed pattern, pulled right up to her shoulders and identical to a sky blue one I had when I was growing up. I knew immediately that was the last time I’d ever see her.

I found myself led into a windowless room. I now think that might’ve perhaps been a glimpse into the rooms of my new future. It had clean white walls and uncomfortable looking wooden chairs arranged rather raggedly that looked like they’d been lifted from someone’s kitchen. They leant the room the feel of something that had just been thrown together. To the entrance’s right, a cross hung in the centre of the room, while on a small coffee table in the far right corner was a dark blue glass vase containing dying flowers, surely an oversight that would do nothing to lift the mood in there, I thought.