The room appears quiet and perfectly still, but something in the air has changed. Whoever the person was who very quietly opened and closed the door, they’re still in here. I can sense their presence.

There’s a long beat of silence, during which the walls seem to press closer to my face. It feels harder to breathe. If I had to breathe of my own accord, that is.

When it comes, her voice sounds coarser than I remembered.

‘I heard about what happened to you but I had to see it for myself before I could really believe it.’

I hear her pad forward from the door a few steps. It’s almost inaudible, but I am instantly alert to the faintest muted rustle of soft soles on a hard floor. My ears have sharpened. It’s as if my body is trying to make up for the fact that almost all other bodily functions have been rendered useless by the stroke, or whatever condition since then has paralysed me.

I catch a whisper of breath and that tells me she has moved a little closer to my bed. But I still can’t see her.

‘What happened to Evie, it’s your fault.’ Her voice sounds fairly level but there is a wobble behind it, a sort of worrying unevenness.

It’s true. It’s my fault Evie was taken. I don’t need her to tell me that. Of all people, she is far from blameless. I should never have listened to her poisoned words.

My heartbeat wallops against my chest wall and, worse than that, I can feel nausea rising in my chest. If I bring back my liquid food, I could choke to death before the nurses even get here.

I hear the soft rustle again. She’s on the move but sticking close to the walls, staying purposely out of my view.

With her last step, she comes into focus.

A vague shape of unidentifiable colours, over on my right hand side. She stands adjacent to my head but well back.

If only I could swivel my eyes, just slightly to the right . . .

‘They say you can’t move, not even a millimetre,’ she says. ‘They say it’s not known whether you can see or hear, but I’ve got some things I want to say to you all the same.’ She shuffles slightly. ‘I’ve got something I want to show you, too.’

I don’t like the way she says that.

I start to shake my head violently from side to side, and stretch the fingers of my left hand until it hurts, stretching towards the emergency button that hangs on a thick cord, just centimetres away.

I shout and yell for the nurse to come and help me, to make her go away.

But of course, in the real world, I remain completely still and unresponsive.

Now she has stopped speaking, there is only the ticking of the clock, the rasp of the respirator and the thick, cloying air that settles on the surface of my skin like a toxic sheen.

I wonder how she got past the nurses. Do they even keep a check on who is coming in here? The medical staff check on me around three or four times a day, taking their readings, maintaining my life support. In addition, Dr Shaw and Dr Chance pay their brief visits also.

The cleaner came in early this morning, whisking quickly under my bed with a mop and leaving the air thick with the acrid disinfectant that chafes at my throat. Another cleaner will drop by later.

None of them will take a moment to really look at me. Nobody will speak to me. Unless the nice nurse comes back, that is.

But for now, I am alone with someone I thought I would never see again. Someone I hoped I would never breathe the same air as again.

Evie, I whisper.

‘Do you still think about Evie? Think about what you did?’

Every day. Every day, I think about her.

‘You just had one job that mattered and that was to take care of her.’ The coloured shape draws nearer to me. ‘It’s laughable you could even think of yourself as worthy. She wasn’t taken, you let her go.’

I didn’t let her go, I screamed. She was taken. Somebody took Evie away.

And then, swiftly, she is right next to my bed and her face is above mine. Directly above my eyes, staring down at me, her lips set in a terrible grimace of something that falls between hatred and anger.

She pulls back her arm and then whips her hand in front of my face. For a moment, I think she is going to punch me in the face but then I see she is clutching something between her fingers, something white and stiff.

She flicks the piece of card, holds it squarely above my eyes. A photograph, of Evie. Her beautiful face is older; eyes like azure pools of sadness. The strawberry-shaped birthmark is partly visible on her neck.

It has been three years since I saw her, when she was five years old. In this photograph she looks about eight.

A force rises up from my solar plexus, I feel the thrust of it travelling up through my body, chest, throat and suddenly it’s there, filling my head like liquid explosive.

And I blink.

I actually blink.

Above me, her face freezes and then sort of collapses. She steps back in shock.

‘They said you couldn’t move, they said—’

Her voice falls away and she steps forward again. Her face looms in front of my eyes. She thinks she might have imagined it and she is checking me again.

I really did blink. I try to do it again and nothing happens.

I squeeze my eyelids together, or I try. But they are glued apart, and once again I am moving only in my head.

I blink repeatedly. Fast, hard, squinty blinks, one after the other.

Nothing happens.

I don’t know what I did that time, how or why it was different. I don’t know how to blink again.

The door opens and she gasps and looks round.

‘Ms McGovern?’ I hear Dr Chance’s voice. ‘The nurses said you were here.’

My heart seems to leap up into my throat.

Tell him! I cry out the words. Tell him I just blinked.

‘Yes,’ she says, turning away from me. ‘Pleased to meet you. I’m her sister.’

‘I take it someone has spoken to you about your sister’s current condition?’

I haven’t got a sister.

‘Y-yes.’ Her voice breaks with emotion. It’s an impressive performance.

‘We’re very concerned there has been no sign of any movement whatsoever. Your sister can neither breathe nor swallow independently. There will need to be’ – he pauses – ‘some important decisions made, quite soon.’

Tell him I blinked. Please tell him.

‘Of course, I understand. It’s so sad,’ she says and I hear sniffling and the swish of a tissue being whisked from a handbag. ‘I’ve been here talking to her and watching her and there’s nothing at all, no reaction. I don’t feel she’s with us anymore. It’s like she’s already gone.’

‘Indeed,’ Dr Chance says softly. ‘And perhaps it is kinder to think of it that way.’

I am here, I shout. I am still here.

‘If you’d like to come with me, Ms McGovern, we can go to my office for a chat. Dr Shaw, my colleague, may be able to join us.’

The door opens. And closes.

And I am alone again.

The room is silent in between the tick tocks and the rasps, which I hardly notice anymore.

The light is fading. The sun has moved round to the side of the building, leaving my room cold and clinical.

The blur of leaves sweeps to and fro across the glass as the wind picks up, lifting the branch to the window. On my face they would prickle and scratch, but from my bed they sound muted and soft. Like Evie’s breathing at night.

I stare at the white, glossed ceiling with blurred eyes and try to blink. Nothing happens. The sensation of an explosive fullness in my head has gone now. I feel completely hollow, devoid of life.

I project the photograph of an older Evie onto the ceiling above me. She dangled it in front of my eyes for mere seconds but it was long enough. I have it now, here in my mind. I conjure up Evie’s smooth, plump cheeks and the soft gleam of her hair cascading onto the shoulders of the red tartan dress with the white lace collar. I block out her never-ending tears, captured by the flash.

I try to un-see the fear and sadness in her eyes, but it is all I can ever think about.

I repeat her cutting words: ‘You just had one job that mattered, and that was to look after her.’

I know I am totally to blame for what happened to Evie.

It was all my fault.