By the time I’d run into the room, breathless and already weary, I had convinced myself that this couldn't be my reality. The words ‘It’s time’ ran on a constant loop in my mind, right up until I saw the look on my sister’s face as she lay underneath the duvet of her otherwise perfectly made bed.

I’d imagined this moment a lot. I’d dreamed about it, had nightmares, and lost hours of my life in a vortex of relentless wondering, what ifs and dread. Now that it was happening, I was certain it couldn’t be real.

She didn’t look grey or heavy the way I’d prepared myself for her to look. She didn’t look in pain or uncomfortable. She wasn’t writhing around with tears falling down her face, begging us to save her. She didn’t seem upset, worried, or even a little bit scared.

Elizabeth looked calm.

Peaceful.

Almost happy.

If my eyes hadn’t fallen to her chest and seen the slow, mesmerising rise and fall, I would have thought she was already dead.

For the first time in months, she looked like my older sister again – older by ten years, but somehow younger at heart. Although her skin was pale, the slightest tint of rose coloured the apples of her cheeks, just enough to make her seem as though all she was doing was taking a nap.

I don’t know how long I stood there for, over-analysing every single detail about her, but the heavy hand upon my shoulder soon brought me back into the moment, and as I turned to see the lost look in my father’s eyes, I knew what I had to do.

I had to say my final goodbye.

My chin trembled as I sucked in a breath and held it high up in the very top of my chest. The room was stifling hot, but I’d never felt colder than I did as I took those slow, agonising steps towards her bedside. The single chair that sat beside her was still warm from whoever had sat there before me, and my imagination went wild as I thought of the words my mother and father had no doubt already spoken before my arrival.

The plain, dusky pink duvet was marked with teardrops, and in a desperate attempt to focus on anything but the death of my sister, I reached out to try to rub them away. I knew it was futile, but I didn’t want Elizabeth seeing any signs of sadness when she had been so strong for everyone else around her.

Her fingers twitched on top of the material, and my own slid across the soft surface to graze hers and touch them just one final time. There wasn’t a crease in the fabric cocooning her. There wasn’t a chipped nail on her hands or a stray hair out of place. She’d asked for everything to be perfect when she slipped away. She’d asked for us all to be ready. We’d been preparing for weeks. Now that it was time, I wanted to scream out in agony and lash out in a fit of rage, mess everything up and throw off her covers, just so she had a reason to stay.

“Tatty,” she croaked through dry lips.

“Lizzy,” I said quietly, running my tongue over my mouth to try to gain some movement. I was choking on nothing at all, but I was choking. Someone had their hands around my throat and was squeezing tight. I just couldn’t see whoever or whatever it was.

Elizabeth sighed softly, the weight of the air she forced out of her lungs bringing a small, tired smile to her face as she continued to speak with her eyes closed, while my fingers worked calming infinity loops over her open palm and wrist.

She’d never looked more beautiful to me than she did at that moment.

“I’m ready,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“Don’t be sad.”

“I won’t be,” I lied.

“You already are.”

“I just wish I could come with you,” I said, so quietly I wasn’t even sure she heard it.

“I’ve had a good life. You have to...” She paused, inhaling sharply and smiling once again before she continued. “You have to stay. It looks like someone else needs you now.”

“Mum and Dad can take care of themselves,” I assured her, dropping my chin to my chest to try to find just a small ounce of strength that would stop me from crying as hard as I wanted to. I had no right to beg any god for any kind of reprieve, given what she was going through beside me, but I begged anyway. I begged silently, unashamedly and pitifully. I begged because I was weak, because I wasn’t as strong as Lizzy, because I could never dream of being as strong as her.

“And what about the other person in this room?” she asked, her head rolling to face me in slow motion. As soon as I heard her hair moving against her cotton pillowcase, I looked back up again, tears coating my eyes as I stared at all her features.

“You’re the only other person here, Elizabeth. It’s just the four of us now. It will always be the four of us.”

“You have eyes, little sister, but you still do not see.” I continued to massage her hands and waited for her to say something that made sense to me. “I wish you’d see. I wish you’d feel.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Step out of the bubble, Nat. Look around you.”

Blowing out a shaky breath, I somehow tore my attention away from her to glance back over my shoulder.

When I saw him, I stared openly. I had no reason to attempt to hide my shock. I had no reason to try to close my open mouth, wipe my tear-filled eyes or clean away the damp from my forehead. He was here. In my home. In the same room as my dying sister.

“Alex?” I whispered in disbelief.

He stood there, completely out of place, his hands joined in front of him, and no football in sight as his head hung low.

“What are you doing here?”

Alex didn’t look up for a few seconds, and the silence allowed me to feel the curl of Elizabeth’s one finger around my own before she gave it a weak squeeze. I glanced back at her in shock, unable to process anything I felt at all.

“I promised I would walk you home, that I would make sure you were okay,” he answered quietly behind me.

I glanced back at him again, then at my father. My father. The man who hadn’t let anybody in here beside the three of us and the nurses that had been trying to keep his firstborn child as comfortable as possible during the final weeks of her life. Not even friends he’d known for decades had been allowed to see her as anything other than perfect. He’d forbidden it. He’d refused to bend to anyone.

Yet here we were, in her final moments. And there stood Alex. A boy I’d known for a matter of minutes.

“Dad?”

“It’s fine, Natalie.” My father’s voice was weaker than I’d ever heard it, but he meant what he said. There was no lie to his approval.

“But…”

“I invited him in.”

“Why?” I asked softly, confusion tearing through me, even though it shouldn’t have mattered who was here at all. I had minutes left. Moments. The time for questioning and problem-solving could wait, couldn’t it?

Lifting his head, my dad looked straight into my eyes and I watched as a heavy tear made its way down one side of his agonised face.

“Now is not the time for restrictions. Your sister’s orders.”

“I don’t understa–”

Elizabeth’s short but raspy cough brought all my attention back to her at lightning speed. I spun in my chair and leaned forward, pushing myself up against the edge of the mattress as she tried to open her mouth and say my name. “Natalie.”

“Don’t speak, sis. It’s okay. I know it hurts. I don’t want to see you hurt anymore.”

“Can’t… let a little pain stop me from saying what needs to be said.” Her voice was already angelic, and I wondered to myself just how long her chosen god had been preparing to take her away from me. How long had he been working on her as his newest masterpiece? She was ready to go to him – that much was clear, even to me. She was ready to be one of the good ones. One of the pain free.

“Nothing is as important as you are right now.”

“You are. You are important to me. To Mum. To Dad. I know me being ill has kept them busy, but…” She paused again, inhaling slowly.

“Lizzy.” Lifting her lifeless hand, I dropped a kiss to the tips of her fingers and left my lips resting against them. I wanted to feel her warmth, to hang on to it for as long as humanly possible.

“Just promise me one thing.”

“Anything.”

Her dry mouth parted again as she hauled in a breath. That knowing smile refused to leave her face, despite what she was feeling, despite how frightened she surely must have been.

“Never let the end of one thing stop you from enjoying the beginning of another.”

Then there was silence. Silence because I didn’t know what she meant, silence because I couldn’t stop staring at the way her eyes rolled behind the backs of her eyelids, and silence because I suddenly felt the need to say something profound, but couldn't think of one single, tiny little thing to say at all.

“Let him be here,” she mouthed so only I could hear. “Let him in.”

The life was leaving her voice now. I’d already had so much more of her than she probably thought she could give me, but it didn’t stop my one final plea as I reached out to smooth her hair away from the sheen of death that was creeping over her forehead.

“Don’t leave me,” I begged pathetically. “Please, Lizzy. Don’t leave me. I don’t know how to be anything without you. I can’t… I can’t…”

It was unfair. It was cruel. The risk of my last words to her making her feel guilty was too much, but I couldn’t help it. She was all I’d ever known and the thought of life without her crushed my soul and made me want to beg death to take me instead.

“Elephant juice,” she mouthed to me in complete silence. It was the one thing we’d always mouthed to each other to declare our love when the words had often been too embarrassing for us to say aloud. “Elephant juice, Tatty.”

Tears streamed down my face as I said my final words to my sister.

“I love you, too, Elizabeth. I love you so much.”

The moment her fingers froze and her shoulders dropped, I could have sworn I saw her last breath drift out from her smiling lips and rise up towards the sky. Tainted with purple.

Just for me.