The first time I saw it, I was thirteen. I thought maybe I was about to have a migraine. Mum always said she saw flashing lights before they came on. It was a ring of fire, whirling like a vortex above my Grandad’s hospital bed.

“What’s that?” I said, as Mum tearfully held his mottled hand. His breathing rattled like Darth Vader.

“What are you talking about, Jake?” she sniffed, distracted.

“That circle over Grandad’s head?”

“They’re just wires. Medical equipment, that’s all,” she said.

“No! That ring of fire.” I said. It blazed larger and brighter by the second, the heat melting me, though everyone else shivered with cold.

Then the machines started beeping and the doctors came running.