Mum lay on the hospital bed with tubes coming off her. Nurses rushed around, plugged in equipment, pulled over a wheeled table with scalpels, sucking things, an I.V. beeps and boops and machines whirred like sirens. The sight of her turned me to jelly. I wished with all my heart that I hadn’t said those words. ‘I wish you were dead!’ It made me feel sick.

            The doctor pulled me outside. ‘She’s refusing to take blood.’

            I clutched my head and tried my best to calm my breathing. ‘She’s a Jehovah’s Witness. It’s against her beliefs.’

            The doctor gripped my shoulder. ‘Listen, she is going to die unless she has blood. I know you are only sixteen, but you are her next to kin. You can overrule her decision. It’ll be entirely your responsibility. We can’t give her blood without your permission.’

            ‘She’ll hate me. She really believes in that shit. Can’t you do anything else?’

            ‘A blood transfusion is her only hope. She has internal bleeding and is in a critical condition. The decision has to be now.’

            I looked at her pale face beneath the tubes. A nurse lifted her arm to push in a needle into her vein. She looked dead already. It was too much to bear.