I was sitting with my back to Peter Pan avoiding Bambi’s wide eyed stare. The room was called the family room. The sign on the door stared back at me challenging me to disagree. I surrendered in hope. I prayed for someone inexperienced who had not yet mastered their poker face against bad news. Someone with a tell to prepare my nerves, mind, heart.

The last few days had been a blur of facts, figures, chances, alternatives and possibilities, all of which now lay discarded until the time came to choose which would hold our fate.

You were still a stranger to me that day, not yet named, an unseen personality lurking beneath the plastic shell that encased the apparatus, that enclosed and held together the fragments of your new and delicate life. It all seemed so simple then. I knew what was going to happen but it hadn’t sunk in. It was like I was a newly initiated psychic who hadn’t yet been convinced of the authenticity of their predictions. You didn’t quite feel part of me.