Nine days? She’s joking, right? I mean, she has to be joking. But there’s something about the way she looks at me that makes me horribly afraid she’s not.

I stare at the salty streaks of dried tears on her cheeks. She’s scared.

My brain fizzes. A woman in blue scrubs passes by. A moment later, a man in green scrubs passes the other way. They don’t even glance at us.

I must be dreaming, I think.

I pinch my nose and force my ears to pop. Then I count my fingers: thumb to index, thumb to middle, thumb to ring, thumb to pinkie. I do it with both hands simultaneously, like I’m playing scales. It’s a technique a doctor showed me once to calm myself down – to check I’m still here, the world is real, I’m not dreaming.

“What on earth are you doing?” Farah says, half laughing.

I put my hands down quickly and slide them under my knees, my face reddening. “Nothing.”

Not dreaming, I think. But I already knew that. It’s too physical for a dream. I can feel myself sweating, my shirt sticking to my back and beginning to itch. I can feel the saliva catching at the back of my throat, making me swallow compulsively. The air in my nose, the grit under my fingernails, the pressure of the chair against my backside.

Somebody else in blue scrubs walks by. I leap up and try to intercept them but somehow I miss. They breeze past.

“Don’t bother,” Farah says. “They can’t see you.”

I give her a cold stare. “What do you mean?”

Farah shrugs, turns away and chews her thumbnail, like she regrets saying it. Something hangs between us. I’m not sure I want to know what it is.

“What’s going on?” I say.

“Have you noticed that there’s no lights, no electricity?”

I frown. “I guess.”

“But we can still see?”

I glance around and see immediately what she means. We’re in the guts of the hospital, heavy doors block off every corridor that might even remotely connect to a window.

But there are no shadows. Just a sort of dull, flat, grainy reflected light that comes from nowhere.

“What does it mean?” I say.

“It means we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”

A wave of nausea hits me.

“I’m going to speak to somebody,” I say, thickly.

I stride back towards Casualty. Farah calls after me, “It’s no use.”

I peer round the corner and scan the waiting room.

Nothing. No snotty toddlers, no old people with leg ulcers.

I turn back to Farah. “Where have they all gone?”

Farah shrugs.

“This place was full.”

“I don’t think so.”

I look again. I was wrong. The room isn’t completely empty. The same guy from earlier is still there, the one with the dressing packed against his neck and the blood soaking into his shirt. He watches me without a word.

“What about that guy?” I call to Farah. “Have you tried talking to him?”

“Don’t bother. You won’t get any sense out of him.”

The air in my throat feels too heavy.

I do my checks again, more urgently than before.

Index, middle, ring, pinkie; pinkie, ring, middle, index.

My mind fights to make sense of it. That’s what the brain does, I think, a little wildly; it’s a sense-making machine. Neurons stretch through the body and take in billions of impulses from everything we see and feel and do and our brains turn them into a world. The brain doesn’t just sense reality, it creates it.

But what if the reality it’s creating is … different?

“But I saw people,” I say, my voice catching. “This place was full.”

“You’re just seeing what you expect to see. It’ll pass.”

“Was there a fire drill?” I say. “An evacuation?”

Farah lets out a cynical laugh. “You know it’s not that.”

“Is it a dream?”

Farah stands and sighs. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

SIX

I follow reluctantly as she leads me deeper into the hospital. Past another set of doors, down another corridor with a glass panel set into the wall that looks on to wards filled with empty beds.

No light. No light, but I can still see.

“Shouldn’t we stay where we were in case they call our numbers?” I say.

She keeps walking. “You still don’t get it, do you?”

The nurses’ station is abandoned, monitors blank, phones silent.