“Sorry, I think I’m done now.”

Is this really it? I think. After every seizure I’ve always known there was a chance of dying, but I never believed it would happen. Yet here I am: dead or dying and spending my last moments with Farah Rafiq. The irony burns inside me.

One of the good things about being an atheist is that you’re not supposed to have to deal with this kind of shit. There’s no heaven or hell for us, just: off.

This must be some kind of neurological reckoning. An elaborate hallucination in which my dying brain forces me to atone for failing to be the person I always wanted to be. Farah isn’t really here, I think. My brain is just telling me she is. But why Farah? Why has my brain come up with her of all people?

She puts the baby down and comes and places her hand gently on my back. I can feel the warmth of her palm burning through my shirt. It doesn’t matter, I think. Whatever this is, I just need to ride it out.

“How long do you think we’ll be like this?” I say.

“I don’t know.”

I swipe at my face and sniff and turn to her. “Seeing as we’re here … what do you think we should do?”

SEVEN

We ride the trolley beds.

It’s Farah’s idea but later she insists it was mine. We start by finding the longest corridor we can, propping open the fire doors and taking it in turns to propel each other towards the far wall. We set up bins and cleaning equipment, arranged in a V, like ten-pin bowling. Farah wins every round. I decide to ride my trolley face first, like a luge, in the hope of taking out more bins along the way, but I crash into a wall and land heavily on my side instead. I writhe in agony, wondering if I’ve broken a rib, while Farah laughs so hard I think she’s going to throw up.

“Are you OK?” she says, running over at last.

I nod and haul myself up against the wall, probing my injured side. “I think I discovered a new way to prove that we’re not dreaming.”

Farah snorts and sits cross-legged, waiting for me to recover. “No dizziness?”

I look up and catch a playful look in her eye that I don’t fully understand.

“Head’s not … swimming, or anything?” she says.

Seriously? My heart sinks. I don’t want to think about the swimming pool; I definitely don’t want her to think about the swimming pool.

“Sorry,” she says. “Couldn’t resist.”

I raise my hand and wave her off. After all, I’m probably going to be dead soon, so why should I care if I’m also being mocked about the most painfully embarrassing moment of my life?

“I’m sorry about that,” I say. “It was a long time ago.”

Farah shrugs. “Don’t be sorry. It was sweet.”

Sweet? I decide to change the subject. “What happened to you?” I say. “How did you end up here?”

Farah looks away for a moment. “I don’t know. I got a headache. I was writing an essay and I thought I could keep going but it got worse and worse. Then I started not being able to see properly, so I came to the hospital.”

“It might have been a migraine?” I say.

“I’ve had migraines before,” Farah says. “It wasn’t that. I must have lost consciousness right after I got to Casualty, I don’t remember anything else. Next thing I knew, I was on the floor and everyone else was gone.”

“And you’ve really been here for nine days?”

“I might have lost count. I tried to leave a few times. I’d go to the door but then I kept bottling it and going back to the waiting area. Have you noticed that the sky never changes here? No sun. No clouds.”

I nod.

“But it gets darker and lighter, so I counted that as best I could.”

“What is this place?” I say.

Farah shuffles closer so she’s knee to knee with me, our hands almost touching. A warm flush passes through me. “I have a theory about that,” she says. “I reckon we’re in some kind of messed-up brain state.”

I give her a quizzical look. “A messed-up what?”

“It’s something we studied in philosophy A-level. The thing that we call reality is just something our brains construct.” I nod; I know that. “But because we’re so sick, our brains are constructing a different version of reality—”

I nod. I’ve watched videos on YouTube about this stuff as well, but I don’t like where all this is going. Messed-up brain state? Life rushing before your eyes? Long tunnels and bright lights? We all know what that means.

“It’s a pretty wild theory,” I say.

“You got a better one?”

“Not really,” I concede.

“Anyway, this thing we studied, it’s from Plato: the Allegory of the Cave. Do you know it?”

“No.”

“There’s a cave and a row of prisoners chained up facing a wall. They can only face the wall; they can’t see anything else.”

“That sounds cruel,” I say.

“That’s not the point. Anyway, they—”

“Do you know what they were in prison for?”

Farah cracks a begrudging smile. “Do you want to hear this story or not?”

“Of course.”

I place my hands primly in my lap. Sitting knee to knee with Farah is a rush. I have to resist the smile that keeps forcing its way on to my face. Farah clears her throat and begins:

“They’ve been locked up this way for generations, they don’t know anything else. All they can see are the shadows of the courtyard outside, cast on the wall by the light of a fire behind them. They watch the shadows and they mistake them for reality.”

“It’s cruel, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Kyle!”