I can sense time slipping away, but not feel it passing. An invisible wind pushing me like a fluff ball of old skin. I’m being rejected, cast out, ceasing to exist.

Concentrating, I can open my left eye briefly, just enough to see my visitor chair. Once in a thousand heartbeats I blink. It is always empty. When I was younger, a bit of a catch, I twisted an ankle performing a too enthusiastic Charleston. The boys came in droves to keep me company. Where are they now?

“Betty, what do you want to do when you grow up?” my little brother asks. He is sitting at the end of the bed playing with my medical chart.

“I want to be a ballet dancer and I want to live in Australia.”

“That’s stupid,” he says. “You’ll have sore feet all the time and never be warm in those silly costumes.”

I laugh and it turns into a cough that pulls at my chest.

What have I done? Have I been a ballerina? Have I lived in Australia?

I recall the teacher who called my dancing rubbish at the school show, how I locked myself in the loo until everyone had gone. Probably not a ballerina then. But the second? I can see the outback, the kangaroos, and hear the lazy Australian drawl of a man saying he loves me.

Is this a real memory? Does it matter now?

Here comes the darkness.