‘Come in, please. Take a seat, take a seat…’

You didn’t sit down, but stood, as you always do when you are tense. You’d told me once it’s an atavistic, animal thing, meaning you are ready for immediate flight or fight. I hadn’t understood until now. But where could we run to and who could we fight? Not Dr Sandhu with his shining eyes and softly authoritative voice.

‘I’d like to start on the positives,’ he said and you nodded in vehement agreement; the man was talking your kind of talk. ‘However tough the environment,’ you say in the middle of some godforsaken place, ‘you can always find strategies to survive.’

You hadn’t seen her yet, but I had, and I suspected that ‘starting with the positives’ was putting a few cushions at the bottom of the cliff before pushing us off it.

‘Your daughter has achieved the hardest thing there is,’ continued Dr Sandhu. ‘Which is to come out of that intensity of fire alive. She must have huge strength of character and spirit.’

Your voice was proud. ‘She does.’

‘And that already puts her ahead of the game, as it were, because that fight in her is going to make all the difference now.’

I looked away from him to you. The smile lines around your eyes were still there; too deeply etched by past happiness to be rubbed out by what was happening now.

‘I need to be frank with you about her condition. You won’t be able to take in all the medical speak now, so I’ll just tell you simply. We can talk again – we most definitely will talk again.’

I saw a shake in your leg, as if you were fighting the instinct to pace the room, flee from it. But we had to listen.

‘Jennifer has sustained significant burns to her body and face. Because of the burns, stress is being placed on her internal organs. She has also suffered inhalation injuries. This means that inside her body her airways, including part of her lungs, are burnt and not functioning.’