I was only five, my mother says, too small to remember. But I do. I remember it all. Even the things that I shouldn’t be able to.

‘Wakey wakey Elaine. It’s morning now’, the mellow voice of my mother says. I am ready to reply a sleepy ‘nooo muuum’ and turn to the side when I suddenly realize that it’s impossible. I try to open my eyes but I can’t, nor can I move my body.

‘Elaine!’, my mum calls again. ‘Elaine, come on!’

She shakes me gently. I want to reply, to give her a sign but nothing works. With my children mind, I try to make sense of what is happening, but I fail. I want to cry, to scream, do something to show that I am here and I am scared. The shaking and her voice become harder with each second. In less than a minute I can hear my mum in full panic, calling my dad to come in the room straight away. He is beside me in no time and I feel his two fingers on my neck, pressing it.

‘She is breathing. Anne, relax, she is breathing’, he says to my mum which by now is weeping hard and keeps repeating ‘my baby is dead, my baby, my baby’.

What is happening to me? Why can’t I move? Why can’t I talk? Why is there so much darkness? Mum? Mum?

I hear the ambulance sirens, I feel my body being picked up, examined, I feel the speed of the vehicle, the bumps on the road, everything.

‘Do you have any drugs or alcohol in the house in places that she could have reached?’, a doctor asks. ‘No, no, please save her, please, what happened?’, my mum is in hysterics. My dad replies more calmly, and he and the doctor go on to have a lengthy discussion about what could have caused this that could have been their fault. ‘Did you notice any unusual behavior? Did she have a fever?’ He keeps asking and asking as my mother’s crying becomes louder and more desperate. Someone comes to take her out of the room, and then it’s only my dad and the doctor’s voice present. I want him to stop asking my dad what he did wrong, he hurts him, he hurt my mum already, why can’t he understand that? It’s not their fault. It’s… it’s me. It has to be my fault. Why can’t I open my eyes and talk to them? I should try harder. I can do it. I know I can do it. I have to do it.

For a week I go in and out of consciousness. Sometimes the only way to understand that I am sleeping is because there are other people in my dreams and I have the sense of vision again. The worst part of those dreams is waking up in the darkness again. Then, on the seventh day, as suddenly as it started, it ended. I wake up. Finally, I wake up and I see and move and talk.

‘It’s a miracle’, they said. ‘For her, it was like a long sleep’, they said. ‘She won’t remember a thing’, they said. But I do. I remember everything.