Warren Street

There I am on the tube to my internship induction.

A huge opportunity for me and my dream job.

Only a short journey with just 5 stops.

Next Stop Warren Street

Suddenly my heart is in my throat.

The air is thin.

My eyes begin to water.

My hands are shaking....

Of all the things to trigger me, I never thought of a tube station being one of them.

Why Warren street?

You see that is where I spent most of 2013.

Sitting on that tube.

Not knowing what I was going to see.

My sister was ill from Christmas eve 2012 and the problem is no one really knew what was wrong with her.

She was ill. Seriously ill.

I was still at university but found myself spending more time at home as my sister get more ill as I needed my family but more importantly they needed me.

That's the thing, I don't regret having to retake a year of university or losing a boyfriend as I was spending so much time away because I had to do it. 

My family needed me and I stepped up. I don't regret that.

It was pancake day, we had the usual routine of all the children sitting round the kitchen table whilst my mum tried (and on the odd occasion succeeded) to perfectly flip the pancake.

The phone rang.

What you have to try and understand is when someone you love is ill, every time the phone rings your heart drops. It's emotionally exhausted constantly trying to work out what is being said on the phone, if it is the hospital or just my nan rambling on about her cats.

This time I knew straight away it was the hospital.

I could see it in my mums face, the watery eyes, the hand over the mouth trying to compose herself when her heart is being broken.

"I have to go to the hospital now" 

She runs out the room, grabs her shoes but you can tell she has no idea what she's doing.

I grab her arm and ask her to tell me what they said.

"Charlotte's having internal bleeding, they don't know why and they don't know if it's fatal but they need me to go up there"

Tears filled eyes look at me.

"I'll come with you, we'll get the train up"

A 50 minute train ride can feel like a life time. There we both were sitting on a train having no idea what we were going to see.

Your brain goes into over load playing different scenes out in your head of what could happen, arriving and having the doctor say the dreaded "I'm terribly sorry, we did all we could"

I couldn't bare to think about it, and I could see on my mum heartbroken face the same thing was going through her mind. 

My mum had always been very strong, cold almost at times but there she was crying her eyes out. I'd never seen her look so fragile.

I think that's one of the worst things, seeing your parents cry because they're not strong enough to look after you, right now you have to look after then.

I grabbed her hand and smiled.

"I always remember when we were little going shopping in Croydon, Charlotte in the push chair, and we went into the Disney store had a look around and then left to go do some other shopping. We're halfway across the shopping centre when we look down to see Charlotte with a Winnie the Pooh bear double the size of her"

Mum began to laugh, the first smile I'd seen on her in hours.

"I completely forgot about that, I used to use it in my police talks to school about shop lifting."

Next stop Warren street,

We'd been on this route so many times we knew when to stand up, what side the doors opened and the best way to get to the hospital from the station.

The hospital is this huge glass tower. It's quite daunting but sometimes I'd be up there 5 days a week.

My biological parents don't get on. I'm sure they must of at one point but I've never known them that way.

They were refusing to talk to each other.

Therefore I had to organise when they were both visiting hospital so they weren't there at the same time.

I was the middle man.

Seems crazy you think they'd just get along for the sake of Charlotte but lets not get into that.

I didn't want Charlotte to not have a visitor so even if a family member didn't visit we'd organise for the play therapist or aromatherapist to come in and see her.

I'd basically fill in the gaps.

My mum and dad would tell me days they could do and I'd come in all the days they couldn't.

It was much easier when my older brother was home (He's in the navy) as we'd split the visits between us: it gave me a bit of a break.

Also Charlotte loved seeing him and she would always mention how she missed him.

Anyway back to the story, my mum and myself go up to the twelve floor.

Whilst Charlotte was no longer a Cancer patient as her conditions were probably caused by the cancer she was in the Teenage cancer ward, an amazing ward supported by the Teenage cancer trust.

We got into her room and she was sitting up.

Overwhelmed by seeing us she just burst into tears and sobbed her heart out.

She was scared and so were we.

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