I’d go through it all again just to hold her hand.

I thought I could save everyone.

I didn’t want to be the sun to light up their day but the moon to shine light in their darkest moments.

However it seems whilst I tried to fix these broken hearts, I myself was cut by the shattered pieces.

You know if I could I would take the pain away.

Even if it meant I felt more I would take it away, if it meant you would feel better.

Right now it feels like the people I’m trying to save aren’t getting better and I’m getting worse.

That’s the problem when you’re considered the strongest one, you must hold everyone up but no-one will ever offer you a hand.

I found myself falling into old habits, telling a lie, faking a smile, having something eat away at my head and heart but not having a soul I could trust it with.

I will tell it to you, reader.

Promise you will not pity me.

A night at the bar a girl had fallen and badly injured her knee.

I was working close down and whilst the bar was emptied of customers, the paramedics entered.

The girl was distressed and clutching onto the gas and air.

The cries of pain this girl made when they tried to move her.

Blood curdling.

It triggered something inside me.

In fact the situation was fairly familiar.

At the Children’s hospice, I had fallen asleep on an armchair in Charlotte’s room, refusing to leave her side.

My university books on my lap and my empty dinner plate on the floor, the nurses brought it in the room for me understanding my need to be with Charlotte (I also couldn’t bare the idea of sitting in the dining room and making small talk)

I was awoken by a boney tap on my shoulder, Charlotte even before she’d lost all the weight had incredibly boney fingers making her pokes very hard to ignore.

I instantly jumped from my chair and looked at the expression on her face followed by her hands (She was deaf and used sign language).

The nurses knew very little sign language so I was a vital translator- hence why I had to be there all the time.

She complained of a pain in her knee.

Now it is important to understand Charlotte had a high pain tolerance, having over 50 operations in her time she was rarely one to exaggerate when it came to pain.

We had a system, I would ask her on a scale from 1-10 how bad the pain was in order to figure out the seriousness.

Even when Charlotte had C-diff, Chicken pox internally and was in intensive care she only labelled pain at a 6.

So when she signed the number 8, I knew it was something serious.

Charlotte had lost a lot of weight by this point, so much so that her bones were beginning to break through her skin.

Mainly at the joints, so elbows and knees.

A nurse stood in front of me, waiting instruction, I knew nothing of medicine but I knew Charlotte like the back of my hand.

It was decided we needed to take the dressing off her knee, change it and up her pain medication.

Charlotte’s boney fingers gripped onto mine whilst we slowly moved her leg.

The cries of pain echoed through the hospice, my heart sinks just thinking about it.

Well that cry was parallel to the one I heard at the bar that night.

Suddenly I was back in that room, the smell of the chemicals from the medicine and the touch of Charlotte's hand in mine.

I was upset when I realised I wasn’t there, whilst that was one of the most horrendous things I’ve ever experienced-

I’d go through it all again just to hold her hand.