She lived her life in three rooms. The neonatal ICU, the operating theatre, and her mother’s womb. Five and a half months in one, two minutes in the second, and nine and a half days in the last.

​

You had reasoned that your fatigue-wracked bodies needed rest for the long months going in and out of hospital that you had been promised. So you weren’t there when it started. Missed calls from an unknown number on the phone screen in the dark, red on black. An instant, chemical jolt of shame and guilt and fear. This is the rollercoaster. They told you about the rollercoaster. You drive in the dark through the city, a rain-slick windscreen and neon lights, just like how you imagined the city would look, when you were young. You’re going home. Home is where she is.

​

The faces on the nurses - midwives - doctors - you never worked out which colour scrubs meant what - tell you the full text of the short, bitter story long before their lips start moving. This isn’t the rollercoaster. This is it.

​

You look at the numbers. The numbers have been all you have looked at for a week and two days, apart from what little patches of her skin you could see under the wires and those little squares of wool. Bonding squares. To strengthen the connection. But the glimpses of the face beneath the wool had done that. The unmistakable look of one of yours; in exquisite miniature.

​

The numbers are blue. That’s the good colour. But the numbers are low. That means that the numbers have been recalibrated. The machine used to be calibrated for hope. Now it isn’t. If it was calibrated for hope now, it would be screaming. The numbers would be yellow. The numbers would be red. And the numbers are dropping. The machine complains. Even calibrated for this, it isn't happy.

​

You don’t know how long you have. You only know this is it. She has lived her life in three rooms. None of them had windows you could see the world out of. You are here. This is it. There is nothing you can do. It will be over soon. It’s already over. You cling on to each other. You don’t know what to do. You know exactly what to do. She has lived her life in three rooms, and none of them had windows you could see out of.

​

You tell her the world. You are thinking literally, so you start with countries. Thailand first, then Belgium. You don’t know much about either of them, and you aren’t sure why this is the order they come in. You tell her chocolate, you tell her beaches. You’d promised her a beach, once she was outside. You tell her one, instead. You tell her sand, and sunshine, and the sea. You tell her Peru. You remember Peru, so you tell it well. You tell her Cuzco, and the perfect angles of the stones.

​

You remember that the planet isn’t the countries. You don’t want her to get the wrong idea, so you refocus. You tell her the oceans. You try to start with the size of them, but the scale is difficult to express. She is behind perspex, in a box, and the box is small. She is very small. You can’t find anything to compare the size of the oceans with here. So instead you tell her the things in them. You are trying to do things in order, so you start with the algae and the plankton. This takes too long. There is so much more of the ocean to tell her, and you’re stuck on the plankton. You skip ahead to the whale sharks. You secretly prefer them to the plankton anyway, even though you know you shouldn’t. You prefer the whale sharks because they are big. The plankton is small. That isn't fair. Small things dont matter less. You change tack. You tell her the reefs. They are good because they are colourful, and very alive. You tell her the coral, and the little fishes that live in anemones. You tell her their stripes. You tell her that you saw them, once, but that you were afraid, so you floated on a lilo with a window in it so the blue-ringed octopuses wouldn’t get you. You tell her that was OK.

​

You tell her the mountains. You tell her the meadows and the waterfalls in the summer. You tell her the snow. You tell her cold, because all she has known is warmth, and humidity. Warmth and humidity are two of her numbers. Those numbers are blue. The other numbers are red. You tell her speed, and how that makes the cold air in the mountains feel on your face. You tell her this can be scary, but also good. You tell her exciting. You tell her a plastic washing-up tub for a toboggan, and a hill, and a park and the city clad in white. You tell her igloos, and snowmen, and snowball fights. You tell her scarves and woolly hats and gloves wet from snow. You tell her hot chocolate.

​

You see light start to yellow the frosting of the window which you cannot see the world out of. She has never opened her eyes. You cannot stop looking at her. Hours have passed. You don’t know how long is left. You wish you had more time. You wish it was over. You want to pick her up. You want to hold her. You want to hold her. You want to hold her. You want to hold her, to hold her, to hold her, to hold her to hold her to hold her. You want to feel her little hand in yours as you run together. The numbers are impossibly low. They have done something to the machine and now the numbers are never yellow. You have so much left to tell her.

You tell her touching. She knows touching, but mostly she does not like it. Touching is wires and the machine, and she does not like it, and it makes the numbers yellow. But there was some good touching. There was your finger in her hand. And once there was one of your hands on her head, and one against her feet, so she could push against you, to become strong for when she was out of this room, and to remind her of the feel of the first and best room she was in. That was good touching, so you tell her more of it.

​

You tell her hugs, but this is the touching you want, and it hurts to tell, so you move on. You tell her holding hands, which she knows, but it is important, so you tell her anyway. You tell her nose boops. You tell her piggybacks and horsey rides and wrestling on the rug with a big sister and brother. You tell her pillow fights. You tell her the soft thump of it against the back of your head. You tell her giggling. You realise you haven’t told her any of the good people to do touching with. A lot of people have touched her, but that was always in the second and third rooms. You need to tell her the rest of the people. You tell her her brother. You tell her her sister. You tell her her family. You tell her cousins and uncles and aunts and grandparents. You tell her her grandfather, who would have loved her, so much.

​

You tell her humanity. You start at the beginning, which wasn’t that long ago, not really. You tell her fifty thousand years. She has been in this room for nine and a half days. The sun is coming up. You tell her petroglyphs. You tell her Joshua Tree and Moab, and how they must have wanted to leave a mark, to shout into the future and say “I was here.” You tell her art. You tell her paint, you tell her pencils, you tell her felt tips, and finger painting, and plasticine, and collages cut from magazines, and making things from pipe cleaners and googly eyes and glue sticks and shoe boxes, and you tell her photographs, and movies, and sculpture and dancing and architecture and theatre and poetry. And you tell her music, and song. Even though she knows about song, because that is one of the things you could give her. And you explain that there are actually lots of songs, but that you only remembered the words to six of them, and the six more you had copied the lyrics from onto your phone yesterday so you had more to sing.

​

The doctors say that her mum can hold her if she likes. It’s all you’ve wanted for her since the moment she was born. It’s the most terrifying thing you can hear. They pick her up. The machines scream in protest. The doctors turn off the alarms. They place her on your wife’s chest. It’s still not skin to skin. There are sheets and tubes and wires and the wires don’t reach and they’re tangled on the cot and she can’t be moved far enough to be held in the way that you know your wife needs to hold her. But she can hold her. And you can cup her head and hold her toes, which are very perfect and exactly the right kind of toes. She looks perfect, and she isn’t missing anything, she even has beautiful dark hair, even though she is very small.

​

You tell her our bodies. You tell her all the incredible things they can do. You tell her running, just for the thrill of it, so fast and far that your lungs burn and your legs feel like jelly. You tell her jumping, the magnificent splash of puddles and wellies. You tell her climbing trees, and throwing and catching, and cartwheels, you tell her falling, and being caught. And the sun is coming up and you don’t know where the time has gone and you still have so much left to tell her so things get a bit disjointed. You tell her the farm which her grandfather made, with the deer and the woods and fields with the chalk and the ancient land all around, the Ridgeway and Weyland’s Smithy and Uffington which is the best of the white horses. You tell her toad in the hole and Sunday lunch and porridge and sushi and cheese and fizzy lemonade and ice cream. And you tell her sitting around the kitchen table, all together, and how much it means to her mum and you that you have that, even if your brother and sister have amazingly bad table manners and don’t eat potatoes. And you tell her the sun shining through the glass over the table, and you tell her the house, which is so colourful, and has a small but wonderful garden with just enough room for a hammock or a paddling pool, and a single pear tree which grows so many pears that they fall like fat rain in the autumn so the squirrels come from all around to eat them and become crazy with the rotting fruit. And you tell her the cosy living room with a bright orange sofa and a stove for when the nights are cold. And you tell her London, with museums and trains and canals and parks with see-saws and swings and roundabouts and sand pits and trampolines and basketball courts and climbing frames.

​

And the nurses come with antibiotics and with reserves of strength you didn’t know you possessed you look at the syringe and you look at the tubes going into her tiny body and you find yourself telling them no because you know that she doesn’t need them any more and it would be a pointless cruelty to whatever little is left of her. And they take the syringes away and they put up a plastic screen around you with stupid fucking cartoon lions and ladybirds on it and they turn off the machines and they leave you alone.

​

And you know you’re out of time and there’s so much left to do. And you tell her stories, which is one of the things she knows, because you read those to her. And there are so many of them. And the woman you love says it wasn’t long enough, just like you knew she would, and you find yourself saying those awful, perfect, inevitable words you once read, that have lived inside you so long, and somehow now they are spilling from your lips even though you had always hoped they never would, and you say: she got what we all get. You say: she got a lifetime. And you shudder with the awesome realisation that the words are true, after all. Fifty thousand years. Five and a half months. Forty four years. Two minutes. Fourteen billion years. Nine and a half days.

​

A lifetime, too small, too soon, exactly enough.

​

You tell her love. There’s no words left. You don’t need them.