What do you call a patient who is also your friend?

She was always a patient first, but over the last 4 years, she became someone I was used to seeing around. She was someone i would “catch up” with over drips of ambisome rather than a coffee, but that was still ok.

I’d keep in touch even when she didn’t know, silently making sure I was watching her progress, watching her take more steps into the future where she belonged.

I thought it was going ok, until today, when I found out that she had died.

Two weeks ago apparently. I don’t know when I’d last checked on her, but every time I would see her name pop up every now and again I would feel something. Some sweet feeling that she was there and that I could see her and continue being there for her, to continue to know her.

Now there is so much she will never get to know. She will never get to do all of the things she deserved to do, in a future she fought so hard to have.

I am angry that this could happen to her, happen to her young soul. It wasn’t fair.

She is up there with Lucy and George, and with dad. He will look after her. It isn’t fair that she didn’t get to live. I will never get to see her again, never get to hear her chatting away like she usually does, or smile at me the way she always does.

I know her fight was long and hard and she was probably fed up with it all. But she was trying to live, trying to live BRAVELY through it all.

It all could have been less tragic, it could have been different. She hoped until the end, was brave until the end.