His grandma had finally got his mum to bed and then had gone into Conor’s bedroom and shut the door, not asking if he wanted anything out of it before she went to sleep herself. Conor lay awake on the settee. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep, not with the things his grandma had said, not with how his mother had looked tonight. It was three full days after the treatment, about the time she usually started feeling better, except she was still throwing up, still exhausted, for far longer than she should have been– He pushed the thoughts out of his head but they returned and he had to push them away again. He must have eventually drifted off, but the only way he really knew he was asleep was when the nightmare came. Not the tree. The nightmare. With the wind roaring and the ground shaking and the hands holding tight but still somehow slipping away, with Conor using all his strength but it still not being enough, with the grip losing itself, with the falling, with the screaming– “NO!”
