Mormor and Uncle Pete are Mam’s mam and younger brother and they are already at the hospital by the time we get there, sitting with Mam in the beige waiting room beneath Aslan the lion from Narnia. A box of tissues and empty cardboard coffee cups sit between them. Their eyes are red and puffy. Outside the room, hospital staff walk quickly everywhere, and for a moment I try to imagine I’m just there for something normal, but of course it’s never normal being in hospital, is it?

A man in a doctor’s coat comes into the room. He explains that Dr Nisha has gone home, and that he is the doctor in charge of Seb’s case. I don’t remember his name and he doesn’t look at me once. He seems nervous and doesn’t sit down.

The news is not good. Seb’s blood pressure and breathing rate have fallen and, while the doctors are still ‘optimistic’, it is still too early to say, and they still don’t know exactly what’s happening to him.

There is talk of the ICU, which I know from TV means ‘intensive care unit’, reserved for the most serious cases of everything, although Seb is not there. Not yet.

‘Can I see him?’ I ask the doctor.

I’m on my own with Seb in his room.

I can hear Mam and Uncle Pete murmuring outside, talking with a nurse. Seb looks like he’s hardly moved since this morning. He’s still for ages, then he twitches a bit – maybe his hand, or his eyes move behind the eyelids, then he’ll return to stillness, only his chest moving up and down under the bedclothes. There’s a drip attached to his arm, and something else leading from his wrist, and a strip of something stuck to his forehead.

‘Hey, Lil-Bro,’ I say. I feel self-conscious. No one can hear me, but then Seb probably can’t, either, so it’s all a bit odd, like I’m talking to myself. There’s a chair next to his bed, so I sit down and take Seb’s left hand in both of mine. I’d never hold his hand normally, of course, but this is anything but normal. I run my fingers over the raised red marks on his wrist. Have they got worse?

Perhaps, in the dream, he’s twisting and turning to get away? Perhaps, like me after the Hitler dream, he’s dreaming that he’s awake? Or is he just stuck in a static dream-state, unaware of what’s going on? I hope it’s that. I can’t bear to think of him terrified all this time: aware that he is in a dream, but unable to escape it.

The marks are definitely worse. I wonder if anyone has noticed? I’m thinking about telling someone when Seb jerks his arm away and then turns his head on his pillow. For a glorious moment, I expect his eyes to open and his stupid, gappy grin to reappear and I start to smile …

He gives a little grunt, then a gasp and a sort of little cough, then his body twitches again. He doesn’t wake, but I notice he has started to sweat. There’s a few seconds of this; some numbers on a screen above him start changing rapidly, though I’ve got no idea what any of them are.

Seb’s twitches are becoming bigger, and his head moves from side to side. Then there’s a beeping sound coming from the machine. It’s like he’s in a fight with an invisible attacker.

‘Seb! Seb, man!’ I shout. ‘Wake up!’

I look at his writhing head and I gasp: a huge red mark has appeared below his left eye, spreading down his cheek. It’s exactly as though he has been punched in the face, and the sweat is now pouring off his forehead. The beeping of the machine continues, and a nurse dashes in, ignoring me, and studies one of the screens. She hits some buttons, the beeping stops, then she goes to the door and calls down the corridor.

‘Jez, Aminah! Quickly!’ Two other nurses, a man and a woman, come hurrying. Mam and Uncle Pete are nowhere to be seen, and I’m just standing next to the bed, feeling scared and useless.

They all say things like, ‘BP elevated one three five over sixty. Heavy perspiration. Heart rate one twenty, ECG spiking, temperature falling thirty-three degrees …’

Then the nurse called Jez leans over to look at Seb’s face. He touches the raised wound gently with a gloved hand. I can see already it’s going to be a big bruise, and I’m hoping that Seb is not in pain.

‘What is this? Who was here with him?’ says Jez to the others and they all lean in to look at it. Then the three of them turn to look at me.

He says, ‘What happened? Did he fall?’ Then, more slowly, ‘Did you touch him?’ It’s a moment before I realise what is going on.

They think I hit my brother! I would never do …

Okay, there was that time I hit him with the game controller, but that was ages ago …

I raise my hands. ‘No. No. No, no, no. I didn’t touch him. Honestly. It … it just came up on his face!’ My voice gets higher and louder. ‘Really! Why would I?’

If anyone answers that question, I miss it among the people coming and going – quickly but with purpose. Ten minutes later, Seb has been admitted to the intensive care unit.

His condition is being described as ‘involuntary comalike stasis with spontaneous facial and dermal contusion’. I suppose the doctors know what that all means, but I don’t. I hear a lot of, ‘Are you sure?’ and, ‘We need to wait for the results before we know,’ and stuff like that.

Back in the waiting room, Mam and Dad sit side by side while I stare out of the window again.

‘Malky,’ Dad starts, and Mam snaps back, ‘Tom. Don’t.’

He ignores her. ‘Malky. I know you’ve been violent to Seb in the past …’

‘Dad! Honestly!’ Mam knows that I wouldn’t have hit Seb. Well – not hard, anyway, and not in the face like that. They have both seen us fight plenty of times, Mam especially. Apart from the game-controller incident, I gave Seb a black eye once when I pushed him over and his face hit the corner of a low wall; I was grounded for a week after that. Seb once kicked me so hard in the mouth that he split my lip, but he wasn’t grounded, because I was pinning him down and Mam said it was my own stupid fault.

Trouble is, Dad’s not around these days and maybe he thinks I’ve turned into a thug. There’s a look on Mam’s face that tells me she’s not totally convinced that I didn’t hit him. Not one hundred per cent like you need your mum to be about something like this. As for Uncle Pete and Mormor, they’ve come back with coffees and all Mormor wants to do is hug me, which is nice to begin with, but it’s getting a bit tiresome.

Whatever Dad is going to say next is interrupted when the young doctor from before returns and holds up a plastic bag.

‘We have had these back, at least,’ he says.

‘What?’ says Dad.

‘Malcolm’s dream … things?’

‘The Dreaminators?’ I say.

This is amazing – I can’t believe it! I’m not going to have to get one off a dead man, after all!

Uncle Pete and Mormor exchange glances: they have no idea about any of this. The doctor sits down next to me. In fact, I soon realise that this is pretty much all for my benefit.

He smiles, trying to make the mood a little lighter, and reaches into the bag. His brings out two broken plastic rings and some tangled and cut wires and it’s a few seconds before my mind catches up.

When it does, I feel sick.

The Dreaminators: they’ve been ripped apart almost beyond recognition.

I stare at them. There’s no way I can put them back together.