The sign above the Harry Potter ward says Burns Unit. Owen and Pryia pause outside a small room before the doors to the main ward and I stop, wondering why we’re not going through. Owen squirts some gel from the bottle clipped onto his belt, rubs it over his hands and waits for Pryia to do the same. There’s yellow and black tape around the floor, as if the room has been cordoned off like a crime scene. The sign says Protective Isolation. Pryia follows Owen in, but holds the edge of the door so firmly, I almost crash into her.

‘Ah, I’d forgotten you wouldn’t be able to come in here with us. We’ll catch up with you in about ten minutes, okay?’ Behind her I see Owen put on a mask, apron and gloves, before she sharply pushes the door shut.

‘Where do they all come from, the patients?’ I ask Owen, when they come out of the small room ten minutes later.

‘Birmingham mostly and the rest of the Midlands, but we get people coming from further afield, especially north Wales. This is one of the best children’s hospitals in the UK,’ he answers, with pride in his voice. Owen is a nurse here as well as working with Singing Medicine. ‘Come on, we’re going to go onto the main burns ward now. If you need to get out you hit the green button and this is the code. I’ve written it down for you. Have you ever been on a burns ward before?’

I shake my head.

‘If you feel uncomfortable, that’s understandable, but you mustn’t make the patients feel uncomfortable. Say you’ve got to go to the toilet or need to make a phone call, then leave quietly and we’ll find you when we’re done.’ He obviously thinks I’m not going to be able to cope. How bad is this going to be? Mum wouldn’t let me see anything really traumatic, would she?

I follow Owen and Pryia, who stop in front of bright red, yellow and blue sofas that look very Ikea. A pair of crutches are propped up against one. Pryia and Owen hand out instruments and wait patiently for the kids to settle down. Parents stand awkwardly behind them, looking as if they’d rather be somewhere else. I keep my eyes on the parents for a second before forcing myself to look at the children. I tell myself not to stare at them but it doesn’t matter because they’re all busy staring at me. They whisper behind their hands but Pryia is on to them.

‘Yeah, yeah, a new person. Now hush it!’ she joked, grinning. ‘This is Hope. She’s going to be joining us for a bit. And I know you’ll make her feel welcome.’

Owen winks at me and starts singing, just like that, with no introduction. He’s bordering on cheesy, but all the kids join in. I don’t know the song. I shake my tambourine, pretending that I’m fine with all of this singing, smiling and generally being super happy, even though one girl’s hands are so burned that she can’t hold an instrument. She’s bandaged up to both her elbows and holds them away from her body at an awkward angle. Her eyes look squashed as if her skin has swollen up. But she’s laughing and singing and asking Owen to use rude words. Her dad rolls his eyes at her toilet humour and goes back to texting. I stop second-guessing what’s happened to these children. But I don’t sing because I can’t, nothing comes out when I try. It’s like that part of my voice box has been switched off and I’ve no idea why. I’d fake it if I could or even hum at least, but singing isn’t something you can fake, unlike my smile.

They sing three songs, not nursery rhymes and not hymns either. They sing funny counting songs with animal sounds, then they switch and sing personal songs they must have written about healing. I didn’t realise they wrote their own songs. I mean, Mum must have mentioned it, but I didn’t take it in properly. I thought they just altered ones from a song book or something like that. They sing stories and when they use one of the kid’s names in the song you can tell who Becky, Max or Raja is because they sit up taller and don’t take their eyes off Owen or Pryia. The singing casts a spell over all the children, taking them somewhere else. I play a triangle, ambitiously moving on from the tambourine. Pryia looks at me when I don’t join in with the singing, but she doesn’t ask me why and I’m relieved. When they finish, the kids are calmer – it’s like a musical form of medicine, a bit like magic, except I’m too old to believe in that anymore.

‘How are you doing, Hope?’ Owen asks, steering me towards a row of blue chairs lined up against the wall. We sit down and he rubs his hands over his face, his stubble making a scratching sound like sandpaper.

‘Fine,’ I lie. ‘How come I couldn’t go in that isolation room with you?’ I can’t help asking.

He pauses to search for the right answer.

‘Doesn’t matter. Don’t worry if you can’t tell me. I shouldn’t have asked.’ I’m not a member of the team so there’s obviously stuff they can’t tell me. And that’s completely fine.

‘The patient has only just been moved from HDU. The patient is now in isolation, so that complicates things a little.’

‘What’s HDU?’ I feel like I should already know. I wish he’d stop saying ‘the patient’.

‘High Dependency Unit. It isn’t quite as critical as an ICU – you know Intensive Care – it’s more of an intermediate measure before going back to the main ward,’ he explains, tucking the bottom of his polo shirt into the top of his trousers. I delete ICU from my mind before it can pin me to the floor and stop me breathing. I have to change the subject.

‘What about that girl on the renal ward, Pan Ward? The older one, what’s the matter with her?’ I gulp in air and force out the question.

‘Fatima? She’s here on dialysis, but now she desperately needs a kidney transplant. She’s been waiting a long time for a donor match.’

‘Long waiting list?’

‘It isn’t just that, it’s more about the patient’s ethnicity. About twenty-five per cent of the organ donor waiting list is made up of black or ethnic minority patients but only eight per cent of the population are black or from ethnic minority groups and not everyone wants to be a donor,’ he explains, adding, ‘she’s got the best chance here in Birmingham but we just don’t know how long she could be waiting. Not all faiths believe in organ donation. That can mean we have fewer kidneys for girls like Fatima.’

‘I knew there was a shortage of donors but I didn’t realise it had anything to do with religion.’

‘Well, now you know.’ He gets to his feet. I don’t know what to say so I get up too and follow him and Pryia down the corridor.