Escape.

She packs up her bags and makes her way towards the building exit, her eyes on the dark grey carpet of her office. Hafsa is: a youngest child, a loving daughter and a welfare officer for an NGO, in that order.

Tonight she has to rush to North Manchester Hospital, where she will be allotted her weekly hours to see her mother. Her mother has been in ICU for ten days, breathing through tubes, looking bruised and smaller than Hafsa has ever seen her mother look. She sits there and notices a change from last week: this time, her mother cries as she speaks.

Ten days ago, Hafsa had taken her first leave of work in two years. She had booked tickets to Spain, and waved goodbye to her mother, who looked well and told her to enjoy herself.

She had been in Spain for two hours when she got a call from her older sister.

'Hafsa, you need to come home. Mum is in ICU.'

Hafsa thought, for a split second, that her sister was joking. That it was some prank, and waited for her sister to tell her so and to enjoy her holiday. She was preparing her reproach when the silence on the other end of the line told her this was no joke. Hafsa got back on a plane.

Over the week that followed, a sleepless week, Hafsa guiltily came to realise how much her mother had always done for her, babied her. She still hung up her daughter's clothes, so that all Hafsa ever had to do with regards to clean clothes was put them on in the morning. They had eaten every meal together, and Hafsa had never kept a secret from her. Now, there was just Hafsa at the dinner table, staring blankly at forgotten cutlery, occasionally visited by her sister and nephews.

Her mother had always told her that she felt it in her heart whenever Hafsa cried. So Hafsa cried and asked 'Mum, can you hear me?'

When she spoke to the doctors, Hafsa was told that they weren't sure what was wrong with her mother. Though she was a thyroid patient, it wasn't her thyroid causing the problem, nor was it her liver or kidneys. They were investigating, they promised her.

'There is some improvement in her condition, which is positive,' they said.

Hafsa went to sit beside her mother.

'Mama, the doctors say you are getting better. I will be praying for you,' she said, and tears leaked from her mother's closed eyes.

Hafsa bit her lip, and waited till her hours were up before sobbing in the hospital corridor.

The next day, Hafsa' boss took her aside to warn her that she should begin to prepare for the inevitable. Hafsa's heart seized. She did not want to prepare for anything at all, and prayed all night that her mother would not escape her.