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‘All day?’ he repeats.

‘Yes. All friggin day.’ What is wrong with him?

‘And instead of going straight to hospital you decided to hop on a plane and fly to Alicante? Why? Why would you do that?’ He sounds panicked. Why is he panicking on my behalf? If anyone should bloody panic, it’s me.

‘Hospital? Why would I do that? They can’t offer me the help I need.’

He sucks in his lower lip, nodding frantically. ‘Uh-huh. Yeah. Right. I get you.’

‘Do you?’ I doubt it.

‘You’re running away?’

Oh.

How astute of him. I can’t speak. I just can’t. I nod back instead. We lock eyes for a fraction too long, and before I have a chance to explain that while I’ve endured an extremely harrowing day, any bad decisions that ensue are very much mine to make.

‘I understand.’

‘You do?’ Finally, someone who gets the enormity of this situation. A small shiver of relief crawls up my spine. Maybe I’m not going insane after all. Maybe this is a perfectly normal reaction to a perfectly catastrophic and diabolical situation.

‘Fear of hospitals?’

What? ‘No,’ I snap.

His pupils dilate. He doesn’t believe me. He looks me over as though I’m one of those perplexing art exhibits in the Tate Modern. ‘You clearly need help.’

What the actual…?

I straighten back up and wince. Being cramped for hours in that airplane cubicle has done nothing for my spine. ‘No, I don’t. I’ll be… I’ll be… fiii-iiiiiine!’ It’s no use. Thoughts of my sister living my life with my boyfriend and picking out curtains and matching bed throws swim before my eyes. ‘Aaaargh.’ I cling to his arm, sobbing as a fresh bout of tears spring from my eyes like two power jet hoses.

He swivels his eyes past my head, across the customs hall, to bellow with the lungs of a drill sergeant to a passing security guard, ‘Over here! Bloody cyst! Help! Emergencia!’

His words filter slowly into my conscious. Bloody cyst?

I’m now aware of his words being echoed several times and being translated into multiple languages. I glance around me at the people in the queue. They are becoming agitated and staring at me.

‘I’m a doctor. How can I help?’ A man barges efficiently through the throng towards me. ‘Did you say bloody cysts?’

‘That’s what she said, yes,’ confirms the man I’m clinging to.

‘Epidermoid or sebaceous?’ the doctor asks me with a serious expression.

Eh? What the heck is going on here? It feels like an alternative reality.

‘Don’t worry,’ he says calmly. ‘I’m a dermatologist. Cysts are my bread and butter.’

The crowd seems horrified, as though I’m about to explode all over their hand luggage and brand-new holiday espadrilles. It’s enough to snap me out of it.

I wipe away my tears. ‘I don’t have a bloody cyst! Who said anything about a cyst?’ I say, stepping away from them both.

‘You did. You said you had a bloody cyst.’ The man turns to the doctor. ‘She did. She said she had a bloody cyst and she has a fear of hospitals.’

The doctor is very concerned now. ‘Has it burst? Where’s the stabbing pain? In your back, did you say?’

The crowd cautiously move further away from us.

How humiliating.