I awoke to the sound of my sister sobbing. Leaping out of bed I hurdled straight to the bathroom.

‘Oh my gosh, what’s happened?’

My sister was slumped on the closed-lid toilet, my mum comforting her; rubbing her back with the concerned-but-in-control expression I had witnessed numerous times before. We are a family of adventurous but clumsy children. It surprises me still to this day that none of us have ever broken a bone.

Ruth, my sister, looked over to me with sad, pained eyes and held out her foot.

‘She stepped out the shower, fell backward and stepped on my belt.’

Ruth revealed the sole of her foot and pointed to a dark puncture wound in the centre.

‘The prong went straight into my foot and mum had to yank it out’, she murmured through tears.

‘Oh my god,’ I exhaled, before catching sight of myself in the mirror directly ahead.

The blood was draining from my face, I could feel it. I was disturbingly pale but couldn’t think of anything other than how much I wanted to stop the pain my sister was feeling.

The black mist turned to a grey haze and then to fuzzy specks of reality. The back of my head was throbbing and my body ached horribly. There were screams and shouting, disjointed voices. It felt like I was dying. The panic that struck my thumping heart soon faded when I realised what had happened. I had never seen the room from that angle before, it was disorientating. The phone started ringing. My brother was yelling about an ambulance.

My mother’s concerned expression had evolved into one of troubled composure; her gentle voice drew me fully awake:

‘Oh darling. It’s okay, you’ve fainted. Be very careful getting up.’

I had fainted backwards, through the glass pane of the shower doors and down a two-foot drop into the basin of the shower. My legs were higher than my head, the ceramic bathroom tiles felt embedded into my skull. However the discomfort of hitting your head can never outweigh the comfort of appreciating you are not actually dying. A sense of relief overcame me.

I didn’t mean to, but in a morbidly thrilling way, I stole my sister’s thunder that day.