The ones we never meet.

It’s not always the people you meet who have the biggest impact on your life.

Sometimes it’s those you’ve never met; those whose stories find their way to you in your darkest moments, reminding you that you’re not alone, and that there’s still so much to be grateful for.

For me, that person was Eimear.

To this day, I still don’t know much about her, only that her story reached me when it was too late to find out more; too late for us to learn about one another.

It was June 27th, 2019.

I’d been fighting an infection and was still reeling from the news that the leukaemia had spread to my central nervous system. 

I’d also been moved into a private room – a precaution that suited my need for solitude as much as it frustrated me with its confinement. Four walls to keep me safe, four walls to keep me in.

It had only been a few months since my relapse, but it might as well have been a lifetime. By this point, it felt like the odds were stacking against me. One thing after another. 

My body was exhausted – it had already been through so much – and there was still so much ahead. I was tired of chemo. Tired of infections. Tired of waiting, hoping, praying.

My surroundings didn’t help much either.

10 North was old and weary. The walls were sterile, and the air thick with disinfectant. 

Trolleys lined the hall, stacked with tablets, needles, and test tubes.

IV bags hung heavy with platelets, blood, chemo – the lifelines keeping us all going.

In bays, machines hummed softly and monitors beeped in rhythm, each one a constant reminder that life here was measured in drips and doses. And everyone around me looked the same – grey, hollowed, quietly breaking beneath the weight of treatment.

I wanted out. I wanted it to be over.

And with that realisation came something heavier: acceptance.

I decided this would be it. I’d finish the treatment, follow the plan, and hope for the best. But if I relapsed again, that would be it – the end of the line. I’d let my body run its course. 

I just didn’t have it in me to fight anymore. And that thought stayed with me, like a weight in my chest. 

It’s a strange thing, coming to terms with your own mortality – especially at twenty-five.

People call it the decade of adventure, of travel, freedom, and finding yourself.

But I’d spent mine wondering if I’d even make it to the following year.

I felt alone too. Most residents on the ward were much older, their bodies worn thin by years I hadn’t yet lived. As for those closer to my age, they seemed to be hidden away in other bays, glimpsed only through half-smiles or the brief meeting of tired eyes.

So yes, I was resolved. If chance decided to deal me another bad hand, I’d take it as it came. I was too tired to keep pretending I had any control left.

But then the news came.

That morning, the air had certainly felt heavier than usual. Mum even said she felt it the moment she arrived on 10 North. 

The nurses were quieter, their smiles thinner, their usual small talk replaced with silence. The ward felt tense, sombre.

And the reason?

A young woman – twenty-five years old, just like me – was taking her final breaths a few doors down.

“She was going to get married this year too,” one of the nurses said. “They held the ceremony here, on the ward. It was beautiful.”

The words sank deep, leaving a hollow kind of ache behind.

She’d had a stem cell transplant – a final push for recovery – but perhaps her body was simply too fragile to take any more. And when infection took over, it was just too much.

I never knew her, but I remember sending her a DM on Facebook.

I’m still not entirely sure why – maybe it was just to feel some kind of connection, maybe it was just to reach out, to say something – even if I knew she’d never see it.

All I knew was that something in me wanted her to know she wasn’t alone – that someone like her was nearby. Someone who could feel even a fraction of the pain and anger she was possibly carrying.

Someone who shared the same hopes, the same milestones waiting just out of reach.

Someone who understood what it meant to have a life on pause in your twenties.

And though I never knew her, her life left a mark – on the staff, on her fellow patients, on everyone lucky enough to have known her. And on me. A stranger behind a closed door.

In the aftermath, I felt selfish. 

I’d spent hours, days, even weeks drowning in my own pain, forgetting that others were facing goodbyes, while I still had time and hope, despite acting as though both were already gone.

Listening to Eimear’s story, I knew it could have easily been mine.

And the courage in how she met the end of her life filled me with both shame and resolve.

So I made a promise – to her, and to myself.

That I would face whatever came next with the same strength, the same grace, and the same quiet bravery she had shown.

Because, Eimear – your story found me when I needed it most, reminding me what courage looks like: the kind that keeps showing up, even when life doesn’t play fair.

Thank you for that.