The joy of hearing my father’s voice again

‘Now I can believe I’m alive.’ These were the first words I heard my father speak in over a month. It was 7.15 on Wednesday morning and I was just clambering out of bed for my morning jog on Bodmin Moor. I am lucky in that I can run a few miles down to an old china clay quarry on the moors with a trusty labrador and two terriers in tow without seeing a single other human being. My telephone rang and I noticed it was a Plymouth number, likely heralding a call from Derriford Hospital where my 83-year-old father, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, has been fighting coronavirus since mid-March. He has been sedated and on a ventilator for most of that time, has suffered multiple organ failures, needed a tracheotomy and has now been struggling to wake up for almost two weeks. The doctors were compassionate but realistic and have told my mother several times that ‘we may need to have a difficult conversation soon’.