N

My N, my Southern Hemisphere best friend is in hospital, in ICU and I'm so very far away. I'm besides myself with worry and concern and scared witless of what she is going through, will be going through and the outcome. I can only imagine what she is feeling.
My memories of ICU are shitty... it's where I watched my once vibrant and fantastic mother die, to be transformed into a mother I don't know, a mother who has flashes of the humour and sensitivity she once had but who I cannot talk for ages to. I don't want any of that to happen to N. Obviously, I'm projecting my own experiences into the absolute worse case scenario and I'm sure many people trot out of ICU and go back to who they were but I'm very conscious that it's a life-altering experience. If only because you see the very end of life and also the little miracles. It has to change you.
But my N doesn't need to change. She's beautiful, inside and out. Never will you meet a woman who is good all the way through, who would give the last shirt off her back if she knew it would keep you warm. Her last penny if she thought your need was greater than hers. And yet also physically beautiful. Maybe it's her soul shining through her eyes?
N is honest, a rare breed of woman indeed. She will tell you very many home truths. She will tell you if you've hurt her and not a lot of people get this.
She will also laugh like a loon with you.
I've known her since I was my son's age. I was 14. To begin with I was a bit cagey around her, that lasted 5 minutes and then we were inseparable. We didn't even go to the same school yet in the fashion of teenage girls, there wasn't a day we didn't speak. We nearly fell out over a boy once - that lasted 10 minutes. As she was raven haired and full of voluptuousness and I was blonde and not so curvy, we never attracted the same guys. When I moved to another city, we spent our holidays together. There is nothing this woman does not know about me and I know that I can tell her ANYTHING and not be judged. I have tapes of us singing and talking through 1989 and it's hysterical. I like having friends I don't have to entertain, and I didn't have to with N, because she became part of the family. I started typing this with a view to sharing some of our great escapades but it's not necessary.
I just needed to put it out there on cyber-paper, that my every thought and prayer and so on is going to my N, to get better and be well and be sparkly. Please.