‘How do you know?’ she asks.
‘Because he’s short and bald and looks like the man who solves building problems on TV.’
Her eyes are shining so bright that I can see the screens reflecting in her pupils. I love watching my screens with her. I just wish she could stay and watch them with me all the time.
Dave and Dom are walking along the trench drinking cups of coffee. Dom points at a pipe – move that along this way. He holds his hands up and pulls them apart – just to make more space. Dave rubs his forehead and glances down the road at Mike. Mike looks down at his shovel. He’s done it wrong again.
I change to screen 8. On the roof the man in the grey boiler suit walks between the silver tubes with his knife in his hand.
Beth covers her eyes. She doesn’t want to see the pigeons again.
‘Okay, you can turn it off now,’ she says.
‘No, it’s okay. Look.’
Beth peeps between her fingers.
The man walks towards the traps and bends down. He shakes his head. The traps are empty. He won’t be cutting any pigeons’ throats today.
‘Good!’ says Beth. ‘I hate him.’
I laugh and go to switch to screen 4 but I hear the corridor door open into the transition zone. Me and Beth look at each other. We know the doctors are trying to help but it’s scary waiting to hear what they have got to say. I feel Beth’s arm wrap tighter around me. We sit quiet and listen to Dr Moore talking on the other side of the door. He says something about being stuck in a traffic jam; a man behind him was blowing his horn, then he says something I can’t hear and Dr Hussein laughs.
Me and Beth look at each other.
The doctors don’t usually talk this loud.
I hear the taps turn on and the spray of disinfectant.
The door clicks opens so I turn off the screens.
‘Ah,’ Dr Moore grins. ‘It’s good to see you two are still friends.’
‘Just about,’ says Beth.
I nudge her with my arm. Having her here has been like a holiday. She gets up off my bed and sits down in the chair.
Dr Hussein walks over and checks the monitors.
Room temp.: 18C
Body temp.: 38.1C
Heart rate: 79
Humidity: 11%
Air purity: 97.0%
‘All okay?’
‘Yes.’
‘No sudden room temperature drop?’
‘No,’ says Dr Hussein. ‘All fine.’
Dr Moore looks over the top of his glasses at me.
‘So, our superhero wasn’t out rescuing anybody last night.’
I think I’ve just been told off. Again!
A grin creeps across Dr Moore’s face as he sits down on the edge of my bed. ‘So, young man. What are we going to do with you?’
I shrug and push out my bottom lip.
‘Well, tell me how you’re feeling, first.’
‘I’m still aching,’ I say, ‘but the shooting pains have stopped and I don’t feel sick any more.’
‘That’s good . . . and maybe we can tell you something that will make you feel a bit better.’
‘Are you going to let me keep the CCTV?’
Dr Hussein chuckles.
‘No,’ says Dr Moore. ‘They still have to go.’
‘Can I keep the one in reception?’
‘We’ll see. I’ll check with security.’
‘Can you ask about the one on the roof, too?’
‘You don’t give up, do you?’
I give him my best grin. Beth laughs. I wish she’d tell him that she likes them, too.
‘Okay, come on then. Listen.’ He taps my leg like he’s trying to wake me up. ‘Some good news, some bad. What do you want first?’
‘Let’s go for the good,’ Beth says. I would have picked that too.
‘Okay, well, the good news is that it looks like we’ve found this bug. It was in the air-conditioning in the car.’
‘Staphylococcal?’
Dr Moore scratches his head. ‘You know, I’m beginning to think you’re after my job.’
‘Mine too,’ says Dr Hussein.
We all smile.
‘Anyway, look, the bad news is that it’s going to take a while to get things right. You know how it goes, just like you’ve been feeling these past few days . . . up and down while we balance the meds out.’
I know how it goes – feeling sick, feeling heavy, feeling like my head’s going to lift off my body, feeling tired, feeling dizzy, feeling sick again, feeling okay, feeling good and then always back to bad. It only takes me a few seconds to think it but it can take days to happen. I put my head back on the pillow. I know it’s going to be hard but the doctors always help me make it in the end.
Dr Moore looks at Beth. She’s smiling but from the dark look in her eyes I can tell she’s worried.
Dr Moore rubs my head.
‘Hey, come on, we’ll have you right as rain before long.’
‘Soon be as fit as that chap.’ Dr Hussein nods at my poster of Theo Walcott. ‘Oh, no, I forget, he’s injured again!’
Dr Moore laughs.
‘Are you watching the game tonight?’ says Dr Hussein.
I try to think what day it is.
‘Match of the Day?’
It’s Saturday.
‘It’ll be on late. Maybe you’d best record it,’ says Dr Moore. He stands up. ‘I’ll pop back later this afternoon. Will you still be here, Beth?’
Beth looks at me. We both know that she’ll be gone by then. That’s the trouble when the doctors think I’ll get better. It means Beth can go. She’s been here four days, she can’t use up all her holiday days for that. She has to save them, just in case I need her again.
She stands up and follows the doctors towards the door. I know she’ll want to ask them more questions about me.
Dr Moore turns round. ‘Hey, don’t look so down. It’s good news for once.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ I say. ‘Sorry.’
They turn away. As soon as they’re gone I reach for my laptop – the doctors are right, I’ve got good news. I click on Skype. I must tell Hen—
I stop. My hand falls down onto my bed and I squeeze my duvet tight.
I’ve been sending him messages for years and he always replies in seconds. I used to tell him my bad news and he’d make me feel better. I’d tell him my good news and he’d make it even more great. I close the laptop down and take some deep breaths to stop the exploding-lung feeling, to stop my heart from aching. Beth said it would get better. It’s only been five days but I’m not sure it ever will.
I turn on the TV. A ferry has sunk near South Korea. It’s lying on its side with lifeboats bobbing around it in the water. The news reporter says 126 people have survived but over 200 more are missing. There’s a picture of Korean people and children crying in the streets. Then there’s a picture of a rollercoaster. A man and his little boy have been trapped upside down in it for two hours. The fire brigade have been trying to rescue them but the ride is so high that their ladders won’t reach.
When Beth comes back in, a new nurse follows behind.
‘Hi, I’m Chloe,’ she says. ‘I’ll be looking after you for a while.’ She puts a silver tray down on the table. Beth pours me a glass of water. Chloe hands me two orange pills and a big white one. I swallow the orange ones easy but I cough when the white one gets stuck in my throat.
Chloe bends down.
‘Okay?’ she asks.
I nod. I swallow again and feel the tears in my eyes. I lie down again. Chloe picks up the tray and walks out of the door.
Beth smiles. ‘She seems nice,’ she says.
‘Yeah.’ Chloe does seem nice, but I don’t think she’s going to make me laugh as much as Amir. I wish Beth would talk about him. I wish somebody would say his name. It’s like he’s suddenly a criminal. It’s like they all pretend he was never here. I feel Beth’s hand on my arm.
‘Hey, what’s wrong? Is it Henry?’
I shake my head. ‘No, I was thinking about Amir.’
Her eyes turn dark like I’ve just said a swear word.
‘I liked him,’ I say.
‘I know, but people can’t go round doing anything they want.’
‘But he was funny. He went home and showed me his family. He made me forget I was in here.’ My throat closes up again. I want to tell her I’ve heard from him, that he still thinks the aliens are going to land, but I don’t want to upset her before she goes.
She suddenly stands up and picks up my laptop.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask.
‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Let’s not sit here all grumpy. Show me all the messages you got on the forum so far. How many have you had?
‘A few.’
She nudges me. ‘Come on then, let’s have a look.’
I flip up the lid and show her them. She says ‘awww’ and rubs my head when she reads the one about me not being cute any more and laughs at the one about the man who thought he saw me in KFC. She laughs even louder at the reply. I don’t tell her it was Amir who wrote the reply and not me.
I click on the new messages.
BBC Bubble Boy Forum
Sat 4 September, 09:15
Dear Bubble Boy
Arsenal are S** H ** I ** T!
Ha! Stuff you BBC censor guy!
Jake
London
Beth sniggers.
‘Go on,’ she says.
I click on the next.
BBC Bubble Boy Forum
Sat 4 September, 10:07
Dear Bubble Boy
If you were able to go outside, what’s the first thing you’d like to do?
Emma French
Norwich
I look at Beth. She’s looking out the corner of her eyes like she hasn’t read it.
I type.
I’d take my sister to the cinema.
Beth shakes her head and points at the next message.
‘Who’s that one?’ she asks.
‘Hannah.’
‘She’s sent quite a few.’
‘I know.’
Beth nudges me. ‘Go on then, let’s have a look.’
I click on Hannah’s message.
Dear Joe.
Sorry about your grandparents going nuts. Mine aren’t nuts but my grandad is deaf. He has the TV up really loud and his next-door neighbour bangs on the wall.
I watched Mission Impossible 3 last night. It was good. I won’t tell you what it was about in case you haven’t seen it, but I think you probably have because I saw all your DVDs piled up against the wall.
I’m going to my friend Rachel’s birthday party tomorrow. I don’t want to go. But she’s my best friend, so I have to.
I’ll chat to you after.
Hannah.
P.S. If you haven’t seen Mission Impossible 3 I could send it to you.
And I don’t mind if you don’t tell me what you did. I just hope you enjoyed yourself!!
‘Awww, She sounds really nice.’
‘Well, she’s nicer than the KFC guy!’
Beth laughs. ‘I expect he’s okay too . . . Are you going to reply?’
‘Yeah, but not now.’
‘I’m glad she wrote. You need to meet new people.’
‘So do you,’ I say.
She goes quiet and looks at the screen. Her cheeks turn red. I know what that means.
‘Have you got a boyfriend?!’ I sit up on my bed. Beth is smiling.
‘Have you?’
‘I might have.’ She pauses. ‘To be honest, it’s where I was when you were taken ill.’
‘Eeeeew!’
‘Haha, it wasn’t like that!’ She pushes me on my shoulder. ‘It was a party. Loads of people were there.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Dan.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He’s a graphic designer.’
‘Oh . . . Amir used to be one of those.’
Beth goes quiet. I’d better not say his name again.
‘Can he draw cartoons?’
‘Yeah. I’ll get him to draw you something.’
‘Cool.’ I think I’d like to be a graphic designer, for comics. I wonder if I could do it from my room.
Beth puts her arm around me. I scroll through the rest of the messages. I’m glad she’s got a boyfriend. Now when she’s finished work, she won’t go back to the flat and spend her evenings alone. I hope I get to meet him, but Edinburgh to London is a long way and really expensive just to meet your girlfriend’s brother. But maybe he’s got a car and they can drive on the motorway like I did with Amir. It’s 452 miles away. I can’t imagine what it’s like to drive that far. It was only 16 miles to Heathrow and that seemed to take ages.
I close my eyes. The planes don’t take off any more but I can still see the cat’s-eyes that were in the middle of the road and the massive buildings either side of it. They play like a film on repeat in my head. Beth’s head rests against mine. I wish she could see the film too.
E = Mc2, Lucozade, GlaxoSmithKline, and Mercedes-Benz.
E = Mc2, Lucozade, GlaxoSmithKline, and Mercedes-Benz.
E = Mc2, Lucozade, GlaxoSmithKline, and Mercedes-Benz.
11 years, 3 months and 19 days
I’m standing at the window. I sent Beth a text telling her about the dream I had last night after she left. She thought it was great but a bit weird. Then she told me that she’d spoken to her boyfriend, Dan. He’s going to draw me Spider-Man. He said he’ll bring it with him when he visits me. It’ll be cool to talk to him; maybe he’ll like all superheroes and we can watch football together too. I want to send her a text now, but it’s late.
It’s too late to message Hannah too.
It’s raining outside. The lights in the glass building are all dim and blurry and the pavements are shining orange. I turn my head and look down the road. It’s long, dark and empty. The diggers and the trucks and the traffic lights have gone. Mike, Andy, Chris and Dave’s van has gone too. All that’s left is a new shiny strip of tarmac running down the middle of the road.
If the aliens wanted to land on earth they should do it on a Sunday night like this when everyone is at home watching TV.
I hear a click behind me. Greg comes in, puts my pyjamas on my bed and then stands next to me. We look out of the window and watch a man on a motorbike speed down the new tarmac.
Greg smiles. ‘I think he believed it, mate.’
‘. . . Who?’
‘Amir. I think he really thought that the aliens were going to land on that strip.’
‘How did you know that?’
‘It’s okay, Joe. He told me too.’
‘But you don’t believe in them?’
‘No, mate. I’ve told you before.’
I look back out of the window down at the gravity boost porthole. That’s where Amir said they would land. The spaceship would hover above it, with bright lights shining down onto the road. I rest my head against the glass. Out of the corner of my eye I see Greg looking at me.
‘I’ll give you a penny for your thoughts, mate,’ he says.
‘Just thinking.’
‘. . . about Henry?’
‘No. Aliens.’
‘If you believed in them, I could talk to you about them like I used to with Amir.’
‘You can still talk about them, mate. I don’t mind.’
‘You’ll laugh.’
‘I won’t,’ he says.
‘Promise?’
‘Go on, tell me, mate.’
I point at the drain cover in the middle of the road just after the crossing. ‘They’re going to land there, but the spaceship won’t touch the ground. It’ll hover with a beam of light above the gravity porthole. Then the doors of the spaceship will open and a gangplank will slide out and go straight into the reception.’
Greg stares at the drain cover. ‘Keep going, mate,’ he says.
‘The aliens will walk out one by one.
They won’t have to wait for an appointment; they won’t have to ask for directions because as soon as they get inside they will take over all the doctors and nurses, take their bodies and their minds. But they’re not stealing them –’
‘That’s a relief.’
‘No, they’re just going to borrow you for a while.’
Greg rests his hands on the sill. I tell him that the aliens won’t have to wait for the lifts or climb the stairs because they can morph through ceilings and walls. And when they do the rounds and visit us all, we won’t have to unbutton our shirts because they won’t have stethoscopes hanging around their necks or heart monitors in their pockets. All they’ll need are their minds and their hands. ‘Really?’ Greg looks surprised.
‘They’re here to cure us . . . not kill us.’ I say. ‘They just stare at us, one by one and get inside our bodies and find the poison, then they’ll take it all away. And when we’re cured we all put on our clothes and shoes and walk out of the doors and then we get to go home.’
Greg smiles and puts his arm around my shoulder. ‘Mate, maybe I should have believed in aliens after all.’
I smile and look back out the window. I miss Amir talking about the aliens. I miss having him around. He took me outside, he got me Sky TV and introduced me to his family. But most of all I miss talking to him. Maybe he was crazy but he was so much fun. I wish he could’ve stayed. I’m tired of the nurses changing all the time. The only one that stays is Greg.
‘You okay, mate?’ Greg squeezes me.
‘I miss Amir.’
Greg sighs. ‘Yeah, we all do, mate. It’s difficult not to miss someone like that! But maybe this wasn’t the job for him.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. Not everyone can do it. You know what it’s like.’
‘Kids dying.’
‘Yeah. Not everyone can cope with that. I don’t think he could, mate.’
I look down onto the street. A man and a woman are walking hand in hand. They stop and look at the clothes-shop window. A car’s headlights light up the landing strip as it goes down the road.
Greg ruffles my hair.
‘Come on, mate. You can’t stand here all night.’
I turn around, pick up my pyjamas from the bed, and take them with me into the bathroom. I wash and change while Greg checks my monitors and puts a fresh glass of water on my table.
The Bubble Boy Page 22
