The Distant Home (7 page)

Mrs Webster was tapping the buttons of her telephone, like a Morse Code operator. She was punching in a message.

As she did so, the transparent door of the microwave oven was suddenly no longer transparent. It was like a video screen on which words were appearing. At least, they looked like words, but they were not in English, and not even written in letters that anyone in Middle Street would have recognized. The strange words in their strange script scrolled over the screen from bottom to top and right to left.

As she punched in her code, Mrs Webster was muttering to herself. ‘Code’s rusty. This better work. Codename Webster breaking deep cover … trouble … red alert.’ And all the while she continued monitoring what was happening to Sally in the hospital.

‘How long do I have to stay here?’ Sally said, as Chambers and the nursing sister headed for the door.

Chambers paused. ‘I’ll be discussing that with your parents,’ he said.

‘Why not discuss it with me?’ Sally told him. ‘I do understand the issues involved.’

‘I’ll discuss it with your parents!’ Chambers almost yelled. He and the sister went out and he slammed the door. As Sally rolled out of bed, she heard a key turn in the lock. They had locked her in!

She tried the door to test it, but it was definitely locked. She spun away, moved quickly to the wardrobe, opened it and sighed with relief when she found her own clothes in there.

Swiftly, she slipped out of her hospital smock, and dressed in her ordinary clothes. Now at least she would be ready to move when she got the chance.

Sally was intent on escape. Bobby had told her that Mrs Webster had said it was important for her to get out of there, and on a matter like this she tended to take Mrs Webster’s word. Also, she totally distrusted Dr Chambers, whom she had already summed up as being a bully who just wanted his own way, whatever it cost other people. She certainly didn’t want to be in the power of anyone like him.

As Sally was dressing, Chambers and the nursing sister were moving away down the corridor.

‘Who else knows about this?’ Chambers was saying.

‘Just you, me, Dr Rosen and the radiologist,’ the sister replied.

‘It goes no further,’ Chambers said. ‘I’m relying on you.’

The sister nodded. In her experience, when people told her that they were relying on her, it was a very polite threat. There always was an ‘or else’ there that had not been spoken.

In the X-ray department, Rosen was already busy with Bobby, Maria and Jim. Bobby had just been scanned and now it was Jim and Maria’s turn.

‘See?’ Bobby had said. ‘Perfectly normal. Your machine just went bananas when Sally was in it.’

Rosen ignored him and ushered Maria to the machine.

Meanwhile Sally was dressed and using the telephone in her room. By experimenting she had worked out the number to call for the switchboard, and now she was using her best deep adult voice to speak to the operator. ‘Could you page Dr Bobby please, I’m on three one two.’

‘Dr Bobby?’ asked the puzzled operator.

‘Yes, Dr Bobby. That’s …’ Sally hesitated, then spelled it out, ‘that’s B-O-B-B-I. He’s … he’s from India. On attachment, only arrived this week.’

‘Paging him,’ said the operator, and Sally hung up, and let out a breath of relief. She hadn’t been sure that she would get away with it.

In the lobby, the desk clerk was leaning forward and speaking into the microphone. ‘Dr Bobbi please. Dr Bobbi …’

The voice floated through the hospital, ignored by everyone whose name was not ‘Dr Bobbi’.

In the X-ray department, Jim was in the machine with Maria watching anxiously. Bobby was in one corner, planning his next move. For a moment he did not react to what he was hearing. ‘Paging Dr Bobbi. Dr Bobbi, there’s a call for you on line four,’ said the soft voice coming from the paging system.

Bobby was stunned for a moment. Maybe there was a Dr Bobby working in the hospital. No, he didn’t believe that. It must be Sally trying to reach him. He looked around, saw a telephone on a desk, moved to it, picked it up, and then sat down out of sight behind the desk with the phone in his lap. He picked up the receiver and pressed button number four on the main pad. That did not work. Then he saw the little buttons above the main ones, and pressed the fourth one from the left.

‘Dr Bobby here,’ he said, dropping his voice.

‘Bobby,’ said Sally’s voice, ‘got to be quick. They might come. The extension number written on the phone is three one two, so that’s probably the room number as well. There are bars on the windows, they’ve deadlocked the door.’

‘Right,’ said Bobby, improvising a plan, ‘I’ll be there soon as I can. A fire axe should deal with the door.’

‘No fire axes, Bobby,’ said Sally. ‘Just get up here. Room three twelve.’

‘Right. Soon as I get clear,’ he was saying, when a shadow fell across him. He looked up to find himself looking up into the pink froglike face of Dr Chambers. The thin lips were stretched into what Dr Chambers obviously thought was a smile. ‘Hello Bobby,’ he said. ‘I need your blood.’

‘I think I have to go now,’ Bobby said into the phone, ‘I’ll make basketball practice just as soon as I can.’

Sally was standing on her bed examining the air-conditioning ducting when she heard the key rattle in the door’s deadlock. Immediately, she got down and was smoothing the bed covers when Dr Rosen entered with another woman. The second woman carried a briefcase and wore the same sort of black business suit that Auntie Kate often wore when she was making court appearances. Sally thought she looked as if she were a professional of some sort.

‘Sally, this is Dr Allport,’ Dr Rosen said, and then noticed Sally’s clothing. ‘Changed our clothes, have we?’

‘I’m feeling fine,’ Sally bluffed. ‘I thought I might check myself out now. Mum and Dad must be worried.’

‘Oh I’m afraid we can’t just check ourselves out quite yet, dear. We’ve had a very serious accident. Dr Allport is going to ask you to do some simple tests.’

Allport was already getting some papers from her briefcase. Sally recognized them as the sort of tests she had occasionally done at school. ‘Intelligence or personality tests?’ she asked.

Allport shot a glance at her as if to say that nice little girls did not ask questions like that, then said, ‘A bit of both, Sally. Dr Chambers was interested to know …’

‘What made me tick?’

‘… what made you tick. Yes. Very good.’ Allport was putting the first test down on the trolley table that fitted over the bed.

‘Do you want me to get them all right?’ asked Sally.

‘That’s an interesting question, Sally,’ said Dr Allport.

‘Sometimes when I do them at school, they say I’m cheating.’

‘And why do they say that?’ said Dr Allport in a silky, confiding kind of way.

‘I sometimes get too many right. They seem happier when I get a few wrong.’

Allport smiled. She had a nice smile, but Sally felt that she was being humoured as a quaint little girl. She had had a lot of that in her life. ‘I want you to try to get all of them right, but don’t worry if you can’t finish in time. There’s no shame in that. No shame at all.’

She handed Sally a pen. ‘Shall we begin?’

In another room in the hospital, Bobby’s blood flowed dark red into the barrel of a hypodermic syringe. The sister took the needle from his vein and put a gauze pad on the puncture mark. ‘Press hard there,’ she said.

Bobby put his thumb on the gauze pad, and looked at the syringe full of his blood. ‘You realize that was technically a criminal assault?’

Chambers gestured at Maria and Jim. ‘But Bobby, we had your parents’ permission. You saw them sign the form.’

‘It’s just to help their experiment,’ Bobby said to Maria and Jim. ‘They want to see if we’re all freaks like Sally.’

‘Your sister’s not a freak!’ Jim was getting very sick of this.

‘What do you say, Doctor?’ Bobby was glaring at Chambers.

Chambers stretched his face into his froglike smile. ‘I say we’re acting in your best interests, Bobby.’

Bobby looked at Jim and Maria. ‘Mrs Webster’s always warned me against people who say that,’ he said. ‘She says it means they’re up to no good.’

Dr Chambers looked at Bobby the way teachers did when he answered back. Chambers yearned for the good old days when you could give boys like this a good thrashing without being unreasonably accused of child abuse.

In the private room, Sally was skimming through her IQ test, scarcely pausing at the questions. It was as if she knew the test by heart, and was just ticking the boxes from memory.

Dr Allport stared at Sally’s speeding pen. Now she looked at the stopwatch on the top righthand corner of her clipboard and then back as Sally finished the test and handed her the papers. ‘I hope you were reading the questions, Sally? And not just ticking the boxes any old how?’

‘I read the questions when you handed me the papers.’

‘I saw you glance through the sheets.’

‘That’s when I read them.’

‘I see.’

Sally had a familiar sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. It was not fair. Dr Allport had asked her to answer the questions correctly. And it was kind of fun, seeing how fast she could do it. Now Dr Allport was turning on her like all the others at school did.

It was not easy pretending you were dumber than you actually were, pretending that you did not understand things, pretending you did not know the answer when the teacher asked you, but if you did not pretend you got into trouble with your friends, and earned suspicious looks from the teachers.

‘So you didn’t just answer at random?’ Dr Allport was saying.

‘No!’ said Sally. ‘Of course not. That’d be no fun.’

‘Mmmm,’ said Dr Allport, collecting her papers and putting them away in her briefcase.

‘Do I get the results?’ said Sally.

‘I don’t think that’d be for your benefit, Sally,’ said Allport, snapping her briefcase shut. ‘You already know how bright you are, don’t you?’

‘No,’ said Sally. And then, to Allport’s questioning look, she added, ‘I’ve never really been pushed to my limits.’

Allport hesitated. Sally was obviously telling the truth. Allport had already done what Dr Chambers had asked in giving Sally a test appropriate for her biological age. But in the briefcase were other tests, tests that would give Allport herself trouble, and Allport was a very intelligent woman indeed.

After a moment’s pause, Allport unlocked her briefcase again. ‘Then let’s do that,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if we can push you to your limits. Whatever they may be.’

Sally was happy to oblige. The more she could distract Allport the better chance she had of palming the pen she had been given to use on the tests. Sally was already thinking of several uses for that pen.

Meanwhile, Dr Chambers was leading Bobby, Maria and Jim into a waiting room very like the one in which Jim had sweated out the hours before the twins’ birth twelve years before. Following them in was the large orderly who had foiled Bobby’s attempt to get Sally out of the hospital.

‘If you wouldn’t mind waiting here,’ Dr Chambers said, showing his teeth in what he obviously thought was a reassuring smile, ‘we’ll get right back to you.’

‘I want to see Sally,’ said Maria abruptly. Bobby could have told Chambers it was no use trying to distract Maria’s attention when she wanted something.

‘When can we see our daughter?’ Jim said, sounding angrier by the minute.

‘We’re just running some psychological tests on her at the moment,’ Dr Chambers said in a soothing voice as if he were trying to sell Jim something.

‘Psychological tests?’ Jim did not like the sound of that.

‘In case of head injury,’ Chambers said.

‘Head injury?’ Maria’s words came out as a stifled yell.

‘Routine!’ said Chambers. ‘Just routine. She doesn’t have a head injury, you can take my word for that, but hospital regulations say we have to do tests, so we’re doing them.’ He moved to the door and then turned, and asked, very casually, ‘How does she do at school by the way?’

‘She’s a dead-set Spock,’ said Bobby.

‘Bobby means she’s very bright,’ Jim said. ‘Tops her classes, always has.’

Chambers got even more casual. ‘In everything?’

‘The teachers say she has the reading age of an adult.’ Jim was very proud of this.

‘And you never wondered about that?’ Chambers was genuinely puzzled. If his kid had showed an abnormality like that he would have had her investigated. You couldn’t be too careful these days.

‘We were just very proud,’ Maria said.

Chambers understood. The parents were so stupid that they had not regarded an adult reading age in a twelve year old as in any way suspicious. Unless they were in league with the kid. They would certainly bear investigation. ‘Of course,’ he said. He beckoned the gigantic orderly and murmured, ‘I want that boy to stay in this room.’ And then he forced a smile at Jim and Maria, and went out.

The orderly picked up a chair in one huge hand, spun it, put it down and sat on it, keeping his eyes on Bobby the whole time. Bobby did not like the way the orderly looked at him. There was a big kid at school who looked at him like that. The big kid’s nickname was ‘Predator’.

In the pathology laboratory, the pathologist was checking blood samples. One tube was labelled ‘Maria Harrison’, one ‘Jim Harrison’, one ‘Bobby Harrison’.

Now Dr Chambers handed the pathologist another tube. This one was labelled ‘Sally Harrison’ and contained a blue-green fluid.

The pathologist looked at the liquid in the tube and then at Dr Chambers. ‘Is this a joke?’ she asked.

‘Have you ever heard me make a joke?’ said Chambers.

‘No I haven’t.’

‘Have you ever heard me laugh at a joke?’ said Chambers.

‘No, sir.’

‘Behind my back, people say I have no sense of humour,’ said Dr Chambers. ‘Correct?’

‘I wouldn’t know anything about that, sir,’ said the pathologist.

‘If you knew they said that and then denied knowing it, that would mean that you were in on it with them,’ said Dr Chambers.

‘I now remember hearing people say it, Dr Chambers,’ said the pathologist.

‘And knowing I have no sense of humour you ask me if I’m making a joke?’ yelled Dr Chambers.

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

‘Test the blue-green fluid,’ he said.

‘What sort of test, sir?’ said the pathologist.

‘A blood test,’ said Chambers. When the pathologist hesitated, he screamed, ‘Do it!’

Back in the waiting room, Bobby was crossing his legs. The blank eyes of the gigantic orderly took that in. Now Bobby crossed his legs the other way. Now he stood up and jiggled on his feet.

‘I think I’ll just go to the lavatory,’ he said.

‘Dr Chambers wants you to stay here,’ the orderly said, speaking each word in exactly the same way, like a robot.

Bobby sat down. Then he crossed his legs. Then he recrossed them, and then he uncrossed them. He wrinkled his forehead, he pursed his lips, his face took on a look of desperate agony. Then he shot out of his chair as if rocket-assisted. ‘I’ve really got to go!’ he shouted.

‘Sit!’ said the orderly, rising, and pulling the chair out from under himself.

‘Sorry,’ yelled Bobby. ‘I’m busting!’

And he was out of there like a sprinter. The orderly lunged after him like a big football forward trying to catch a speedy back, and missed him by a centimetre.

The orderly thundered into the corridor after Bobby, looked both ways, and saw nothing! Bobby had already disappeared.

The orderly suddenly had a very sick feeling. Dr Chambers would skin him for this. He ran off along the corridor searching for Bobby, looking in each door, asking questions of passing patients and staff. No one had seen a runaway boy.

All the while the orderly searched, a linen trolley moved along the hospital corridor in the opposite direction. There was an odd thing about this linen trolley. It was moving, but no one seemed to be pushing it. Looking closer, an observer might have seen a boy-sized foot wearing a jogger, protruding through a slit in the linen bag, and pushing the trolley along.

Before the orderly turned and came back to search in the opposite direction, the linen trolley had turned a corner and disappeared.