A Class Apart Page 4

  Chapter 4 – The Visitor

  Roger and Yvonne Blake looked at Dr Soames. The man was clearly a competent medical man, but he wasn’t a magician.

  Dr Soames looked back at the Blakes. Unless they had given birth to Harry Potter, there had to be a rational explanation for what had just happened. He just couldn’t think what it could possibly be.

  Dr Soames had been about to examine James Blake and, as such, had pulled the curtains around James’s bed. Roger and Yvonne Blake had stepped outside of the curtain and Dr Soames informed them it would only take a few minutes. He had then stepped in through the curtains to discover that James’s bed was empty.

  His first thought was that James had just got up and exited through the curtains on the other side of the bed. Dr Soames threw back the curtains on the far side. He was facing Philip Randerson’s bed. Mrs Randerson was just giving her unconscious son a kiss as they prepared to go down to the restaurant for lunch. She started at the sudden movement as Dr Soames appeared behind her and began looking around the ward with an expression of comic amazement on his face. Dr Soames then walked back around the curtain until he was face to face with the Blakes again. They returned the doctor’s dumbfounded expression with ones of concern and puzzlement at his strange behaviour.

  Dr Soames looked as though he wanted to speak, but instead opted to just whip back the curtains and let the Blakes see for themselves.

  Yvonne cried out.

  Roger leaned over the bed and touched the discarded pillow, as if needing to convince himself that his son was really not there. The bed was still warm.

  “Where is he? Where’s he gone?!” demanded Yvonne.

  Desperately trying to recover his composure, Dr Soames summoned a nurse, who came running.

  “Nurse Winter, please contact the senior police officer in the hospital and inform him that... a patient has gone missing. James Blake.”

  Nurse Lucy Winter tried to work out what the panic was about. She could see the empty bed, the distraught parents and, more worryingly, the visible shock on Dr Soames’s face. She knew Dr Soames and his temper too well to start asking questions. She hurried off to do as she was told.

  Roger Blake took his wife’s hand, pulled her closer and tried to reassure her that everything would be ok. This was too much to bear. Both children had survived a near-death experience, and their beautiful baby girl had come out of her coma, only for their son to disappear, seemingly into thin air.

  That phrase struck a chord in his head. Something about the fantastical nature of it.

  He held his wife close to him, mechanically rubbing her back, lost in thought.

  He had no idea how long they had been standing there when there was a commotion in the corridor outside the ward.

  James was being helped back onto the ward by another doctor.

  “Dr Soames!!!” the new doctor called out.

  Yvonne Blake rushed to the door to take hold of her son.

  James was only half aware of what was going on. He felt relieved to see his mum and dad, but couldn’t answer the questions that they were heaping on him. James assumed he must have blacked out somehow and, for some weird reason that he couldn’t even begin to imagine, had been left in a McDonalds restaurant. It sounded like a story in the Daily Mail. The really weird thing was, it didn’t seem like any time had gone by at all since he had been sitting in his bed, waiting for Dr Soames to examine him.

  “Dr Soames!!” said the angry voice of James’s helper.

  Dr Soames rushed back onto the ward.

  “Dr Rajesh?” Soames felt relief at seeing his patient back in the room, but what the hell was he doing with Rajesh?!

  “What are you playing at, Soames?” stormed Dr Rajesh.

  The two doctors and James’s parents ushered the befuddled boy back into bed. Dr Soames immediately began checking to make sure his patient was unhurt.

  “I apologise,” said Dr Rajesh to the Blakes and then continued in an attempted hushed, but in fact totally audible, tone to Dr Soames: “Is this how you look after your patients Soames? Leaving them lying around in reception?”

  Nurse Winter stepped in to take over James’s care. Dr Soames’s rivalry with Dr Rajesh was the talk of the hospital and she wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to watch a blow-up first hand.

  “What on earth are you talking about Rajesh?” retorted Dr Soames, who had no intention of allowing his colleague to gain the upper hand. “What were you doing with him in reception?”

  “In reception?!” cried Yvonne Blake. “James darling, how did you get down there?”

  How indeed? Roger Blake’s mind was racing.

  The same question was troubling James Blake. The arguing doctors were giving him a headache, the nurse seemed to be fussing over him more than his mum and all of a sudden another thought came back to him. Just before he woke up in McDonalds, he’d closed his eyes and imagined tucking into a Big Mac. He felt even hungrier now and hoped he wouldn’t black out again. He envied Sam in her private room. He wished he could be in one now, no one else to hassle him, watching Sky Sports News while tucking into an enormous plate of steak, chips and mushrooms.

  In her private room, oblivious to the events on her brother’s ward, Samantha Blake was sitting up in bed with the television on. It was part of the baffling logic of the hospital that the TV was positioned on a bracket set high into the wall, which made it uncomfortable to watch. Maddeningly, given her immobility, there was no remote control either. A nurse had switched the set on for her and left it on BBC 1, so she was stuck with horse racing. Fortunately her phone was beside the bed, with a note from her brother under it which read:

  ‘I’ve charged it for when you wake up.’

  There was no wifi, but she was able to connect to the internet via 3G and use the 24/7 Interactive News app.

  Her parents had told her very little about what had actually happened to her. She knew that there had been a car bomb, which had blown up their coach. She could remember that now. But she had no clue about what had gone on since, or what had happened to her classmates, or anything. She felt very out of touch. In fact she felt totally zombified, as though she was floating on a cloud and looking down on her own body, which was no longer a part of her.

  Sam felt a sudden need to try and reconnect with herself. She wanted to understand what she had been though.

  She scanned the news.

  Sam harboured a vague aspiration about wanting to be a journalist when she grew up, if she didn’t make it as an athlete. Given what had happened to her legs, she wondered if she’d ever be able to run again. Dr Okocha had told her that her injuries were severe. In all likelihood it would be a long recovery programme. She tried not to think about it.

  24/7 Interactive News was reporting live from the hospital! She clicked on the ‘Live TV’ link, and waited for the video to start. It stuttered as it played. The news ticker at the bottom of the screen read:

  ‘Mystery as bus-bomb schoolboy spotted in hospital McDonalds’.

  “Shut. Up!” said Sam, addressing her phone. The footage that the news channel was playing was of her brother James, in his pyjamas, looking frightened and hurt, hurrying across the hospital reception area and into the arms of a policewoman and a doctor. The camera footage was shaky, but he was easy to recognise. What was he thinking, popping down to get a burger in his condition? Stupid!

  Frustratingly, the footage kept staggering at such an annoying rate that she had to close the app. Surely they had wireless in this place? Without the internet she’d go nuts in a day. She took it as a good sign that she was already feeling bored. Lunch had helped recover her spirits and even the comment from the doctor about her being underweight hadn’t made her feel as defensive as it normally did. She knew her eating habits were a source of tension between her parents. Although they did their best to hide it from her, she knew that Mum believed that it was all Dad’s fault for encouraging her fitness and diet regime. Which was ridiculous, because there was
no problem. Sam felt that she ate sensibly and healthily. Even more than she wanted to be a journalist, she wanted to be an athlete. Dad thought she was good enough to be in the Olympics one day and she was determined to prove him right. So Sam had cut out crisps, sweets, cakes and meat. She ate very little bread, wheat, or carbs. She ate lots of fruit, salads and soup. She drank plenty of water and smoothies. She was in control.

  But she had to acknowledge it was unusual for her to wolf down a lunch, as she had done earlier, without even looking at it. She couldn’t even remember what she had eaten.

  Her mum had left her a banana, an apple and a bowl of sushi. She ate it all while reading the older articles about the bomb incident itself.

  Her heart leaped as she read the list of those who had lost their lives. The report said that the nation was in mourning at the tragedy. The Sun newspaper had offered a £250,000 reward for any information leading to the identification of those responsible.

  Sam clicked on a link that read:

  ‘Who was School Bomb Rescue Hero?’

  The article showed a photograph of the aftermath of the bombing. At first, Sam wasn’t sure exactly what she was looking at. The photograph was dominated by the glare of a large fire, and the sheer volume of smoke made it hard to get a sense of scale. But portions of the photo had been highlighted to show where survivors were lying on the ground some distance away from the wreckage of the coach. Ambulance crews and fire engines were included in the scene. The photograph claimed to have been taken nine minutes after the bomb had exploded. Sam felt a twisting sensation in her stomach as she looked closer. The bodies on the ground were mostly blurs, so it was impossible to say which of them was her. But it brought back flashes of memory. The heat, the noise, the pain – and the panic! That horrible claustrophobic sensation of being trapped and knowing that you are going to die! Then there was that bizarre, dreamlike moment where she felt that she was being carried to safety. And that seemed to be the point of the story. According to the report, every person on the coach, including the dead, had been carried to a safe point away from the coach before it had been totally consumed by flames. This had all happened in the nine minutes before the ambulance and emergency services had arrived. There was no CCTV footage, and no eyewitness accounts, so there was no explanation as to how this had happened. The report concluded that undoubtedly the hero – or, more likely, heroes – had saved many lives.

  Samantha sat lost in thought. What did it mean? Should she tell anyone about what she remembered? She wanted to talk to James about it.

  She was jolted out of these thoughts as she caught a movement in the corner of her eye. Through the glass panel in the door, she could see someone shuffling past. It was a patient, but Sam didn’t really have time to see who it was; whether it was a child or an adult, or even if it was a boy or a girl. Sam had just caught a glimpse of bandages.

  Something made Sam shiver and she didn’t understand why. She kept looking. Another patient limped past. Again, she didn’t have a good view of them, but whoever it was, was wearing surgical dressings of some kind. Several seconds later and another one went past. Odd. Sam was pretty sure that, even in hospital, you didn’t get a procession of bandaged patients wandering around in a line like the three blind mice. Make that four! Another one appeared at the door. This one stopped, however.

  Like the others, this patient was heavily bandaged and it was impossible to determine age or sex. The head was completely covered, although there were holes for the eyes. Through the door it was impossible to get any clue as to who this person was, or what they wanted. Sam started a little when a bandaged hand thumped against the glass. The patient remained like that for what seemed like a creepy age, staring at her. Then there was a crashing sound which made Sam cry out in alarm. A collection of objects had blown off her window sill. Several cards lay scattered on the floor, and the jarring noise had been one of her running trophies hitting the floor and the silver section breaking away from its wooden base. She had won it running for her school. It had been her first major prize.

  She looked back at the door. The bandaged patient had gone.

  Minutes later, one of the nurses came into the room.

  “Afternoon, Samantha.” She took note of the girl’s expression and the mess on the floor. “Are you all right, luv?”

  Sam realised she felt a little shaky.

  “I’m fine. Sorry. My running cup fell on the floor. It made me jump.”

  After checking to make sure Sam was ok, the nurse started tidying up the detritus.

  “That’s all right. Were you asleep?”

  “No...” said Sam, not really sure how to phrase her next question. “Did... did you see those other patients outside my room?”

  The nurse laughed. “There are one or two out there,” she admitted.

  “I don’t mean to be rude... well, I mean... were there people with a lot of bandages?”

  The nurse looked at her curiously.

  “I didn’t really notice. Why?”

  “No reason. One stopped at my door to look in. Looked a bit lost I suppose. I wasn’t sure if they were ok.”

  “I’m sure they are,” said the nurse, reassuringly. She made Sam as comfortable as she could. “Better?”

  Sam nodded. She just wanted her mum and dad to come back now. She wanted to get out of the hospital.

  “When will I be able to walk again?”

  “Dr Okocha will be able to answer that question better than I can, I’m afraid. But I know she’s really pleased with your progress.”

  Sam sank back into silence. The nurse left and closed the door.

  Sam felt isolated from the rest of civilisation. Once again, she could not hear any sounds from the corridor. Just the hum of the electrical appliances in her own room. You could almost believe you were alone in the whole building. Sam looked out of her window. It looked hot and sunny outside, but such was the height of the building, the angle at which she was sitting and the direction that her room faced that she could not see any other buildings or signs of the city. She was looking out into infinite sky. She realised that she had no idea which floor she was on. She did not know how many storeys there were below her, or above her. The hospital always reminded her of an enormous brick that had been dropped from the sky, landing on its end in the earth below. She’d been here several times before with sports-related injuries and if she ever stood at the base of the hospital and looked up to see the top of the building she always felt dizzy. Like she was going to keel over and the big slab would fall on top of her and crush her. Now she wished she could float out of the bed, drift over to the window and fly out into the world, unbound by her injuries, unfettered by her fears, unburdened in the freedom of the skies.