Chapter 23: Adam
I’m like a snowman left out in the sun. Everything on one side of my face has melted. The edges have gone. I’ve lost my detail. The first time I see myself in the mirror I don’t cry, I just stare and stare, trying to find myself in that face. I look away and back again, hoping it’ll be different when I look again, hoping some miracle will have happened and I’ll be back to ‘normal’.
But there’s no miracles. I’m scarred from the fire. I always will be.
The police come calling, asking all sorts of questions, but I won’t talk. I close my eyes. I keep my mouth shut. And they go away. I keep the curtains round my bed closed. I don’t want to see anyone and I don’t want anyone to see me. When the nurses come in, I don’t look at them. I don’t need to see anyone’s number right now. For a couple of weeks, that works, but one day the nurse don’t draw the curtain properly and now the boy in the bed next to me is watching me through the gap when I hold the mirror up to my face. He’s younger than me, about eleven, a pale little kid with no hair. I recognise that look. He’s on chemo, like my mum was.
I catch him watching, but instead of being embarrassed and looking away, his eyes lock onto mine and he says, ‘What happened to you?’
I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to talk to anyone, but especially not another twenty-seven. Because that’s what he is. He’s in here, up to his eyeballs in chemo, when his number’s telling me he’s going to be wiped out in a few weeks with all the rest of them. I pretend I haven’t heard him, but he just says it louder.
‘What happened? Looks like a burn.’ He’s not giving up.
‘Fell in a fire,’ I say eventually. There, I’ve told you. Now shut up and leave me alone. He nods.
‘I’m Wesley,’ he says. ‘Cancer, like Jake over there, but he’s kidneys and I’m leukaemia. In my blood.’
When I don’t say nothing, he takes it as some sort of invitation, and before I know it he’s moving his sheets out of the way, slipping out of bed, pushing back my curtain and perching on the side of my mattress.
‘That’s Carl,’ he says quietly, tipping his head towards the kid in the opposite bed with both legs in plaster, feet raised up. ‘Car crash,’ he whispers, ‘lost his dad and his brother.’
‘Shit,’ I say.
‘Yeah.’ Carl is looking over our way, but he’s not really seeing us. His eyes are glazed over, but I still clock his number. He’s going tomorrow.
‘He’s sick, man. Really sick,’ I whisper to Wesley.
‘No,’ he says. ‘He looks bad, but he’s way better than he was. It’s just the fractures in his legs now. The rest of him’s okay.’ Wesley’s obviously listened to the doctors but they’re wrong. The numbers don’t change. They don’t lie. I should know.
Nan comes to see me in the afternoon.
‘Nan, you gotta get me out of here.’
‘Goin’ a bit stir crazy? Don’t blame you.’ She’s brought me a bag of mint humbugs and is chewing her way through them.
‘It’s doing my head in.’ I lower my voice and beckon to her, and she leans in nearer. ‘The numbers, Nan. The numbers. Some people in here, they ain’t got long to go.’
She stops chewing then, and looks me straight in the eye.
‘That boy over there, with the legs up. He’s checking out tomorrow, but nobody else sees it. They think he’s okay. They hardly bother with him.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah, course I am. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t know.’
‘You should tell someone.’
‘Should I?’
‘Maybe …’
‘It wouldn’t make no difference, Nan. It didn’t make no difference with Mum or Junior.’
‘Maybe it would this time.’
‘Nan, I’ve seen it my whole life. The numbers don’t change. I could’ve died in that fire, but I didn’t, because it wasn’t my day. Junior could’ve just been nicked by that knife, but he wasn’t. It killed him, straight out. I seen his number. It was fixed. No one could change it.’
‘But that shouldn’t stop us trying … I’ll have a word with the staff. We need to get you out of here anyway. I don’t think it’s a good place for you.’
She gets up and goes off to find someone to talk to, taking the bag of mints with her.
That evening, when the duty nurse makes her last round before lights out, I stop her.
‘Can you check on Carl?’ I say.
‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I check on everyone.’
‘But can you keep checking him. Tonight.’
She looks at me like I’ve lost my marbles, then smoothes the sheet over my legs.
‘Don’t worry about him. He’s doing fine.’
I keep my bedside light on when the ward lights go off, and I sit up. I promise myself I’ll watch over him, raise the alarm if I hear or see anything. When I feel myself starting to drift off, I give myself a good pinch. It wakes me up for a minute or so, but then I feel myself going and I can’t stop. The next thing I know the overhead lights are on and there’s a team of staff crowding round the bed opposite and someone’s yanking the curtains across.
‘What is it? What’s happening?’ I call out, but no one’s listening to me. Wesley and Jake are still asleep, even with all the frantic activity a few metres away from them, and everyone else is focussing on Carl.
Later, all the staff are tight-lipped about what happened. Even Wesley can’t find out what’s gone on.
‘It’s something bad,’ he says to me. ‘Someone slipped up, made a mistake, otherwise they’d tell us.’
What he don’t know is what I saw when they was working on Carl, trying to save him: the pool of blood spreading out from under the curtain, the scissors kicked along the floor in the confusion. I reckon Carl found his own way out.
I think about it all day. I can’t think about nothing else. If I’d stayed awake, I could’ve raised the alarm earlier. They might have saved him. I knew something was going to happen – I should have made them listen. It was my fault.
There’s an empty space where his bed used to be. I get out of mine and walk over to it.
‘I’m sorry, man,’ I murmur. ‘I let you down.’
I’m thinking Nan was right. If you try hard enough, you might be able to change the numbers. If I’d stayed awake, if I’d seen him make his move, it could all have been different. Now I’m thinking about all the twenty-sevens. They’re still out there.
If I warn people, make myself heard, perhaps it won’t be thousands or millions dead. Maybe I can save them, or some of them. Even if I only save a few, it will be worth something, won’t it?
There’s not long to go now, I’d better start telling people.
But how do I get people to listen?
And what am I going to tell them?
Chapter 24: Sarah
She won’t stop crying. She just won’t stop.
It starts out of the blue, one evening, she just starts to cry. Feeding doesn’t help. Changing her doesn’t make any difference. I pick her up, hold her to my shoulder and walk her backwards and forwards across the room. After what seems like hours she falls asleep from sheer exhaustion.
I put her into the drawer I’m using as a cot and flop onto the bed. The sound of crying is still ringing in my ears, bouncing off the walls in an everlasting echo. I curl up and put my hands over my ears to try to stop it. I suppose I drop off to sleep, but I don’t know how long for. All I do know is that her cries reach into my dreams and drag me to the surface. Automatically I reach down to her. Her skin is red hot and sticky with sweat.
I try the things that I know; feeding, changing, singing, pacing. And she cries and cries and cries.
Vinny knocks on the door and comes in.
‘You all right? I saw your light on. Well, I heard you. Brought you a cup of tea.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Fiveish.’
‘In the morning?’
‘Yeah.’
/> ‘I can’t stop her, Vin. I can’t stop her crying.’ My voice is high and wobbly.
‘Give her here. I’ll have her while you have your tea. Let’s see what we can do.’
He takes her from me.
‘Jesus, Sarah, she’s boiling.’
‘I know. What do I do, Vin? What do I do?’
‘We’d better take her to the walk-in, at the hospital.’
‘I can’t. They’ll want ID, an address, everything.’
‘We’ll have to take her somewhere. We can’t leave her like this. Just pretend you’ve forgotten your ID, give them a false name. It’ll be all right. They’ll take one look at her and treat her – she’s tiny, she needs their help, they’ll see that. Come on. Get some clothes on. I’ll find the car keys.’
There’s no car seat for Mia, so I sit in the back and cuddle her.
‘Drive slowly,’ I say.
‘Course.’
The hospital is a bright, white place. I’ve hardly left the house in weeks, and it’s overwhelming being there. It’s so busy, so big, so clean. I look down at myself; stained sweatshirt pulled over my T-shirt and jogging bottoms. No socks, feet stuffed into slippers. I look like I’ve been sleeping rough.
‘Name?’
‘Sally Harrison.’
‘ID, please.’
‘Oh God, I left it at home. We were just in such a rush …’
The receptionist looks at me and raises an eyebrow. ‘You’re not chipped?’
‘No.’
‘And your baby?’
‘No.’
They can refuse treatment without ID. I look at her, wondering which way she’s going to jump.
‘Please,’ I say.
The eyebrows shoot higher, but then she just sighs and asks me for more details. I give a false address and phone number and tell her as much about Mia’s symptoms as I can.
We only have to wait for twenty minutes, and then a nurse takes us to an assessment room. A doctor joins us there – she’s young, but she’s got grey rings under her eyes and her blonde hair is escaping from a messy ponytail.
‘Let’s have a look at her.’
They lie her on a white mattress in a plastic tank, like a fishtank, and gently take her clothes off.
‘How long has she been running a temperature?’
‘’Bout twelve hours. She’s been crying for twelve hours, too, on and off.’
‘Feeding okay?’
‘Not since she started crying.’
They look at every inch of her, examine her eyes and ears and mouth, move her arms and legs gently.
‘She’s got a bit of an infection around the umbilical stump. Can you see how it’s red and swollen here?’
When the doctor points it out, it’s obvious. The skin is puffed and angry-looking on her belly where the remains of her cord are. Oh God, why didn’t I see it? What sort of mother am I? She’s crying because she’s in pain.
‘We’ll give her some antibiotics straight away.’ Before I know it they’re injecting something into her leg. And then they’ve got another syringe out of its cellophane wrapper.
‘She’s not chipped, is she?’
‘No, but …’
‘It’s compulsory.’ Her eyes flick up to mine, and I know it’s no use arguing. Even if I wanted to, it’s too late. The needle is in, the plunger is pressed.
‘We can register all her details on the ward.’
‘The ward?’
‘We have to be careful with infection in this part of the body. Occasionally it can lead to tetanus, so we’ll keep her in today, while we see how she responds to treatment.’
Keep her?
‘Can’t you just give her some medicine? We don’t want to stay. We need to be somewhere …’
‘We need to observe her. Tetanus could be extremely dangerous for such a young baby. We can’t take that risk. You look like you could do with a rest. You can both go on the maternity ward for the day – I’ll request a single room if you like.’
It feels like things are spinning out of my control. Now they’ve got her here, they won’t let her go. They’ve got her. They’ve chipped her. The thought of a microchip settling into her body makes me feel sick. I didn’t want that for her. I didn’t want her tagged and labelled and tracked for life.
But if I stick to my story – forgotten ID, false name, false address – we’ll be safe here, won’t we? I look back at Mia’s tummy, at the infected skin taut and shiny, and I know I’ve got no choice.
Chapter 25: Adam
They refuse to discharge me, but I’m going anyway. I can’t stay here no longer. I’ll go mad. Nan brings some clean clothes in and I get dressed while the nurse tells her how to look after my face. Then it’s time to go.
Wesley has his head over a bucket when I go over to say goodbye. He raises a hand up, but he don’t speak.
‘Hang in there, Wes,’ I say. I want to tell him to stop the chemo, enjoy what time he has left. He’s a twenty-seven after all, so he’s only got just over a week to go. But then I start thinking how I’m going to try and change all that, change things for the twenty-sevens, so maybe he will need the chemo – it might buy him some extra time.
I’m choked up as I walk down the ward. I can’t help glancing at the bed where Carl was. There’s someone else there now, and there’ll be someone else in my spot soon. It’s a never-ending production line of the sick and wounded, and some of them will get better and some of them won’t, but a dark cloud settles over me when I think about Carl. It still feels like my fault. All I had to do was stay awake. And I let him down.
‘What’s eating you? I thought you wanted to leave?’
‘Nothing. Just … this place.’
She’s looking where I’m looking.
‘You tried your best,’ she says, reading my mind, ‘and so did I.’
‘Didn’t try hard enough.’
‘Stop beating yourself up. Let’s get out of here.’
It’s surprisingly difficult to walk. I’ve been in here seventeen days and my legs have switched off. The corridors go on for ever.
‘There’s a bus stop just to the left here. Adam? Adam …’
Her voice fades away until I can’t hear anything at all. There’s a girl getting into a beaten-up old car in the car park. She’s got a coat slung round her shoulders so you can’t see her arms. A tall skinny bloke is helping her. He’s standing my side of her so she’s mostly hidden from view, but all I need is a glimpse to know.
It’s Sarah.
She’s changed her hair, shaved half of it off, but it’s her, oh God, it’s her.
I stand there like an idiot, watching her get settled in the back of the car. The bloke closes the door for her and goes round to the driver’s seat and then it’s like I’m waking up. She’s going! In less than a minute she’ll be out of here. What am I doing?
‘Adam? Where the hell …?’
I start to walk over to the car park, then break into a run. He’s already started the engine, they’re moving. I make to cut them off at the barrier. They’ll have to stop there to be let out. The car moves slowly and I’m there just before it. I wave at the driver, to flag him down. He looks alarmed, but he has to stop anyway. He pulls to a halt, winds down the passenger window and leans across.
‘All right, mate?’ he says.
I peer in the back. The headrest of the passenger seat is in the way.
‘I just wanted to … I just wanted … Sarah?’
She moves to one side and I see her face. It’s definitely her, the face I’ve had in my head all this time, the face I’ve gone to sleep thinking about. She gasps, and her mouth falls open, and then I remember my own face, what a shock it must be to see it.
I put my hand up to shield it.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks …’ I start to say, but she’s looking away and screaming.
‘Get out of here, Vinny! Get out of here! Drive! Drive!’
‘Sarah!’
The wheels sque
al on the tarmac as Vinny stamps on the accelerator and the car lurches forward a couple of metres. The barrier is taking its sweet time. I put my hands on the car and lean towards the back passenger window. Sarah’s still shouting, but when she sees me, she stops and shrinks away from me.
The moment the barrier starts to rise, Vinny’s out of there. The metal of the car spins away from under my fingers and I’m left standing, shell-shocked. It was like the first time she saw me, only worse. Why is she so scared of me? Who is she really, and who does she think I am?
‘Adam!’
I look behind me. Nan’s standing on the pavement, watching. I walk back slowly to join her.
‘Who the hell was that?’
‘A girl I know.’
‘What’s up with her?’
‘She hates me. She’s scared of me.’
Her face darkens.
‘Scared? What you done to her?’
‘I haven’t done nothing. She knows something about me, or she thinks she does.’
‘People been gossiping? Telling tales?’
‘No, nothing like that. She was like it the very first time we met, on the first day at school.’ And then the penny drops, and when I say it out loud it sounds true. ‘She’s different. Different like you and me. You’ve got your auras, I’ve got the numbers. She’s got something. She knows something.’
Nan don’t laugh. She don’t think I’m nuts.
She reaches into her bag and fishes out a cigarette, then she lights it, inhales deeply and blows a stream of smoke out towards a sign saying, ‘No smoking on hospital grounds. Penalty €200.’
‘You’d better find her then, son,’ she says. ‘You need to find this girl and she needs to tell you what she knows.’
Chapter 26: Sarah
It was him.
And his face was the face in my nightmares. Scarred on one side, melted.
How could I possibly have known his perfect face would be burnt? How do I know that I’ll see him again in another fire?