The Bubble Boy (10 page)

I wait for Henry to write more but all I can see is the pencil, still, on the screen like he doesn’t know what to say next and I don’t know what to write either. I
sigh. After waiting for so long to go out, all he got to see was tarmac and walls. And I guess nothing much is different out there, really. Just more dangerous. But I wish I could breathe some
dangerous fresh air. Just one time.

I reach over for a cup of water. I drink it but with every gulp it feels like I’ve got a hedgehog stuck in my throat. I swallow again. It’s still there. I look back
at the screen. I really want to go sleep but Henry is typing at a hundred miles an hour, now.

My stomach aches; the pain moves up towards my heart. My fingers hover over the keyboard, shaking. I wish he hadn’t written that.

I look at the clock. I know I should go to sleep. But I love talking to Henry.

I feel really tired and funny— like all the blood has gone from my face. I look at the clock.

I click on the link.

Teen hitches ride in the wheel of a plane

I scroll down and read how a boy climbed an airfield perimeter fence, ran across the tarmac, climbed up a wheel and hid in the hold of the plane. I smile. I can’t believe
it. The boy flew all the way from San Jose to Hawaii. He was sixteen. It doesn’t say what his name is.

I smile and keep reading. The boy flew for five hours curled up in a ball. He had no reason to go to San Jose; it’s like he did it for a dare. Scientists said he’s
lucky to be alive because it was minus eighty degrees. He said being in the wheel was the same as being without much oxygen at the top of Mount Everest.

I look out of the window. The planes are only sixteen miles away. The internet says it takes 31 minutes to get to Heathrow in a car, 42 minutes on the Tube. If I was Thor I
could get there quicker. But if I was Thor I wouldn’t need to go to an airport, I could fly all the way to Philadelphia on my own. I’d only have to sneak up onto the roof, stand on the
ledge, point my hammer at the sky. If I can reach the stratosphere and come back down without taking a breath, it would only take me a few minutes to get to America. I’d be faster than a
plane, faster than a rocket even. I’d be there so quickly that I wouldn’t even have to stop for lunch. My laptop beeps. I look back at the screen.

I chuckle.

My head begins to swirl. Sweat drips off my face and trickles down my neck.

The monitors beep.

The numbers start to blur. I blink.

Heart rate
: 119

Body temp.
: 40.2C

My head falls against my pillow. My laptop crashes to the floor.

I try to shout but all that comes out is a croak.

This is a crash.

This is when the blood goes from my head to my feet, pours out into the room and drains through a hole in the middle of the floor. This is when the walls start spinning and the pictures blur.
Then the ceiling turns black and the floor turns black and I don’t know which way I’m facing any more. My body is cold and wet. My sheets are screwed up and falling off my bed. This is
a crash when all I can hear are footsteps and voices around my bed.

‘I feel sick . . . and my head aches.’

‘We know, Joe,’ says Dr Moore.
Increase saline, take the atropine to 50 ml.

Charlotte shouldn’t have let them stay so long.

It’s not her fault, we all share responsibility. This could have happened whether they came or not.
‘Easy, Joe. Easy.’

I roll over on my side. A nurse puts her hand on my forehead. My stomach cramps and I retch over a bowl. The room spins again – Dr Moore, Dr Singh, two nurses –
we can’t
stop filming because someone’s going to die, we can’t stop filming because someone’s going to die
. I retch again.

‘Am I going to die?’

Temp 40. BP 70 over 35

‘Am I going to die?’

100 over 55 . . .

‘Am I going to –?’

‘Steady, steady. No, Joe, you’re not going to die.’
Increase the atropine to 60 ml. Let’s leave it there
.

Needle in my hand, cold fluid in my veins, I feel it surge up my arm, through my shoulder and into my chest.

‘Relax, Joe. Deep breaths. Nice deep breaths.’

I try to breathe. I try to breathe deep and not too fast. I try to imagine my feet sinking into soft sand.

‘I want to walk on the beach.’

‘Easy, Joe. Easy.’

‘Watch the waves.’

‘Don’t talk, Joe. Just breathe. It’s okay, we can talk later.’

I blink, see Dr Moore standing over me. Feel so tired. Feel so –

‘I want to watch . . .’

This is a crash.

11 years, 2 months and 26 days

There’s an IV drip by the side of my bed – a plastic bag full of blood hangs from it and there’s a white container marked
BLOOD
on the floor.

A nurse I’ve not seen before smiles at me. My eyes are too blurry to read her name tag.

‘Okay?’ she whispers. ‘Joe, are you okay?’

My head is so heavy it’s like it’s stuck to the pillow.

She puts her hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s all right, Joe. It’s done now.’

I look at the dark blood flowing from the bag, down the tube and into my arm. My eyelids are heavy. They drop down. I open them again. Dr Moore is leant over me. ‘Okay, Joe?’

I try to nod.

‘It’s all right.’ He puts his hand gently on my head. ‘We’ve got you back now.’

He walks to the end of my bed.

‘Look after him, nurse,’ he says. ‘He’s a gooner.’

The nurse looks at me, puts her hand up to her mouth, like she can’t believe what Dr Moore has just said.

‘A gooner.’ He nods at my poster of Theo Walcott on the wall. ‘He supports Arsenal.’

‘Oh, I see. I thought –’

Dr Moore shakes his head. We both know what she thought he’d said.

My eyelids fall down.

Dr Moore’s footsteps fade away.

Am I a gonner? Maybe I am. I hope not. These new drugs were supposed to make me better, not kill me. The nurse sits down next to me.

‘I’ll be right here,’ she says.

‘Okay.’

The new blood goes into my body as the old blood drains away.

I wish Beth was here. She used to come for all my transfusions but I know she can’t be here all the time. They always make me tired and weak. Sometimes it can make it feel like the room
spins around. I’ve only ever had that happen twice; Henry has had it happen twice too. He told me it happens because the blood has been in storage for too long and has got too much potassium
in it. But I already knew; I’d looked it up like he had. That’s when I read about graft versus host disease: it’s when the immune cells attack the white cells and the body goes to
war with itself. That’s what happened when they tried a bone-marrow transplant when I was four. They took the marrow from Beth; at first they thought it was working but even with the
anti-rejection meds, my body wouldn’t take it. That’s when I got a massive fever and my body went to war. I don’t want a war in my body.

I hear a click and look up at the ceiling. The lights are bright and my ears are full of silence.