The Bubble Boy (13 page)

In the afternoon we look up Edinburgh on my laptop. We look at a map and I trace the red line out of London, through Cambridge, Nottingham and Sheffield and stop. I’m at 161 miles and
it’s still not halfway. I keep going through Leeds and Newcastle until I get there – 403 miles. Beth sighs when she sees it will take 7 hours and 15 minutes by car.

‘It only takes 4 hours 20 minutes on a train,’ I say.

‘Well that’s better,’ she says.

I look back at the map. I’ve looked at it loads of times, to check the places where Greg goes on his holidays, or places where other nurses go to work when they leave me. But no
one’s ever gone to Edinburgh. I never realized it was that far. I close my eyes.

‘Shall we see what it looks like?’

‘Okay,’ she says.

I type in Edinburgh. We look at pictures of the castle, and the University, and a big square in the middle of the city surrounded by tall black buildings.

‘It looks nice,’ I say.

‘The streets are really wide and straight,’ she says. ‘And it’s windy . . . Look up the hospital.’

I search it up and we look at a picture of a big black house with spires at the ends. Beth points at another picture of a white glass building.

‘That’s the old part,’ she says. ‘I’ll be working in the research bit.’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘That other place looked creepy.’

She laughs and we look at a few more, then we watch
Taken
on DVD. We’ve seen it three times but I still jump when the man pulls the girl out from under the bed and Beth still gets
tears in her eyes at the end.

When the screen goes blank, Beth yawns and looks at me. My stomach cramps. We don’t have to say anything. We both know it’s time for her to go. I get up and go to the bathroom.
She’s standing by the window when I come back out. I go and stand beside her and we watch the roadworks’ traffic lights change from red to green and back again three times. My chest is
tight and my throat aches. I want to talk to her but we’ve been quiet for so long that if I say something now I think it might make us both jump. She presses her finger against the glass like
she’s going to draw.

‘It’s only for three weeks at first,’ she says.

‘It’s okay.’

She turns and wraps her arms around me. Three weeks is a long time, but I’ll have to get used to her going.

‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘We can Skype!’ I feel her breath on my ear as she squeezes me a little tighter. I’m glad we can Skype like I do with Henry. I must
write to the person who invented Skype one day. Everything would be so much more rubbish without it.

The streetlights are flickering as I watch her walk out onto the pavement and cross the road. She looks up and waves to me when she gets to the other side. I send her a text.

She looks down. My phone buzzes.

She walks along the road with her head down. Nearly bumps into a man who’s walking towards her. She looks up and waves. Then the bus comes.

I must write to the person who invented text too.

11 years, 3 months and 1 day

The screens hang like black pictures on the wall. They’ve been blank for several days and Amir hasn’t been back to switch them on. I walk over to the window. It
rained yesterday but today it must be hot because all the men digging the road have taken off their shirts. Across the road the people in the glass building are sitting at their desks, waving
pieces of paper in front of their faces like fans. I lean forward to see if I can see Amir walking up the pavement. My head bumps against the glass. I can’t see him anywhere. All I can see
are people crossing the road to walk in the shade. I glance at the monitors.

Heart rate
: 86

Body temp.
: 37.5C

Room temp.
: 18C

Humidity
: 7%

Air purity
: 98.5%

It’s like everyone is melting except me.

I go over to my bed and turn on my laptop. Sarah smiles at me. It’s another video, so she must still be on holiday.

‘Hi, Dew. Today we’re going to learn Archimedes’ Principle.’ She points at a picture of a watering can. I shake my head. I’m too tired to learn anything today. I go
back to the window. A white van pulls up outside the glass building. Two men get out, open up the doors and carry fans and portable air-conditioners inside.

I type a message to Henry.

I want to ask Henry more about his trip but his Skype icon has gone off.

I look back at the screens. I wish Amir would hurry up. The people in the glass building plug in their air-conditioners and fans. Pieces of paper blow off the tables onto the floor. The workmen
stop digging up the road, put their drills down and drink bottles of water in the shade.

I go back to my bed and turn on the TV. People are dying in West Africa from a new disease. The reporter says three and a half thousand have died already in Sierra Leone then he points at red
dots on a map. The disease is spreading across Mali, Nigeria and into Chad. A doctor has flown back to America. She didn’t know she had the disease but she’s taken it back to Houston
with her. She’s in quarantine and the police have closed off all of the hospital.

I turn off the TV and lie back down on my bed.

It’s hot outside and there’s a new disease that going to spread all over the world.

I look around the room. I feel trapped in it today. Sometimes I wish it was bigger. Sometimes I wish I could get up and push the walls and they would slide back until the room became the size of
a tennis court. But I wouldn’t stop. I’d keep pushing until the room grew as big as a football pitch. Then I could put a goal net up, paint a penalty spot, kick the ball, score a goal
and run around with my hands above my head. I’d run towards the crowd and they’d shout my name,
Joe Grant! Joe Grant!
and I’d pump my fist, take off my shirt with number 10
on the back and throw it to them. And they’d cheer louder and I’d jump into them. They’d carry me above their heads, pass me from one person to the next and I’d feel their
hands pressing on my back but I wouldn’t care about that, because I’d be big and full of muscles and all my bruises would be gone.

I wish my real world was as big as the one in my head. But the walls are where they’ve always been. They haven’t moved, only the posters have. Theo Walcott is still there smiling at
me. I wrote him a letter once asking if I could have his autograph, and if perhaps he could send me a ball. He sent me the picture that hangs on the wall. Sometimes I wish he would come and see me
and I think I can hear his football studs on the floor in the transition zone. I think I hear him talking and another person replies and he speaks in Spanish and for a moment he’s brought
Cesc Fàbregas with him, but it can’t be, because he plays for Chelsea now, but he might have come back because every time I see them on TV Theo Walcott smiles at Cesc Fàbregas
and I think they might be good friends.

I look at the screens. If they were working I could watch every football match in the Premier League at the same time. I take a deep breath and blow out my cheeks. More than three days
they’ve been blank but it feels like three weeks. I lie back, stare at the ceiling and wish it was the sky.

It’s late in the afternoon when I hear voices in the transition zone. I don’t recognize one of them, but the other is Amir’s.

‘I’m okay,’ he says. ‘False alarm.’

‘But you know the rules.’

‘Yes,’ says Amir. ‘I took the three days and an extra one to be sure.’

‘Okay.’

I hear the sound of running water, then the spray. The door slides open and Amir walks in. I stand up.

‘Amir, where have you been?’

Amir smiles. ‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry. I thought I had a sore throat but I remembered I swallowed a chicken bone.’

‘Was it serious?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It got stuck for a while but I’m okay now.’ He grins. I know him better now but I still can’t tell if he’s joking or not.

He walks over to the window and looks out, first across the buildings, then to the side of the window, then down the street. He whispers, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

‘What is it?’ I ask.

Amir rubs his hands together quickly like they’re cold. ‘It’s all good,’ he says. ‘The planes still come, the satellite dish is on the wall and the landing strip is
halfway up the road.’

It’s only been a few days but I’d begun to forget what it was like to have Amir around. I love Greg but Amir is the best at making me forget where I am.

He turns away from the window. ‘You not been well?’

‘No.’

‘But you better now?’

‘I think so. Just a bit bored. It would have been better if they were working.’ I nod at the screens.

‘Oh, the TVs!’ He opens his arms wide. ‘12 x 1920 x 1080 HDMI DVI Full HD. My brother get them from his work. They’re upgrading to Hitachi. Do you like them?’

‘Yes, I like them, but Amir—’

‘What? They the wrong colour? We could get some paint and spray them silver.’

‘No, it’s not that.’

‘What then?’

I hold out my hands. ‘Amir, why did you get so many?’

‘Oh.’ He puts his hand on his head like he’s only just noticed. ‘That how many he get. I know you had room. You saw me measure the wall. Have you switched them on
yet?’

‘No, I couldn’t find the remote.’

‘Oh, sorry. I take it home.’ He taps his pockets. ‘Here.’ He hands me the remote. It’s got more buttons on it than I’ve ever seen. Amir leans over and points.
‘You press the red button first, then the green.’

I press the red button. I hear the click of speakers then the sound of static. Three of the screens flicker on. There’s a picture of cars and trucks going down a street, another of a dark
empty alley, then another alley with a black stairwell, full of boxes and bins.

I look at Amir. ‘I thought you said we were getting Sky.’

‘Press the button again.’

I do as he says and four more screens flicker on. There’s a delivery lorry parked on a kerb, a security guard standing by a door, a man walking with a briefcase and a lady typing on a
laptop behind a glass screen. I don’t know what I’m watching but it isn’t Sky.

‘Amir, what are you doing? Are you going to rob a bank?’

‘Ha, no, come here.’

I follow him over to the window. He looks down onto the street then back at the screens. The delivery van stops in the road. The delivery van stops on the screen. I scratch my head.

‘Amir, what have you done?’

‘Me and Rashid. We get you hospital CCTV.’

I shake my head. I didn’t want CCTV. I only wanted Sky. I walk along the screens and look at them one by one. The security guard throws his cigarette on the ground and walks back around
the corner. He disappears from one screen and then appears on another. He nods at the people who walk past him through the hospital doors. I follow them inside; they form a queue in front of the
lady typing behind the screen. On the next screen the bus has stopped and people are getting off, some wear coats, some carry rucksacks, some carry plastic bags.