The Bubble Boy Read online

  ‘I thinking . . . You’ve got nothing to do in here.’ He glances at the electrical sockets in the corners, at the TV, at the window, then back at me.

  ‘Tell you what. Now you my friend, I get us Sky TV!’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You need Sky TV? You can get lots of channels, lots of films. You only got 47 channels, I get you 607.’

  ‘But I can’t pay, and people will notice.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘It’s not a big dish and I bring my card from home. We can watch football. Who you support?’

  ‘Arsenal.’

  ‘Snap!’ he says.

  I sit up. My head spins. I lean back on my pillow and wait for it to stop. Amir doesn’t seem to have noticed. The worry has gone from his eyes; now they’re sparkling bright. I don’t understand how someone can look so sad one minute and then look so happy the next. He jumps out of the chair, walks to the end of my bed and checks the wires on the back of the TV. I think of all the new channels I could watch. I’d have so many that I wouldn’t have to go to sleep early just because there was nothing on! I could stay up all night, watch the same films as Henry, and Beth wouldn’t have to spend all her money on DVD’s any more.

  Amir shouts something.

  ‘Sorry?’

  He looks over the top of the TV.

  ‘How long you been in here?’

  ‘All my life,’ I say.

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘Nearly. Didn’t they tell you?’

  ‘That’s terrible. You’ve been in here all your life and they don’t give you Sky TV?’

  I laugh, Amir is smiling at me. After being scared for so long I suddenly want to laugh. Amir is so confusing. Maybe he’s not a real person. I look around the room for hidden cameras, waiting for him to take off his disguise to reveal himself as a celebrity.

  Amir walks over to the window, bumping his head against it as he tries to look up at the hospital roof.

  ‘We could put the dish up here,’ he says, putting his hand on the wall.

  I swing my legs over the side of my bed.

  ‘But what about the aliens?’

  ‘They don’t need dishes.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I mean if you’re watching TV, you won’t be watching the aliens.’

  ‘That’s okay. We can look out for them at the same time.’

  I was wrong. He’s definitely still really crazy.

  I check the time. The doctors will be here in half an hour and I’ve not even showered. I put my feet on the floor. My head spins but not as much as yesterday. I need to feel better before the doctors arrive. I don’t want to miss the documentary team. I pick up my clothes and walk into the bathroom. Amir pulls his chair to the door and all the time I’m washing I can hear him talking outside. He tells me that his brother will install the dish, that he’ll put wire around the edge so the pigeons won’t sit on it and ruin the signal. He says his brother knows all the things like that.

  I check my body again – no new bumps, no new bruises. Then I realize the TV plan won’t work.

  ‘Amir!’ I shout. ‘It won’t work, they won’t let him in.’

  He doesn’t answer so I shout again, but there’s still nothing. I dry myself off and put on my clothes.

  ‘Amir –’

  I stop. The room is quiet and still. Amir is stood back at the window. Dr Moore and Dr Hussein have arrived and are stood by the monitors. Dr Moore has his notes clutched to his chest. Dr Hussein is smiling without opening his mouth. I know what that smile means. I sit down on the edge of my bed.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘Low whites?’

  Dr Moore nods.

  ‘Yes, low whites.’

  ‘Do I have to have a transfusion?’

  ‘No, we’re going to hold off on that for a while. Just to see how you go. You’re not feeling too tired, or got a sore throat?’

  ‘No.’ I stare ahead and hope they can’t tell that I’m lying.

  The mattress sinks as Dr Moore sits down beside me.

  ‘Joe,’ he says. ‘There’s something else, something in the platelets that’s causing your anaemia.’

  I look up. Amir’s eyes are still bright. I wonder if he knows I am lying about my throat. He turns and looks out the window.

  Dr Moore puts his hand on my knee as he gets up. ‘Don’t worry, Joe,’ he says. ‘It’s just a case of working things through.’

  I watch the doctors leave the room. I’m glad I don’t have to have a transfusion. I hate the achy dizzy feeling I get as they take the old blood out and put the new blood in. It makes my white blood cells increase, helps me fight infection, makes me stronger – but I have to lie down for the whole day afterwards. The documentary people would definitely have left by then. But what about the anaemia? That’s when I don’t have enough iron in my blood. Is it really serious? Maybe they’re letting me do the documentary because it could be the last thing I do. Maybe they think I’m going to die. I think about dying a lot. It’s hard not to when a monitor beeps every time my heart beats. I never, never want the beeps to stop. I might not be able to do much in here or go outside, but I’ve got Beth and I’ve got Greg. I’d miss them and I know they’d miss me. I’d rather live all my life in a bubble than die. It’s cool to even be born. That’s what me and Henry say.

  Amir turns away from the window. The room is so quiet it’s like all I can hear is the sound of us breathing and the men drilling outside. I wonder if he knew about the anaemia. Maybe he did and that’s why he’s trying to get me Sky. Maybe it’s his plan to help me watch all the programmes and films in the whole world before I die. He smiles at me nervously and picks up the TV remote. The TV flickers on.

  ‘Oh, great. Countdown! Do you like it?’

  ‘No,’ I say, ‘it’s for old people.’

  Amir looks pretend-cross. ‘My wife records it and we watch every night when I get home!’

  I sigh. Amir walks round to my side.

  ‘What’s wrong? I upset you, Joe?’

  I don’t want to tell him what I’ve been thinking.

  ‘It’s nothing. I’m just tired of TV. Is it okay if we talk instead?’

  ‘Talk? We going to get 607 channels and you want to talk?’ He pokes me gently on the top of my arm, but not enough to bruise it. ‘I joking.’ He turns the sound down. ‘I like to talk too. What you want to talk about?’ He sits down beside me. I look at the TV. A pretty woman picks letters off the board. I quickly glance at Amir. I’ve said I want to talk but I don’t know how to start. I look around the room, at the monitors, the window, my laptop. The minute hand on a big clock counts away the seconds on the TV. It ticks past five seconds on towards ten. Amir slams his hand down on my bed.

  ‘Blindworm!’ he shouts.

  I jump. Oh no. The craziness is coming out again. I edge to the other side of the bed.

  ‘Sorry, I no mean to frighten you.’ He nods at the TV. ‘Blindworm, I’m right, just you see.’

  Oh yes, the programme. Phew.

  I look back at the TV. The Countdown clock is still ticking. Amir turns the sound up and tilts his head like he’s thinking.

  ‘Born wild,’ says a man with grey hair and glasses.

  Amir laughs. ‘You can’t have that! It two words.’

  Another man with dark hair opens a dictionary and shakes his head. The man with glasses looks down at his pad. A lady smirks beside him.

  ‘I’ve got ‘owl’,’ she says.

  ‘Owl,’ says Amir. ‘Three letters. My children do that.’

  ‘The longest word is ‘blindworm’,’ says the man with the dictionary.

  ‘Ha! You see!!’

  Perhaps Amir is insane but also a genius. Cool.

  ‘Wow, can you do that every time?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘As long as there not more than six consonants, then it get hard. It’s harder than a Rubik’s Cube. I do that in 23 seconds. I show you, have you got one?’

  ‘No. I don’t think they’re hygienic.’

&n
bsp; ‘Never mind, we watch the planes instead.’ He turns the TV off and walks over to the window. I blink and shake my head. Amir’s talking so quickly he’s making me dizzy.

  ‘Come on,’ he beckons.

  I get up and walk across to the window. For a while we don’t say anything. I look at the people walking and the traffic while Amir watches the planes. Down the road the men in orange coats are still drilling. They’re getting closer every day but they’re as slow as snails. I look up at the roof opposite me. The man in the boiler suit is walking between the silver vents and the poles. The pigeons flap their wings, jump up and down and bash against the cage. The man bends down, opens a cage. The pigeons flutter as he puts his hand inside. I wish they could squeeze past his arm out of the cage door. I wish they could escape his hand and fly away.

  The man grabs a pigeon and slits its throat. I look away. Beth’s right. It’s not nice. It’s not fair that they die like that.

  Amir leans forward and starts rolling his forehead against the glass. He stops, looks at me out of the corner of his eyes.

  ‘You really should try this.’ He starts to hum.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just try. It’s like whistling. It takes bad things away.’

  The man in the boiler suit walks back across the roof towards the door. I put my hands on the window sill, slowly lean forward until my forehead touches the glass. The cold of the outside comes through and cools my skin. I hum, very quietly. I don’t know if it takes my bad things away but it makes my head feel like it’s lifting off.

  ‘It nice?’ Amir asks.

  I close my eyes and it’s as if I can feel my blood slowing down, moving in slow motion through my arms and legs, getting slower and slower until it stops and the only place I can feel it is in my head.

  ‘Yes, it’s nice.’

  ‘And don’t worry.’ Amir stops rolling his head, looks down to the street then back at me. He stares at me for so long it’s like he’s looking into my mind. ‘I know what you worry about,’ he whispers.

  ‘Do you?’ I wonder if he’s an insane genius who also has psychic powers.

  He taps the side of his head. ‘Everything will be okay.’

  ‘Will it?’ It sounds true when he says it. Not like when the doctors say it.

  Amir nods his head slowly. ‘Of course. My brother got long enough ladders to reach up here.’

  His head has flicked us back to talking about the TV. He’s really weird but I’m starting to like him.

  Amir smiles.

  I smile.

  We start to hum.

  11 years, 2 months and 25 days

  My eyes are blurry and my head is aching when I wake up the next morning. The sound of the drills is getting closer but I don’t think it’s that. It feels like someone has taken off the top of my head and poured hot porridge inside. Sarah has been beeping on my laptop but I don’t feel like learning about sound waves today, especially when I know the TV people are outside. I can hear the sound of laughter and I recognize Graham’s voice as he gets changed in the transition zone. He’s the one who makes the documentary. He made the first one when I was two and we’ve done another nine since then. I can’t wait to see him – not because I want to be on TV, but because for once something different gets to happen in my day.

  I go to the bathroom and splash cold water on my face. I still feel dizzy. I shake my head and try and clear the porridge, but it doesn’t work. On the other side of the door the voices are quieter. I stop by the door. Charlotte R is talking.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I’m not sure. I was told you had to reschedule.’

  I hear the sound of running water and a squirt of disinfectant. I press my ear up against the door.

  ‘Reschedule?’ says Graham. ‘No, we’ve not heard anything about that. It’s our last day. We want to spend it with Joe.’

  ‘But— Dr Moore said—’

  ‘Did you want to check, then?’

  The door to the corridor clicks open. I hear footsteps. The door closes. Graham and someone I don’t recognize talk in the transition zone.

  ‘Spray everything,’ says Graham. ‘Camera, tripod, microphone.’

  ‘Everything?’

  I hear the sound of metal scraping the floor, the hiss of the anti-bacterial fluid being sprayed.

  ‘What is she talking about, postponing? The whole point is that these programmes are about life and death.’

  ‘I know. I guess she’s just doing her job.’

  ‘David, they should know it’s not all about survival and recovery. We can’t stop filming just because somebody dies.’

  They stop talking.

  Die? They can’t mean me. Can they? Am I about to die? It’s so hard to tell, sometimes. My whites are back up. I might have a headache and I know I feel dizzy, but I’m feeling better than I did three days ago, and I haven’t had a nosebleed since then. No, I don’t think it’s me. It could be anyone because kids die in here all the time. They might mean the boy with the snooker-ball head. But I thought he was getting better. Maybe it’s the girl who chases him, pretending to be a horse, or it could be the boy who reads the Hunger Games all day. It could be any of them and I feel bad for whoever it is.

  The corridor door clicks open.

  ‘Sorry,’ Charlotte R says, ‘he’s not answering his pager.’

  ‘How about we get started and see how we go?’

  ‘Okay, but I’ll sit in. Then if things get too much –’

  ‘We stop. Of course.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘. . . All set, David?’

  I walk back to my bed.

  My door slides open. Charlotte R walks in, followed by a young guy wearing white overalls. He’s got a camera in one hand, and a silver box hangs from the other. He nods at me, puts the box gently on the ground and then looks slowly around the room like he’s landed on Mars. Charlotte R walks over to me.

  ‘I’ve told them I’ll sit in for a while. Okay?’

  I smile.

  ‘But you tell me as soon as it gets too much.’

  ‘It won’t,’ I say.

  Charlotte R shakes her head. ‘I know you want to do this, but you just tell me if you feel bad.’

  ‘I will.’ (I won’t.)

  She walks towards my bathroom and sits down in the chair outside it. I hear a knock, and then Graham walks in with a tripod in his hand and a big smile on his face.

  ‘Hey, there he is! How are you doing, young man?’

  I smile and feel warm inside. Graham makes me feel special. Just hearing his voice makes me feel like I’m the most important boy on earth. I push myself up on my bed.

  ‘I didn’t think you were coming!’ I say.

  Graham leans the tripod against the wall. ‘Wouldn’t miss it. It’s not every day we get to catch a real live superhero on film.’ He walks over to me and rubs my head like he’s my best friend. He’s not my best friend, but he is the person that I’ve known the longest. Last year he thought it would be the last time he would be able to do the programme. The BBC told him they were going to cut his money and they were only going to allow him an hour instead of a whole series, but when four million people watched me on their TVs, they decided to let Graham film again. Graham tells me I’m famous, that there isn’t a day that goes by without someone asking him how I am. I don’t feel famous, though. After each episode goes out, Graham forwards me emails from people who watched it, but they only last for a few weeks.

  Graham sits down on the edge of my bed.

  ‘So how are you, Joe?’

  My head begins to throb. I tilt my head down and hope that it will clear. Graham gently squeezes my shoulder.

  ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Where’s the lively lad I met last year, eh?’

  ‘Refuelling his jets and webs.’ I point at my Spider-Man t-shirt.

  Graham laughs. ‘And maybe getting a bigger suit,’ he says. ‘You’ve grown.’

  ‘Not as big as the Incredible Hulk.’

  �
�No, not that big, yet.’

  My head spins again. I close my eyes.

  Charlotte R stands up and walks over to my side. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this if you’re not feeling right.’

  ‘No, I want to! I’m just a bit tired.’

  ‘You’re like my kids when they were your age,’ Graham says. ‘Too tired to get up in the mornings and even when they did, they spent all day in their pyjamas on their phones.’

  I grin. ‘I do that all the time.’

  Graham laughs. ‘Yes, I bet you do. You’re all the same. Look,’ he says to Charlotte R. ‘I think Joe’s old enough to make up his own mind.’

  Charlotte R bites on her lip. I don’t want to get her into trouble; she’s nice.

  ‘I’ll tell you if I feel bad. I’ve been looking forward to this for ages. I can’t stop just because I’m tired.’

  ‘Do you promise you’ll say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Charlotte nods at me, then at Graham.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Let’s see how it goes.’ She walks back to her chair.

  Graham grins at me. ‘Good lad.’ He rubs my head again and I don’t know if it’s because he makes me happy or because we’re getting ready to film, but suddenly I feel better. Graham sees me looking at the camera guy.

  ‘Ah, introductions, new cameraman – David, this is Joe, Joe this is David.’ New-cameraman-David takes his eye away from the viewfinder and waves. I wave back. New-cameraman-David looks back through the lens and pans around the room.

  ‘See they’ve given you a sofa, Joe,’ Graham says, ‘. . . and a new TV.’

  ‘I’m getting Sky TV, too.’

  ‘What? We can’t have you watching the competition.’ Graham’s face goes straight then cracks into a smile again. He looks different to the last time I saw him. He’s still as friendly as I remember, but his hair is much greyer than last year and his face is brown like he’s just come back from holiday. He makes me feel like my white face is practically see-through! He looks at me for a long time like he’s waiting for me to talk but I can’t think of anything to say. Graham nods at my Theo Walcott poster.

  ‘So, you won a trophy at last.’

  ‘Yes. But he didn’t play. He was injured.’

  ‘He’s always injured.’

  I want to say more, but I can’t. I only get to meet Graham once a year, so it’s like I have to get to know him all over again.