LITMIR.BIZ

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Thank God, he’s hanging on. Don’t pull at your mask, son; you still need it.”

      This last comment was addressed to him and he could vaguely see that a face now hovered above his own.

      “Can you hear me?” He nodded, or at least he thought he did.

      “I’ll take that as a yes.” The blurred face smiled. “You’re in hospital. Don’t try to talk yet; you’ve been through a nasty time. You need your sleep, don’t fight it. You’re quite safe now.”

      His eyes drifted open and closed and the sounds receded as the pull of sleep dragged him into darkness.

      He knew that time was passing rapidly, slipping away from him, but had no idea how much. He opened his eyes to another ceiling, this time in darkness, and another empty room. He closed his eyes again and, when he found the strength to reopen them what felt like only seconds later, he was no longer alone.

      “Can you see me?” the nurse asked.

      “Yes,” he mumbled back.

      “Do you have any family?”

      “No,” he said truthfully. “No family.”

      “So there is absolutely no one to come for you?”

      “No, no one’s gonna come.”

      “How do you feel?”

      He found lucid thought almost impossible. His breathing came ragged and hard in his chest and his body felt impossibly heavy.

      “I’m fine,” he lied. “I want to leave.”

      “I’m sorry, boy, but there is no way that you will be leaving here.” The nurse smiled coldly at him. “No way at all. Is there anything you need? A priest?”

      He almost laughed, but coughed instead and it tore his body up with pain.

      “No priest then.” The nurse did not call for help as he coughed and clutched at his chest. “So there is no one we can get for you at all? No social worker? No friends?”

      He shook his head as the cough became a blinding white light of intense pain. His body convulsed and he became vaguely aware of an alarm going off. He could see the nurse standing at his bedside, watching him.

      “Do not struggle,” she said. “It is far too late for that.”

      The door burst open and the room suddenly filled with people all talking at once and throwing back the covers from him and dragging equipment to his bedside. It was the last thing he saw.

      “He’s not going to make it; the damage to his heart is just too severe. That’s why they brought him here from casualty.”

      “Why?”

      “Well, he’s going to die, isn’t he? Nothing they can do for him over there and it’s upsetting for the whole hospital to have a kid lying around, waiting to die.”

      “How old do you think he is?”

      “About fourteen, I reckon, maybe less; he’s probably older than he looks, think he was living rough for some time.”

      “Damn shame. Where on earth are his family?”

      “No sign of them, and he wouldn’t tell them his name upstairs, must be a runaway. We’ve been calling him Adam for want of something better. He was found in Adam Street under the archways; paramedics said he was so filthy he must have been living rough for some time. Last few nights were just too cold for him; hypothermia combined with long-term malnutrition, irreversible organ damage. Then the coronary . . .”

      The two hospice nurses fussed around the grey-faced, fair-haired boy who lay as still as death before them. His frail body barely made a lump in the crisp white sheets and his feet lay far short of the end of the bed. Machines sprouting tubes and wires decorated the bedside, trailing to the backs of his thin hands. The room’s silence was punctuated only by the beep of the heart monitor as it registered the failing beat and the regular suck and blow of the ventilator. The nurses whispered as they spoke, although neither was sure if the boy could hear them.

      “I just can’t believe stuff like this can still happen in the twenty-first century,” the younger of the two whispered as she affectionately brushed his fair hair back from his narrow face. “He would have been so handsome, but he’ll never grow up. How can things like this happen?”

      “When you’ve been here as long as I have, you’ll understand we’ve not come as far from the Dark Ages as we like to think,” the older one commented scathingly.

      “At least he’s clean and warm now, even if he doesn’t last long,” the first said wistfully. “Did you see his eyes before he lost consciousness? Such a pale blue-grey, like ice, so beautiful but such terrible sadness in them . . .”

      “Don’t get involved.” The older woman gripped her colleague by the arm and tried to turn her away from the boy. “You can’t go getting upset over every body that comes in.”

      “I know.” She finally tore her gaze from the boy’s pallid face. “But it’s so difficult sometimes. There was something in his eyes; it was like he was older. I dunno, like he was . . .”

      “Weary.”

      “Yes, that’s it, like he was tired of living.” She sighed. “Shouldn’t have that look at his age. He looked older than his years.”

      The senior nurse ushered her junior out of the room and once more the boy was left in peace. The staff had given him a side room, more to spare the emotions of others in the wards than to benefit the boy. This was the first time for a long time that he had a room of his own and he was too far gone into his coma to even notice; instead his thoughts drifted to all that had gone before. His memory ran through the violent foster home from which he had fled as soon as he had been able, to the bitter cold of the London streets where all he had to keep him alive were the handouts from strangers. It was a stranger who had found him that morning and he had a fleeting moment of recollection as she had called for an ambulance while her dog licked his blue-tinged face; then there was the noise and the pulling around . . .

      It was quieter now, but he had heard brief snatches of conversation as they tried in vain to stabilise his heart after the coronary. For a while he felt he was already dead as he drifted in and out of consciousness while the doctors worked on him. He could recall a few faces from that hectic room, but soon had no strength to resist the coma. Several people had rushed him through into the first room, the one with all of the machines and the constant noise and shouting, but only two nurses had wheeled him very slowly into this silent room and so he knew it would be his last. He didn’t mind; it was warm in here and, though he only felt he had the tiniest grip on life, he felt safe for the first time in years.

      “Sleep, young man; you need your rest now,” a nurse told him but, despite the warmth in her voice, cold had already begun to run in his veins.

      He gave up trying to fight it and, feeling the overwhelming drag of sleep, he gave in and the beep that accompanied him gradually began to slow down . . .

      Chapter Three – D’Scover

      “I cannot send anyone until at least next week, possibly Thursday; that is my final word on the matter.”

      The tall, thin man leaned across his desk and flipped the pages of a large desk diary lying in front of him. Loose black hair fell forward across his almost impossibly pale skin as he ran a lean finger down a list of diary entries. Using both hands, he pushed his hair back, frowned and adjusted his telephone earpiece as the voice on the other end of the line continued to speak.

      “What do you mean?” he snapped. “Why did you not say this before? This puts a very different light on the matter. You know full well that activity of this nature is dealt with by the lower departments.” He slammed the diary closed. “You can call them yourself and arrange an agent; Section One does not deal with matters so trivial.”

      He waited while the person on the other

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