“I don’t know!” protested the girl.
“Look, I don’t know what you children get up to after dark. But, please, from now on be careful.”
“Thank you, Tootsie.”
“No, thank you, Amber.”
“No, thank you.”
“No, thank you.”
“For goodness’ sake, woman! PLEASE can I have my breakfast NOW!” complained Robin bitterly. “I’m STARVING!”
“Yes, of course, Robin!” replied Tootsie as she served him a bowl of dry cornflakes. She had run out of cold tea. George got the same and went into a tremendous SULK.
Next Tootsie moved on to Sally. Under her overalls she had concealed a small white paper bag. “Don’t tell the others,” whispered Tootsie. “But I bought you an iced bun on the way in to work.”
“Thank you so much, Tootsie!” whispered Sally. “Would you like half, Tom?”
Tom was touched. “No, thank you. You have it. You need to get your strength up.”
“I’ll ’ave ’alf!” said George. “In fact, if you want, I’ll ’ave more than ’alf!”
“Let Sally eat her bun!” said Tom.
“It’s OK,” replied Sally.
George leaped out of his bed as the girl broke it in two.
“There you–” But before Sally could say “go” he had taken half of the iced bun out of her hands and devoured it in one gulp.
“Fanks, Sally,” he said. “I’m always ’appy to ’elp.”
Tom smiled, then his eyes turned to Matron’s office. She was talking on the telephone, having a heated conversation with someone. “What was all that about with Tootsie, Amber?” he asked.
“They know someone’s been down in the freezer room,” replied the girl.
“How?” asked Tom.
“Footprints. Wheelchair-tyre marks, they’re on to us …”
“What are you two conspiring about?” demanded Matron. The children hadn’t seen her coming, and she was now looming over their beds.
“Nothing, Matron,” replied Amber.
“Yes, absolutely nothing at all,” added Tom.
Matron studied their faces for signs of lying. Tom could feel his face glowing bright red.
“I don’t believe you!” snarled Matron. “I know you rotten children are up to something!”
“We ain’t done nothin’, Matron. If we ’ad done some’ink, which we ain’t, then you’d ’ave us bang to rights. But we ain’t. All right?” said George.
Matron looked him straight in the eye. The lady was clearly not convinced. “I think the boy protests too much. I have just had the hospital principal on the phone. Sir Quentin Strillers himself. And he was FUMING! Sir Quentin said three small-footed patients had been down in the freezer room in the middle of the night. And there were wheelchair tracks too. I know it’s you. Who else can it be? Now will any of you wicked lot confess?”
All the children fell silent. No one knew how to talk their way out of this.
Then from the corner of the ward came a voice. “I was awake all night, Matron.” It was Sally. “And everyone else was asleep the whole time. So it couldn’t have been them!”
“Swear it!” demanded Matron.
“I swear, Matron!” Sally put her hand to her heart. “I swear on my pet hamster’s life!”
“Hmm,” purred Matron. This stopped the lady in her tracks. “Well, you should know I have my eye on every single one of you. Now, Tom …”
“Yes, Matron?” replied the boy, trembling in fear.
“You will be taken down to the X-ray room in five minutes. They need to check on that pathetic little bump on your head. With any luck, you’ll be out of this hospital by lunchtime.”
“Yes, Matron,” replied Tom.
The lady turned on her heels and marched back into her office.
Tom lay back in his bed in sorrow. The last thing he wanted to do was leave his new friends at the hospital. For the first time in his life, Tom felt like he belonged somewhere. His parents travelled abroad so much for his father’s work, he felt like he never had a home. And as for his posh boarding school, St Willet’s, Tom thought of his time there as a prison sentence. Days and weeks were ticked off in his mind, and the boy knew he was wishing his life away.
Tom felt close to all the children on the ward, but in particular the little girl in the corner. She was special.
“Thank you for getting us out of that one, Sally,” said Tom.
“My pleasure,” replied the girl.
“I feel bad you swore on your hamster’s life.”
“It’s all right,” said the girl. “I don’t have a hamster.”
Tom and Sally laughed.
“Wonderful news!” exclaimed Dr Luppers. “There is nothing wrong with you!”
“That’s fantastic,” replied Tom in the most unconvincing way.
The pair were down in the X-ray room. Doctor Luppers was showing the boy a strange transparent black-and-white photo of his head under a lamp.
“So you can see the bump on your head is this outline here,” began the young doctor, “but if we look inside the head here …”
Luppers took out a pencil and pointed to a grey area where the boy’s brain was meant to be.
“… then we can’t make out any shaded areas at all. So I would say you don’t have any internal bleeding.”
“Are you sure, Doctor?” pleaded the boy.
“Yes. It’s absolutely super news. There’s really no point you being here at all.”
“No?”
“Yes! It means you can go back to your boarding school immediately.”
“Oh!” Tom lowered his head and said nothing.
Luppers looked absolutely baffled that this child was sulking because he could leave. Normally patients wanted to get out of LORD FUNT HOSPITAL at the earliest opportunity.
“What’s the matter, Tom?” asked the man.
“Nothing. It’s just …”
“What?”
“Well, I have made some really good friends on the ward.”
“Then make sure you get their addresses before you go, and then they can be pen pals.”
Pen pals sounded boring. Tom was yearning for more adventure.
“I will ask Matron to call your headmaster right away to arrange for you to be collected as soon as possible.”
Tom realised he had to think fast if he was going to be able to stay with his new friends for another night of adventure.
“I feel very extremely hot, Doctor!” he exclaimed. At his boarding school a high temperature guaranteed you could leave a lesson and have a lie-down in the sick bay. This was a particularly useful way of getting out of double Maths on Wednesday afternoons. Tom had even seen a boy put the end of a thermometer on a blazing hot radiator to fake illness.
“Are you sure?” asked Luppers. He felt the boy’s forehead, and wasn’t at all convinced.
“Yes! I am burning up, Doctor!” lied the boy. “Hotter than even a particularly hot cup of tea that is too hot to drink!”
Luppers whipped out a thermometer from his pocket, and put it in the boy’s mouth. Tom needed a distraction.
“I need a glass of water, Doctor …” he mumbled with the thermometer in his mouth. “Urgently! Or as I am so hot I might spontaneously combust!”
“Oh dear!” replied Luppers, a note of panic in his voice. As he flapped around the X-ray room like a trapped bird, Tom slipped the thermometer out of his mouth and put it next to the fiery-hot light bulb. Immediately the temperature shot up. Then the boy slipped the thermometer back in his mouth, burning his tongue a little in the process.
Luppers returned with a vase of flowers. “I couldn’t find a glass. This was the best I could do right now, I am afraid.”
Luppers took the thermometer out of the boy’s mouth and pulled the flowers out of the vase. Green water with bits of brown bobbing around in it lurked at the bottom.
“Be sure to drink it all!” ordered Luppers.
Reluctantly, the
boy started sipping the rank liquid.
“Big gulps, please!” said Luppers. “Every last drop!”
Tom closed his eyes and swigged down the rest of it. It tasted of pond. As he did so, Doctor Luppers studied the temperature in horror.
“Oh no!”
“What?” asked Tom.
“This is the highest temperature ever recorded for a human being!”
Tom worried he might have overdone it. “Do I win a prize, Doctor?” he asked.
“No! But we are going to have to keep you in the hospital until your temperature goes back down to a normal level.”
Luppers whipped out a medical form, and began making notes on it.
“Do you have a headache?”
“Ow, yes.”
“Fever?”
“Yes! I am burning up!”
“Cold sweats?”
“Yes, suddenly I am freezing.”
“Aching joints?”
“Aah, yes.”
“Blurred vision?”
“Yes, but, sorry, who is speaking?”
“Dry throat?”
“It’s hard to answer my throat is so dry.”
“Excessive tiredness?”
“I don’t have the energy to answer.”
“Hearing problems?”
“Sorry, can you repeat that?”
“Pain when you pass water?”
“Yes, it hurt when I walked past a fish tank.”
“Chronic indecisiveness?”
“Yes and no. Doctor, you name it, I’ve got it!”
Luppers broke out into a sweat. His voice cracked with panic. “Oh my! Oh my, oh my! Oh my, oh my, oh my! It’s a miracle you are still alive. We need to do hundreds of tests. Heart tests. Blood tests. Brain tests. Let’s just do every test there is. Then we’ll get you straight back up to the children’s ward!”
Tom didn’t say it out loud, but in his head he shouted the most enormous YES!
“Nurse! NURSE!” shouted the doctor, looking as if he was about to faint.
Nurse Meese, who had met Tom on his arrival at the hospital, rushed into the X-ray room.
“What now, Doctor?”
“It is an emergency! This boy needs to do tests. Right now!”
“What tests?”
“All of them! Any you can think of! NOW! NOW! NOW!” spluttered Luppers. “Fetch two trolleys!”
“Why do you need two?” demanded Meese.
“Because I am going to pass out!”
While waiting for all the results of Doctor Luppers’s extremely long list of tests, Tom was under strict bed-rest orders from Matron. The boy’s temperature was so high he was forbidden to leave his bed under any circumstances. First, the doctors at LORD FUNT had to work out what might be wrong with him.
As for Luppers, the newly qualified doctor had been thrown into such a panic he had passed out. In less than a week at the hospital, he had gone from doctor to patient.
As soon as Tom was back in his bed, Sally turned to him and said, “So come on, Tom, tell me …”
“Tell you what?”
“… what you got up to last night.”
Tom hesitated. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” he said.
“But you promised.”
“I know. I know. I know. Look, I am sorry, Sally, but the others told me it has to be a secret.”
“What has to be a secret?”
“The secret thing.”
“What is the secret thing?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be a secret thing if I told you.”
“All right then,” replied the girl. It was clear she wasn’t giving up. “What were you all doing down in the freezer room last night?”
It became clear Amber had been earwigging, as she joined in the conversation. “For goodness’ sake, Sally, the grown-ups are on to us. The principal of the hospital knows something is going on. So, look, the less people who know, the better. If you know everything, you will be in trouble too.”
“But I’d love to be in trouble! I hate being left here on my own while you lot go out and have all the fun.”
“It’s better you don’t know,” replied Amber.
“But I won’t tell anyone,” pleaded Sally. “I covered for you all last night, remember?”
“Yes, yes, thank you for that,” said Amber. “We may need you to cover for us again tonight.”
“We are going out again tonight?” asked Tom. He couldn’t believe they would risk it.
“Yes!” cried George from across the children’s ward as he tucked into some chocolates. “It’s my turn tonight!”
“What are you going to do?” asked Tom.
“Fly?” replied George.
“Oh, please no!” said Robin.
“What do you mean ‘oh, please no’?!” demanded George.
Matron must have heard the raised voices, because she dashed out of her office.
“What’s all this now?” she demanded.
“Nothing, Matron!” replied Amber. “Nothing at all.”
“Really? Nothing indeed. It seems I have a ward of nasty little liars. Now, my shift is finishing soon. Nurse Meese will be here in a moment. She will be in charge of the children’s ward until nightfall. Then I shall return. If Nurse Meese has to report bad behaviour from any of you, I will have all of you thrown out of here and moved to separate hospitals. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Matron,” the children all said together.
“Good,” purred Matron. “Sally, you will be going down for your treatment soon.”
“Do I have to?” asked the girl.
“Stupid child!” snapped Matron. “Yes, of course you do! What do you think you are here for? To have fun?”
“No, Matron,” replied the girl.
At that moment the tall doors at the end of the ward swung open with force. Nurse Meese entered and said, “Morning, Matron. Morning, kiddies.”
“Good morning, Nurse Meese,” said the children in unison.
“Morning, Meese,” said Matron.
“How is that temperature of yours, Thomas?” asked the nurse. By her tone, it sounded as if she suspected the boy was faking it. She was much more experienced than the new boy Luppers, and so harder to fool.
“Still very incredibly high, Nurse,” replied Tom.
“That boy is not to leave his bed,” said Matron. “Under any circumstances!”
“Yes, Matron. You can trust me. I will make sure of that,” said Meese as she eyed the boy suspiciously.
Later that afternoon, the Midnight Gang began planning the night’s adventure. George’s dream was to fly. This would take some thinking. Especially as it seemed the top brass at the hospital were on to them.
With Sally downstairs receiving her special treatment, and Nurse Meese sitting in Matron’s office, the children set to work.
The children’s ward of LORD FUNT HOSPITAL had a few tatty old board games. There was a Snakes and Ladders set that had no dice, a jigsaw of a cute white kitten playing with some balloons that had a number of pieces missing, and a game of Operation with no batteries so the patient’s nose never lit up red.
Tom, Amber, George and Robin all pretended to work on the jigsaw together as they talked in hushed tones about tonight’s adventure.
“Maybe we could make a glider out of sheets and curtain poles?” suggested Robin. “The porter can help us put everything together.”
“But where would we fly it?” replied Amber. “There’s nowhere high enough in the hospital.”
“There’s the stairwell,” said Robin. “This hospital goes up forty-four floors. So it must be a long drop.”
“Erm, excuse me,” said George, “I wanna fly, not die!”
“You would have a glider,” replied Robin.
“Well, I would ’ave some sheets and poles tied together. That’s not the same fing!” said George a little too loudly.
All eyes turned to the office, but Nurse Meese was busy with her paperwork.
“Well, ma
ybe you shouldn’t have such an impossible dream!” remarked Amber.
“But it’s always been my dream. I ’ate bein’ ’eavy like this.” George slapped his big stomach and it wobbled like jelly for a few seconds. “I want to feel what it’s like to be as light as air.”
Tom had been listening to everything, and searching his mind for an answer. As he placed a jigsaw piece down on the tray table in front of him, he realised the answer was staring them all in the face.
“Balloons!” he said.
“Wot?” asked George.
“Let’s not go down, let’s go up!” said Tom.
“Please would you be so kind as to explain, new boy!” said Amber.
“You know at a birthday party when you sometimes have those special balloons that float?” began Tom, his words tumbling out in excitement. The other children all nodded in agreement.
“Well, if we could get our hands on enough of them, then George could start at the bottom of the stairwell and float up!”
George smiled. “Tom! I love it!”
“Are there enough balloons in Britain?” asked Robin.
“Very funny!” replied George.
“I bet there are enough dotted around this hospital,” replied Tom. “Patients often have them tied to their beds. There’s one right there!”
With his eyes, Tom indicated over to Sally’s bed. One lonely balloon with “Get Well Soon” printed on it was tied on to her headboard. It was floating in the air just shy of the ceiling.
“What a brilliant idea of mine!” said Amber. The girl obviously wanted to be back in charge again, and didn’t like this new boy stealing her thunder.
“What?” protested Tom.
“I was about to suggest balloons just before you did,” she fibbed.
“Of course you were!” said Tom.
“Come on, ladies! Let’s not fall out!” joked Robin.
“I bet there are ’undreds of those balloons in this ’ospital,” said George in a rush of excitement. “There’s loads for sale in the gift shop on the ground floor. I often sneak down there to buy a chocolate bar or two. All we need to do is steal ’em!”
“Borrow them!” said Tom.
The Midnight Gang Page 8