The Bubble Boy

by Stewart Foster

  ‘Try and drink, mate,’ he says.

  I take a sip but my throat is so sore it’s like I’ve got a hedgehog stuck in it. I cough again. Greg raises my bed. I see the shadows of doctors and nurses.

  ‘It’s happened rather suddenly.’

  ‘BP?’

  ‘100/80.’

  ‘Heart rate?’

  ‘117.’

  ‘Let’s try . . .’

  My room starts to spin. My stomach feels like it’s coming up through my throat.

  ‘I feel sick.’

  Greg puts his hand around my shoulders and I’m sick in a bowl.

  ‘Easy, mate. Easy.’ He wipes my mouth. I look down at my arm. A tube comes out of it across my bed and up into a plastic bag.

  ‘What happened?’ I whisper.

  ‘Not now, mate. Just relax.’

  Greg puts a wet flannel on my forehead. It’s so cold it freezes my brain.

  I shiver.

  Greg pulls my covers up to my chin. My head falls back. The shadows move and talk in front of the window. Outside, the lights in the glass building are dull and the sky is turning from black to grey. Another plane flies across the inside of my head. I wish I could go and see them again but I don’t think I’d want to go if I came back feeling like there’s a bug crawling through my body. I don’t want any bugs. I hate bugs . . .

  ‘I hate bugs . . .’

  ‘He’s very restless, let’s try something to bring his temperature down . . . Paracetamol . . . and increase the fluids to . . .’

  ‘I hate bugs.’

  ‘I know, mate, just take it easy.’ Greg’s back by my side. He puts a clean bowl on my bed. I try to talk but it comes out as a whisper.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask.

  Greg looks at the doctors then back at me. ‘We’re not sure, mate. One minute you were watching Henry, the next you’d passed out.’

  I turn my head slowly and look at the screens. They’re all blank and the red standby lights are blurred. I close my eyes and try to remember what I was watching. Henry in the mall, smiling and waving on the escalator. I wait for him to get off but the escalator goes on and on and he never reaches the top. It’s like I’ve got a DVD in my head stuck on repeat.

  I open my eyes and close them again. Henry’s jumped ahead, he’s outside McDonald’s with people all around him cheering and smiling. Then I see Henry start to fall forward.

  ‘Henry!’

  ‘Wow, mate, stay still.’ Greg puts his hand on my arm.

  ‘But Henry . . . ?’ I swallow and screw my eyes as pain shoots again. ‘Is he okay?’

  ‘Mate, please, lay still.’

  ‘Can I check . . . ? Can I message him?’

  I try to reach for my laptop. My head spins again. Another nurse stands my by side and puts her hand on my shoulder. Greg puts his hand on my chest.

  ‘Mate, this is serious. You’re not well enough for that.’

  ‘But—’ My chests rattles and I cough. ‘But I need to find out . . . I really need to know.’

  Greg looks towards the doctors. ‘It’s important . . . I don’t think he’s going to rest till he knows.’

  I don’t hear the reply but I think I see a shadow shake its head. Greg gets up and walks towards them. They nod and start to whisper.

  ‘I think . . .’

  ‘I know but . . .’

  ‘Just for . . .’

  ‘Okay. Okay.’

  They stop talking. Greg comes back to me. ‘Just one message’ he says. ‘Just to check.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He slides my laptop onto my bed and lifts up the screen. I try to move the mouse but the keyboard is all blurry and the letters move up and down they’re floating on the sea. I blink. My head clears a little and I check my messages. There’s two from my teachers, eleven for Bubble Boy but nothing on Skype from Henry. I start to type.

  Henry. I hope you’re ok.

  23:00

  I wait for the pencil to start scribbling. But it doesn’t.

  Henry . . . message me when you can.

  23:00

  I cough and a bright light flashes through the middle of my head. I scrunch my eyes. The light flashes again, a million times brighter than the car headlights I passed on the road with Amir. I shout to Greg. All that comes out is a croak. The lights shine again. I twist in my bed, reach for my pillow and try to wrap it round my head.

  ‘Easy, Joe. Easy.’

  A hand on my shoulder. A hand on my leg.

  ‘Hold him. Hold him!’

  Another bright light.

  ‘No, Joe. Don’t take it off. I tell you, not to take it off.’ Amir’s stood in front of the car headlights with his hand in the air. ‘Joe, I tell you. No take it off.’

  I didn’t take it off. I don’t think I took my helmet off? I bite my teeth together as the pain comes again.

  I’m at the airfield with Amir. Planes are roaring over my head. My helmet is rocking backwards and forwards on the grass.

  ‘Pick it up, Joe. You put it back on!’ Amir runs towards me but it’s like he’s moving in slow motion. He looks back at the car then back at me. Bugs and midges buzz around in the headlights.

  Amir keeps running. Bugs fly around his legs, his body and in his hair.

  ‘Joe! Hurry, they coming.’

  I pick up my helmet and try to put it on. My hands are shaking and my gloves are too thick to fasten the straps. The bugs are all around me, biting at my suit, crawling up my arms and my shoulders towards my neck.

  ‘Amir! Amir!’

  ‘Joe! Joe!’

  I open my eyes. I’m back in my room. Greg’s standing over me shouting my name.

  I try to sit up.

  ‘The bugs,’ I say. ‘They’re everywhere! Don’t let them get me! Don’t let the bugs get me!’

  ‘Joe, there are no bugs.’

  Can’t he see the bugs are in my room? There’s millions of them, crawling over the monitors, down my IV tube and into me. They’re biting my hands and my neck. They’re going to eat me until all that’s left is bones. I try to shout but they’re crawling up my neck into my mouth. Doctors and nurses all around me. Bugs buzzing everywhere. They’re bouncing off the ceiling and scratching on the floor.

  ‘There are!’ I scratch the bugs off my body and my head.

  ‘Okay. Okay, let’s sedate.’

  More hands on my arms and legs.

  ‘It’s all right, mate. It’s okay.’

  My head starts to go dizzy. I feel something cold in my arm, like ice is travelling through my veins. I take a deep breath, then another. Fuzzy faces look down at me.

  ‘There we go. There we go.’

  I feel like Spidey when he fought Morlun. He got smashed against cars and thrown from the highest towers. Then he swung Morlun around in a circle and threw him against the Empire State Building. Spidey’s suit was torn and he lay crumpled on the floor. It was the hardest fight Spidey ever had. No one had hit him harder than Morlun, not even the Hulk. But he kept getting up every time Morlun knocked him down, he wouldn’t give up, as long as his heart kept beating he would keep fighting every moment and, in the end, he found a way to win.

  I turn my head. Something is scratching under the door. The bugs are coming back again.

  11 years, 3 months and 13 days

  The sun is out and the clouds are rolling slowly over the glass building. The doctors are standing at the end of my bed. Dr Hussein has got his arms folded. Dr Moore is holding his chin. They smile when they see me looking.

  ‘Hey, young man.’ Dr Moore walks towards me and sits on the edge of my bed. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Not very good,’ I say.

  ‘No, you’ve had a tough night,’ he says softly. Then he looks at me for a long time like he’s waiting for me to say something. I don’t want to say anything. All I want is for the pain to go away.

  Dr Moore rests his notes on my bed. ‘Just tell me about the pain, Joe,’ he says softly.

  ‘It’s bad
.’

  ‘I know, but where is it?’

  ‘All over and I feel really hot.’

  ‘Okay, let’s stay with the pain. Tell me where it hurts most?’

  ‘My legs, my arms, my back. It’s everywhere.’

  ‘But mainly?’

  ‘In my head and my mouth is really sore too.’

  ‘How bad is the pain? On a scale of one to ten?’

  My eyelids fall down. How bad is this pain? Sometimes it’s a dull ache – that’s about a four. Sometimes it’s a throbbing pain – that’s about a six.

  I wince as the paint shoots again. ‘Eight, I think it’s an e-i-g-h-t’.

  The pain stabs like a knife in my head, fades to an ache.

  Dr Moore taps my hand. ‘Joe, we need to give you something more for that. Okay?’

  This must be serious. Dr Moore doesn’t usually talk to me as quietly as this. He’s usually smiling and making jokes with Dr Hussein and the only time he calls me Joe is when I’ve done something wrong.

  He taps my hand again like he’s trying to wake me up. ‘Okay, young man. I think you know how this goes.’

  ‘More tests?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. It’s an infection. We know that. We’re just not sure where it came from. It’s like investigating a crime. We have to eliminate all the suspects until we’re left with the culprit . . . But we think it’s fungal.’

  ‘In my blood.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And sometimes it can affect the lungs.’

  He rubs my head gently and glances up at Dr Hussein. ‘It’s taken a while,’ he says, ‘but I think we’ve got our man back again.’

  I smile. I don’t feel well but I feel better. I feel better because the doctors are here.

  Dr Moore stands up. ‘So Joe, this is how it goes. You need to take it easy . . . stay in bed a few days. Dr Hussein’s going to take a look at you, then we’ll do those tests and we’ll give you something for the pain. Okay?’ He scribbles something down on his pad.

  ‘Is it really serious?’

  ‘Well, you know that any infection is serious. We’ll do all the usual things like check the air purity and the ventilation system, but this really shouldn’t have got in here. It’s something new that we’ve not come across before.’ Dr Moore turns and talks quietly to Dr Hussein.

  I know I should help them search for the infection. They’re really busy looking after the other kids. I could save them time. They don’t have to do all the tests or change all the filters. I could tell them the reason I’m ill is because I went outside. Every time I’ve had an infection before, it’s just happened; they tell me it’s just bad luck. But this time it’s my fault. I should tell them now but I can’t. I don’t want to get into trouble, but most of all I don’t want to snitch on Amir. He shouldn’t get into trouble for giving me the most exciting night of my life.

  ‘Hey,’ Dr Moore stands above me. ‘Don’t look so worried. We can do this . . . You’re a superhero. We all know superheroes bounce back.’

  I smile and try to lift my arm to show them my muscles, but it aches too much.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ says Dr Hussein. ‘We’ll soon have those muscles as strong as Thor’s . . . Now, let’s take a look at you.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ says Dr Moore. ‘I’ll be back later – and Joe?’ He stops by the door. ‘Everything will be fine, even if it is the filters, there are back-up systems to stop the really bad stuff getting through.’

  I nod as he goes out of the door. He doesn’t know that when I was outside all I had was my helmet. I lean forward. Dr Hussein puts his hand on my back and taps it with his fingers. He tells me to breathe in and out. I’ve had this done so many times I know what to do. When he’s finished tapping on my back, he does the same on my chest. Then he looks in my mouth and in my ears. He makes a ‘hmmm’ sound, then writes in his notes. Then he sits down and asks me more questions – do I still feel sick? Have the bright lights stopped flashing in my head?

  I tell him I feel a bit dizzy and that the lights have gone away. More ‘hmmm’s. More notes.

  My head falls back onto my pillow and my eyes meet the ceiling. The pain throbs through my head every time the monitors beep. I take a deep breath and try to slow it down. Then another – seven seconds in. Eleven seconds out.

  Seven seconds in. Eleven seconds out. Just like Amir taught me.

  My heart rate slows, the pain weakens and Dr Hussein’s words start to fade like he’s walking away from me into another room.

  I’m floating through the air, over the tops of skyscrapers. I touch each one with my fingertips, push gently, then float on to the next. The sky is blue but the streets are grey, and empty – there are no cars, no busses or taxis, and there are no people walking.

  It’s like everyone has left and gone to a new planet. Why didn’t they tell me? I didn’t see them fly past me.

  I look ahead. Another skyscraper comes towards me. I float over it and out to sea.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Room temp.: 19C

  Body temp.: 40.1C

  Heart rate: 114

  Air purity: 99.1

  My room is white. Outside, the glass building is blue. There’s music playing quietly.

  Charlotte R is standing beside me with a syringe in her hand. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘It’s me again.’

  I close my eyes and feel the sting as the needle goes in.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Not brilliant.’ I wince.

  ‘No, Greg said you didn’t have a great night. But let’s hope that’s the worst.’

  ‘I’m worried about my friend too.’

  ‘I know. Greg said he’s going to try and call the hospital when he comes in.’ She taps my arm. ‘There . . . all done.’

  I see the time on her watch. It’s 11:15. Greg won’t be here until six. I can’t wait that long to find out about Henry. I reach for my laptop.

  ‘No,’ Charlotte R says. ‘You’re supposed to be taking it easy.’

  I give her my best Please let me! look.

  ‘Stop doing that meerkat thing. It doesn’t work.’

  I do the meerkat again. I know it will.

  Charlotte tuts. ‘Look, I’m sure he’s okay.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘But I just want to check. Please.’

  She sighs. ‘I’ve just got to take this down to the lab.’ She slides my laptop onto my bed. ‘I’ll be gone five minutes.’

  I give her my best Thank you look.

  She walks back to the door. ‘Five,’ she mouths and holds up her fingers.

  I open my laptop. Henry might be tired but it doesn’t take much energy to type a message. We’ve always been able to do it before when one of us has had a cold or been sick. We’ve even messaged in the middle of transfusions. I’m really ill and I can do it. But maybe he’s feeling even worse than me.

  I check Skype. He still hasn’t replied.

  Henry. I’m really worried now.

  11:20

  I wish I could contact his mum and dad but I’ve only ever spoken to them on Skype when they’re with Henry. They’ve never called or texted me. They send me Christmas and birthday cards but I don’t have an address to send anything back. But they would get hold of me, wouldn’t they? They would know I am worried.

  Henry, where are you?

  11:22

  I look at the time. Charlotte said she would be five minutes but it takes longer than that to go down to the lab and back.

  There must be news about Henry somewhere. I switch to the internet and start to type.

  Boy in a Spacesuit. Philadelphia Shopping Mall.

  My finger hovers over the enter key. I want to know how he is, but I don’t want to know if he’s really ill. It’s like when the doctors tell me what’s wrong with me. I don’t want to know how bad it is but I still go on the internet and look it up.

  I close my eyes, press the key, then open my eyes again.

 
; Bubble Boy Collapses At Philly Shopping Mall.

  There’s a picture of Henry slumped in his chair with his mum and the nurses surrounding him. I click on the link and start to read but it doesn’t say any more than I already know, only that they couldn’t do anything for him at the Mall because it meant getting him out of his suit. They took him back to the hospital in an ambulance. I look at the next search result:

  Bubble Boy Burst – YouTube

  I click off the screen. I’ve seen Henry collapse once. I don’t want to see it again.

  I should be resting but I can’t relax when my best friend is ill. I have to do something. There are two messages on the BBC website.

  BBC Bubble Boy Forum

  Sun 29 August, 22:01

  Dear Bubble Boy.

  I think I might have the same disease as you, but my mum thinks it’s just an excuse so I don’t have to go to school.

  Marlow Trent. Essex

  BBC Bubble Boy Forum

  Mon 30 August, 09:41

  Dear Bubble Boy, or shall I call you Joe, I don’t know. Should I? Anyway I’m sorry I haven’t contacted you, I’ve been to my gran’s in Wales and she doesn’t have internet and the mobile signal isn’t very good there either. What have you been up to? I think . . .

  The words start to blur like I’m revising for a history test.

  My phone buzzes on my bed and makes me jump. It’s Beth. I haven’t spoken to her since I went outside. I don’t want her to worry about me or find out what I’ve done. I open her message.

  Hey Joe. How are you?

  I’m OK.

  You sure?

  Yes.

  I know you’re not.