Odd Child Out: A Novel

by Gilly MacMillan

  He’ll be able to speak when he gets home, she tells herself, and she says this out loud to her parents when they return to the bedside.

  The police escort them out and offer to drive them home.

  As they exit the parking area, Sofia sees the Children’s Hospital next door. They’ve told her that Noah’s being treated there. That makes sense. There’s no way they could have mistaken him for a sixteen-year-old.

  Noah’s condition is critical. The police have explained this to Abdi, apparently in an effort to persuade him to talk. She wonders how wise that was.

  She also wonders what Abdi saw and what he and Noah did.

  When she swallows, all she tastes is fear.

  Noah,” Mum says. “Can you open your eyes, love?”

  I can’t.

  She asks me to squeeze her hand, but I can’t do that either. I can’t move at all.

  “Anything?” Dad asks.

  “No.”

  I think I can feel Mum’s fingers tightening around mine, and then, a little louder than before, she says, “Noah! Darling, can you hear me? Can you squeeze my hand at all, Noah, even just a little bit?”

  My first response is to think, I’ll be able to later, I’m sure I will. But then I’m not so sure, because everything is kind of a gray mist right now. I’ve no idea what’s happening. There’s only one thing that’s clear in my mind: a very recent memory. It’s the unforgettable, irreversible fact that I’ve had the talk, the one where they tell you that the wheels have fallen off the bike and there’s no putting them back on.

  “How long have we got?” Mum said to Sasha, the day we got the news. We were sitting in the room in the pediatric oncology ward that’s supposed to be for parents to take refuge in when everything gets a bit much. Only families who are new to the ward use it, though, because everybody else knows that it’s also known as the “bad news room.” You learn to avoid it like the plague.

  Sasha’s my oncologist. Full name: Dr. Sasha Mitchell, with lots of letters afterward, but she’s been treating me for eight years, so we’re firmly on a first-name basis.

  “I can’t predict that with any accuracy,” she told Mum. “I’m sorry.” She had a grip on Mum’s hand, and I was glad because Mum looked as if she might vaporize if somebody didn’t physically hold her. “But I would hope, if we don’t get any kind of unexpected event, that there might be a couple of months. We can discuss how we might alleviate Noah’s symptoms, so that time can be as enjoyable as possible, but I’m afraid that’s all we can do.”

  Silence.

  “I’m very sorry,” Sasha repeated. I didn’t want her to look at me.

  Dad wasn’t with us that morning. He was on a plane back to Bristol from somewhere.

  My favorite nurse, Sheila, was in the room, sitting in the circle of bad news. She’s been treating me for years, just like Sasha.

  My medical notes were on her knees, a stack of papers so thick that nobody had yet transferred them to the electronic system. They’re filed in multiple cardboard folders, each bursting with paper, dog-eared and coffee-stained, and held together with rubber bands. They follow me around the hospital to wherever I’m having treatment. Trolleys look as if they might sag under the weight of them, and nurses have to carry them with two arms. They document everything that’s ever happened to me here. Families who haven’t been in the system for as long as we have eye them with fear. One of Sheila’s tears soaked into the cardboard cover. I wondered what the hospital would do with them when I’m gone. Trash them, I suppose.

  I blubbed in the bad news room, of course I did. The three of them rallied around me, arms crisscrossing my back, and Mum said, “Noah, love, Noah.”

  I said, “But there are so many things I need to do.”

  On the way back to my room, with Mum and Sheila and the rolling IV stand that I was attached to, I noticed the other nurses at the station averted their eyes. They knew. I wanted them to face me. I used my elbow to knock over a tray that one of them had left in a precarious place. Syringes and blood vials clattered across the linoleum. The fourth-floor color scheme is blue in Bristol Children’s Hospital, if you’re interested. Blue floor, blue walls. The vials rolled a satisfyingly long way. I felt as if everything was happening in slow motion.

  Mum’s voice interrupts my thoughts. She’s speaking slowly, like I’m half-witted or deaf.

  “Darling, you’ve been in an accident. You fell into the canal and you banged your head while you were under the water. The doctors have put you in an induced coma because they think that’s the best way to get you better. You’re in intensive care.”

  “Do you remember being by the canal last night?” Dad asks.

  The canal: black water, the surface a thick, slick membrane until I hit it, and the cold clenched my chest.

  “With Abdi?” he adds.

  “Don’t,” Mum says.

  “He might remember.”

  “He’s not even conscious.”

  “Then why are you talking to him and asking him to squeeze your hand?”

  “Because I think it’s good if we talk to him, but I don’t think we should be asking distressing questions. We don’t know what happened.”

  “It was an accident. What else could it have been?”

  “I’m not talking about it now. I’ve just said it might distress him.”

  She has lowered her voice, but I can still recognize the tone she uses to let him know that she knows best. She does know best. Dad’s never home enough to understand everything about my treatment.

  My parents are quiet for a while, until Mum says she’s going to the loo. Dad waits until the sound of her footsteps has faded and then he talks to me again.

  “You’re tough, buddy, you’re going to pull through this. We have things planned, Noah, and we’re going to do them. It’s not going to end like this.”

  He’s talking about my bucket list. We made the list when he arrived at the hospital after I got the news. He lay on my bed with me all night, smelling of airports and strange places, and we handwrote the list with a stubby pencil he always carries in his shirt pocket. Together, we whittled it down to thirteen items. Thirteen is not a lucky number, I know, but at this point you can probably understand why I’m not too concerned about that.

  Noah’s Bucket List Item No. 1: Don’t tell anybody else I’m dying. Not even Abdi.

  “Are you sure about that?” Dad asked me.

  “Completely sure.” I wanted to spend my last few weeks doing things my way, and you can’t do that if everybody’s sobbing or being funny around you.

  Dad had stubble on his chin that night. I always wanted to have stubble one day, but that wasn’t going to happen now.

  Cancer’s a big fat thief, we agreed when we talked that night. It had taken so many things from me since my diagnosis—things I wanted to do, friends I wanted to make, experiences I didn’t want to miss out on, normal stuff—and now that it had decided to ink its signature onto my death warrant, it was going to take my future away, too.

  I’m aware of a weight on my hand and I think someone’s holding it. It must be Dad, because he’s talking to me again, or trying to. I can’t feel the temperature of them today, but I know that his hands are always warmer than my mother’s.

  “I wish we could have taught you to swim properly,” he says. His voice cracks.

  I had some swimming lessons before my diagnosis, but they put a permanent line into your chest when treatment starts. It’s called a central line. It’s designed so they can shoot the toxic drugs into you and drag blood out of you whenever they want without sticking you with needles.

  Here’s a cool thing Sasha did when I freaked out about one of the drugs they were giving me, because I overheard a nurse saying it burns your skin. She showed me a photo on her phone of a little purple flower.

  “Firstly,” she said, “this drug can’t burn your skin because you have a line in, so it’s not possible because we’ll inject it down the line. Secondly, look hard a
t this flower. It’s called vinca, and it’s what your chemo drug’s made from. When you get home, go and look in your garden and see if you can spot some growing there. If you do, you need to give it a little salute because it might look like nothing, but it’s going to do a grand job of fighting the cancer cells. It’s your friend, right now.”

  No-shit Sasha. That’s what my dad calls her, and he’s right. I liked her straight talk even when I was little.

  Anyway, whatever good stuff the line did, it was also a big pain. I wasn’t allowed to get it wet. Swimming lessons ended before I learned to swim strongly for more than one width of the pool. Pathetic.

  Dad’s repeating himself in the sort of self-flagellating way that drives my mum crazy: “We should have made sure you could swim better.”

  When he starts to cycle on the we should have’s, it means he’s going to lose it big-time, and he does.

  A machine begins to beep.

  “Oh, crap. I’ve set you off,” Dad says. He does this all the time. Mum knows how to slink carefully around my bed like a cat, but he blunders, snagging tubes or bumping machinery.

  I hear the metallic swoosh of curtain rings being whisked back.

  “Sorry,” Dad says, “I think that was my fault.”

  A nurse must be there. They’re very quick to come on PICU. I’m impressed, though I guess it figures.

  “I’m not sure it was you,” says the nurse. “I’m going to call the registrar.”

  Pressure grows and intensifies in my head.

  “What’s happening?” Dad asks.

  “Give us some room, sir, please.” A new voice.

  “Noah!” Dad shouts. “Noah!”

  “Stand back, sir!”

  “Charging. Clear!”

  A hammerblow to my chest.

  In my mind, water closes in over me and drags me away. There’s fire in my lungs. Above the surface of the water I see Abdi. He’s blurred. He’s no more substantial than an eliding set of shadows. He’s something and nothing.

  As I sink, he watches.

  Detective Constable Woodley and I find the witness in one of the cabins at the scrapyard. She’s sitting with a uniformed constable who’s made himself a bit more comfortable than he should have. He gets to his feet quickly when we step in, looking like a kid caught with his hand in the biscuit tin.

  A fan heater pumps sickeningly hot air into the tiny space, powered from a socket that’s half hanging off the wall. Invoices and purchase orders cover a desk that fills most of the space. A stack of yellow hard hats and fluorescent vests hang off a coatrack, alongside a row of keys on hooks, a dog lead, and a calendar featuring pictures of sports cars.

  The witness isn’t what I expected from an industrial neighborhood like this one. She’s young, late twenties at a guess, attractive, and, apart from the dark circles under her eyes that have doubtless emerged over a long night, well-groomed.

  She stands up to shake my hand when we’re introduced, and it’s a confident gesture. Under a tailored jacket she’s wearing only a thin blouse, and I understand why the fan heater is on full blast. Skintight jeans and a pair of very high heels complete the outfit. I thank her for waiting around to speak to us.

  “I was collecting from my lockup, over there.” She points in the direction of some low buildings that are behind the scrapyard. “It was just after midnight.” She’s in control; her voice is calm.

  “What were you collecting?”

  “Stock. I own a lingerie shop. Upmarket, before you jump to conclusions, Detective. It’s in Clifton.”

  My own flat is located in a building on the edge of Clifton, and it’s also the neighborhood that the parents of the boy who nearly drowned live in. Clifton’s made up mostly of wide, leafy streets with Victorian mansions, many of which have chic mews houses hidden behind them. Some very pretty parkland and the city’s famous suspension bridge complete the picture, making its real estate some of the most expensive in Bristol. The shops are mostly small, smart, and pricey. I think I know which is hers. Only one has a window display of mannequins dressed in tiny scraps of lace with extraordinarily high price tags.

  As if she can read my thoughts, the witness flashes me a smile that’s both sweet and knowing, and I have to fight to stop myself returning it instinctively. Out of the corner of my eye I notice Woodley smirking.

  “Do you normally collect stock in the middle of the night?”

  “Not normally, no, but I was out last night and I didn’t see a text saying we needed more stock until I was on my way home.”

  “Can you describe what you saw?”

  “It was more what I heard. I was loading my car when I heard shouting. I wasn’t too bothered at first because it sounded like somebody calling somebody else, but it got rougher.”

  “Could you hear what they were saying?”

  “Not exactly, but it sounded like a name, like they were calling out to somebody. It was hard to tell where it was coming from, but I thought it was probably the scrapyard.”

  “Could you see anything happening at all?”

  “Not at that point. I locked up because I felt a bit nervous, and got in my car. As I drove past the scrapyard I could see two figures by the edge of the canal. Looked like two young lads.”

  “Did you see this from your car?”

  “I was nervous to get out.” Her gaze flickers across mine as if she’s wondering whether I’ll judge her for this admission. “There was something about them.”

  “Can you explain a bit more what you mean by that?”

  “There was a threatening look about them.”

  “Did you witness any violence between them?”

  “They were pushing and shoving.”

  “Was that how one of them ended up in the water?”

  “I couldn’t say, but it’s not rocket science, is it? One of them was much bigger than the other.”

  “But you didn’t actually witness the fall?”

  “No. I was getting my phone out of my bag so I could call you, wasn’t I?”

  “And the next time you looked, what did you see?”

  “Just one of them, standing on the side, looking into the water.”

  “Did he try to help the boy who went into the water?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “Did he try to run away?”

  “No.”

  “Did he threaten you?”

  “No. He didn’t see me. I wondered if they were off their heads.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Her eyes dart sideways. “One of them, I think it was the one who fell, was weaving around a bit before.”

  “In what way?”

  “Sort of sideways. Like this.”

  She gets up and enacts a bizarre drunken stagger. Woodley and I avert our eyes until she sits back down. It’s a small space and she has a curvaceous figure.

  “Did you see how they got into the scrapyard?”

  “No. Climbed the fence, I expect.”

  Woodley says, “Emergency services had to cut through the chain locking the main gate, so they must have, unless there’s a hole in the fence somewhere.”

  The witness shivers in spite of the heat. She looks tired.

  On the desk between us a mobile phone begins to buzz and dance, as if on cue. It has a glittery case. She grabs it and takes a look at the screen. Her finger hovers before she rejects the call.

  “It’s my partner.” She lays it down carefully.

  “Do you need to call him back?”

  “No, it’s fine, we already spoke. He’s just worried.” There’s something about the way she says this that makes me keep my mouth shut for a minute, just to see if she’ll elaborate. She does; they almost always do. Most people have an urge to explain.

  “He doesn’t think I’m in danger. He just wants me home, you know.”

  I notice a small dash of lipstick on the front of her teeth as she gives me a smile that’s more an exercise in muscle control than a show of emotional wa
rmth.

  “Of course,” I say. “That’s understandable.”

  She squeezes her arms together awkwardly, showing me a glimpse of something lacy as her blouse parts. I look away again. The fan heater’s still blasting out hot air and Woodley and I are both tugging at our collars.

  “So, just to clarify, you didn’t see what happened at the precise moment when one of the lads went into the canal, because you were getting your phone out of your bag?”

  “I didn’t see, but just as I dialed I heard a splash, and when I looked again, the white boy was gone. It was just the black boy standing there, looking at the water.”

  “And were you able to identify the skin color of the boys from where you were sitting?”

  “No, but I saw them after.”

  “After what?”

  “After emergency services got there and pulled him out of the water. Honestly, I’m surprised he was still alive. I can’t believe the other boy did nothing to help. If I hadn’t phoned you . . .”

  “You did the right thing.”

  As soon as she’s gone, I flick the heater off and leave the door open. Woodley and I watch her stride across the yard to retrieve her car from outside the entrance. It’s a top-of-the-range small Mercedes, sporty and fast.

  “What do you think?” Woodley says.

  “She hasn’t actually witnessed a crime.”

  “She’d go down well in court, though,” he says as we watch her leave.

  I agree. She’s articulate, confident, and well-presented.

  “Why would she have to fumble in her bag for her phone if she drives a motor like that?” I ask. “Surely it would be Bluetooth-connected. Can you check the paramedics’ account supports her story? And I’d like to hear the recording of the emergency call she made, please, if we can arrange that.”

  When the Mahad family arrives home from the hospital, Abdi walks up the stairs to the flat on his own, though Nur hovers anxiously behind him all the way. It’s painfully slow progress.