The Bubble Boy (9 page)

‘I’m okay, but still tired.’

‘Dr Moore said it’s best that we shoot in half-hour slots and you rest in between.’

I nod. ‘Okay.’ New-cameraman-David stands in the middle of the room and holds up a gadget that checks the light. Then he goes back to his camera and takes it off the tripod.

I sit with Graham on the sofa. I like talking to him but when the time goes past 3 o’clock, all I can think about is how empty the room will be when he and New-cameraman-David leave. I
want to say something that will make them want to stay longer. I wish they would come more often, but I don’t think I do anything interesting enough to be on telly more than I already am.

At 4 o’clock, Amir comes in. He checks I’m okay, checks the monitors, looks out of the window, hands me a cup, and gives me my pills. Graham asks him how long he’s worked here,
but Amir doesn’t hear him. He can be so funny and noisy when he’s with me but so quiet when he meets new people. He’s nervous and some people don’t like that. You have to
wait a while for him to turn into a friend.

Amir goes into the bathroom, then turns and waves his hands behind Graham to get my attention, but I don’t understand what he wants.

He opens his mouth wide and points at the sky like he’s playing charades.

HAVE YOU SEEN ANY?

I shrug, and try to mouth: PLANES?

Amir shakes his head.

NO. A-LI-ENS!

Graham turns around.

Amir scratches his head.

‘Are you okay?’ asks Graham.

Amir nods. ‘I’m good. You good?’

‘I’m fine . . .’ says Graham. I can tell he thinks Amir is a total loony.

‘Then we all good, aren’t we Joe?’ Amir winks at me and I grin back, trying to concentrate on not laughing, in case Graham thinks I’m laughing at him.

‘Right,’ says Graham. ‘Where were we?’

Amir points at the window. KEEP WATCHING, he mouths dramatically.

I’m still smiling as he walks out of the door.

Graham glances up at me.

‘He’s . . .’

‘Weird?’

‘Yes.’

‘He is, but he’s brilliant at
Countdown
.’

Graham laughs. ‘Perfect, Joe,’ he says. ‘We’re going to wrap it up there.’

‘Already?’

‘Afraid so.’

New-cameraman-David takes the tripod down and puts the camera in the silver case, then holds out his hand.

‘It’s been nice to meet you, Joe.’

‘You too.’ I shake his hand and then follow him and Graham towards the door.

‘When will I be on TV?’ I ask.

‘Next Monday,’ he says. ‘Oh, and don’t forget to answer your fan mail.’

‘I never do. I answer every one of them. It’s them that go away.’

Graham looks at me like he wants to hug me. I get this look a lot. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘Maybe you’ll get some good friends this time.’

‘Hope so.’

Then he does hug me. Not too tight but just enough for me to feel his hands in the middle of my back. Then he’s gone.

Sometimes he leaves me with a present. He brought me a microphone once, another time he brought me a copy of a script from
Doctor Who,
signed by David Tennant. He didn’t leave
anything this time. I think maybe he forgot, that when he gets in his car he’ll find something in his pocket and he’ll run back in and leave it in reception. I wish I saw him more often
or at least got a text from him once a week or maybe a month. But he doesn’t send me texts. He just goes out of the door and I don’t hear from him again for another year.

The diggers are getting closer. I can feel the drills vibrating through my hand on the window pane. And I can hear them too, a distant buzz. I’ve been watching them since
Graham left – two yellow generators, eight men with fluorescent jackets wearing white hats – two of them talking, two of them drilling, two of them in diggers, scooping up the road and
filling yellow trucks with rubble. Another two men stand by the traffic lights, talking, one of them pressing buttons, changing the lights next to a van with red letters on the side:
If you
smell gas, ring this number – 0845 500200 – Any time.

The door clicks open. Amir walks in.

‘You see they start laying the landing strip,’ he says.

I scrunch my face in confusion.

‘The workmen. They digging up the road to lay huge magnets to create a magnetic field – electric charges and elementary particles with quantum properties.’

‘I think they’re just laying a new pipe for the gas,’ I say. ‘It says
London Gas
on the vans.’

Amir taps the side of his head. ‘That’s what they
want
you to think. They not stupid. They get humans to do all the work for them.’

I smile in what I hope is a convincing way. It’s not true, I’ve seen the road being dug up, but I’ve not seen any massive magnets.

Amir turns away from the window and yawns. ‘Sorry, I was up all night,’ he says.

‘Looking for aliens?’

‘No. Just couldn’t sleep.’

His eyes are dark but there’s a watery sparkle that makes me thinks he was up all night watching the stars. He sits down beside me.

‘How the documentary go?’

‘It was good,’ I say. ‘But I’m a bit tired.’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It must be tiring being on TV. I wish I on TV. I could be in Bollywood.’

‘Hollywood?’

‘No, Bollywood. Indian films. You no see them. Like
Slumdog Millionaire
, but much better. They very different, lots more singing and dancing. I could have been in that
film.’

‘Really?’

‘Of course. I do many things. I not always a nurse. When I was in India I used to be a train dispatcher.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I dispatched trains.’

‘You got rid of trains? Why?’

‘No, I no get rid of them. I dispatch them. I check the doors and blow a whistle. Then they leave.’

‘Oh.’ Amir is talking so quickly that he’s confusing me. He doesn’t seem to mind. He just keeps talking.

‘I prefer my job before,’ he says. ‘I used to be graphic designer for newspaper in Delhi. It was good job, but rubbish money. That’s why I come to England . . . to get a
better job for me and my family. But we no talk about the past. We talk about the future.’

His eyes dart from side to side and I wonder what he’s going to say next. Sometimes I don’t think he knows either. He stares at me like he’s waiting for the next thought to zap
into his head but finally it looks like he’s going to stop saying stuff.

I rest my head on my pillow.

‘You okay?’

‘I feel really tired now.’

‘Okay. I just sit here a while.’

‘Haven’t you got to see the others?’

‘No. I stay with you.’

I lay back and think about the TV crew. They’ll be in another ward now, talking to someone just like me. Graham might be talking to the snooker-ball kid. I hope he is, because when the
programme is shown next week, I’ll get to see him on TV. I wish I could see him for real but I know he can’t, he’s too sick to leave his bed and come and see me, Greg says.

I look at Amir. After talking so much he’s suddenly sat quietly, twisting a gold ring on his finger.

He sees me looking. ‘Ten years,’ he says.

‘Sorry?’

‘Me and my wife. We are married ten years tomorrow.’

That’s nearly my whole life. ‘Do you have any children?’ I ask. Amir’s face lights up. ‘Yes. Do I not tell you?’ He holds up three fingers and taps the tips
of each one. ‘Ajala, Shukra, Guru.’

‘I like their names.’

He touches his fingertips again. ‘Earth, Venus and Jupiter. Nine, seven, and three. I love them.’ His eyes shine like his children are stood in front of him.

I smile at how happy his kids make him. He must be a really fun dad. I bet he chases them around his house like my dad used to chase me around this room. I don’t remember it, but Beth says
he did. She said he used to put me on his shoulders and pretend he was going to bump into my bed then he’d make an engine noise and swerve around it like we were in a car. Then he’d
slow down and put me gently back onto my bed. Sometimes I think I can remember it. That I can smell the shampoo in his hair and his aftershave as we ducked to miss the lights. It feels so real when
I think about it. I look up at the ceiling – the lights are too high – I wouldn’t need to duck. It’s like I’ve blocked it all out, or maybe it was just another
dream.

I swallow. Amir does the same.

‘I sorry,’ he says.

‘It’s okay. Do you have a picture of them?’

‘No. I don’t need one. It’s like the letters in
Countdown
. I see them all in here.’ He taps the side of his head. ‘But maybe I’ll bring you one to show
you one day.’

I nod and look at the TV. I don’t see the picture or hear the sound. I wish I had pictures of my family in my head but all I have is a pain in my chest and tummy. I’ve seen a few
documentaries where people talk about losing someone, but they’re all older than me. They say things like, ‘it’s hard’, that ‘the pain never goes away completely, but
it does get easier in time’. But I’m eleven now, and it doesn’t get easier for me. I wish when I hear the word ‘orphan’ that my ribs didn’t squeeze my heart. I
wish I was like Amir. I wish I had a family. All I have is me and Beth. I’ll always want Beth here with me, I just wish Mum and Dad could be too.

I lean over, open a drawer and take out a photo to show Amir. ‘It’s me, Mum and Dad, and Beth.’

Amir holds the edge of the photograph between his fingers and smiles. ‘Everyone looks so happy. How old were you?’

‘Six.’

Amir nods and looks at the picture again. I’m sat up on the middle of my bed. Mum and Dad are sat either side and Beth is knelt up behind me. I don’t really remember the day, only
what Beth’s told me. She says it wasn’t a special day like Christmas or any of our birthdays. It was just a day of the week when they all came to see me. The photo was taken in the same
room as I’m in now. I’ve never been moved out of this room, because it was built specially for me. I had posters of Transformers on the walls then, and my bed was smaller, and the
monitors were bigger and grey, not white. Sometimes when I look at the photograph I can hear them talking. Mum looks and sounds like Beth, only older, and Dad looks and talks like Frank Lampard.
Beth talks to Mum about school and what subjects she needs to take in sixth form. I talk to Dad about football. I tell him I’m sorry but even though he does look like Frank I support Arsenal.
Dad says he doesn’t mind, he likes José Mourinho. I look at Dad smiling in the picture. I wonder if he knows that José Mourinho left Chelsea and then came back again, that when
he came back he let Lampard go and now Frank’s scoring goals for Man City. I’ll tell him out loud one day, when Amir isn’t here.

Amir hands me the picture and I put it back in the drawer. When I turn round he’s looking at his watch.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘You have to go.’

‘Sorry.’

I get up and walk over to the window. The traffic lights change from red to green. The drilling has stopped and the workmen have gone home. I look across the rooftops and watch the planes come
and go into Heathrow. Hundreds of them fly every day and night. Sometimes they fly so close that I think they’ll crash into each other and explode. But the planes never touch each other. The
people in the control towers make sure they don’t do that. I wonder if there’s a person in a control tower somewhere controlling my life. Maybe he sits there watching me on a screen
deciding what will happen to me next. Maybe that’s what God does. He watches me from a control tower. I don’t know if God is real, but if he is why does he make me live in a bubble? And
why wasn’t he in the control tower directing the traffic the day Mum and Dad had their accident?

My laptop beeps behind me. I smile. I know it’ll be Henry. I feel really tired but so much has happened in both our lives today that we have to talk.

I pick up my laptop and sit down on my bed.