The Bubble Boy Read Free

increase the cleaning or reduce the number of visitors.
    ‘Maybe we should,’ says Dr Moore, ‘. . . and maybe postpone the television people.’
    ‘Do we have to? Can’t you just change the filters?’
    ‘Just for a day or two, Joe. It’s not just that. We have to work out what’s going on inside of you at the moment.’
    ‘But I feel okay!’
    Dr Moore bites on his lip as he looks at my chart again.
    ‘Joe, it’s the third nosebleed in eight days.’
    I nod. I know that. I don’t need the chart to count – yesterday, then three days ago and four days before that. It’s the third one since they started the new treatment.
They’re trying a new drug to keep my white blood cells up. If it works, it won’t cure me, but it will stop my body getting so many infections and I won’t have to have so many
blood transfusions. I hate blood transfusions. It’s when they give me new blood. It doesn’t hurt but it makes me feel sick the day after.
    Dr Moore takes a deep breath.
    ‘More blood tests?’
    ‘Yes, I think so, Joe, just to be safe.’
    He tells Dr Hussein to arrange a test for tomorrow morning, then they press some buttons on the monitor and walk back towards the door. They say goodbye and tell me they’ll see me soon. I
look down at my bed. Greg sits back down beside me.
    ‘Hey, mate. It’s just for a day.’
    ‘But I love it when the TV people come!’
    ‘I know, mate. Let’s see how it goes.’
    I look back at the monitors. I wish I could change the numbers with my mind. Make the air purity go up, make my temperature go down, keep my heartbeat constant. But I can’t control them.
My body does that. Not very well, though.
    ‘Does it mean Beth can’t come either?’ I ask.
    ‘Of course she can.’
    I lie back on my bed, hear my breath and in the distance I can hear the low buzz of the workmen’s drills outside. Greg stays with me for ten minutes until his shift ends and the new day
nurse arrives.
    The new nurse started yesterday. He doesn’t talk to me much. All I know is that his name is Amir and that he’s come to England from India. I only know that because it’s what
Greg told me, and he only told me that much because that was all Amir had told him.
    Greg gets up and says ‘hello’ when Amir comes in and Amir says ‘hello’ back, but his words are muffled behind his mask. Greg shows him where stuff is, asks him if he has
any questions. Amir shakes his head and mumbles that he’s okay. Greg holds his arms out and shrugs behind Amir’s back. I want to laugh but I can’t because Amir is looking right at
me. Greg slides out of the door. I wait for Amir to say something but he doesn’t. He just walks around my room, slides the chair back into the corner, ties the string on the blinds, smoothes
his hand over the monitor, then presses his finger against the red light and for a moment it glows bright. I want to tell him that he looks like ET, but it’s hard to talk to strangers.
It’s easier if they talk to me first. People who come in from the outside have things they can say – they can tell me what they did last night, what time they got up, why they’re
unhappy, why they missed the bus. But I can’t tell them what I did yesterday because it was the same as the day before and the day before that. I could tell him that I don’t have
anything interesting to say but you’re not supposed to start conversations like that. And it’s even harder to talk to people who wear a mask because I can’t tell what
they’re thinking as easily. Some of the new people wear them when they first start. They say it’s to stop me catching things, but when they leave after a few days I think it’s
because they are more scared of catching things off of me.
    Finally Amir walks over to the window and stops. He looks across at the grey building opposite, then up at the sky. A plane flies across it and he turns his head and watches it fly over the
Lucozade building towards Mercedes-Benz.