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Mercy Point Page 11


  ‘Well, yeah, that is obvious!’ he said. ‘But they won’t just give them to us. We’d have to break into the hospital!’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The room went into a shocked silence. He looked around. The expression on Emma’s face nearly made him laugh out loud.

  ‘Are you really asking little Miss Innocent over here to break the law?’ he said.

  ‘I’m not that innocent!’ Emma protested.

  ‘You’ll have to do more than pierce your nose to convince me,’ he said. Michael couldn’t resist riling her up. It was so easy. She was just about to respond when Sam cut in.

  ‘I’m in!’ he said.

  ‘Me too,’ said Fabian straight way. His jaw was set and determined; Michael wondered what he was trying to prove.

  Emma glared at him. ‘So am I.’

  ‘You can’t just say that. If you’re in, you actually have to do it. That means breaking the law. What will your mummies think?’

  ‘I will do it, thank you very much. You’re the one that’s chicken, Michael.’

  ‘Sorry, guys, but I’m totally in. I know you don’t want me, but I think you’re going to need me for something like this. If anyone knows how to break the rules, it’s me.’

  ‘I hate to say it, but he’s probably right.’ Tessie looked exasperated.

  ‘Thank you, I live to please,’ he mocked, giving them a little bow.

  ‘What do you think we should do, man?’ asked Sam, again proving to be the only person who didn’t detest him.

  ‘Yeah, since you’re such a badass, why don’t you tell us how it’s done?’

  Michael racked his brains. The truth was he had no idea how someone would get a file from the hospital without being seen.

  ‘Well, you’d have to make a distraction. You’d make a big scene and then someone would just slip in and out. Easy.’

  ‘Only one problem,’ said Tessie. ‘This is real life, not a movie.’

  ‘Hey, before we diss Michael’s plan, let’s see if we can think of a better one,’ said Sam.

  The room was silent.

  ‘Well, then,’ Michael didn’t bother to hide his smirk, ‘I guess that’s the plan.’

  ‘I know where the file room is.’ Fabian spoke in that irritatingly quiet voice of his. ‘My mum works at the hospital, so I’ve hung out there a few times.’

  ‘Are you volunteering for the job?’ asked Michael. If Fabian wanted to prove how tough he was, Michael would let him. He didn’t want to think what his dad might do if he got into trouble this big.

  ‘Okay, I’ll do it,’ said Fabian, looking at his hands.

  ‘You don’t have to!’ said Emma. ‘Don’t let him push you into it.’

  ‘I’m not. I want to do it.’

  ‘Thanks, Fabian,’ said Sam, ‘that’s really cool of you.’

  Fabian just nodded. Michael wondered if his back still hurt from where the tennis ball had hit it. He still felt pretty bad about that. It was rare that he had actually physically hurt someone else, and prior to that he’d only done it to someone who’d really deserved it. Like when Andy had said stuff about his mum. This was totally different. Fabian hadn’t even seen him coming. He wished he could apologise, but he didn’t know how.

  ‘What about the distraction?’ asked Tessie.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Emma. ‘I could faint or something?’

  ‘Great idea,’ Michael mocked, turning to her. ‘I’m sure no one has ever fainted in the hospital before. All the security guards will come running!’

  ‘Shut up!’ she said, her voice rising slightly.

  He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Calm down.’

  ‘Don’t you dare tell me to calm down.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have to if you weren’t always so quick to get offended.’

  ‘I’m only offended by narcissistic, obnoxious —’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Sam cut in.

  ‘Let her finish.’

  ‘No,’ Sam said, ‘everyone get up.’

  ‘What, why?’ asked Tessie.

  Michael wanted to know the end of Emma’s sentence, although the words ‘narcissistic’ and ‘obnoxious’ were already stinging. Maybe it was better if he didn’t know what she was going to say. Last week, when she’d called him ‘absolutely pathetic’, it had echoed around in his head for the whole rest of the day.

  ‘In the middle of the room,’ Sam was saying now, ‘hold hands.’

  ‘Huh?’ Michael said. ‘No way!’

  ‘If you guys don’t do this, I’m leaving now and never coming back.’

  They looked at each other. They needed Sam. Even Michael knew it. Without him, they’d do nothing but argue.

  Silently, they all came together in the middle of the room. Michael held Tessie’s hand on one side and reached for Emma’s with the other. She looked reluctantly at him and then took his hand. As she did, he felt a glimmer of something rise up through his fingers. His heart seemed to beat loudly. Her hands were exactly what he’d thought. Soft and warm.

  ‘Okay, guys, if we are going to do this, we need to be united,’ said Sam, and Michael fought to stop himself from rolling his eyes. ‘I know on the message board we all felt so in synch. I want that back.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Emma quietly.

  Michael would never say how much he wanted that as well.

  ‘I want us to all say this at the same time: we are one, we fight together.’

  Michael wanted to scoff. This was so stupid.

  ‘Okay, shut your eyes. Now, ready? We are one, we fight together. We are one, we fight together.’

  They all began to chant, their voices melding. Michael felt something shift inside him; it was working. It was like they were a chain, their hands linking them stronger than metal. They stopped chanting, but Michael kept his eyes closed. He had to say it. Apologise. If he didn’t because he was too scared, then Emma would be right, he would be absolutely pathetic.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, without being able to stop it. For an awful second, he thought he might cry. Opening his eyes, he saw that they were all looking at him.

  ‘I really am,’ he said again, and looked Fabian straight in the eye. Fabian nodded at him.

  He felt Emma squeeze his hand.

  ‘Me too,’ she said, and for a moment he felt like he could do a cartwheel in the middle of the room.

  ‘Great!’ Sam said. ‘Now, we can really get down to business. All this fighting stinks.’

  Then, not quite out of nowhere, it hit him.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ Michael said, and he couldn’t help but smile.

  CHAPTER 12

  EMMA

  They were really doing it. It was mid-afternoon on a Sunday; they decided that would be the best time. Apparently, hospitals got busier on weekends because the regular doctors were closed, so people had to go to hospital instead. They were standing outside the front of Cameron Hospital, a large red brick building just off the main road. It was so cold that Emma could see her breath misting in front of her. She pulled her jacket tightly around herself. She didn’t want the others mistaking her shaking body for fear. Although to be honest, she was terrified. She’d never done anything like this before.

  ‘Ready?’ asked Sam.

  Fabian nodded and walked away from them, into the hospital to take his position. Emma watched as the doors opened for him. The bright fluorescent lights of the waiting room made it seem to glow against the grey day. She watched as Fabian said something to the woman at the front desk, who smiled and waved him past.

  Tessie and Michael went next. She watched as they took their positions in the waiting room.

  ‘Nervous?’ Sam asked her.

  ‘A little,’ she said. Although really, she was nervous right now because she was alone with him. He was so different from anyone she’d ever met. His life was so exciting already, whereas Emma always felt like her life hadn’t even started yet.

  ‘You’ll be awesome!’ he said, beaming at her. He had a great
smile.

  They walked shoulder to shoulder towards the hospital. She felt stronger being next to him. She could do this. After all, she was only a distraction for the distraction.

  When the doors whooshed open, her heart skipped a beat. Michael was in position. Tessie was at her post as lookout, and Sam was on his way over to his. They were really doing this. She took a deep breath and walked up to the front desk.

  ‘Excuse me?’ she yelled, and almost laughed as the nurse jumped.

  ‘Yes?’ the woman replied, but Emma pretended she couldn’t hear.

  ‘Excuse me! I need to see someone right now. My hearing aids are broken!’

  ‘Okay, just take a seat please.’

  She looked over at Michael out of the corner of her eye. He hadn’t done it yet, so she looked around again. The security guard was watching him. He must be able to sniff a troublemaker.

  ‘Can you help me?’ she yelled even louder.

  The nurse pointed to a seat. It wasn’t working. Then she heard another voice.

  ‘Will you shut up! I’ve got the worst headache and you keep shouting!’

  She looked around — it was Tessie. She was putting on a strange accent for some reason and was walking towards her.

  ‘What?’ she shouted.

  ‘Keep it down! Or do I have to make you?’

  For a moment, she was kind of scared of Tessie. She was a good actor, that was for sure.

  ‘Are you ladies okay?’ a deep voice boomed.

  Already, she was starting to smell it. The plan had worked. Now it was just up to Fabian.

  CHAPTER 13

  FABIAN

  Fabian heard the commotion spill into the quiet hallway. He was sitting in the security office. This wasn’t weird for him. When he was younger, he had often sat in the room with the guard while he was waiting for his mum to finish her shift. He hadn’t done it in a while, not since he’d been hired at the video store, but the guard didn’t seem to think it was unusual that he was there.

  He’d watched Tessie and Emma argue and the security guard step towards them so that his back was to Michael. Of course he hadn’t seen what Michael had done; Fabian had told him which corner of the room the camera didn’t quite reach. What he had seen were the reactions of the people in the waiting room. At first people just looked at each other, sitting up straighter and putting their hands over their faces. Within about thirty seconds, people had started getting up and rushing out of the room.

  ‘Better see what that’s all about,’ the guard said with a sigh. He got up and left Fabian alone in the security office. Fabian put his hands flat on the desk in front of him to try to steady them. Now, he had to go right now. Forcing out a long steady breath, he lifted his hands, noticing the clammy patches they had left behind on the tabletop. How pathetic. If Michael saw him at this moment, he would have a field day. He stood up and looked out towards the file room. He could do this.

  The hallway was empty, but somebody could turn the corner at any time. How would he explain it? No, he couldn’t do this. He didn’t want to do it. He wasn’t going to. There could have been another guard, the others would never know. The hot sweat pooled in his armpits, and the smell of his own body odour reached his nostrils. It made his stomach turn. Disgusting, pathetic. He imagined what his father would think of him now. He wasn’t behaving like the son he had wanted. He wasn’t like a real man was meant to be.

  Then he did what he always did when he felt afraid. He closed his eyes and thought of Al Pacino. He thought of being someone who people were afraid of. He took a deep breath. I may look weak, but I am strong. He could do this. He was going to do this. Making sure his feet made no sound on the squeaky lino, he took three quick paces across the corridor. There was a keypad on the door, but he’d seen his mum put in the code enough times to know it. Three, seven, eight, Y. He took a shaky breath and turned the handle. He expected it to stick, for the deadlock to be on still, but the door swung open in front of him.

  There were so many filing cabinets inside. There must have been at least thirty, all cramped together, boxes of files on top of them. The one in front of him was marked ‘Patient Records, A–B’. Emma’s surname was Arling. He’d meant to look for his own first, but in that moment he couldn’t bear to look at it; to see something offering up the truth in cold black and white.

  Arling. His fingers flicked through the files one at a time. Belinda Arling — Emma’s mother. He pulled out the file and opened it. There wasn’t much in there. Right on top was the birthing record for Emma. His heart swelled and he realised that was what he was hoping to find. Something that would prove them wrong. He was just about to shut the file when he saw it. The signature in the bottom right corner. More familiar than his own. The signature on his sick notes and his primary school reading journal. His mother’s signature.

  B, Brighton. Fiona Brighton — Michael’s mum. This file was thick. He flicked through records of broken bones and fractures, wondering why she had so many, until he found the birth record. Michael Brighton, 2.1 kilograms, born 10 August. Again, signed by his mother.

  It felt like the walls were pressing in. His chest felt too tight. For a moment, it was like he was back in the janitor’s closet, Michael and Tom holding the door closed and laughing. It was so tiny and smelled disgusting. He couldn’t move and he’d started to panic, but there was nothing he could do.

  He’d already been in here too long. If he stayed any longer, he was going to be caught. He had to get out. As swiftly as he could, he pulled open the door, closed it quietly behind him and walked back out into the corridor. Trying to breathe evenly and not run, he turned the corner and walked out towards the waiting room.

  ‘Fabian?’

  He stopped dead. He didn’t have to turn around to know it was his mother.

  ‘What are you doing here, bello?’ she asked, coming towards him.

  He swallowed and forced a smile. ‘I was looking for you. When do you finish?’ he asked.

  She checked her watch. ‘Half an hour.’

  ‘Cool! I just wanted a lift home.’

  ‘Where’s your bike?’

  He just shrugged. He hadn’t used his bike since the incident with Michael. It still worked, but it was making a loud clicking sound that meant something was definitely broken.

  ‘Okay, sure. But maybe wait outside. You wouldn’t believe it, but someone let off a stink bomb in the waiting room!’

  His mum drove him home with the windows open, and he wondered if it was because she could smell him. The others were gone by the time he went outside. They must have had to flee once the stink bomb was released. He could smell the remnants of it when he walked through the waiting room. It really had smelled horrible, like rotten eggs. His phone kept vibrating against his leg, he was sure it was them on the message board asking him about what he found. He’d tell them later, when he got home maybe. Instead, he stared out the window, enjoying the icy air on his face. He watched the people walk slowly down the main street in their thermals and big puffy jackets. No one was ever in a hurry here. Driving past the bakery, he remembered stopping there every Sunday morning with his family for hot chocolate before they went shopping. He’d trade pink for white marshmallows with his sisters, his parents laughing at them while sipping their coffees. He wasn’t sure when they’d stopped doing that on Sundays. He missed it.

  Part of him never wanted to leave this place, but another part of him was desperate to get out. On quiet nights at the video store, he sometimes wrote ideas for scripts. Gangster movies like the ones he loved to watch. After he finished high school, he wanted to go to film school. He tried to imagine that, a different life in the hustle and bustle of the city. A place where he could forge his own identity, be his own person.

  When his mum unlocked the front door, he knew his dad must have already started making dinner. There was nothing quite like the smell of his dad’s cooking. It filled the whole house with the scent of roasting garlic and onion.

  �
��Smells divine!’ his mum called as she hung up her coat by the door.

  Gina and Connie were sitting at the table doing their homework, Jeffrey reclining on the carpet beneath them.

  Gina looked up at him. ‘Hey, little brother, what’s wrong? You look a bit pastier than usual.’

  ‘It’s just my winter look — going for an ice-king kind of vibe for this season.’

  Both his sisters tipped their heads back to laugh as he climbed up the stairs. He loved spending time with his family, but he needed a few moments to collect himself. He still felt all sweaty and jittery.

  Going into the bathroom, he spent a moment staring at his own face in the mirror. His skin was pale and his forehead was shiny. It was the face of a coward. He did it, he tried to remind himself; he was afraid, but he did do it. He hadn’t been a sissy, like what Michael and Tom always liked to call him.

  He put the hand towel under the tap and drenched it, then pulled off his T-shirt. Dabbing at the sweat patches under his arms, he tried not to look at his body. In the changing rooms at school, he had noticed that most of the other boys had hair on their chests now. His was as smooth and bald as a baby’s.

  Last year, he’d started to worry that maybe he wasn’t a boy at all. He didn’t look like a guy. His shoulders were as narrow as a girl’s and he didn’t have an ounce of muscle on him. Also, he knew that the way he thought about the other guys in the locker room wasn’t the way he was meant to. It would be so much easier if he was a girl, even though he didn’t particularly want to be a girl.

  One afternoon, when he was sure his family was out, he took one of Gina’s bras from her room and tried it on, just to see. He had admired himself and then laughed at his own reflection; it looked so ridiculous on him.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ his dad had said, and Fabian could see his reflection coming up the corridor behind him. He had turned to push the bathroom door shut, but just as he did, he locked eyes with his father and saw the look of shock on his face.

  They had never spoken about it, which was a relief, but it was all there in his father’s eyes when he looked at him.

  He shook off the memory. It was better not to think about it at all. Turning around, he looked at the bruise on his back. It had faded to a greyish green. He threw his T-shirt over his shoulder — he’d have to put a fresh one on if he didn’t want his sisters holding their noses all through dinner — and opened the bathroom door. Just as he took a step towards the stairs, the lights seemed to dim.