Jack Tumor by Anthony McGowan Page A

sick bucket and held it under my chin, but that was completely closing the stable door after the horse had vomited. I took over the holding, and Mum turned back to Mordred and said: “Perhaps now you can see that my son is seriously ill.”
    And the tears were rolling again, although of course that could have been something to do with the stink.
    Mordred was trying to look concerned about me, but it was plain that he was much more concerned about the puke on his gray slip-on shoes, and he made a little leap, like a ballet dancer, to get over the main flow, but that was a disaster, a serious error of judgment, because he landed with his heel in one of the tributaries and the heel shot from under him and he ended up flop-103
    ping back flat on his arse in the sick. Oh yes indeedy, about as much in the sick as he could have been if he’d set out with the deliberate intention of having a good old wallow in it.
    Then the school secretary, Miss Bush, who had blue hair and brown teeth and wore her glasses on a chain around her wattled neck, opened the door and sort of shooed in two men in green overalls who looked like Kwik Fit auto mechanics, but who I knew were really paramedics. One of them had a mustache and the other one didn’t, although he might as well have had one for all the difference it made.
    They took in the situation: me, Mum, Mordred sitting in sick, and for a second I thought they were going to run for it, despite the fire-and-vomit-repelling suits and their belts adorned with high-tech weaponry. But then they got their courage back, and the next thing I knew I was being wheeled away, dimly aware of the eyes of the school upon me.

CasUalty
    S o I went back to the hospital, this time with a bit more style and drama about the whole business, riding in the back of the ambulance like a genuine emergency. The paramedics turned out to be pretty funny, in a slightly forced, double-acty kind of way.
    Sample joke: Paramedic A (the one without the mustache) is sitting beside me (I’m still lying down at this stage, although I feel okay, maybe about 82 percent normal) and he has a clipboard. He looks for a pen, then takes out something from his top pocket and sort of goes through a little mime of writing with it before he looks at it in disgust. Paramedic B (mustachioed) says, “What’s that?” and Paramedic A replies, “My rectal thermometer.” And then together they say, “Oh no! Some arsehole’s got my pen,” and then they laugh at their own routine, and I smile as well, because it’s obviously the sort of thing they do all the time.
    But Mum isn’t really listening, and just carries on looking like it’s
her
with the brain tumor.
    Yes, Mum rode in the ambulance too, which put the dampers on things, in the way that being punched in the head and collapsing in the foyer and the fountains of spew never really had. She insisted on holding my hand.
    I suppose if I was being honest I’d have to admit that I didn’t mind, really, this once.
    The ambulance dumped us at the casualty ward, and the men said goodbye like we were old friends, but I guess they forgot about us the second we were somebody else’s business.
    There was a brief conference with some hospital people of indeterminate function, and I was moved from a trolley to a wheelchair, but not one of the cool ones—a brown spazzy job with little wheels. Then there was a wait to get seen by the bighaired receptionist, and then another wait to see the nurse who finds out if you’re about to keel over or not (pretty, in a uniformed kind of way, which, all kinkiness aside, is one of the best ways, and I’m really sorry if that’s offensive to nurses and police-women), and then another wait, the
real
wait, before you get to see the doctor. Mum went and told the big-haired woman on reception about my scan, and she went on in a boring way about how they had to tell Dr. Jones that I was