Jack Tumor by Anthony McGowan Page B

here.
    The waiting room was about the most depressing spot in the universe, the kind of place they stick you in after you die and before they let you into hell. It was full of people with dirty bandages and crying kids, and it was hard to know if it was the kids who were sick or their mothers, who were all tired and gray and greasy-haired, and you could see them itching for a fag. Themothers, I mean, but maybe the kids as well, who were probably passively smoking about forty a day.
    No one here looked at all healthy to me.
    After about an hour I got wheeled through a doorway and into a cubicle, with Mum still holding on to my hand like she thought I was going to make a break for freedom. After another ten minutes Dr. Jones appeared, along with a couple of other doctors—unless they were impostors disguised as doctors, which happens more often than you’d think, according to the papers, at least, but probably not in this case.
    â€œWell, well,” said Doc Jones, “what have we been up to?”
    I didn’t really mind his patronizing tone. As long as people are trying to save me from deadly cancers, etc., they can patronize me as much as they like. What I object to are people who patronize me either before or after beating me up in that overly literal way of adding insult to injury.
    â€œI think I, er, fainted.”
    â€œThink?”
    â€œWell, I was unconscious at the time.”
    My mum pinched me.
    â€œThat’s good,” said Doc Jones, peering into my eyes through a reasonably cool gadget with a lens and a red light.
    After a bit more general-purpose examining (“Tongue out . . . Please cough . . . How many fingers?” . . . etc., etc.), Doc Jones said to my mum: “I think we’ll keep him in tonight. Just to be on the safe side. And anyway, he’s scheduled for his scan tomorrow so it’ll save you both the journey.”
    He smiled, and when he smiled his eyes disappeared, to show that his whole face was getting in on the act.
    So that was that. I hung around for another hour while they tried to find a bed for me, and Mum seemed to cheer up a bit now that she knew the burden of keeping me alive wasn’t solely on her back, and I quite liked that feeling too—the feeling, I mean, that the professionals had taken over. Most of the time what you do, how you get by, how you survive, is down to you. But when you’re in hospital, that’s all for someone else to worry about, and so you can think about other stuff, if you want to.
    I was looking forward to Mum leaving, so I could do just that. But she hung on in there until I was finally pushed up to a ward, when she said, “I’ll nip home and bring you back some pajamas, and some clean clothes for tomorrow.”
    Jack Tumor, you’ll have noticed, kept his mouth shut through all of this. Worn out, no doubt, by all that collapsing and spewing. And then I don’t suppose he liked hospitals much. But I knew he’d be back.

The MeaninG
of Life
    I was wheeled up to the ward by a tiny man who, when I asked him, said he was from Mauritius. I told him that that was where dodos were from, and he pretended to be interested, but I’m sure he knew it already, because even I knew it, and I wasn’t from anywhere near Mauritius.
    He left me with a nurse who took me to my bed. She said I could lie down on top of it until my mum came back with my pajamas. Then she bustled off and I looked around at the ward.
    Like most hospital wards, this one was full of sick people.
    Sick old people.
    Sunken faces, sparse gray hair, bits of flesh the color of putty.
    About half of the old geezers had drips coming in or going out. One man was sleeping with his mouth open, gums all over the place. There was a tube coming out from under his bed-clothes. It was blood red and ran into a jar. The jar was half full.
    Or half empty.
    Not the cheeriest place on God’s earth.
    WHAT A BUNCH OF DERELICTS.