The Chaos by Rachel Ward Page B

He’s in here, up to his eyeballs in chemo, when his number’s telling me he’s going to be wiped out in a few weeks with all the rest of them. I pretend I haven’t heard him, but he just says it louder.
    ‘What happened? Looks like a burn.’ He’s not giving up.
    ‘Fell in a fire,’ I say eventually. There, I’ve told you. Now shut up and leave me alone. He nods.
    ‘I’m Wesley,’ he says. ‘Cancer, like Jake over there, but he’s kidneys and I’m leukaemia. In my blood.’
    When I don’t say nothing, he takes it as some sort of invitation, and before I know it he’s moving his sheets out of the way, slipping out of bed, pushing back my curtain and perching on the side of my mattress.
    ‘That’s Carl,’ he says quietly, tipping his head towards the kid in the opposite bed with both legs in plaster, feet raised up. ‘Car crash,’ he whispers, ‘lost his dad and his brother.’
    ‘Shit,’ I say.
    ‘Yeah.’ Carl is looking over our way, but he’s not really seeing us. His eyes are glazed over, but I still clock his number. He’s going tomorrow.
    ‘He’s sick, man. Really sick,’ I whisper to Wesley.
    ‘No,’ he says. ‘He looks bad, but he’s way better than he was. It’s just the fractures in his legs now. The rest of him’s okay.’ Wesley’s obviously listened to the doctors but they’rewrong. The numbers don’t change. They don’t lie. I should know.
    Nan comes to see me in the afternoon.
    ‘Nan, you gotta get me out of here.’
    ‘Goin’ a bit stir crazy? Don’t blame you.’ She’s brought me a bag of mint humbugs and is chewing her way through them.
    ‘It’s doing my head in.’ I lower my voice and beckon to her, and she leans in nearer. ‘The numbers, Nan. The numbers. Some people in here, they ain’t got long to go.’
    She stops chewing then, and looks me straight in the eye.
    ‘That boy over there, with the legs up. He’s checking out tomorrow, but nobody else sees it. They think he’s okay. They hardly bother with him.’
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Yeah, course I am. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t know.’
    ‘You should tell someone.’
    ‘Should I?’
    ‘Maybe …’
    ‘It wouldn’t make no difference, Nan. It didn’t make no difference with Mum or Junior.’
    ‘Maybe it would this time.’
    ‘Nan, I’ve seen it my whole life. The numbers don’t change. I could’ve died in that fire, but I didn’t, because it wasn’t my day. Junior could’ve just been nicked by that knife, but he wasn’t. It killed him, straight out. I seen his number. It was fixed. No one could change it.’
    ‘But that shouldn’t stop us trying … I’ll have a word with the staff. We need to get you out of here anyway. I don’t think it’s a good place for you.’
    She gets up and goes off to find someone to talk to, taking the bag of mints with her.
    That evening, when the duty nurse makes her last round before lights out, I stop her. 
    ‘Can you check on Carl?’ I say. 
    ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I check on everyone.’
    ‘But can you keep checking him. Tonight.’ 
    She looks at me like I’ve lost my marbles, then smoothes the sheet over my legs.
    ‘Don’t worry about him. He’s doing fine.’ 
    I keep my bedside light on when the ward lights go off, and I sit up. I promise myself I’ll watch over him, raise the alarm if I hear or see anything. When I feel myself starting to drift off, I give myself a good pinch. It wakes me up for a minute or so, but then I feel myself going and I can’t stop. The next thing I know the overhead lights are on and there’s a team of staff crowding round the bed opposite and someone’s yanking the curtains across.
    ‘What is it? What’s happening?’ I call out, but no one’s listening to me. Wesley and Jake are still asleep, even with all the frantic activity a few metres away from them, and everyone else is focussing on Carl.
    Later, all the staff are tight-lipped about what happened. Even Wesley can’t find out