No Such Creature by Giles Blunt Read Free Book Online

their left, red light flashing.
    “Good Lord,” he hears his father say.
    Then an oncoming car veers into their lane. His mother’s scream is the last thing Owen hears.
    Eight years later his memory of specific details following the catastrophe is thin. He woke in hospital with no memory of the cars’ actual impact. He tried to call for his mother but couldn’t speak; there was a tube in his throat. Where were his parents? Why weren’t they here beside the bed? He wanted them to come right away and take him home. A young nurse came in and saw he was awake. She checked his chart and called for a doctor.
    When the doctor came in, he removed the tube in Owen’s throat and held out a glass of water with a straw in it. Owen took a sip and asked for his mother and father. The doctor wanted to examine him first. He asked him a lot of questions, shone a light in his pupils, and tested his reflexes. When Owen asked again for his mother and father, the nurse said she would have to ask someone else. She and the doctor left together.
    They were gone so long that he thought they must have called his mom and dad at home and they would now be driving to the hospital. His room was filled with cards and stuffed animals from classmates. He realized he must have been unconscious for a few days; his parents would have had to go home. Owen was not a boy who cried easily, but tears now flowed from his eyes and down his cheeks. He turned on his side, bruises protesting, and sobbed.
    Finally an older woman came in, not dressed like a nurse. He realized later that she must have been the hospital social worker. She had a soothing voice, and the face of a beneficent moon surrounded by a penumbra of platinum hair. Mrs. Callow. She told him he’d been sleeping for three days.
    “The first thing I want you to know, Owen, is you’re not alone. Have you noticed all your cards and presents?”
    “Where’s my mom? I thought someone was going to get her.”
    Mrs. Callow reached out and smoothed his hair. “Don’t forget, Owen, there are lots of people on staff here who care about you and want only the best for you. People who work in other departments, other floors, they’re all asking after you. I think you’re going to find you’re kind of special around here.”
    “My mom and dad are coming, though, right? You called them, right?”
    “Things may look pretty bleak sometimes,” Mrs. Callow went on, “but Owen, we’re going to do everything we can to help. We’re going to find a way to ensure your happiness, I promise. You’re my number one priority, young man, and I’m going to go all out for you. But,” she added with a social worker’s rhetorical flourish, “I’m going to need your help with that—can you do that, Owen?”
    “I want my mom.” Owen couldn’t stop himself, he didn’t want to cry in front of a stranger, but the spigot opened and the tears gushed out again.
    “I need to tell you something, Owen. Something very sad.”
    “I don’t like it here. I want to go home.” He was bawling like a newborn now. He’d never felt anything like this before, unless it had been in a nightmare, some nameless voracious thing devouring him. He had no idea what this moon-faced woman was about to tell him, but he knew it wouldn’t be good. “I want to go home,” he wailed again.
    “I know, sweetheart,” Mrs. Callow said, and took his hands in her warm palms, “but unfortunately that’s the sad thing I have to tell you.”

    Owen was absolutely, unequivocally alone. It wasn’t as if he had relatives in the area, or even in the country; he didn’t have any relatives at all. His mother had lost both her parents when she was in her early twenties. His paternal grandmother had been a drunk who died in a psychiatric hospital of Korsakoff’s syndrome, and his grandfather had recently died of Parkinson’s. Like himself, both his parents had been only children, and so he was without aunts and uncles.
    The state had to