The Child by Sebastian Fitzek Read Free Book Online Page B

metastases. Bah!’
    For a moment Stern thought the nurse was going to spit on the floor at his feet.
    ‘I don’t know what’s so benign about the thing if it goes on growing and ends by occluding his brain.’
    The door to an adjoining office opened and an Asian girl in judo gear and tiny orthopedic shoes came in. Losensky obviously fancied her because he started whistling ‘Money, Money, Money’ again, but this time it sounded more reminiscent of a labourer’s wolf-whistling at a pneumatic blonde.
    Back outside in the passage, which was rather busier now, Picasso pointed to the second door on the left beside the staff room.
    ‘That’s it, by the way,’ he told Stern.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Room 217. Simon’s got it to himself, but you can’t just waltz in there.’
    ‘Why not?’ Stern feared the worst. Was the boy so ill you couldn’t enter his room without sterile clothing?
    ‘You haven’t brought him a present.’
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘Visitors always bring flowers or chocolates. Or at a pinch, when the patient’s a boy of ten, a pop magazine or something of the kind. You can’t turn up empty-handed, not when he could be dead a week from now …’
    The nurse left his sentence unfinished. Catching sight of something out of the corner of his eye, Stern swung round and located the source of the alarm signal, a flashing red light above a door. Then he hurried after Picasso, who was already on his way to the emergency, and caught him up just outside Room 217.

3
    He had woken up the first time just before four and rung for the nurse. Carina hadn’t come, which troubled him far more than his unremitting nausea. In the mornings this hovered somewhere between his throat and his stomach and could usually be brought under control with forty drops of MCP solution. Only when he woke up too late and the pains in his head had already welded their iron bands around his temples did they sometimes take several days to return to 4 on the scale.
    That was how Carina always gauged his general condition. The first thing she asked him for every morning was a number, 1 meaning pain-free and 10 unendurable.
    Simon couldn’t remember when he’d last been better than 3. Still, it might happen today if the sad-looking man remained at his bedside a little longer. It was good to see his face again.
    ‘I’m sorry if I gave you a shock. I only meant to turn the television on.’
    ‘That’s OK.’ Agitation had given way to relief when it transpired that Simon had pressed the alarm bell by mistake. Having satisfied himself that the boy was all right, Picasso had left him alone with the nervous Stern.
    ‘Carina likes you,’ said Simon, ‘and I like Carina, so I guess I like you too.’ He drew up his knees, forming an inverted V under the bedclothes. ‘Is it her day off?’
    ‘Er, no. That’s to say, I don’t know.’ Somewhat awkwardly, Stern pulled a chair up to the only bed in the room and sat down. It struck Simon that he was wearing almost the same clothes as he had when they met at the factory two days ago. His wardrobe evidently contained several copies of the same dark suit.
    ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’ he asked.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Carina would say you look like something the cat brought in.’
    ‘I slept badly.’
    ‘But that’s no reason to look so grim.’
    ‘It is sometimes.’
    ‘Oh, I know what’s bothering you.’ Simon reached into the compartment beneath his bedside table and brought out a wig. ‘You never spotted it, did you? It’s all my own hair. They cut it off before Professor Müller started on me with his ink eradicator.’
    ‘His what?’
    The boy deftly clapped his wig over the fluffy down on his head.
    ‘They treat me like a little kid in here sometimes. Of course I know what chemotherapy is, but the medical director explained it to me like I was a baby. He said there was a big, dark patch inside my head, and the tablets I took would dissolve it. Like ink eradicator, in other words.’
    He saw