The Distant Home by Tony Morphett Read Free Book Online

her, she remembered the instant of impact, and then there was nothing until she saw the ceiling of the hospital corridor unreeling before her eyes.
    No one had noticed her eyes open for that moment, no one had seen them close. Some instinct had told Sally that she should stay ‘unconscious’ until she found out more about what was happening to her.
    Sally was an intelligent girl, and one who liked to think things through before making decisions. The impulsive one in the family was Bobby; sometimes his impulses got him out of trouble, but more often they got him into it. Sally was just the opposite: think first, then act.
    So, having regained consciousness, she did not speak, but closed her eyes and took stock of things. One arm hurt between elbow and shoulder, and one leg hurt between knee and ankle. She had studied pictures of human anatomy, and she knew that the arm bone was the humerus and that there were two bones between knee and ankle, the tibia and fibula. Maybe she had a broken arm and leg, but they did not hurt as much as her friend Megan said her leg hurt when she broke it playing basketball. And the pain in both arm and leg seemed to be diminishing.
    As the machine began to hum, she lay there, trying to work it all out. She knew from a magazine article she had once read that most people don’t actually remember the moment of an accident, that the mind erases that from the memory. But she could remember it quite clearly, and she wondered why.
    For as long as she could remember, she had always felt different, and perhaps remembering the detail of the accident was part of her difference. She knew she could remember things way back, further back than other kids at school could remember. She could remember, for instance, being in her first cradle. No one else she knew could remember that, in fact she had stopped saying she could because no one believed her.
    While Sally lay there in the X-ray machine, Dr Rosen and the radiologist and the nursing sister were staring at the screen in disbelief. What they were seeing was beyond their experience. It was impossible. If they had not been seeing it, they would not have believed it.
    The skeleton was human, and as far as they could tell, perfectly normal. It was the internal organs that they were staring at. There were two hearts, one each side, both working, four small lungs, four kidneys.
    Rosen just stood there, eyes locked onto the screen. ‘She’s got two hearts!’
    The radiologist had seen the insides of thousands of people but he had never seen anything like this one. ‘Everything’s duplicated. Lungs, kidneys.’
    ‘All working,’ said Rosen.
    Sally could hear them, hear the amazement in their voices, but also something beyond amazement. She could hear scientific interest. Now, scientific interest, that overwhelming curiosity to find out
how
things worked and
why
, was something that Sally knew a lot about, because she had it herself in abundance. She knew how strong it was. She knew it was this curiosity that allowed her to watch frogs being cut up in science classes long after other kids had turned away in disgust.
    When she heard that curiosity in Dr Rosen’s voice, Sally felt her first tremor of fear. She knew she would not be getting out of here in a hurry. She would be here until Dr Rosen and the others knew how she worked and why.
    The conversation between Rosen and the radiologist had also been heard by Mrs Webster as she drove toward Middle Street. The transmission device she had stuck beneath Sally’s hair was still doing its job.
    ‘All working,’ the radiologist was saying, and then there was a silence, and for a moment Mrs Webster was worried that something had gone wrong with the transmitter. But the radiologist’s silence was caused by amazement. When he spoke again, his voice was choked with raw astonishment. ‘This fracture in the right humerus,’ there was another pause as he pointed to the X-ray image of Sally’s upper right arm.