The Distant Home by Tony Morphett Read Free Book Online Page B

at Sally’s side. ‘Sail?’ he whispered.
    Her eyes opened. ‘Am I glad to see
you!’
she whispered back.
    ‘You okay?’
    Mrs Webster, still in her car heading home, smiled. ‘Well done, young man,’ she murmured.
    ‘They’re saying I’m a freak.’ Sally’s whispered words came through loud and clear on Mrs Webster’s hearing aid. The old lady’s eyes narrowed and she drew in her breath with a hiss of anger. The person who had called Sally a freak would have been wise to steer clear of Mrs Webster for a while.
    In the X-ray department Bobby smirked at Sally in a brotherly fashion, and whispered back. ‘They had to get you in hospital to tell that? I’ve always known you were a freak.’
    Sally was not to be cheered up. ‘Not funny, Bobby. They’re saying all my organs are duplicated.’
    ‘Talk English.’ Bobby knew that Sally was much smarter than he was, but he wished she would not use all these big words.
    ‘Two hearts, I knew about them of course, but four lungs, four kidneys, stuff like that.’
    This did not mean a lot to Bobby. Everyone he knew was different in some way or other, and he could not see that a few extra lungs meant all that much. The medical people were still talking, and Bobby peeped around the edge of the big X-ray machine at them.
    The man with the pink face, the one all the others were treating as if he were Lord Muck, was saying, ‘Do we have a history on this kid? Sally, what’s her name?’
    ‘Harrison,’ said the nursing sister as she checked her clipboard. ‘Born in this hospital twelve years ago. Twelve years ago today, as a matter of fact. One of fraternal twins, her and a brother.’
    ‘I’ve been wondering,’ said Rosen, eager to impress Dr Chambers, ‘is that what we’re looking at? A multiple birth that went wrong? Was there a third child? Is this patient a kind of Siamese twin with the organs of two people?’
    Bobby gulped and withdrew his head. He didn’t want to think about Sally being two people inside. He leaned close to her and whispered, ‘Mrs Webster says I’ve got to get you out of here. Can you walk?’
    Having heard what Rosen had just said, Sally was keen to get out of there herself. She stretched out her leg and then winced with pain. ‘Still a bit sore,’ she said.
    Meanwhile Dr Chambers was pointing excitedly at the X-ray pictures. ‘It looks like a back-up system. It was designed that way.’ He paused, trying to put a very strange idea into words that made sense. ‘It looks as if she’s this way because she was built this way.’ It was as well that Sally and Bobby could not see his face. He had a very intense, greedy look, the sort of look that a glutton might have at the sight of a cake, or that a fanatical stamp collector might have looking in a stamp shop window. ‘To be sure I’ll need to open her up and take a look around inside.’
    Sally and Bobby looked at each other. The words had reached them loud and clear. The way he sounded, you could sense that he was already licking his lips at the idea of opening Sally up and taking that look inside.
    The other medical people were staring at Chambers uncertainly. Feeling their eyes on him, Chambers looked from the X-rays to Rosen. ‘I’m going to have to.’
    ‘Operate?’ said Rosen. ‘There’s no internal injuries that we can see.’
    ‘Correct, Dr Rosen,’ said Dr Chambers. ‘No internal injuries that we can
see
. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t any there. We have to operate in the best interests of the patient.’ He smiled. ‘And while we’re doing it of course, we can record all this for science. Full battery of tests, video and photographic record. This specimen’s unique!’
    At the word ‘specimen’, Sally jabbed a finger at the door, and Bobby started to push the trolley. As they went out the door, Chambers was continuing, ‘What’s her medical history?’
    ‘None,’ said Rosen.
    ‘Nonsense!’ said Chambers. ‘Everyone’s got a medical