Brotherhood of Shades. Dawn Finch

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      “It’s OK,” a loud voice boomed above the noise. “You’re on your way to hospital. Don’t pull at your safety belt, kid. You just lie still.”

      He tried to focus on the voice, but the colours and sounds smudged and blurred and a massive and crushing pain in his chest suddenly erased the world.

      Opening his eyes filled his head with an image he did not understand. Lights were flashing by over his head one by one. He was being pushed down a corridor, and remembered something about a hospital. People were talking all around, a cacophony of noise that crashed in around him.

      “What’s your name?” A voice was repeating the question over and over. “Can you hear me, son? What is your name? Can you tell me your name?”

      “No,” he mumbled. “No name.”

      There was no way he was going to tell these people his name. They had to take care of him – it was a hospital after all, he knew they had to take care of him – but there was no way he was going to tell them that. Telling people your name meant social services. Then it would all start over again. He slowly shook his head and closed his eyes.

      “It’s OK,” she said. “We’ll take care of you, but we still have to know your name.”

      “No,” he repeated. “No name.”

      “It’s no good,” the woman said. “Admit him – we can’t wait for permissions, we don’t have time. Take him down.”

      And again the darkness came . . .

      When he woke, the room was full of people and voices tumbled over one another and he could not hear a distinct word. He was aware of something over his mouth and lifted his arm to pull it clear.

      “He’s awake!” someone shouted. “Stand clear, give him some room. Thank God, he’s hanging on. Don’t pull at your mask, son; you still need it.”

      This last comment was addressed to him and he could vaguely see that a face now hovered above his own.

      “Can you hear me?” He nodded, or at least he thought he did.

      “I’ll take that as a yes.” The blurred face smiled. “You’re in hospital. Don’t try to talk yet; you’ve been through a nasty time. You need your sleep, don’t fight it. You’re quite safe now.”

      His eyes drifted open and closed and the sounds receded as the pull of sleep dragged him into darkness.

      He knew that time was passing rapidly, slipping away from him, but had no idea how much. He opened his eyes to another ceiling, this time in darkness, and another empty room. He closed his eyes again and, when he found the strength to reopen them what felt like only seconds later, he was no longer alone.

      “Can you see me?” the nurse asked.

      “Yes,” he mumbled back.

      “Do you have any family?”

      “No,” he said truthfully. “No family.”

      “So there is absolutely no one to come for you?”

      “No, no one’s gonna come.”

      “How do you feel?”

      He found lucid thought almost impossible. His breathing came ragged and hard in his chest and his body felt impossibly heavy.

      “I’m fine,” he lied. “I want to leave.”

      “I’m sorry, boy, but there is no way that you will be leaving here.” The nurse smiled coldly at him. “No way at all. Is there anything you need? A priest?”

      He almost laughed, but coughed instead and it tore his body up with pain.

      “No priest then.” The nurse did not call for help as he coughed and clutched at his chest. “So there is no one we can get for you at all? No social worker? No friends?”

      He shook his head as the cough became a blinding white light of intense pain. His body convulsed and he became vaguely aware of an alarm going off. He could see the nurse standing at his bedside, watching him.

      “Do not struggle,” she said. “It is far too late for that.”

      The door burst open and the room suddenly filled with people all talking at once and throwing back the covers from him and dragging equipment to his bedside. It was the last thing he saw.

      “He’s not going to make it; the damage to his heart is just too severe. That’s why they brought him here from casualty.”

      “Why?”

      “Well, he’s going to die, isn’t he? Nothing they can do for him over there and it’s upsetting for the whole hospital to have a kid lying around, waiting to die.”

      “How old do you think he is?”

      “About fourteen, I reckon, maybe less; he’s probably older than he looks, think he was living rough for some time.”

      “Damn shame. Where on earth are his family?”

      “No sign of them, and he wouldn’t tell them his name upstairs, must be a runaway. We’ve been calling him Adam for want of something better. He was found in Adam Street under the archways; paramedics said he was so filthy he must have been living rough for some time. Last few nights were just too cold for him; hypothermia combined with long-term malnutrition, irreversible organ damage. Then the coronary . . .”

      The two hospice nurses fussed around the grey-faced, fair-haired boy who lay as still as death before them. His frail body barely made a lump in the crisp white sheets and his feet lay far short of the end of the bed. Machines sprouting tubes and wires decorated the bedside, trailing to the backs of his thin hands. The room’s silence was punctuated only by the beep of the heart monitor as it registered the failing beat and the regular suck and blow of the ventilator. The nurses whispered as they spoke, although neither was sure if the boy could hear them.

      “I just can’t believe stuff like this can still happen in the twenty-first century,” the younger of the two whispered as she affectionately brushed his fair hair back from his narrow face. “He would have been so handsome, but he’ll never grow up. How can things like this happen?”

      “When you’ve been here as long as I have, you’ll understand we’ve not come as far from the Dark Ages as we like to think,” the older one commented scathingly.

      “At least he’s clean and warm now, even if he doesn’t last long,” the first said wistfully. “Did you see his eyes before he lost consciousness? Such a pale blue-grey, like ice, so beautiful but such terrible sadness in them . . .”

      “Don’t get involved.” The older woman gripped her colleague by the arm and tried to turn her away from the boy. “You can’t go getting upset over every body that comes in.”

      “I know.” She finally tore her gaze from the boy’s pallid face. “But it’s so difficult sometimes. There was something in his eyes; it was like he was older. I dunno, like he was . . .”

      “Weary.”

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