Charlie's World

© Dave Weaver 2006

When the first sneeze splashed its way across the breakfast table Charlie's mother, Maria, barely turned her eyes from the news on the portable television. He'd tried to get off school before by pretending a cold; anything to dodge the agony of the friendless.

"Charlie is a bright but lonely boy..." read the first lines of his junior school report. He was somehow different from all the others and was routinely bullied for it.

Big for a six year old, only child of a bitter marriage, his father had finally left them for good when the boy was two. The specialist had told Maria that he was just a normal boy but Ôwithdrawn, uncommunicative'; "If only he'd talk more, make some friends."

But Charlie couldn't see the point.

"Its like he's in a world of his own..." he had overheard his mother remark tiredly while he was playing in the waiting room afterwards.

Now, as she raised a piece of toast and marmalade to her mouth, the second sneeze occurred.

"Blow your nose!" Charlie was instructed irritably.

On the screen there was a serious looking man in a dark suit being asked complicated questions by an angry young woman reporter. She managed to look even angrier every time he said the words 'under control'. He'd said them five times before the screen switched to the league tables. These were on TV all the time now and every day the figures on them got bigger. Their town, St Albans, was now on 100. Luton and Watford, larger towns nearby that they'd go on shopping trips to, were higher up in the 1,000's, and places like Liverpool and Manchester where the big football clubs came from were at the top, just like in the Premier League, with more than 20,000 each.

He felt hot and cold at the same time, and shivery. Then he coughed. It was a horrible, spluttering cough, and it made Maria's head spin around. "Charlie...?"

He looked down at the little puddle of watery blood on the table and began to cry.

The doctor took three hours to get to the house. A poke and a prod at the boy's swelling throat glands was all he needed. The ambulance arrived belatedly at two in the afternoon.

"Bloody scandalous!" Maria shouted in a panicky voice at the harassed looking crew as they drove them away, leaving their neighbours' accusing stares behind. The hospital at Welwyn Garden seemed to be choked with people. They sped straight around the back to a building tucked away from the rest with Ôstay out' signs and yellow and black tape around its entrance, like a crime scene on CSI. He was taken to a bed, his mother allowed one rushed hug before being led away by two determined looking nurses.

"I'll be waiting outside, Charlie. I'll be out there..." He saw her point to somewhere over her shoulder as the double doors swallowed her up.

But he didn't see Maria again for three days. Embarrassed and scared, he'd cried at first. The nurses had been kind to him, though, especially the younger ones.

"How's our Charlie today?" They'd ask with pretty smiles as they brought him his meals and took his temperature and walked him unsteadily to the toilet. They seemed nice but he'd often hear them snapping at each other in tired, shrill voices through his curtains. His coughing had been very bad at night, but then others in the room would join in making the same raw, harsh noises in the darkness, like wolves howling at the moon. He would imagine himself as a wolf cub belonging to their pack as he slid into a shallow sleep.

When Charlie saw Maria again she was surrounded by smiling white-coated doctors. His arms and legs ached all the time now. Occasionally he felt dizzy as well, as if someone kept putting him back on a merry-go-round he was trying to get off.

"Hello Charlie, how you doing love? Charlie, the doctors here want to take you to a place called Cambridge. Some clever people there are going to do some tests on you and make you better. Is that alright?" He could see tear tracks on her face and nodded sleepily. She hugged him tightly and whispered in his ear,

"We'll go home together one day, Charlie. I promise." He fell asleep in her arms.

When he awoke again he was somewhere else.

Charlie was in a big glass box now. There were similar boxes stretching to either side and another row across a gleaming white corridor in front of him. Each box had a bed surrounded by greeny blue plastic curtains, some of which were drawn apart to show a child surrounded by computers with screens full of dancing coloured lines. He slowly became aware that the machines were in his room too. There were wires going from them to his head and a plastic tube thing stuck into his arm. He began to struggle.

After the nurse and the young doctor had calmed him down they explained that he was in a Ôresearch laboratory ward', a bit like a hospital, only all the patients were kept Ôisolated' to stop their germs spreading. This made it easier for the doctors to try different cures on them until they found one that worked. Then they could give it to everybody in the world, including Charlie's mother. The young doctor noticed Charlie's frown and swore quietly to himself. "Everyone's sick now, Charlie." He told him.

There followed endless days of boredom, interrupted by injections and pills. Gradually, he began to feel better. The other children came and went. Some had birthdays, their parents arriving with brightly wrapped presents. Maria never came, though, and after a while the others stopped coming as well. Charlie thought the nurses started buying the presents themselves then. Eventually, he was the only one left.

One day everyone seemed happier. The nurse bringing his breakfast that morning beamed at him, "How's our miracle boy then?" He didn't know what she'd meant, but a week later she was crying. "Its not your fault, Charlie. You've been blessed, that's what it is. And the rest of us are cursed!"

His pocket diary announced today was his birthday. He was seven, but no-one had brought him any presents. The young doctor hadn't visited him for over a month, and the last time he'd been red-faced and shivering and, Charlie thought, drunk.

"So long, my little freak!" He'd shouted through the glass. Then he'd turned and staggered away. It had upset him, but the nurse had explained that the young doctor was very ill. Now she had disappeared as well.

At lunchtime, Charlie got out of bed and tried his door. It opened. He walked down the long white corridors until he found the cafeteria. There was no-one around. All the food smelt bad but he got a can of coke and a packet of biscuits and started to eat.

He took out his diary and stared into space for a while. Then he carefully began to make a list, like the one his mother made before they went shopping: ÔTins of food and stuff, bottles of water, warm coat, big boots, somewhere to stay until...'

Until...?

He was going to be like Robinson Crusoe, he thought to himself, and smiled; all on his own until he was rescued.

And Charlie's world had begun.