The curtain was whisked across, and then back again.
As the boy lay there staring at the ceiling, he could hear the sound of footsteps departing.
“Doctor!” she barked out again, now some way down the corridor.
“Coming, Nurse!” came a voice from far off.
“Quickly!” she shouted.
“Sorry!” said the voice.
Then there was the sound of footsteps approaching at speed.
The curtain was whisked back.
A young pointy-faced man breezed in, his long white coat trailing behind him.
“Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear,” announced a posh voice. It was a doctor, and he was somewhat out of breath at having had to run. Looking up, the boy read the man’s name badge – DOCTOR LUPPERS.
“That is a big bump. Does this hurt?” The man took out a pencil from his breast pocket. He then held one end and tapped the boy’s head with it.
“Oooowwww!” the boy screamed again. It wasn’t as bad as being jabbed by a gnarly old finger, but it still hurt.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry! Please don’t report me. I’ve only just graduated as a doctor, you see.”
“I won’t,” muttered the boy.
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure!”
“Thank you. Now I need to make sure I cross the ‘i’s and dot the ‘t’s. I just have this little admissions form to fill in.” The man then proceeded to roll out a form that looked as if it might take a week to complete.
The boy sighed.
“So, young man,” began the doctor in a singsong tone that he hoped might make this boring task fun, “what is your name?”
The boy’s mind went blank.
He had never forgotten his own name before.
“Name?” asked the doctor again.
But, try as he might, the boy couldn’t remember it.
“I don’t know,” he spluttered.
A look of panic swept across the doctor’s face. “Oh dear,” he said. “There are a hundred and ninety-two questions on this form and we are still stuck on question one.”
“I’m sorry,” replied the boy. As he lay on the hospital trolley, a tear rolled down his cheek. He felt like such a failure, not even being able to remember his own name.
“Oh no! You’re crying!” said the doctor. “Please don’t cry! The hospital principal could come by and think that I have upset you!”
The boy did his best to stop. Doctor Luppers searched his pockets for a tissue. Unable to locate one, he dabbed the boy’s eyes with the form.
“Oh no! Now the form’s wet!” he exclaimed. He then began blowing on the form to try and dry it. This made the boy laugh. “Oh good!” said the man. “You are smiling! Now, look, I am sure we can find out your name. Does it begin with an A?”
The boy was pretty sure it didn’t. “I don’t think so.”
“B?”
The boy shook his head.
“C?”
He shook his head again.
“This could take some time,” muttered the doctor under his breath.
“T!” exclaimed the boy.
“You would like a cup of tea?”
“No! My name. It begins with a T!”
Doctor Luppers smiled as he wrote the first letter on the top of the form. “Let’s see if I can guess. Tim? Ted? Terry? Tony? Theo? Taj? No, you don’t look like a Taj… I’ve got it! Tina?!”
All these suggestions firing at the boy clouded his mind, making it more difficult for him to remember, but finally his own name came shining through.
“Tom!” said Tom.
“Tom!” exclaimed the doctor, as if he was about to have guessed it. He wrote down the next two letters. “So what do they call you? Thomas? Tommy? Big Tom? Little Tom? Tom Thumb?”
“Tom,” replied Tom wearily. Tom had already said his name was Tom.
“Do you have a surname?”
“It begins with a C,” said the boy.
“Well, at least we have the first letter. It’s like doing the crossword!”
“Charper!”
“Tom Charper!” said the man, scribbling it down on the form. “That’s question one done. Just a hundred and ninety-one to go. Now, who brought you to the hospital today? Are your mummy and daddy here?”
“No,” said Tom. He could be sure of that. His parents weren’t here. They were never here; they were always there. For some years now, they had packed their only child off to a posh boarding school deep in the English countryside: St Willet’s Boarding School for Boys.
Tom’s father earned a lot of money working in desert countries far away, extracting oil from the ground, and his mother was very good at spending that money. Tom would only see them on school holidays, usually in a different country each time. Even though Tom had travelled alone for hours to see them, his father would often still have to work all day and his mother would leave him with a nanny while she went shopping for more shoes and handbags.
The boy would be lavished with presents upon arrival – a new train set, a model plane or a knight’s suit of armour. But with nobody to play with Tom would get bored quickly. All he really wanted was to spend time with Mum and Dad, but time was the one thing they never ever gave him.
“No. Mother and Father are abroad,” answered Tom. “I
