Colin

Colin's mum had called him three times. The ten year old was pulling
on his right trainer without opening the laces. He performed an amazing
joint popping wriggle, which seemed to send every bone in his legs and
feet in a different direction and suddenly the trainer was on. He
glanced up towards the mirror on the back of his bedroom door and
pulled a tough face at himself. It would have frightened a jungle cat.
Jumping to his feet he stepped forward, hand outstretched for the door
handle. The lace on the other trainer, which hadn't been fastened in
three days, didn't enter his mind until he found himself tumbling head
forward. The crash shook the house. The door smacked shut. The mirror
broke. Colin slumped to the floor blocking the door with his
body.


No one in her aerobics class could have matched how Jenny
Bell leapt up the stairs to her son's bedroom. She pushed at the door
and realised immediately that the boy was unconscious on the floor.
Glass scraped on the floor. She backed off, momentarily indecisive. Her
fists beat up and down on thin air by her waist. She shot downstairs,
through the kitchen into the back garden where Scamp yapped and ran
alongside her to the rear door of the garage. The ladders were heavy
but fear and adrenaline gave her the strength to pull them from beneath
a tumble of boxes and toys. Colin's skateboard toppled onto the garage
floor and rolled out towards Scamp, who jumped out of the way more
excited than ever.


Jenny bullied the ladders into place and climbed to Colin's
bedroom window. He lay in a crazy lake of mirror shards. His window was
locked. Barefooted she had no shoe to break the glass. She stripped off
her Tee shirt and wrapped her fist, punched, swore and punched again.
The window showered more glass into the room. Opening the window clasp
she stepped inside onto a cupboard scattered with football trophies and
computer games. Sharp splinters stabbed at her feet.
"Thank God, I didn't force that door." Jenny was horrified by the
jagged, mirror-knife that protruded from the mirror frame towards
Colin's neck.
"Careful. Careful. Don't move. Let me." She lifted him away from the
glass and carried him to his bed.
The boy was breathing. He was not even terribly pale. Amazingly there
was not a cut on him. There was blood but it came from Jenny's
hand.
"Colin ?.. Colin ?? "
He stirred, opened his eyes. For a heart lurching second those eyes
were blank.
"Colin!"
This time it was as though someone had turned on a light switch inside
his head. They were Colin's eyes again. He looked at her, puzzled. "Mum
?? what are you doing?"



The waiting room at Warrington General Hospital was empty.
"At least it's better than a Saturday and Sunday. Half the footballers
on Merseyside like playing synchronised leg breaks." They squeaked
across the shiny lino floor to the triage desk where a heavyset nurse
looked up from a blue folder. Colin caught a glimpse of "True Romance"
from the magazine cover hidden inside.
She smiled warmly, meeting eyes with both Jenny and Colin. Her gaze
settled for an instant on Jenny's hand.
"Ooh. What have you been doing?"
"It's not me. It's my son. He banged his head."
The nurse looked penetratingly into Colin's eyes.
"We'd better look at that too." She nodded towards Jenny's hand. The
nurse collected details of the accident. When she heard how Jenny had
rescued her son she asked to see her feet as well as her hand.
"We'll have to get those cleaned up. Your feet are going to be very
sore when all the excitement passes. You've got a brave mummy, young
man." Just take a seat over there and we'll get you both looked
at.


Despite the waiting room being empty there was still a wait.
Over the next half hour several other people arrived and were seen at
the triage desk. Half a dozen little clusters of injured folks, their
friends and family, began to build up.


"Colin Bell ?." The Tannoy carried an Asian voice, "? to
cubicle 1 please."
"Colin. Come on. That's us." She reached for his hand, not something he
normally liked too much outside. "Were you day dreaming?"
Colin shrugged and smiled, allowing her to lead him
along.


The doctor seemed to have a lot of difficulty following their
account of the morning's excitement. He asked for things to be repeated
several times. When they thought that they had communicated the whole
story he asked "So why did you break your mirror?" Jenny bit back her
exasperation.
Throughout the strange conversation, with its moments of clarity and
confusion, its unintentional humour and its periods of apparently
talking at cross-purposes, the doctor efficiently examined Colin's
eyes. He shone a light into each in turn and watched to see the pupils
dilate and contract. He did not look up from his note taking when he
announced, "I am sending you for an X-Ray. I will see you again very
soon."


They were sitting in another waiting area when the same
Indian voice from the Tannoy announced, "Jennifer Bell to cubicle 1
please".
"Excuse me." Jenny attracted a passing nurse. "I'm with my son waiting
for X-Ray but they are calling for me around the corner in
casualty."
"Oh. He'll be all right for 5 minutes or so. The radiologist isn't even
here yet. In fact you should have half an hour." She smiled a pretty
smile and gave one funny little skip as she resumed her journey.
Jenny pulled a wry smile at Colin. "Perhaps you should come with
me."
"I'm O.K., mum. I've had an X-Ray before. You go. I'll wait just in
case the lady gets here before you get back."
"I'm not even sure she'll do you without me being here."
"She will. When I was brought from school that time Mr. Newley had to
go in to see a doctor with one of the other lads and I just had to go
in when they called my name."


The X-Ray department was situated off a short corridor
between the Accident and Emergency Department and the main wards. There
was a lot of traffic. Colin was quite contended watching folk pass by.
A porter drove a train of four dirty linen skips. He winked as he
passed Colin.
"Great job this, son. It's like Blackpool Pleasure beach."
A little later he came past again, pulling on an imaginary chain and
making a sound like a steam whistle.
Colin chuckled obligingly. Nurses and doctors occasionally came by,
some hurrying, others sauntering. Not everyone was equally rushed. And
then there was nobody, just the sound of the air conditioning and the
buzzing of a faulty fluorescent tube. Around the corner came a clicking
of high-heeled shoes in the long corridor. Colin waited, curious, as
the steps came closer and closer. He played a game with himself
imagining what the person would look like. When it seemed that someone
was bound to appear the clicking simply carried on, becoming ever
louder. The lady was a very heavy walker. He must have begun to hear
her when she was a long, long way away. At last she turned into his
short corridor. He had certainly lost this little game with himself.
Nothing about her was what he could have expected. The woman was as
tall as any female he had seen. She was dressed in a jumble sale of
black items, a tight leather micro skirt over a thin black body
stocking; an overskirt of crochet or black lace curtain covered one of
her long legs. The other displayed one of her thigh length black, shiny
boots with the highest heels Colin had ever seen. Above a waste length
jacket of glossy, black, fake fur the young woman had a huge tangle of
crimson hair. A frame of black eye shadow exaggerated her vivid blue
eyes and her lips were painted black too.
Colin recognised that the young woman was very beautiful but beauty was
not the effect she intended to portray. "A Goth." He thought to
himself. "She looks like a queen of vampires."
The Goth smiled at him as she walked past. Most of them seemed to think
sullenness was a compulsory part of the image and her easy smile
surprised him. Her mouth was wide and there was no trace of half
expected fangs behind her full vampiric lips. For no apparent reason
suddenly he felt very young and silly sitting there and he returned her
smile nervously, swinging his legs a couple of times self-consciously.
She strode past, her boots clacking on the hard, thermoplastic floor.
She pushed at the swing doors and was gone.
Quite how the radiographer appeared was a different matter.
"Colin Bell?" a small woman in a white smock coat was alongside him.
She held a clipboard, a bright, blue ballpoint pen on a piece of string
nested in the wide part of the clip.
"Colin Bell?" Her smile betrayed a hint of concern for him.
"Uh. Yes." Colin stood.
"You were away in daydream land weren't you?"
"Sorry!"
"No need. Come along." She led him to the locked door of the X-Ray
department. She swiped a plastic card in a slot by the door and pushed
it open. "Is anyone here with you, Colin?"
"Yes, My mum. She's being looked at in ?. "
Jenny arrived slightly flushed and anxious as he spoke. "I'm his
mum."
"That's fine, Mrs. Bell. Colin banged his head, I see."
"Yes. He must have fallen into the mirror on his door." Jenny pushed a
wisp of fair hair from her eye with a bandaged hand."
"And you've been in the wars too?"
Jenny smiled, anxious to shift the spotlight back to Colin. "He was
unconscious for a while. I think that's why they want an X-Ray."
"I'm sure it is. Well you wait on the bench outside and we'll just be a
moment or two."
Colin was used to X-Rays on his arms and legs. This time he was made to
lie down and found himself being wedged with sponge rubber blocks into
a rig which held his head still. "This is just so that the picture
won't be blurred. We have to keep you nice and still."
The radiographer retreated behind a glass screen and Colin felt himself
losing interest as she spoke to him. "There we are. That should be
fine." When she released him from the table she accompanied him to his
mum. "Just hang on there for a couple of minutes." She said. "I'll just
have to check these are clear enough for the doctor to see."
While Colin sat with his mum the swing doors opened and the clacking of
high heels made him look up. There was something wrong with his eyes.
The Goth came through the doors but she seemed blurred, a shimmering
surrounded her. For a moment she was surrounded by a rainbow pattern of
pale, shifting colours, something like the mother-of pearl effect in an
abalone shell. She smiled towards him again and a plume of turquoise
light streamed towards him with such speed and intensity that he shrunk
away from her in alarm.
"Colin!" his mum was holding his face. "What happened?"
"Is he all right?" the Goth looked down anxiously.
The radiographer arrived with her brown envelope bearing Colin's name.
"Has he had a funny turn?" Waves of orange light pulsed around her.
"I'll get a chair."
Within moments Colin was in a wheelchair and was rolled into one of the
cubicles. Another doctor examined him, obliging his mother to retell
the whole story of the accident, the rescue, how she had to leave him
alone for a while. Colin could only explain that his eyes felt
funny.
It was agreed that he should be admitted onto the children's ward. The
emergency room telephone was just outside the cubicle and Jenny could
hear the doctor insisting that a bed be found. It was clear from his
end of the conversation that he was not having an easy time obtaining a
bed for Colin. After a long wait a porter came and pushed Colin on a
trolley towards a lift. Jenny walked behind smiling reassuringly



"God! It was eerie." Georgie's black painted lips stretched
wide in a mock grimace. "He looked at me like I was going to kill him.
He was so cute, all pale and helpless looking. The first time I went by
he'd given me a lovely shy smile and then WHAM!"
The young man wore very expensive, casual clothes. His posture spoke of
easy confidence. He did not look as though he belonged with the tall,
beautiful girl in her Gothic glamour outfit. He didn't. She had chosen
him from a small scattering of outpatients. They had arranged
themselves so that nobody sat next to anyone else and the next person
to enter was going to have to make a choice. The young man nodded
sympathetically, a slight smile playing around his eyes. He was not
used to girls who looked like Georgie. He was glad she had chosen him
for a seating companion and even gladder she had shared her adventure.
Chris offered, "Perhaps he was a touch delirious".
"I don't know what he was, but it didn't half give me the willies!
Jeez. I just got out of there."


They were together for a long time, over an hour. Their
conversation ranged wide and easy. He saw the consultant first and
ended up waiting for her after her appointment. She was surprised to
see him, but not totally surprised. "Still here." She smiled,
confirming something with teasing eye contact rather than asking a
question.
"You don't mind, do you?"
"No." Her smile broadened.
"Coffee?" He extended a hand and she took it, easily. They strode away,
like old friends, like "an item". A middle-aged woman raised one
eyebrow to her male companion. It was an eloquent eyebrow, which spoke
of her disapproval, her resignation to the peculiar ways of the young
and her personal rectitude. The man smiled ambiguously.




"You are not how I expected." He said, levelly. Her eyes held him as he
peered over the top of his coffee cup.
"What did you expect?" Her laugh was teasing. There was a hint of mock
outrage.
"I don't know. Tougher ?."
"You'd better believe it." She poked out a studded tongue and was
pleased to note that he was not as unflappable as he pretended to be.
Through the stillness of his face she detected the flickering ghost of
his surprise. She remembered dropping a pebble into a trout stream and
seeing an invisible fish suddenly reveal itself as its startled
movement momentarily failed to blend with the flow of the current and
the waving of the riverweed. There was something cute about his feigned
sophistication, his cool front. He was attracted to something dark and
dangerous in her look.
"Did it hurt?"
"Only while they cauterised it. When they stuck the red hot needle
through, all the steam went up my nose."
"God!"
"Only kidding!" I didn't feel a thing.
"Why did you do it?"
"To see if I would."
"Well you did. ? Have you got any more little surprises?"
"If I told you they wouldn't be surprises."
He smiled, feeling easier in her company than he would have believed
possible. As he studied her face he couldn't believe how beautiful she
was.
"I have a face on my wall. It could be you."
"Who is it?"
"Nobody. Just a face. I was playing around, drawing eyes, lips,
different combinations. I found one I liked. It looks like you."
"I'll bet you could be very rich if you had a pound for every girl
you've tried that line on."
"You're wrong. It's for real. I did it when I was fifteen. I used to
make up stories about her. I wanted to meet her. Perhaps I have."
She raised an eyebrow and pulled a wry mouth. "What kind of
stories?"
"Ahh! If I told you perhaps I wouldn't have any surprises for you. Do
you want to hang out some time?"
"You're asking me out."
He gave her the cool gaze. It almost worked. A dry swallow gave him
away. It did the trick. She reacted to the undercurrent of
vulnerability more than the studied "cool".
"Maybe. We'd make a funny couple."
"Funny Ha, Ha or funny peculiar?"
"It depends who's looking. What would your friends say?"
"What would yours?"
"Are you asking them out as well?"
He ignored that. "How about it?"
"O.K. You're on. When?"
"Tonight eightish? ?. Where?"
"Where do you have to come from?"
"Appleton."
"Oh! Posh girl eh? I'll pick you up if you like."
"No I'll see you in town. Say The Feathers at 8 o'clock."
"It's a date."
"I think it is."
They stood together and left together. He wanted to touch her but
chickened out. They walked the corridor like work colleagues.



From a window seat in the children's ward Jenny saw the Goth
with a young man on the car park. He closed her car door and watched
her drive off. Jenny turned towards Colin who looked worried as a candy
striper read his temperature from an ear probe.
"How is it?" Jenny demanded.
"Right temperature. That's good."
The ward was quiet and the auxiliary had time to spend. She wanted to
know the whole story and she seemed to take to Colin. Most of her
questions were directed to him and not his mum. When she leaned over
him to adjust his pillow Colin noticed the flickering light around her
head. It was faint, a shimmering mother of pearl effect against the off
white walls. It was more obvious when he looked straight at her but
allowed his mind to focus off the centre of his vision.