“I know I did that operation on your friend!” she said. “And I operated last night – emergency ops – three of them – but blow it all, I’m not a surgeon! Stupid of me – conceited to think I could cope. Can’t. Not trained for it. Anyway… too much for any one person.” Her voice cracked upward.
“Matron, it’s not your fault—” began Omri, terrified that this capable, efficient, down-to-earth woman might be about to burst into tears, which would have unmanned him completely.
“Didn’t say it was! My fault indeed!” She glared at him, took her specs off, polished them on a spotless handkerchief from her apron pocket, and put them back on her formidable nose.
“Blessed if I know how I got here, what this is all about – now don’t you go pulling the wool over my eyes, I know when I’m dreaming and when I’m not – this is real. The blood’s real, the pain’s real, the deaths are real. My ops were real, they were the best I could do, but what is also real is my – my – my basic inadequacy.”
She suddenly snatched the handkerchief out of her pocket again and blew her nose on it. She wiped her nose back and forth several times and then gave a great, convulsive sniff.
“What we need here is a properly equipped medical team!”
Omri gaped at her.
“If we don’t get one – and quickly – more of these poor men are going to die.”
After a moment, during which she glared at him expectantly through her spectacles, Omri said slowly, “I’ll tell you the truth about you being here, and – all the rest of it. But you probably won’t believe me.”
“After what I’ve been through in the past forty-eight hours, I’ll believe anything!” she said fervently.
He explained things as well as he could. She listened intently and asked a couple of questions.
“You say any article or figure made of plastic is affected?”
“Yes.”
“And objects which might be concealed on the person – my hypodermic syringe, for example, and other things I brought in my pocket from St Thomas’s—”
“Yes, they’re made real, provided the person had them on him before he was – brought.”
“Well! Why can’t you get hold of some plastic doctors and put them in your allegedly magic cupboard? Only you must make sure they have some equipment – surgical instruments and so forth.”
“But all the shops are shut! How can I—”
Suddenly Omri remembered. Two nights ago, he had gone to see Patrick at his aunt’s house and they had tried to borrow Tamsin’s new box of plastic figures, only she’d caught them at it and grabbed it back. Omri had only just managed to hold onto the figure that turned out to be Matron. But there had been others in the set – including a surgeon at an operating table.
He stretched out his foot and nudged Patrick awake.
“Patrick! Listen. There’s another Indian dead. And Matron says, if we don’t find a proper doctor, more will die.”
Patrick scrambled to his feet, rubbing his hair.
“How can we get any new ones on Sunday?”
“What about the ones Tamsin has?”
“What are you saying? That I should go back to Aunty’s and nick them when Tamsin isn’t looking?”
“It’s only borrowing.”
“Not when the owner doesn’t know or agree! Not when the owner’s my little creep of a cousin! She’d have my guts for garters!”
Omri said, with a note of desperation, “Well, what are we to do, then? This is a real emergency!” Suddenly he had an idea. “Why don’t you try buying them off her?”
“It might work. Have you got any dosh?”
“Not a penny, we spent it all on the Indian braves. Maybe Dad’ll lend me a couple of quid.”
His dad did better than that. He gave him a fiver, and not just till pay-day. “You’ve earned it. Here’s one for Patrick, too.”
So there was no problem about money.
At breakfast, hastily eaten, the boys sneaked some crispy bits of bacon and quite a few Crunchy Nut Cornflakes into their pockets, and Omri astonished his mother by asking for a mug of tea instead of milk. Matron couldn’t cope without her tea.
“I thought you hated tea!”
“I’m coming round to it.”
“You’ll be hitting the Scotch next,” commented his father from behind his Sunday paper.
Patrick nudged Omri. When whisky was mentioned, there was just one person who came to mind. Halfway back up the stairs, Patrick whispered: “Let’s bring Boone back to life right now!”
At that moment, the doorbell rang.
Omri went back down and opened the door. Then he gasped. Outside stood Tamsin. Of all people!
How could it be, she’d broken her leg!
Omri looked again. It wasn’t Tamsin, it was Emma.
Emma was Tamsin’s twin sister. She was the spitting image of Tamsin, and yet she was wholly different. As far as Omri could remember, she was quite a decent sort of girl.
“Hello, Omri,” she said. “Can I see Patrick?”
Patrick dragged himself reluctantly down into the hall. Omri stood aside, waiting. He could feel himself tensing all over for fear there was a car outside waiting to cart Patrick away.
“Hi, Em. How’s it going?” said Patrick carelessly.
“Okay. Tam’s leg’s in a cast and she’s better. They sent me here because Omri’s phone’s busted and your mum couldn’t ring you and you’re to come back with me.”
“Right now?”
“Yes.”
“I – I can’t come now!”
“Why not?”
Patrick dithered helplessly, trying to think of some excuse.
“How are we supposed to get back?”
“On the train of course,” said Emma. “Come on.”
Omri said, “Did you come here on the train?”
“Yes, why?”
“And you walked up the road to here, from the station?”
“Yes.”
Omri thought of the skinheads. It was Sunday – even the few who went to school or had jobs, were free and on the prowl on Sundays. He himself never walked down Hovel Road on Sundays if he could possibly help it.
“Did you meet anyone…?”
She shrugged. “A few boys. Hanging around. Real creeps, gross. I took no notice of them.”
Omri shivered. But then he remembered. There was a pretty good chance he didn’t have to be scared of that gang any more. He put his hand in his jeans pocket, and fingered the little penlight the smallest of the burglars had dropped the night before.
As he touched it, he felt something else. It was the key. A sudden flash of inspiration came to him, stiffening his whole body like a bolt of electricity.
“Emma,” he said in a