Chapter 53
Ludo
It was the longest taxi ride of my life.
I had run out of Sunny’s flat still pulling on my jersey, arm outstretched, trying to flag down just about any vehicle that might conceivably offer me a lift to the hospital.
Except a bus. I did not have time for a bus.
Mummy had called about thirty seconds after Sunny had gone for his shower.
I knew by the tremor in her voice as she said my name that the news was bad.
“It’s your Uncle Ben, sweetheart.” The words would haunt me until the day I died. “We’re at the hospital. You need to come quickly. There isn’t much time.”
* * *
I ran through the corridors of the hospital, trying to follow the instructions Mummy had given me on the phone and asking absolutely anyone in a uniform for directions to Ward D.
Completely out of breath, I rounded the corner into the private room to see Uncle Ben unconscious on the bed, surrounded by my mother, my father, and Jonty.
Mummy and Jonty had been crying. Their faces were sunken, the colour drained out of them.
“How is he?” I asked, approaching the bed. It was eerily quiet. “Where are all the doctors? The monitors?”
Mummy stood, opened her arms, and flung them around me. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d hugged me.
“I’m sorry, my darling,” she said. “He left us a few minutes ago.”
My legs gave way. The only thing keeping me from the floor was my mother’s arms. I was a dead weight. She let me slump to the hospital linoleum. I heard a blood-curdling noise and realised it was coming out of my body. I was making it, and I had no way of stopping it.