‘Appendicitis; being operated on tomorrow.’
‘Something feels wrong with the blood; it seems to be connected with the bones – something not working properly.’
‘Leukaemia; awaiting a bone marrow transplant.’
‘Part of the brain is damaged, it’s affecting the use of some of the muscles.’
‘Cerebral palsy.’
As we approached one bed, a small girl moaned; I sensed she was awake. I walked closer to her head, relying on the dim night lighting to hide my appearance. Her eyes were closed.
‘Massive headache, affecting much of the brain.’
‘She suffers from frequent and severe migraine attacks; she’s in for observation.’
I bent over her head, sensing the strain within her nervous system, the agony she was feeling. I instinctively reached out a hand and placed it on her head. The flow of nervous energy was clear to me, the pressure points glaring as if red-hot. I focused on these, absorbing their details, willing them to cool while rerouting the flow to release the pressure. The moans quietened and she relaxed into sleep.
‘What did you do?’ An urgent whisper.
I shrugged. ‘Just untied some knots.’
The tests became even more frantic, the doctors suddenly realising that I was more than a medical curiosity; I had become a major asset. My ward tours became nightly, I learned which symptoms were associated with which ailment and was soon able to diagnose with precision. I also learned which problems I could help with; they were essentially ones of the nervous system. I discovered that I could stop pain instantly, relax patients and send them to sleep at a touch. I could cure tinnitus (easily), epilepsy (with some effort), and a host of minor afflictions. There was little I could do about most diseases or physical injuries, but I could usually ameliorate the symptoms and speed the recovery. The hospital authorities were overjoyed – I was enabling them to comprehensively shatter their government targets for patient turnover.
Eventually the inevitable happened; one elderly lady (sciatica) awoke before I could reach her, took one look and screamed and screamed.
‘There will have to be a press conference.’ The hospital manager, a plump, bald man with a perpetual and probably justified air of carrying more than the usual weight of care on his shoulders, was glum but resigned. A crisis meeting was being held in the conference room. The Consultation nodded in agreement, with varying degrees of enthusiasm depending, I suspected, on how ready their articles were for publication. He turned to me. ‘Is there anyone you want to warn first?’
I had thought about this before. ‘No. I have a kind of brother, but we haven’t spoken in years.’
‘A kind of brother?’
‘We were adopted as babies by the same couple, but we’re not blood relatives.’
‘Very well then, the sooner we get it over with, the better.’
I’m not sure exactly what the hospital manager said to the news media (or whether Mrs Sciatica’s relatives had alerted them first), but they were there in force on the appointed morning, packing the lecture theatre amid a buzz of excited speculation. Television lights glared, technicians frantically gaffer-taped cables to the floor, microphones were tested amid much crackling and feedback whine, the table on the dais had been covered with a cloth onto which some alert PR man had imprinted the name of the hospital trust. Eventually all was ready. I watched from the sidelines, out of sight of the press.
The hospital manager said a few words of introduction, announcing an important development in his ability to help patients and commendably working in the name of his hospital three times in five sentences. All wasted effort; from my experience with news editors, they would cut that bit out. Then the HM introduced Brian, who gave a dry but gruesome description of what had happened to me in the fire, illustrated by some photographs which I had not seen before. Even a few of the less-hardened hacks gasped at the sight; I was totally unrecognisable, just the charred form of a man. He went on to describe my miraculous recovery from what should have been certain death, and the strange transformation which took place under my all-over scabs. The photos (discreetly edited in the interests of decency) caused a murmur of astonishment and speculation around the audience. Attention became even more rapt when he described my sensitivity to people and their afflictions, and my ability to heal some of them. He paused for a few moments, the press so stunned that it took at least three seconds before they dived into the gap and started a clamour of questions. He forestalled them with raised hands. ‘I’d now like to introduce Cade to you.’ He turned to face me and beckoned.
Zara, who was watching from just behind me, had decided to take over responsibility for my clothing and had put much effort into my appearance.
‘You can’t go in there just wearing shorts. And you’d look silly in conventional clothes. My sister is doing a course in textiles and fashion, I’ll work on something with her.’
“Something” turned out to be a sleeveless tee-shirt with a deep vee-neck, in an open weave cloth of a metallic grey material. Loose jogging pants in a similar cloth were complemented by silver-grey trainers: I looked like nothing so much as one of the aliens from an episode of Star Trek. Zara gave me an encouraging little push and I realised that I had been hanging back, dreading this moment. I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders and marched to the dais to a stunned silence from the press. I sat down between the HM and Brian, and smiled. ‘Good morning’, I said. Then all hell broke loose.
After a while, the HM managed to establish some sort of order and an agreed sequence for questioning. The first hack stood up. ‘Cade, I don’t wish to be rude but you really don’t look human. How can you prove you are who you say you are, and aren’t some alien from outer space?’ There was nervous laughter from his colleagues.
I smiled. ‘An understandable question. All I can say is that my memories of before the fire are intact, comprehensive and accurate. The only thing I can’t remember is the explosion and fire itself.’
The HM leaned forwards. ‘We did, of course, have some initial doubts about this ourselves, but after draining Cade’s memory of all he could recall we checked it out exhaustively and were able to confirm the accuracy of his account. We also did some DNA tests and I can assure you that he is no alien.’ I hadn’t known about that bit.
The next part of the press conference was predictable. I did my chameleon trick and answered some learned questions from science journalists, one of whom I recognised from my previous life.
‘Hello Stephen, good to see you again.’
He smiled rather thinly. ‘I’m relieved that you recognise me. But I used to call you Matthew. Should I now call you Cade?’
I shrugged. ‘I used to use my first and last names, but so much has happened that to some extent I don’t feel the same person that I used to be, so I prefer to use my middle name now.’
Stephen continued. ‘What explanation do you have for what has happened to you?’
This was the key question and I could sense interest rising to an even higher pitch. ‘Obviously, I’ve thought about it a lot, and identified some theoretical possibilities. Maybe it’s natural; perhaps I’m some earlier or alternative form of humanity and the stress of the fire switched on some dormant genes. But there’s no evidence that such a form ever existed, and nothing like that has ever happened before. It could be a new mutation brought on by the fire, but it’s very hard to believe so many changes happening at once, all of them functional; mutations don’t happen like that. So it seems more likely to be artificial; some scientists somewhere might have been playing with genetic modifications to people, and I somehow got involved. But the science of genetics is decades if not centuries short of being able to achieve this.’ I spread my arms wide, then smiled. ‘Perhaps I have been got at by little green men in flying saucers.’ There was nervous laughter. ‘But I don’t believe in earth visitations by such creatures for very good reasons, as I’ve emphasised in articles I’ve written before.’