Conrad lay back, waiting for Nurse Sadie to go away so that he could be alone with the pain in his vanished leg. Above him the surgical cradle loomed like a white mountain. Strangely, the news that Uncle Theodore had escaped almost unscathed from the accident left Conrad without any sense of relief. Since the age of five, when the deaths of his parents in an air disaster had left him an orphan, his relationship with his aunt and uncle had been, if anything, even closer than that he would have had with his mother and father, their affection and loyalties more conscious and constant. Yet he found himself thinking not of his uncle, nor of himself, but of the approaching car. With its sharp fins and trim it had swerved towards them like the gulls swooping on the turtles, moving with the same rush of violence. Lying in the bed with the cradle over him Conrad remembered the turtles labouring across the wet sand under their heavy carapaces, and the old men waiting for them among the dunes.
Outside, the fountains played among the gardens of the empty hospital, and the elderly nurses walked in pairs to and fro along the shaded pathways.
The next day, before his aunt’s visit, two doctors came to see Conrad. The older of the two, Dr Nathan, was a slim grey-haired man with hands as gentle as Nurse Sadie’s. Conrad had seen him before, and remembered him from the first confused hours of his admission to the hospital. A faint half-smile always hung about Dr Nathan’s mouth, like the ghost of some forgotten pleasantry.
The other physician, Dr Knight, was considerably younger, and by comparison seemed almost the same age as Conrad. His strong, squarejawed face looked down at Conrad with a kind of jocular hostility. He reached for Conrad’s wrist as if about to jerk the youth from his bed on to the floor.
‘So this is young Foster?’ He peered into Conrad’s eyes. ‘Well, Conrad, I won’t ask how you’re feeling.’
‘No…’ Conrad nodded uncertainly.
‘No, what?’ Dr Knight smiled at Nathan, who was hovering at the foot of the bed like an aged flamingo in a dried-up pool. ‘I thought Dr Nathan was looking after you very well.’ When Conrad murmured something, shy of inviting another retort, Dr Knight sped on: ‘Isn’t he? Still, I’m more interested in your future, Conrad. This is where I take over from Dr Nathan, so from now on you can blame me for everything that goes wrong.’
He pulled up a metal chair and straddled it, flicking out the tails of his white coat with a flourish. ‘Not that anything will. Well?’
Conrad listened to Dr Nathan’s feet tapping the polished floor. He cleared his throat. ‘Where is everyone else?’
‘You’ve noticed?’ Dr Knight glanced across at his colleague. ‘Still, you could hardly fail to.’ He stared through the window at the empty grounds of the hospital. ‘It’s true, there is hardly anyone here.’
‘A compliment to us, Conrad, don’t you think?’ Dr Nathan approached the bed again. The smile that hovered around his lips seemed to belong to another face.
‘Yeesss…’ Dr Knight drawled. ‘Of course, no one will have explained to you, Conrad, but this isn’t a hospital in quite the usual sense.’
‘What—?’ Conrad began to sit up, dragging at the cradle over his leg. ‘What do you mean?’
Dr Knight raised his hands. ‘Don’t misinterpret me, Conrad. Of course this is a hospital, an advanced surgical unit, in fact, but it’s also something more than a hospital, as I intend to explain.’
Conrad watched Dr Nathan. The older physician was gazing out of the window, apparently at the fountains, but for once his face was blank, the smile absent.
‘In what way?’ Conrad asked guardedly. ‘Is it something to do with me?’
Dr Knight spread his hands in an ambiguous gesture. ‘In a sense, yes. But we’ll talk about this tomorrow. We’ve taxed you enough for the present.’
He stood up, his eyes still examining Conrad, and placed his hands on the cradle. ‘We’ve a lot of work to do on this leg, Conrad. In the end, when we’ve finished, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what we can achieve here. In return, perhaps you can help us — we hope so, don’t we, Dr Nathan?’
Dr Nathan’s smile, like a returning wraith, hovered once again about his thin lips. ‘I’m sure Conrad will be only too keen.’
As they reached the door Conrad called them back.
‘What is it, Conrad?’ Dr Knight waited by the next bed.
‘The driver — the man in the car. What happened to him? Is he here?’
‘As a matter of fact he is, but…’ Dr Knight hesitated, then seemed to change course. ‘To be honest, Conrad, you won’t be able to see him. I know the accident was almost certainly his fault—’
‘No!’ Conrad shook his head. ‘I don’t want to blame him… we stepped out behind the truck. Is he here?’
‘The car hit the steel pylon on the traffic island, then went on through the sea wall. The driver was killed on the beach. He wasn’t much older than you, Conrad, in a way he may have been trying to save you and your uncle.’
Conrad nodded, remembering the white face like a scream behind the windshield.
