But I don’t know who or what I’m dealing with, so I also feel I shouldn’t give too much away. I should be cautious. Si’s always saying that: a man of science proceeds with care. Or If you’re going to mix chemicals, Jess, put your goggles on.
I’m not sure what sort of goggles I need to deal with the thing in the flask, but I think the least I can try is an apology.
“I’m sorry about the sticky tape,” I say.
I’m not really expecting a reply and I don’t get one, but the movement inside the flask does seem to become a little less frantic, so I have the feeling the thing is listening.
“I guess you must have been in that flask a long time,” I say next.
Where does that remark come from? From the cold and the dust I smelt in the bottle? Or from some story-book knowledge of things in bottles, genies in lamps? What am I imagining, that the thing is some trapped spirit cursed to remain in the flask for a thousand years until – until what? Until Jessica Walton arrives with her father’s ill-fitting slide rule? They say (correction: Si says) if you put a sane person in a lunatic asylum for any length of time they become as mad as the inmates. Me? I’m talking to a thing in a flask.
I’m calling it you.
The word you implies that the thing I’m talking to is alive. I mean you don’t say you to a box of tissues, do you? Or to a hairbrush or a necklace or a mobile phone. So I am making a definite assumption about the thing being alive. Mr Pugh, our biology teacher, says that only things that carry out all seven of the life processes can be said to be alive. Pug calls this Mrs Nerg.
M – for movement
R – for reproduction
S – for sensitivity
N – for nutrition
E – for excretion
R – for respiration
G – for growth
I look at the thing in the flask. Movement – no doubt about that. Reproduction. I’m not sure I want to think about that right now. Sensitivity. Definitely. It’s sensitive to me, I’m sensitive to it. Nutrition. Does the thing eat? Unlikely. It doesn’t have a mouth. But then plants eat and they don’t have mouths. Excretion. Not important. If you don’t eat you don’t need to excrete. Respiration. Yes, it breathes, doesn’t it? And it has to get energy from somewhere or it couldn’t move and it certainly moves. Growth. Yes again; I think I can imagine it growing.
To be alive, Pug says, you have to be able to carry out all seven of the processes. Not two, or five or one. All seven.
I think Pug may have missed out on some of his training. This thing is definitely alive.
“Who are you?” I say. “What are you?”
The thing does not respond.
I retreat a bit. “I think you’ll be safer in the flask for a while,” I say.
I mean, of course, that I’ll feel safer if the thing is in the flask. I’ve heard adults do this. They tell you something they want by making it sound useful to you, like, You’ll be much warmer in your coat, won’t you?
“Because,” I add, “I have to go to the hospital in a minute. Gran’s taking me to the hospital.”
No reply.
“To see the babies.”
No reply.
“So I’m just going to pop you (you) back in the desk for a bit.”
No reply.
“OK?”
“You see, I noticed how you rushed back in the flask yourself, so it must be your home, I guess. Am I right?”
No reply.
“My name’s Jess, by the way.”
Some little silver seed fish, swimming.
“How do you do that? How do you make the fish swim?”
No reply.
“It’s beautiful.”
No reply.
“So just wait, OK?”
No reply.
“Promise?”
Very gently, I place the flask back into the dark space behind the left-hand drawer in the desk.
“See you later,” I say, as I leave the room.
Our local hospital is too small to deal with cases like the twins’, so we have to go to the city. It’s a long drive.
“Your mum will be very tired, you know that, don’t you?” Gran says.
She makes it sound like we shouldn’t be going, but I know why we’re going. In case the twins belong in the thirty-four per cent who die on day one.
The Special Care Baby Unit is in the tower-block part of the hospital, on the fifteenth floor. We come out of the lift to face a message to tell us we are In the Zone and to make sure we scrub ourselves with the Hygienic Hand Rub. The doors to the unit are locked and we have to ring to gain admission.
Si hears us as we check in at the nurses’ station and comes out to greet us.
“Angela,” he says to Gran and then, “Jess.” And he puts his hand out to touch me, which he doesn’t usually. I look at his eyes. They aren’t sparkling, but they are smiling. “Come on in.”
There are four incubators in the room and five nurses. Two of the nurses are wearing flimsy pink disposable aprons and throwing things into bins. There’s an air of serious hush, broken only by the steady blip of ventilators. Beside each cot is a screen with wavy lines of electronic blue, green and yellow. I don’t know what they measure, but they’re the sort of machines you see in films that go into a single flat line when people die. Mum is not sitting or standing, but lying on a bed. They must have wheeled her in on that bed, and braked her up next to the twins. She doesn’t look up immediately when we come into the room; all her focus, all her attention is on my brothers.
Brothers.
All through the pregnancy, Mum’s been calling them my brothers. When the twins are born, when your brothers are born… But, I realise, standing in the hospital Special Care Unit, that they are not my brothers. Not full brothers, anyway. We share a mother, but not a father, so they are my half-brothers. But half-brothers sounds as if they’re only half here or as if they don’t quite belong. And that’s scary. Or maybe it’s actually me that doesn’t quite belong any more, as though a chunk of what I thought of as family has somehow slid away. And that’s even scarier.
So, I’m going to call them brothers – my brothers.
Mum looks up, shifts herself up on her pillows a little when she sees me, although I can see it hurts her.
“Jess… come here, love.”
I come and she puts her arms right around me, even though it’s difficult with leaning from the bed.
“Look.” She nods towards the incubator. “Here they are, here they are at last.”
They lie facing each other, little white knitted hats on their heads, hands entwined. Yes, they’re holding hands. Fast asleep and tucked in under a single white blanket they look innocent. Normal.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” says Mum.
“Yes,” I say. And it’s true, though there is something frail about them, two little birds who can’t fly and are lucky to have fallen together in such a nest.
“You were a beautiful baby too, Jess.”
She is making it ordinary, but it isn’t ordinary. Somewhere