A look of panic swept across the doctor’s face. “Oh dear,” he said. “There are a hundred and ninety-two questions on this form and we are still stuck on question one.”
“I’m sorry,” replied the boy. As he lay on the hospital trolley, a tear rolled down his cheek. He felt like such a failure, not even being able to remember his own name.
“Oh no! You’re crying!” said the doctor. “Please don’t cry! The hospital principal could come by and think that I have upset you!”
The boy did his best to stop. Doctor Luppers searched his pockets for a tissue. Unable to locate one, he dabbed the boy’s eyes with the form.
“Oh no! Now the form’s wet!” he exclaimed. He then began blowing on the form to try and dry it. This made the boy laugh. “Oh good!” said the man. “You are smiling! Now, look, I am sure we can find out your name. Does it begin with an A?”
The boy was pretty sure it didn’t. “I don’t think so.”
“B?”
The boy shook his head.
“C?”
He shook his head again.
“This could take some time,” muttered the doctor under his breath.
“T!” exclaimed the boy.
“You would like a cup of tea?”
“No! My name. It begins with a T!”
Doctor Luppers smiled as he wrote the first letter on the top of the form. “Let’s see if I can guess. Tim? Ted? Terry? Tony? Theo? Taj? No, you don’t look like a Taj… I’ve got it! Tina?!”
All these suggestions firing at the boy clouded his mind, making it more difficult for him to remember, but finally his own name came shining through.
“Tom!” said Tom.
“Tom!” exclaimed the doctor, as if he was about to have guessed it. He wrote down the next two letters. “So what do they call you? Thomas? Tommy? Big Tom? Little Tom? Tom Thumb?”
“Tom,” replied Tom wearily. Tom had already said his name was Tom.
“Do you have a surname?”
“It begins with a C,” said the boy.
“Well, at least we have the first letter. It’s like doing the crossword!”
“Charper!”
“Tom Charper!” said the man, scribbling it down on the form. “That’s question one done. Just a hundred and ninety-one to go. Now, who brought you to the hospital today? Are your mummy and daddy here?”
“No,” said Tom. He could be sure of that. His parents weren’t here. They were never here; they were always there. For some years now, they had packed their only child off to a posh boarding school deep in the English countryside: St Willet’s Boarding School for Boys.
Tom’s father earned a lot of money working in desert countries far away, extracting oil from the ground, and his mother was very good at spending that money. Tom would only see them on school holidays, usually in a different country each time. Even though Tom had travelled alone for hours to see them, his father would often still have to work all day and his mother would leave him with a nanny while she went shopping for more shoes and handbags.
The boy would be lavished with presents upon arrival – a new train set, a model plane or a knight’s suit of armour. But with nobody to play with Tom would get bored quickly. All he really wanted was to spend time with Mum and Dad, but time was the one thing they never ever gave him.
“No. Mother and Father are abroad,” answered Tom. “I am not sure who brought me to the hospital today. It must have been a teacher.”
“Oooh!” said Doctor Luppers excitedly. “Might it have been your games teacher? There was a man in the waiting area dressed as a cricket umpire with a straw hat and long white jacket, which I thought was unusual, as we tend not to have cricket matches in the waiting area.”
“That must have been my games teacher, Mr Carsey, yes.”
Doctor Luppers’s eyes flicked down to his form. They flashed with panic once again. “Oh dear, it only says ‘parent’, ‘guardian’, ‘friend’ or ‘other’ on the form. What am I going to do?”
“Tick ‘other’,” instructed the boy, taking charge.
“Thank you!” said the doctor, looking relieved. “Thank you so, so much. What is the nature of your injury?”
“A bump on the head.”
“Of course, yes!” replied Doctor Luppers as he scribbled that down on the form. “Now, next question, would you say the general appearance of LORD FUNT HOSPITAL has ‘been lower than your expectations’, ‘has met your expectations’, ‘has exceeded your expectations’ or ‘has greatly exceeded your expectations’?”
“What was the first one again?” asked Tom. The pain in his head made it hard for him to think straight.
“Ooh, that’s ‘been lower than your expectations’.”
“What is?”
“The general appearance of the hospital.”
“I’ve only seen the ceiling so far,” sighed the boy.
“And how would you rate the general appearance of the ceiling?”
“Fine.”
“I’ll put that it ‘has met your expectations’. Next question, would you say that the care you have received today at the hospital has been, ‘poor’, ‘fine’, ‘good’, ‘very good’ or in fact ‘too good’?”
“It’s been all right,” replied Tom.
“Mmm, sorry, but ‘all right’ isn’t on the form.”
“‘Good’ then?”
“Not ‘very good’?” said Doctor Luppers, a hint of pleading in his voice. “It would be nice to say I got a ‘very good’ on my first week.”
Tom sighed. “Put ‘too good’ then.”
“Oooh, thank you!” replied the doctor, his eyes dancing with delight. “No one ever gets a ‘too good’! Though I worry whether ‘too good’ might actually be a bad thing. Can I just put ‘very’?”
“Yes, put whatever you like.”
“I’ll put ‘very good’. Thank you very much! This will go down very well with the hospital principal, Sir Quentin Strillers. Now, next question. We’re racing through them now. Would you recommend LORD FUNT HOSPITAL to family and friends, ‘with a heavy heart’, ‘half-heartedly’, ‘wholeheartedly’ or ‘very wholeheartedly’?”
Suddenly Nurse Meese bustled through the curtains. “There isn’t time for all your stupid questions, Doctor!”
The man put his hand up to his face