Plan B

Chapter Thirty-seven

It wasn’t until after midday that they finally made it to the hospital.  Brookie had rung Isaac several times to ensure that the twins weren’t anywhere near the place when he arrived with Fran.  After trolling Brookie for quite some time, Isaac had eventually admitted that he and his brother were out eating lunch and had left the hospital some while ago.

“Get back under your bridge,” Brookie told him firmly when this emerged.  “Or do I need to build you a new one?”

“Huh?”  Fran looked up as Brookie tucked his phone into his pocket.

“Isaac’s being a troll,” he explained.  “Let’s go.”

“So who exactly are we visiting?” Fran asked as she trotted down the corridor after him once they’d checked in.

“An old friend of mine,” Brookie replied, pushing open pair of double swing doors and glancing both ways down the passage before turning right.  “He’s just had a back operation.  Apparently they’re not totally sure if everything’s gone okay, so he’s being monitored in case he needs a follow up operation.”

Fran winced sympathetically.  “That kinda sucks.”

“Yeah.”  Brookie checked the sign on the door that they’d come to and moved on to the next one.  He paused with his hand on the doorknob.  “It sucks even more because they really screwed up the last operation they did on his back, and this operation was supposedly to correct it.”  He pushed the door open.

The first thing that struck Fran was the enormous collection of presents neatly stacked on almost all available areas of the floor.  A few steps into the room, Brookie stopped in surprise.

“This much already?”

“Jealous, Brook?”  The voice came from the other side of the room, but the bed was obscured by more things, which Fran suspected were unwrapped gifts.  She chewed her bottom lip, wondering exactly how popular you had to be to receive so many gifts for your birthday.

“Just bewildered,” Brookie said, looking around him.  “Isn’t this a bit excessive?  Not to mention a fire hazard?”

The boy in the bed laughed, although it still wasn’t possible to see him.  “If you think this is excessive, you should see what I get for my birthday and Christmas.”

“I already have, numerous times.”

“Really?  I forgot.”

“Sure you did,” Brookie said sarcastically.  “How am I supposed to get across the room?”

“Fly?”

“Get real.”

“I am real.  I cogito, therefore I sum.”

“It’s cogito ergo sum,” Fran corrected without thinking.

There was a rustle as the boy in the bed struggled to sit up, and his silhouette appeared over the presents.  Fran squinted and shaded her eyes: the window faced south and the room consequently got a lot of light.  As her eyes refocused, she saw that the boy was quite thin and pale, but otherwise looked remarkably like Brookie – he had the same shaggy brown hair and piercing grey eyes, but his face was slightly freckled and his grin was as mischievous as Bertie’s.  His overall build, from what Fran could make out, appeared slimmer and lighter, but that might just have been because she knew Brookie worked out daily, whereas this boy probably hadn’t had the chance to go to the gym for quite some time.

Brookie hurriedly picked his way across the room.  “Bruno, are you sure you should be sitting up?”

Bruno… the Bruno?  Fran’s jaw dropped.  She’d known that Brookie and Bruno were friends, but it felt like Brookie had taken her to see the Queen.  Seriously?