The Sight
By
Nick B

 © Nick B 2008
Despite being clobbered by Ang over the weekend, Gabi pulled out all the stops on this one. Thanks girly

“You mean he’s psychic or something?”

“It would seem so.”

“I shall have to watch what I’m thinking around him in future.” Gemma said wryly.

Chapter 9

Darryl could hear a lot of voices around him and could feel a lot of anxiety. None of it made any sense and all he wanted to know right then and there was whether Sergeant Cummings–and his men had managed to catch up with those poor women.

He was back in that all too familiar place; the white room. He knew who would be waiting.

“Hello. It’s been a while,” he said.

“We wanted to see how you came along,” Mariella answered by way of a greeting.

“And what do you think?”

“Not bad. You could use a little common sense though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you any idea what kind of danger you’re in right now?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“My point exactly,” said the short, dark-haired lady. “You have to learn to think. How ever well-intentioned your actions, they’re not much use if they’re going to kill you in the process are they?”

“Kill?” Darryl asked, his eyes going wide. “What do you mean, kill?”

“Your little escapade getting to the phone has opened up that wound in your leg. You lost a lot of blood and risked further damage to the tissue as well as infection. You’re lucky you didn’t lose it altogether. Looks like Paul and Doris got to you just in time.”

“Oh,” he said somewhat sheepishly. “It was an accident.”

“Listen to me, Darryl, you’re a very important part of our lives and by “our” I mean your mum, me, Padraig, Paul and Doris. You, my child, represent so many hopes, fears and expectations and with a little thought, there’s a chance that some of it at least may come to fruition. You carry on the way you are and you’re unlikely to see your next birthday.”

“But it was important,” he argued.

“It’s alright. I know and I forgive you. Just don’t make a habit of it. Never mind the mess you’ve made of Paul and Doris’s carpets, the near heart failure you gave them; imagine how they feel–how your mum must feel.”

“She doesn’t know.”

“She most certainly does,” Mariella replied hotly. “She’s been waiting with Paul in the waiting room for ages.”

“Why doesn’t she come and seem me then?” he asked, the sound of resentment in his voice.

“Because the doctors are still trying to put you back together,” she replied patiently.

“Sounds bad,” he said, looking mainly at the pristine white of the polished marble floor, but really, anywhere that escaped his grandmother’s angry gaze.

Mariella walked towards him. “You are a goose!” she said shaking her head and for the first time, hugged him tightly.

It was a confusing development.

Firstly, she hadn’t done that before. Secondly, he didn’t mind–at all, actually. In fact, it felt nice–comforting in a strange way; right in another. The third thing was how come he could sense it all? It was only a dream and yet, he could feel it, smell the soap in her hair; sense the body heat against his breasts as he reciprocated, hugging her just as tightly.

“You’re a slow developer, but they’re coming along just fine.” She smiled, looking directly at his chest and with a simple “goodbye”, she vanished.

Breasts? he wondered. I don’t have . . .

Oh but he did.

His hands flew to his chest and there beneath the simple tunic he was wearing were a pair of fledgling mounds, nothing to write home about–at least they wouldn’t be for a young girl, but he wasn’t a girl was he?

That simple pronoun “he”, signified that “he” was male, a boy, a young man, yet the protrusions on his chest started to call all of that into question. The memories of one of his previous conversations with Mariella and Padraig came back to him.

Maybe they were right after all.

God, he hoped not.

He had plenty to think about. He had admitted to himself that he was now capable of doing things that others couldn’t–at least not to the same degree or with such accuracy, but on top of that, he had now more to come to terms with . . .

His grandmother had been quite positive about his being a girl–something he had fought against and yet here he was with both hands on two small mounds that whilst weren’t every man’s dream pair, they were nonetheless–breasts.

They had all the hallmarks of breasts in their formative state. They were like small, round pancakes, each with a puffy sort of nipple. Both showed that they had every intention of getting bigger and more prominent. His nipples were actually quite sensitive too, by the looks.

He sat, his tunic pulled up while he craned his neck to take more of a look at these strange mammalian protuberances, which oddly, he couldn’t seem to take his eyes from–or his hands either, especially with the feelings they were bringing about.

Why is my body changing? he wondered. All this time, he had thought of himself as a boy and had several very salient points he thought would be proof enough of his masculinity.

Trouble was his masculinity was questionable.

It’s not that he wanted to be a girl; it was just that that was what seemed to be happening. Whether he liked it or not, it seemed that his body or brain, whatever it was that was controlling that side of things, had its own ideas.

The strange thing was, that more he thought about it, the less he found it bothered him. After all, it wasn’t like he had a choice was it?

He started hearing voices again, yet there was no-one near.

Some of them seemed to be agitated for some reason and there was an persistent, grating tone that he could hear just on the edge of everything; a constant, almost “whine”.

A flash of light hurt his eyes and the voices became more intense.

Another flash came moments later with more intensity. Darryl had to rub his eyes before things came back into focus and even in the dream room he wobbled slightly, his knees buckling. He looked around to try and fathom where the voices and that tone was coming from or what was happening, but as far as he could make out, there was no way in and no way out, what he saw was all there was.

Then something started beeping, the tone seemed to have disappeared and the voices around him seemed much mellower about whatever it was they were initially agitated about. Meanwhile, the white room started to fade . . .

---

Gemma and Paul sat in silence, neither wanting to look at the other. The space around them seemed frosty with the atmosphere they were creating and Gemma was not in a good mood.

“I can’t believe you went out and left him on his own,” she sniped.

“The only reason he is staying with us at all is because we are likely to be in more of the time than you are, so you have no grounds for getting shitty with us, or me in particular,” said Paul with uncharacteristic venom. “Regardless of what you might think, there is no way we could be there absolutely all of the time.”

“I wouldn’t have left him on his own,” she said petulantly, thrusting her nose in the air.

“No and I suppose someone else would have done the shopping.”

“No, I would have done that, but during the day.”

“What difference would that have made?” asked Paul. “We were only out for two hours, which is about the same time as the shopping would take. Besides, we have been there for him, which is more than I can say for you.”

Gemma almost seemed to have steam shooting from her ears at that remark and looked about to respond when a nurse came in.

“Could I ask you to keep it down, please?” she asked. Both Paul and Gemma looked shamefaced.

“Mrs. Groves?” she asked and Gemma nodded. “Your son is out of surgery. The doctors say he stable and is sleeping. I don’t think he’ll wake for some time, why don’t you go home and get some rest. Come back tomorrow. Things will look a lot better then.”

Gemma thanked the nurse then shot a daggers look at Paul who just shook his head.

Cummings returned as they were leaving and met them in the hospital entrance.

“Hello Paul,” he said and shook his hand. “How’s he doing?”

“He’s just come out of surgery and is described as stable.” Paul replied.

“I take it you’re Darryl’s mother?” he asked, turning to Gemma.

“I am. You are?”

“Detective Sergeant Ron Cummings,” he replied, cordially. “That’s a rare boy you have there.”

“Only just, from what I hear.”

“Yes, well . . .” he said somewhat awkwardly, fearing he may be stepping into some sort of family feud. “He has talent and at least he was trying to put it to good use. His information was of vital importance to us and hopefully will enable us to clear things up now.”

“Information?” she asked. “What information?”

Paul was making signals at Cummings out of Gemma’s line of sight and thankfully, the copper took the hint.

“I think I’ll let Paul explain that,” he said and turned to leave.

Standing outside in the cold night air, Gemma broke the ice.

“It looks as though I have missed quite a lot,” she said finally.

“Yes. Perhaps we should talk.”

“Do you want a lift?”

Nothing was said in the car through the half hour or so it took to get from East Brighton to Hove and when they pulled up outside Paul’s house, they could see that the lights were still on.

“I’d better let you go.”

“No Gemma. We do need to talk and if you don’t mind the mess, I think now is the best time. I know you’re busy.”

“Are you sure? It’s very late.”

“Looks as though Doris is still clearing up and I think she’ll appreciate a cuppa before I give her a hand finishing off.”

It was obvious that Gemma had no clue what Paul was on about and followed him into the house. The smell of pine scented cleaning fluid was abundant and Doris was on her knees, scrubbing at the red-stained carpet.

“What the hell–?” said Gemma, blinking.

“Ah. Yes. Darryl was pretty determined,” said Paul with a slight chuckle.

Paul had been right. Doris did want to stop for something to drink. It was nearing two in the morning and it was apparent that despite having been swabbing and scrubbing for nigh on two hours, still she could not get the congealing stain from the carpet.

“I’ve tried as hard as I can, but I still can’t get rid of the blood in here,” she said as she flopped down into a chair. Paul handed her a cup of coffee.

“That should help,” he grinned.

“Why, what are you going to be doing?”

“Helping. You don’t think I’d leave it all to you did you?”

“Damn right!” she said and laughed.

The laughter was contagious and pretty soon, despite the knowledge that they would probably have to rip out all the carpet from the hall and the lounge, they still sounded upbeat. That was something that surprised Gemma.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“What for?”

“For all this,” she said, gesturing around the wet and still stained carpets.

“Oh pah!” snorted Doris. “I can think of better things to be doing, but really in the great scheme of things, I don’t actually think it’s so bad. I’m more worried about him.”

“You are? I mean, you don’t?”

“Well no. True, he should have been more careful, but he has helped the police and I for one would rather he did that than kept it to himself, wouldn’t you?”

“How could he possibly have helped them?”

“It’s what he can do.” Doris said.

“You’re not making any sense,” said Gemma, so Doris went on to tell her just what she knew about Darryl, which wasn’t much, but it was enough to outline the fact that somehow, he had proved capable of knowing information about the women in the news and other stuff–stuff he couldn’t possibly have heard in passing.

“You mean he’s psychic or something?”

“It would seem so.”

“I shall have to watch what I’m thinking around him in future.” Gemma said wryly.

---

Gemma cut work the next day. Paul and Doris had given her a new sense of purpose, especially where Darryl was concerned. They had almost shamed her into putting him higher up her list of priorities for some things and yet further down for others–but curiously in a really gentle way. She could see why Darryl liked them.

It had been a long time since she had felt so comfortable talking to someone else about family matters and had unfortunately tarred all others with the same brush as her ex-husband–Paul’s brother, who had little time for anyone other than himself and believed that her problems were her problems alone, not something she should burden anyone else with.

She had made her way to the hospital and wanted to be the first thing that Darryl saw when he came to. Further into the journey. She chuckled to herself for being so stupid. With round the clock supervision, it was unlikely in the extreme that she would be the first thing he saw.

It was as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders and she walked into the hospital with renewed vigour.

She was given directions to a different ward to that which Darryl had been in last time, as this time he was still under observation. The nurse on reception didn’t know whether he would be able to talk to her, but the doctor certainly would and she would page him while Gemma was on the way there.

The ward sister asked Gemma to wait whilst she informed the doctor that she had arrived and a tall, handsome man with a clipboard and a white lab-coat turned up minutes later.

“Mrs. Groves?” he enquired. “I’m Andrew Robertson, Darryl’s consultant. We put him in the observation ward as after his operation, we needed to keep an eye on him. It’s nothing to worry about, I’m sure, but he passed away on the table last night and we needed to defibrillate to bring him back with us.”

Gemma gasped. This wasn’t made apparent last night. “The nurse never–” she started, but he waved his hand to stop her mid sentence.

“We weren’t about to send you home worrying.” The doctor said smiling. “He was stable after all. It’s probably the trauma of the blood loss, but he pulled through. He’s a tough cookie.”

Gemma wasn’t quite so sure of things now. It brought home the fragility of life and she needed to sit down.

“I’m sorry doctor,” she said, her voice a little shaky. “I wasn’t aware of any of this. These last few hours have been a real eye-opener, I can tell you.”

“Would you like some tea or coffee?” he asked.

“Coffee would be nice. No sugar, thanks.”

Mr Robertson went off down the corridor and while he was gone, Gemma thought about this sudden influx of information about her son, none of which she had been aware of.

The doctor returned with a plastic cup full of vending coffee. “I’m sorry, it’s all there is round here,” he said, smiling.

“It’s wet and warm,” she replied smiling back.

Mr. Robertson took a pair of wire-framed glasses from his top pocket, flicked out the sides and put them on. “Is Darryl on some kind of hormone therapy?” he asked.

Gemma nearly sprayed her mouthful of coffee all over the corridor. “No. Why do you ask?” she spluttered.

“He’s nearly seventeen isn’t he?” Robertson continued, flicking through the information on the clipboard.

“Yes. He’ll be seventeen this December.”

“Good.”

“What’s this about, Doctor?”

“We probably wouldn’t have noticed had we not needed to use the defibrillator, but he’s developing breasts.”

---

To be continued . . .

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