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my fifth-grade teacher Mrs Barnes, I open them right away.
    ‘He’s awake, doctor!’
    A woman in a white coat bends over me and shines a pencil-thin beam into my eyes. ‘Hello, Jordan. I’m Dr Beth Reinhardt.’
    ‘Where am I?’
    ‘You’re in Cedar Oakes Regional Hospital. You have a broken beer bottle in your abdomen.’ I feel my eyes start to roll up into my head. ‘Stay with me, Jordan. Good. That’s good. Now, listen and don’t talk. You have sustained serious injuries to your liver and spleen, causing you to bleed internally. It’s imperative we operate now. Do you understand, Jordan?’
    I blink and she takes this for a yes. My eyes drift to my middle and she gently pushes on my shoulders. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ she says, her voice starting to come in fragments, ‘Too deep … remove in surgery … stay with me, Jordan.’
    Through the haze I hear her explain how they’re goingto operate without parental permission; that it’s too urgent to wait.
    ‘Your friends Danny and Sophie –’ I blink slowly to let her know I’m following – ‘who managed to beat the ambulance to the hospital –’ she smiles briefly – ‘explained about your state guardian, Lillian Fisher. One of my staff is letting her know you’re on your way to surgery now.’
    As if swept up by a magical force, I feel myself lift from the darkness suddenly.
    ‘He’s stabilising,’ the doctor calls out with relief in her voice. ‘Let’s get him down there, stat. We move on my count – one, two …’
    And then I’m rushing along a corridor and into an elevator with hospital staff hovering around my bed. I get the sense of dropping, then the lift opens and I’m in front of a pair of wide swinging doors marked
Theatre 2
. A different crew, wearing green outfits with matching paper caps, takes over. They’re chatty and make jokes and laugh. An older guy introduces himself as Dr Mac. ‘We’ll have you back as good as new in no time, Jordan,’ he says, grinning.
    I know they’re just trying to put me at ease, but their breezy attitude doesn’t fill me with confidence.
    At least I’m feeling no pain now, so the morphine they gave me upstairs must be kicking in. I get how bad my situation is, and the nicer these people are, the more thoroughly I get how tentative my hold on life is right now.
    A dude named Todd smiles and starts explaining how he’s going to be my anaesthesiologist tonight. ‘Now I want you to start counting down from a hundred …’
    My lights go out at ninety-nine.

9

Ebony
    We stand out on the pavement while Amber calls her dad to pick us up and I try to figure out what happened tonight. I recall one other time when my hands felt overcome with a similar compulsion. I was two years old and Dad was losing his favourite mare, Lady Elsa. She was in the final stages of a difficult labour and struggling because something was stopping her foal from being born. Dad had tried everything, even turning the foal around with his hands, but Lady Elsa was exhausted, scared and panicking. I laid my little hands on the mare’s belly. She calmed right away, allowing the gutsy foal to make his final push for life.
    Dad had looked at me strangely for days afterwards.
    My hands feel the same now. Though they look normal, they’re tingling fiercely. I take a deep breath and release it slowly. ‘I think I’m hyperventilating.’
    Engrossed in my memory, I’m surprised to find Mr Lang pulling up at the kerb. Amber holds open the rear passenger door. ‘That’s nothing,’ she says as I get in behind her. ‘All this commotion is making you breathe faster, that’s all. You’ll feel better in a minute. Trust me.’
    I stare out the window for the ride home. Mum and Dadwill be waiting for me, poised and ready to attack. I know the routine. They’ll drill me first, then punish. They probably plan to ground me for life!
    Well, tonight I have questions too important for them to brush aside with their usual tactics.