CHERUB: Knight

2: Bleeding

In any other circumstance George would have loved the feeling of rushing through the London streets in a patrol car with the lights flashing, but he was starting to feel sick so he just stared at his lap and tried not to think about all of the weird thoughts going round and round in his head.

"Are you okay? Do you need us to pull over?" the policeman asked, looking at George in the rearview mirror. "You look very pale."

"I'm okay," George said weakly, hardly looking up.

"We're almost there," the policewoman said, trying to reassure him. "Just a few minutes."

George had only been to a hospital once before, and that was when he broke his arm falling off the swings. That time he'd just had to sit and behave himself in Accident & Emergency for a while until they X-rayed him and put a cast on. This time the police took him straight through the waiting room into another area where a nurse was waiting.

"Hello George, I'm Nurse Winters," she said, giving him a smile full of slightly yellow teeth. "If you come with me we'll go and see your mum."

He didn't say goodbye to the police as he followed the overweight nurse through some corridors and up a flight of narrow stairs before she pushed into a ward.

"Please wash your hands with some of this gel. Just rub it in, it'll disappear in a minute," Nurse Winters said, putting some on her own hands to show how it was done. "Your mum is in a critical condition so you mustn't try and hug her or anything."

George didn't know what to say so he just followed again as they walked through the rows of beds to one hidden behind curtains. It was a stretcher on wheels so it could be moved, and his mum was lying beneath the blankets, her grey-brown hair drawn back behind her pale face.

"Hi George," she said quietly, her eyes crinkling into a smile as she saw her son, her cheeks wet with tears. "How are you doing, sweetie?"

George found tears welling up in his eyes for the first time. Boys who cried at school seemed soft so he tried to sniff them back and blinked a lot, but his mum covered up with blankets and wired up to tubes and a bag of blood was too much. He just nodded in response and sniffed again.

"The nice doctors are going to do an operation on me," she said, her voice shaking as the nurse disappeared behind the curtain. "It'll probably take a few hours, but afterwards I'll be all better, okay?"

"I hope so," George replied, reaching out with his hand. It took a few moments, but his mum pulled her hand out from under the blanket and took hold of a couple of his fingers.

"You be good, okay George? They'll look after you until I can come home." She was crying as she spoke. George hardly ever saw his mum crying like this. She sometimes dabbed away a few tears after a sad bit on one of her soap operas, but the last time she'd cried this much was when his dad had died seven years ago.

"Okay mum," he said, feeling inadequate.

"We'll take you to theatre now. The earlier we get started the better," the nurse said, taking George's other hand. "I'll look after George."

His mum waved a little as they wheeled her out of the ward, and he waved back, tears dropping off his chin onto his school jumper. When she was gone, the Nurse looked down at him.

"Your mum says you don't have any aunts or uncles or grandparents to look after you, so I'll take you to a play area we've got downstairs for a while. I expect someone from the council will find somewhere for you to sleep," she explained as they worked their way through more unfamiliar corridors and doors. "Try not to be too upset, I'm sure your mum is going to be just fine."