Just A Number ⋆Hetty Feather⋆ (SLOW UPDATES)

Chapter 10 (Episode 4)

Things at the Foundling Hospital had not been particularly good recently. Despite the firm friendship forming between us and the boys, we had not seen each other properly for a few days, mainly due to the increased workload that we were all forced to do. Added on to that, no-one had seen Mathias since the night he returned (the night of the party), and this made us nervous, which was hardly surprising where Matron was concerned. Personally, I had been struggling to fall asleep since he had come back to the Hospital, the look in his eyes as he'd been huddled in the corner of the pantry reminded me of a traumatised animal. The main questions that ran through my mind were what had she done with him, and what did she have planned?

I was brought out of my thoughts by someone placing a hand on my arm. I looked up from the spot on the desk I'd been staring at to see Polly looking at me with concern in her eyes, evidently asking if I was alright. I smiled a tight-lipped smile, nodding quickly to assure her that everything was fine, although I wasn't entirely sure that that was a true sentiment. She smiled back at me before the two of us returned to our sewing, given that we were in our sewing lesson.

A few moments of silence passed as we focused on our work before Hetty paused with her work, putting it down onto the table and looking around to see if Nurse Macclesfield was anywhere near us. "I wish I could just see Mathias, just to make sure he's alright," she said in a soft voice, causing the rest of us to lean in so we could talk without anyone else overhearing our conversations. It was a miracle that Matron hadn't questioned why we were out of bed on the night when it had happened and none of us wanted to give her any reason to question us further. "He's got the boys," Mary reassured her from her place opposite Hetty. "They'll be looking out for him." This caused me to smile softly, appreciating her endless optimism in any situation. "You wouldn't get near him," interjected Harriet, her realism being a direct contrast to Mary's soft enthusiasm. "Matron's all over him like the pox."

"You think he's punishing him?" I questioned, worry flooding my voice as Harriet's words registered in my head. She turned to me, giving me a stern look (reminding me slightly of a mother) before responding. "Obviously." Her voice was sharp. "He ran away." I responded with a glare of my own, preparing to retort, when Mary's soft voice cut across the tension the two of us had created. "But he looks awful." Those words caused the image of Mathias curled up in the corner of the pantry looking like a wounded animal flashed across my mind, and I instinctively curled my hand around my sewing, willing the image out of my, which thankfully worked.

Footsteps moving towards our table caused us to jump apart, all looking in the direction that they came from. I groaned internally, seeing Sheila walking over, a smug look on her face, and instinctively knew that she'd heard our conversation and was coming to gloat about something. "He's probably already in the Tench." She leaned down to speak to us, and despite her not mentioning anyone by name, we all knew who she was talking about. "What would you know?" Hetty asked sharply, glaring at Sheila. "More than you." The smug tone she used caused anger to bubble up inside me. I averted my eyes from her, staring at a spot on the table in front of me in an attempt to stay calm. "I caught him." The pride in her voice at that sentence was the last straw. 

"You snitched on him!" I accused, anger radiating through my body as I glared at her. 

"He was stealing," she offered as a justification. 

"And you're just sucking up to Matron," I retorted, slightly calmer now.

"You're jealous because Matron trusts me and not you," she said, her tone a mixture of smugness and pride. I snorted at the notion that Sheila actually believed she held any influence over Matron, unable to help myself, causing her to glare harder at me. "No she doesn't. You just follow her around like a toady poo-fly." My retort caused her to splutter in anger, whilst my friends laughed at my statement. Before she could say anything back to me, Nurse Macclesfield's voice cut through the relative quiet of the room.