Emma Donoghue - Room - A Novel

She leans over Bed, she makes a weird cough and puts her hand in her mouth. She keeps making the weird sound. Then stuff falls out of her mouth like spit but much thicker. I can see the fish sticks we had for dinner.

She’s rubbing it on the pillow, on my hair. “Stop,” I shriek, I’m trying to wriggle away.

“Sorry, I have to.” Ma’s eyes are weird and shiny. She’s wiping her vomit on my T-shirt, even my mouth. It smells the worst ever, all sharp and poisonous. “Put your face on the hot bag again.”

“But—”

“Do it, Jack, hurry.”

“I want to stop now.”

“We’re not playing, we can’t stop. Do it.”

I’m crying because the stink and my face in the hot bag so I think it’s going to melt off. “You’re mean.” “I’ve got a good reason,” says Ma.

Beep beep. Beep beep.

Ma grabs the bag of water away, it’s ripping off my face. “Shh.” She presses my eyes shut, pushes my face down into the awful pillow, she pulls Duvet right up over my back.

The colder air comes in with him. Ma calls out right away, “There you are.”

“Keep your voice down.” Old Nick says it quietly like a growl.

“I just—”

“Shh.” Another beep beep, then the boom. “You know the drill,” he says, “not a peep out of you till the door’s shut.” “Sorry, sorry. It’s just, Jack’s really bad.” Ma’s voice is shaking and for a minute I nearly believe it, she’s even better pretending than me.

“It reeks in here.”

“That’s because he’s had it coming out both ends.”

“Probably just a twenty-four-hour bug,” says Old Nick.

“It’s been more like thirty hours already. He’s got chills, he’s burning up—”

“Give him one of those headache pills.”

“What do you think I’ve been trying all day? He just pukes them up again. He can’t even keep water down.” Old Nick puffs his breath. “Let’s have a look at him.”

“No,” says Ma.

“Come on, get out of the way—”

“No, I said no—”

I keep my face in the pillow, it’s sticky. My eyes are shut. Old Nick’s there, right by Bed, he can see me. I feel his hand on my cheek, I make a sound because I’m so scared, Ma said it would be my forehead but it isn’t, it’s my cheek he’s touching and his hand isn’t like Ma’s, it’s cold and heavy — Then it’s gone. “I’ll get him something stronger from the all-night drugstore.”

“Something stronger? He’s barely five years old, he’s totally dehydrated, with a fever of God knows what.” Ma’s shouting, she shouldn’t shout, Old Nick’s going to get mad.

“Just shut up for a second and let me think.”

“He needs to go to the ER right now, that’s what he needs and you know it.”

Old Nick makes a sound, I don’t know what it means.

Ma’s voice is like she’s crying. “If you don’t bring him in now, he’ll, he could—”

“Enough with the hysterics,” he says.

“Please. I’m begging you.”

“No way.”

I nearly say Jose . I think it but I don’t say it, I’m not saying anything, I’m just being limp all Gone.

“Just tell them he’s an illegal alien with no papers,” says Ma, “he’s in no state to say a word, you can drive him right back here as soon as they’ve got some fluids into him . . .” Her voice is moving after him. “Please. I’ll do anything.”

“There’s no talking to you.” He sounds like he’s over by Door.

“Don’t go. Please, please . . .”

Something falls down. I’m so scared I’m never opening my eyes.

Ma’s wailing. The beep beep. Boom, Door’s shut, we’re on our own.

It’s all quiet. I count my teeth five times, always twenty except one time it’s nineteen but I count again till it’s twenty. I peek sideways. Then I lift my head off the stinky pillow.

Ma’s sitting on Rug with her back against Door Wall. She’s staring at nothing. I whisper, “Ma?” She does the strangest thing, she sort of smiles.

“Did I mess up the pretending?”

“Oh, no. You were a star.”

“But he didn’t take me to the hospital.”

“That’s OK.” Ma gets up and wets a cloth in Sink, she comes to wipe my face.

“But you said.” All that burning face and vomit and him touching me. “ Sick, Truck, Hospital, Police, Save Ma. ” Ma’s nodding, she lifts my T-shirt off and wipes my chest. “That was Plan A, it was worth a try. But like I figured, he was too scared.” She’s got it wrong. “ He was scared?”

“Just in case you’d tell the doctors about Room and the police would put him in jail. I hoped he’d risk it, if he thought you were in serious danger — but I never really thought he would.”

I get it. “You tricked me,” I roar. “I didn’t get to ride in the brown truck.”

“Jack,” she says, she’s pressing me against her, her bones hurt my face.

I push away. “You said no more lying and you were unlying now, but then you lied again.”

“I’m doing my best,” says Ma.

I suck on my lip.

“Listen. Will you listen to me for a minute?”

“I’m sick of listening to you.”

She nods. “I know. But listen anyway. There’s a Plan B. Plan A was really the first part of Plan B.” “You never said.”

“It’s pretty complicated. I’ve been puzzling over it for a few days now.”

“Yeah, well I’ve got millions of brains for puzzling.”

“You do,” says Ma.

“Way more than you.”

“That’s true. But I didn’t want you to have to hold both plans in your head at the same time, you might get confused.” “I’m confused already, I’m one hundred percent confused.”

She kisses me through my hair that’s all sticky. “Let me tell you about Plan B.”

“I don’t want to hear your stinky dumb plans.”

“OK.”

I’m shivering from having no T-shirt on. I find a clean one in Dresser, a blue.

We get into Bed, the smell is awful. Ma shows me to breathe through my mouth only because mouths don’t smell anything. “Can we lie with our heads the other way?” “Brilliant idea,” says Ma.

She’s being nice but I’m not going to forgive her.

We put our feet at the stinky wall end and our faces at the other.

I think I’m never going to switch off.

It’s 08:21 already, I slept for long and now I’m having some, the left is so creamy. Old Nick didn’t come back I don’t think.

“Is it Saturday?” I ask.

“That’s right.”

“Cool, we wash our hair.”

Ma shakes her head. “You can’t smell clean.”

I was forgetting for a minute. “What is it?”

“What?”

“Plan B.”

“Are you ready to hear it now?”

I don’t say anything.

“Well. Here goes.” Ma clears her throat. “I’ve been going over it and over it every which way, I think it just might work. I don’t know, I can’t be sure, it sounds crazy and I know it’s incredibly dangerous but—”

“Just tell me,” I say.

“OK, OK.” She takes a loud breath. “Do you remember the Count of Monte Cristo?”

“He was locked up in a dungeon on an island.”

“Yeah, but remember how he got out? He pretended to be his dead friend, he hid in the shroud and the guards threw him into the sea but the Count didn’t drown, he wriggled out and swam away.”

“Tell the rest of the story.”

Ma waves her hand. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, Jack, that’s what you’re going to do.”

“Get thrown in the sea?”

“No, escape like the Count of Monte Cristo.”

I’m confused again. “I don’t have a dead friend.”