The Distant Home by Tony Morphett

history.’
    Rosen interrupted him. ‘With respect, sir. None. I just had the family doctor on the phone. She’s seen the parents, seen the brother, never seen Sally. The parents say she’s never been sick. Ever. From anything.’
    There was silence for a moment and then Chambers looked at the radiologist. ‘You say the bones actually knitted as you watched?’
    The radiologist nodded. ‘It was weird. I could see them knitting and straightening. They were already doing it when she came in. We just caught the last five minutes of it.’
    Chambers was like a dog looking at a big steak—he was practically slavering. ‘You realize we could be talking Nobel Prize here? All those people I went through university with. The ones who put me down. The ones who won the medals. They’re going to have to look up to me after this.’ His eyes were distant. ‘Shelley Watson who wouldn’t go to the medical students’ ball with me, Kay McGregor who said I looked like a frog, Patti Brahms who said she wouldn’t date me if I put a bag on my head and gave her ten dollars, they’ll be crawling on their bellies to me after this!’
    Chambers suddenly broke off, realizing that the others were watching him. Embarrassed at having revealed too much, he snapped out some orders to put them in their places. ‘No publicity on this. Absolute blackout. No one says anything. Rosen, I want a full batch of tests, I want to know everything about this kid that medical science can tell me.’ Then he paused, and a sweet, blissful smile spread across his face. ‘Then we’ll prep her and cut.’
    He turned and moved around the X-ray machine, expecting to see Sally on the trolley.
    His jaw dropped. His eyes bulged. For there was no trolley, and no Sally, just an empty space and the door still rocking slightly on its two-way hinges.

chapter fourteen
    Bobby was heading along the corridor, pushing the trolley with Sally on it.
    ‘Where are we going, Bobby?’ she said.
    ‘Out of here!’ he yelled as they went around a corner.
    ‘Do you have a plan?’ Sally knew that usually Bobby acted first and thought later.
    ‘That’s my plan. Get out of here.’
    Sally sighed. She was going to have to think for both of them. ‘Bobby, we’ve got to get off this level. This is where they’ll look for us first. Find an elevator.’
    ‘Stop!’ Chambers’s voice echoed down the corridor.
    Bobby looked back and saw Chambers, Rosen, the nursing sister and the radiologist chasing them. Bobby put on speed, saw a corner coming up, and slewed into it, almost spilling Sally onto the floor in the process. Sally just saved herself by hanging onto the sides of the trolley, and now they were accelerating again.
    ‘Do you know where we’re going?’ she yelled at him.
    ‘No,’ he answered, taking a quick peek behind. ‘Do you?’
    ‘That’s the point I’m making!’ she said.
    He waved back at the pursuing figures. ‘You want to stop and discuss it with them?’
    Two nurses stood in the corridor talking. Suddenly they realized that the trolley coming toward them was not going to slow or stop, and they leapt aside, and stood staring after Bobby and Sally, only to be swept aside once more by the charge of Chambers and his party.
    Sally, her head up so she could see where they were going, saw more than she wanted to. There was a T-junction coming up and Bobby’s pace showed no sign of slackening. At the last corner she had almost gone off the trolley. Unless they slowed, she knew that this time he would surely lose her. ‘Slow down, Bobby!’
    He did, realizing as Sally did that there was no option. This meant that Chambers and his party gained on them as they cornered, but Bobby was meaning to pick up speed immediately he was around the corner.
    He had no chance to do so. As they rounded the corner, they ran slap bang into a huge male orderly who grabbed the end of the trolley, brought them to a sudden halt, and stood staring hard at Bobby, who was still