Free The Distant Home by Tony Morphett

‘I need your blood.’
    ‘I think I have to go now,’ Bobby said into the phone, ‘I’ll make basketball practice just as soon as I can.’

chapter eighteen
    Sally was standing on her bed examining the air-conditioning ducting when she heard the key rattle in the door’s deadlock. Immediately, she got down and was smoothing the bed covers when Dr Rosen entered with another woman. The second woman carried a briefcase and wore the same sort of black business suit that Auntie Kate often wore when she was making court appearances. Sally thought she looked as if she were a professional of some sort.
    ‘Sally, this is Dr Allport,’ Dr Rosen said, and then noticed Sally’s clothing. ‘Changed our clothes, have we?’
    ‘I’m feeling fine,’ Sally bluffed. ‘I thought I might check myself out now. Mum and Dad must be worried.’
    ‘Oh I’m afraid we can’t just check ourselves out quite yet, dear. We’ve had a very serious accident. Dr Allport is going to ask you to do some simple tests.’
    Allport was already getting some papers from her briefcase. Sally recognized them as the sort of tests she had occasionally done at school. ‘Intelligence or personality tests?’ she asked.
    Allport shot a glance at her as if to say that nice little girls did not ask questions like that, then said, ‘A bit of both, Sally. Dr Chambers was interested to know …’
    ‘What made me tick?’
    ‘… what made you tick. Yes. Very good.’ Allport was putting the first test down on the trolley table that fitted over the bed.
    ‘Do you want me to get them all right?’ asked Sally.
    ‘That’s an interesting question, Sally,’ said Dr Allport.
    ‘Sometimes when I do them at school, they say I’m cheating.’
    ‘And why do they say that?’ said Dr Allport in a silky, confiding kind of way.
    ‘I sometimes get too many right. They seem happier when I get a few wrong.’
    Allport smiled. She had a nice smile, but Sally felt that she was being humoured as a quaint little girl. She had had a lot of that in her life. ‘I want you to try to get all of them right, but don’t worry if you can’t finish in time. There’s no shame in that. No shame at all.’
    She handed Sally a pen. ‘Shall we begin?’
    In another room in the hospital, Bobby’s blood flowed dark red into the barrel of a hypodermic syringe. The sister took the needle from his vein and put a gauze pad on the puncture mark. ‘Press hard there,’ she said.
    Bobby put his thumb on the gauze pad, and looked at the syringe full of his blood. ‘You realize that was technically a criminal assault?’
    Chambers gestured at Maria and Jim. ‘But Bobby, we had your parents’ permission. You saw them sign the form.’
    ‘It’s just to help their experiment,’ Bobby said to Maria and Jim. ‘They want to see if we’re all freaks like Sally.’
    ‘Your sister’s not a freak!’ Jim was getting very sick of this.
    ‘What do you say, Doctor?’ Bobby was glaring at Chambers.
    Chambers stretched his face into his froglike smile. ‘I say we’re acting in your best interests, Bobby.’
    Bobby looked at Jim and Maria. ‘Mrs Webster’s always warned me against people who say that,’ he said. ‘She says it means they’re up to no good.’
    Dr Chambers looked at Bobby the way teachers did when he answered back. Chambers yearned for the good old days when you could give boys like this a good thrashing without being unreasonably accused of child abuse.
    In the private room, Sally was skimming through her IQ test, scarcely pausing at the questions. It was as if she knew the test by heart, and was just ticking the boxes from memory.
    Dr Allport stared at Sally’s speeding pen. Now she looked at the stopwatch on the top righthand corner of her clipboard and then back as Sally finished the test and handed her the papers. ‘I hope you were reading the questions, Sally? And not just ticking the boxes any old how?’
    ‘I read the questions when you handed me the