Free Captain Mack by James Roy Page B

plan?”
    â€œWhat plan is that?” Dad asked with a smile, looking back and forth between them. “Is there a plan?”
    â€œThe Private will fill ye in, I’m sure,” Captain Mack said. “Best we don’t discuss it here.”
    A girl in a pink uniform came to the end of the bed. “Cup of tea, Mr McAuliffe?” she asked.
    â€œAye, I would like that,” he said, but as she walked back to her trolley in the hall Captain Mack said in a low voice, “Always trying to curry favour, these people.”
    Dad smiled. “Nice to meet you, sir,” he said. “I’ll leave Dan here so he can visit for a bit longer.” He squeezed Danny’s shoulder. “See you at home.”
    â€œNice man,” Captain Mack said when he’d gone. “We could use him.”
    â€œWhat did you think?” Danny asked Dad when he got home.
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œAbout Captain Mack.”
    â€œI thought he seemed very nice. A bit … confused, I guess, but pretty harmless. Just like you described him, really.”
    â€œWhat about the place? Pretty awful, huh?”
    Dad raised his eyebrows. “Seemed all right to me. I mean, I’m no expert, but as nursing homes go —”
    â€œWhat about the smell?”
    Dad shrugged. “Didn’t think about it, to be honest.”
    â€œHe doesn’t like it there at all. It was much nicer where he was before.”
    â€œWell, Dan, that’s the way things go sometimes.”
    â€œDad thought it was OK, but Captain Mack hates it,” Danny said to Ellie.
    She handed him his drink and closed the fridge. “I’m sure he does. It’s a horrible place. It’s got a reputation. They’re always looking for staff, and they can never get them. I don’t know what they do to make them leave, but whatever it is, it works.”
    â€œSo what would happen if he tried to … to escape?”
    â€œEscape?” She laughed. “You make it sound like a prison.”
    â€œWell, he thinks it is. So what would happen?” he repeated.
    â€œI guess they’d just take him straight back. Anyway, he wouldn’t.”
    â€œWhat makes you so sure?”
    â€œDanny, do you realise how many times he threatened to leave Lady Smythe because he was unhappy with the temperature in his unit, or because the sheets were too wrinkled, or the mowers were too noisy outside his window? I lost count. He lives in this fantasy world where he’s a brave soldier held in a jungle camp, but at the end of the day he’s not brave enough to run off. It’s really that simple.”
    Danny shook his head. “But what if he did ?” he argued. “Just say he did escape — what then?”
    Ellie took a deep breath and looked Danny in the eye. “He’s an adult, Danny. He’s in a place that looks after old people like him, regardless of how well or how poorly they do it. He might hate the place, but it’s food and shelter, and I think underneath it all he realises that. That’s why despite his continual threats to leave, he never does. End of story.”
    Danny watched his hands as they turned his glass around on the table. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
    â€œThat’s not to say that I’d blame him for running away from that dump,” added Ellie with a smile. “In fact, I might even think it was pretty cool.”
    If Danny thought or hoped that Captain Mack might forget about his escape idea, he was wrong. Whenever he went to visit — which wasn’t quite as often since the move, as the new hospital was a little more out of his way than the old one — Captain Mack would whisper again about how he intended to leave. In the beginning he’d always talk about going back to Lady Smythe, but gradually his plan changed. Now he was going home. It took some time for Danny to get around to asking where home was, but he