Curtains and Cross-Examinations

“When the curtain closes, everyone thinks the play has ended—but that’s when the scariest parts begin.”

The door opened, and my heart sank.

It wasn't Dr Schofield.

Nurse Lola came through first, her face carefully composed but her eyes still carrying that sharp, watchful quality I'd noticed before. And behind her came someone else—someone I hadn't expected, someone who made my stomach twist with fresh anxiety even as a small part of me felt a flicker of relief.

The Matron.

She was the most senior nurse on the children's ward, and she looked it. Everything about her commanded attention—the way she held herself, the way she moved, the way the air in the room seemed to rearrange itself around her presence. She was tall, with long legs that seemed to eat up the distance between the door and my bed in just a few strides. Her grey-streaked hair was pulled back in a bun so tight it looked like it might hurt, drawing the skin at her temples taut, making her already sharp features sharper still.

Her eyes were the most striking thing about her. They sat behind wire-rimmed glasses that caught the light, and they missed nothing. I'd seen those eyes spot a child hiding contraband sweets from across the ward. I'd seen them notice when someone was in pain but trying to hide it. I'd seen them go soft with compassion and hard with authority, sometimes in the same moment.

Right now, they were surveying the scene before her—my tear-stained face, my mother's composed expression, Nurse Lola's evident discomfort—with the kind of attention that made me feel like she was reading a book written in a language only she understood.

"Dr Schofield is presently preoccupied with another patient," she said, and her voice was crisp and clear, each word carefully pronounced. It was the voice of someone who was used to being heard, used to being obeyed, used to being the final authority in any room she entered. "How can I help you?"

Her gaze swept the room again, slower this time, more deliberate. It lingered on my reddened ear. On Gloria's empty bed, with its too-smooth sheets and its too-perfect pillow. On the way my mother's hand rested on my shoulder, fingers curved around the bone in a grip that looked protective but felt possessive.

Something flickered in those sharp eyes. Something that looked almost like recognition.

I had always liked the Matron.

That might seem strange—she was stern, she was strict, she had rules about everything and enforced them with an iron will. The younger nurses were afraid of her, I'd noticed. They jumped when she spoke, hurried when she gave instructions, double-checked their work when they knew she'd be reviewing it.

But underneath that stern exterior, there was something else. Something kind. Something that saw children as people, not just patients—not just problems to be solved or symptoms to be treated.

She had let me plan my own meals once, when I'd been in hospital for a week and the endless rotation of bland food was making me want to scream. Nurse Lola had snuck me some menu forms, and I'd filled them out with all the things I desperately wanted—green jelly, chips, chocolate pudding—and the Matron had made it happen. The next day, a tray had arrived with everything I'd asked for, and when I'd looked up at her in amazement, she'd just winked and said, "Growing boys need proper nutrition."

And there was the time she'd caught Gloria and me sneaking through the corridors after lights-out. We'd been playing spies, pretending we were secret agents protecting the hospital from bad guys, tiptoeing past nurses' stations and ducking into doorways whenever we heard footsteps. The Matron had appeared out of nowhere—she had a way of doing that—and we'd frozen, certain we were about to be in enormous trouble.

But she'd just looked at us with those sharp eyes, taken in our guilty faces and our ridiculous spy poses, and said, "Just this once. But spies need their sleep too."

Then she'd walked us back to our rooms and tucked us in, and she'd never mentioned it again.

The memory of Gloria sent a fresh pang through my heart, sharp and sudden. Where was she? Why wasn't she here? The question burned in my mind, a mystery that felt somehow connected to everything else—to the strange tension in the room, to the way the adults kept exchanging looks I couldn't interpret, to the empty bed that nobody would explain.

The Matron would know. She knew everything that happened on her ward. If anyone could tell me where Gloria had gone, it would be her.

But before I could ask—before I could even open my mouth—my mother's voice cut through my thoughts.

"Luke is feeling feverish and really needs some medicine."

My mother's tone was matter-of-fact, brooking no argument. She was speaking to the Matron the way you might speak to a servant—with the assumption of authority, the expectation of obedience. Her hand tightened on my shoulder, a reminder that she was in charge here, that she knew what was best, that her word was the final word.

"Nurse Lola, however, doesn't seem to think it's necessary." She gestured toward Nurse Lola with her free hand, a dismissive wave that managed to convey disappointment, accusation, and injured patience all at once. "But clearly he is in distress. His temperature is 39.2, and he's been crying from the pain."

Nurse Lola bristled. I saw it happen—the way her shoulders stiffened, the way her jaw tightened, the way her professional calm cracked just slightly at the edges. She'd been accused of something, publicly, in front of her superior, and every line of her body said she wanted to defend herself.

"All I was saying was that—" The words tumbled out, quick and urgent, a desperate attempt to explain, to justify, to make the Matron understand. "His temperature was normal an hour ago, and there are some inconsistencies that Dr Schofield should—"

The Matron raised her hand.

The gesture was small. Just a slight lifting of the palm, fingers spread, nothing dramatic. But it carried absolute authority. Nurse Lola's words died in her throat, cut off as cleanly as if someone had pressed a mute button. The room went silent, suspended, waiting.

The Matron's eyes moved between the three of us—my mother, composed and certain; Nurse Lola, flustered and frustrated; me, trapped between them with a thermometer taste still on my tongue and tears drying on my cheeks. I could almost see her taking mental notes, filing away observations, building a picture that the rest of us couldn't see.

"Mrs Smith," she said finally, her tone perfectly professional, perfectly neutral. "I understand your concern. A fever of 39.2 is indeed significant."

She turned to Nurse Lola. "Nurse Lola, may I see the thermometer?"

"I've already cleaned it."

My mother's response came too quickly. The words were out before the question had fully landed, before there was time for a natural pause. She was already answering, already explaining, already heading off whatever might be discovered.

"But the reading was clear," she added, her voice smooth and confident.

The Matron's expression didn't change. "I see," she said slowly, drawing the words out, giving them weight. "And you took his temperature yourself?"

"Yes." There was an edge in my mother's voice now, a sharpness that hadn't been there before. "I know how to take care of my son."

"Of course," the Matron said. Her tone was perfectly agreeable. "No one knows a child like their mother."

But there was something in the way she said it. Something that could have meant anything. The words themselves were supportive, reassuring—the kind of thing you'd say to comfort a worried parent. But the delivery... the delivery was different. Flat. Careful. As if she were reading from a script she didn't quite believe in.

The Matron nodded thoughtfully, her eyes still moving between us, still taking in details I couldn't guess at.

"Nurse Lola," she said, "let's discuss this outside for a moment."

She turned toward the door, then paused. Her hand reached out and grasped the blue curtain that hung from a track on the ceiling—the curtain that could be pulled around beds to give privacy during examinations or difficult conversations.

"Mrs Smith, we'll just be a minute."

The curtain slid along its track with a soft rustle, the fabric billowing slightly as it moved. It was a pale blue, the colour of a winter sky, covered in a pattern of tiny flowers that had faded from years of washing. I watched it close around us—around my bed, around my mother, around me—sealing us off from the rest of the room, from Nurse Lola's worried eyes, from whatever conversation was about to happen on the other side.

The curtain settled into place.

And we were alone.

The soft swish of the fabric felt like the final act of a play. The audience departing. The lights going down. The actors left alone on stage with nothing but each other and the truth.

I could hear voices beyond the curtain—low, urgent, impossible to make out. The Matron's crisp tones mixing with Nurse Lola's softer ones, words blending together into a murmur that might have been about the weather or might have been about saving my life. The not-knowing was almost worse than knowing would have been.

My mother's hand was still on my shoulder. I could feel each of her fingers individually, pressing into my skin through the thin fabric of my hospital gown. For a moment, she was perfectly still, listening to those muffled voices, her head tilted slightly like a predator tracking prey.

Then she turned to look at me.

The transformation was instant. Absolute. The mask of maternal concern that she'd been wearing—the worried brow, the anxious eyes, the trembling lip—all of it fell away like a costume being discarded at the end of a performance. What remained was something harder. Colder. Something that looked at me without love, without warmth, without anything but calculation.

"You did well," she said quietly.

The words should have been praise. Should have been comforting. But there was nothing in them—no approval, no affection, just assessment. The way a farmer might tell a plough horse it had done its job. The way a general might tell a soldier who'd followed orders.

Her hand left my shoulder and rose to my head. Her fingers slid into my hair, moving through the short strands with a gentleness that made my skin crawl. It was the same gesture she'd used a thousand times before—stroking my hair when I couldn't sleep, smoothing it down after a bath, running her fingers through it while she told me how much she loved me.

But I also knew what that gesture could become. I knew what lived inside it, coiled and waiting.

My body stiffened. Every muscle tensing, every nerve firing warnings. It was like watching a storm approach—knowing the destruction it would bring, seeing the dark clouds gathering on the horizon, feeling the pressure in the air change—but being powerless to stop it, powerless to run, powerless to do anything but wait.

Her fingers found their target.

It was a spot near the crown of my head. A place where my hair grew in a slight whorl, the strands tangled together in a way that made them easy to grip. A place that wouldn't show, wouldn't leave visible marks, wouldn't give anyone a reason to ask questions.

She'd found this spot before. I knew that now, though I couldn't remember the specific moments. There were gaps in my memory—places where time had gone fuzzy, where I'd woken up in hospital without knowing how I'd gotten there, where the only evidence of what had happened was a tenderness in my scalp and a fear I couldn't explain.

Her fingers tightened around a few strands.

And then she pulled.

The pain was immediate and intense, shooting through my scalp like electricity, making my whole head feel like it was on fire. I gasped, my eyes filling with tears that I couldn't stop, my hands clutching at the sheets beneath me.

"Listen carefully," she whispered, her lips barely moving, her voice so low that anyone standing outside the curtain would hear nothing but silence. "When they come back, you need to be in pain. Real pain."

She pulled harder. The strands were twisting now, wrapping around her fingers, pulling against my scalp in a way that felt like something might tear.

"They need to believe you're sick." Her eyes bored into mine, dark and flat and utterly without mercy. "Do you understand?"

I couldn't speak. Could barely breathe. The pain was a white-hot point at the top of my head, radiating outward, consuming everything else. I wanted to nod, to show her I understood, to make her stop—but any movement made it worse, sent fresh waves of agony crashing through me.

She'd found the spot where she'd pulled before. The place that was already tender, already damaged, already hurt from times I couldn't remember. And she was twisting now, not just pulling—rotating her wrist, tightening the strands around her fingers until it felt like she might tear them out by the roots.

I let out a cry.

I couldn't help it. The sound escaped before I could stop it, ripped from my throat by the pure physical reality of what she was doing to me. It echoed in the small curtained space, loud enough to carry, loud enough to be heard.

Loud enough to sound exactly like a sick child in pain.

Footsteps approached rapidly. I could hear them through the curtain, through the pain, through the roaring in my ears—the quick, purposeful steps of people responding to a child's cry of distress.

My mother leaned closer. Her breath was hot against my ear—my good ear, the one that didn't still throb from her earlier abuse—and her whispered words landed on my skin like drops of poison.

"Tell them you don't feel well and want some medicine, and the pain will go away." Her grip hadn't loosened. If anything, it had tightened, a final punctuation mark on her demands. "Mess this up, and tonight you'll feel much worse."

The threat was clear. Absolute. I knew what "much worse" meant—or rather, I didn't know, which was somehow worse. There were dark places in my memory, black holes where experiences should have been, and I understood now that she had put them there. That the times I couldn't remember were times I didn't want to remember. That "much worse" meant things I couldn't imagine and wouldn't be able to forget.

The curtain was pulled back suddenly.

The metal rings scraped against the rail, a harsh sound that seemed to cut through everything—the pain, the fear, the suffocating intimacy of what had just happened. Light flooded in, harsh and revealing, exposing our tableau to the women who had rushed to respond to my cry.

The Matron stood there, her sharp eyes taking in everything—my tear-stained face, my mother's composed expression, the way my mother's hand rested in her lap. Nurse Lola was behind her, her face pale, her hands clenched at her sides.

"Is everything okay?" the Matron asked.

Her voice was calm, professional, but her eyes were doing something else entirely. They were cataloguing. Analysing. Moving from my mother's hand to my face to the position of my body, reading the scene the way a detective might read a crime scene.

"He just cried out in pain," my mother said.

The concern was back in her voice, the worry, the maternal anxiety. The transformation had happened in the space between one heartbeat and the next—from cold predator to frightened mother, from abuser to protector. It was seamless. Flawless. The kind of performance that deserved an award.

"It seems to be getting worse," she continued, her free hand gesturing toward me with a helplessness that looked utterly genuine. "Please, he needs help."

The Matron's eyes met mine.

I knew what I was supposed to do. I knew the lines I was supposed to speak, the role I was supposed to play. The pain in my scalp was still there—not as sharp as it had been, but present, a constant reminder of what would happen if I didn't cooperate.

"I don't feel well," I sobbed.

The words tasted like ashes in my mouth. Each syllable was a betrayal, a lie forced from me by fear and pain and the terrible, inescapable reality of being six years old and completely powerless. I was drowning, and the only way to survive was to pretend I wanted to be underwater.

"Can I please have some medicine? Please?"

The desperation in my voice was real. The tears on my face were real. The pain was real—just not from where they would think, not from the illness my mother had invented. I was crying because my scalp was on fire, because my mother had just hurt me, because Gloria was gone and no one would tell me where, because I was trapped in a nightmare I couldn't wake up from.

But they would think I was crying because I was sick. That was the whole point. That was what she'd designed.

The Matron's face softened with sympathy, and my heart sank even as a part of me was relieved. She was believing the performance. She was falling for the lie.

But then I caught something else in her expression—a flicker, just for a moment, that might have been doubt. Her nostrils flared slightly, as if she were trying to catch a scent. Her gaze lingered on me for a moment longer than necessary, taking in details I couldn't guess at.

"Luke," she said gently, "can you tell me exactly where it hurts?"

"My tummy," I whispered. "And my head. Everything hurts."

The Matron nodded slowly. Whatever she was thinking, whatever suspicions might be forming behind those sharp eyes, she kept them hidden. Her professional mask was firmly in place.

"I see," she said. "Nurse Lola, would you get Luke some paracetamol, please? The standard dose for his age and weight."

Nurse Lola nodded and left, her footsteps quick and purposeful. I watched her go, watched my one potential ally disappear through the door, and felt a fresh wave of despair wash over me.

"The medicine should help you feel better, Luke," the Matron said, but her attention had already shifted. She was looking at my mother now, and her tone had changed—still professional, still courteous, but with an undertone of something harder.

"I'll have Dr Schofield come by as soon as he's free. In the meantime, I'd like to run a few additional tests." She paused, letting the words settle. "Just to be thorough, given the sudden onset of symptoms."

"Is that really necessary?" my mother asked. Her voice was light, questioning, the voice of a reasonable parent who didn't want her child subjected to unnecessary procedures. But underneath it, I could hear something else. A tension. A worry that hadn't been there before.

"He just needs rest and medicine," she added.

"Standard procedure for sudden fever spikes," the Matron said smoothly. Her tone left no room for argument—this was going to happen whether my mother approved or not. "I'm sure you understand we need to be careful, especially with Luke's..." she paused, and the pause was deliberate, weighted, "...history."

The way she said history made my mother's hand twitch.

I didn't know what it meant, didn't understand the significance of that particular word, that particular tone. But my mother did. I could feel it in the sudden tension that radiated through her body, in the way her breathing changed, in the way her fingers went suddenly still.

The Matron moved to the end of my bed and picked up the clipboard that held my charts. She flipped through the pages, her pen moving quickly, scribbling notes in handwriting that was completely illegible to me. Her face gave nothing away—just professional concentration, a nurse doing her job, nothing unusual at all.

"Nurse Lola," she said without looking up, "after she’s given Luke his medication, I’ll have her arrange for bloods to be drawn. Full panel."

She paused, pen hovering over the page, seeming to consider something.

"And let's get a urine sample as well."

"Urine?" my mother asked sharply. The word came out too fast, too hard, with an edge that didn't match her carefully constructed maternal persona.

"To check for infection," the Matron explained. But her eyes were steady on my mother's face as she said it, watching her reaction, noting her response. "Very routine."

The Matron turned to leave.

But at the door, she paused. She was facing Gloria's bed now—that empty, perfectly made bed that no one had explained, that no one would talk about. For a moment, she just looked at it, and something passed across her face. Something complicated and sad.

The Matron looked at me one more time, and in that look I saw something that might have been a message. Something that said: Hold on. Be brave. Help is coming.

"I'll check back later," she said.

And then she was gone.

The room felt different without her.

Smaller. Quieter. More dangerous. The morning sun was climbing higher now, pouring through the window in streams of harsh white light that illuminated everything without warming anything. Gloria's empty bed looked like a wound in the room, a gap where something vital had been torn away.

My mother's hand was still in her lap. She hadn't moved, hadn't done anything but wait for the door to close and the footsteps to fade.

Now she looked at me.

And she smiled.

But there was no warmth in it. No affection. No love. It was the smile of someone who had won a battle but knew the war wasn't over. The smile of a chess player who had taken an important piece but could see that the board was shifting, that her position wasn't as strong as it had been.

"You did well," she said again.

The words were the same as before, but the tone was different now. There was something underneath it—a calculation, a planning, a racing mind figuring out the next move.

"The blood tests will show you're sick," she said, almost to herself. "They always do when you need them to."

I wanted to ask what she meant. Wanted to understand how blood tests could show something that wasn't true, how numbers on a chart could lie as convincingly as words from a mouth. But I was afraid of the answer. Afraid of what it would mean, what it would reveal about all the other times I'd been sick, all the other tests that had shown something wrong with me.

Instead, I lay back against the pillows, my ear throbbing, my scalp stinging, my heart aching for Gloria. The special care unit. Where the really sick children went. Where they hooked you up to more machines and watched you more closely and sometimes—

I couldn't finish the thought. Wouldn't let myself finish it.

Gloria was strong. Gloria was fierce. Gloria had survived five years of JSLE, five years of hospitals, five years of fighting her own body. She would survive this too. She would come back to this room, back to that empty bed, back to me. She had to.

Nurse Lola returned.

She moved quietly, her footsteps soft against the floor, her face carefully neutral. In one hand she held a small paper cup filled with water, and in the other, another cup containing two small pills—white and round and ordinary-looking, just like all the other pills I'd swallowed in all the other hospital stays that had defined my life.

"Here you go, Luke," she said, and her voice was gentle, professional. The voice of a nurse giving a patient his medicine, nothing unusual, nothing that would draw attention.

But as she handed me the cups, her eyes caught mine.

And her hand brushed against my fingers.

Not accidentally. Not casually. Deliberately. Carefully. A touch that lingered just a moment longer than it needed to, that pressed against my skin with intention, with meaning, with something she was trying to communicate.

"These should make you feel better," she said.

But her eyes were saying something else entirely. They were saying: I see you. I know something is wrong. I'm paying attention.

I took the pills obediently, swallowing them down with a gulp of water that tasted like metal and hope. They felt like stones in my throat, like all the other medicines I'd taken that I was beginning to suspect I'd never really needed. But Nurse Lola's secret touch had planted something in my chest—a seed of something that might have been hope, a tiny flame in the darkness.

She knew. She was going to do something.

As she turned to leave, she adjusted my blanket. The movement was unnecessary—the blanket was fine, didn't need straightening—but she did it anyway, leaning close to tuck in an edge that was already tucked.

And as she did, she whispered.

The sound was so soft I almost thought I'd imagined it. Just breath shaped into words, landing on my ear like a secret, like a promise, like a lifeline thrown to someone drowning.

"Dr Schofield will come soon."

My mother's hand found mine.

Her fingers wrapped around my smaller ones, squeezing gently but possessively. The grip felt like a chain, like a collar, like all the invisible bonds she'd wrapped around me since the day I was born.

"There," she said, and her voice was sweet and caring, the voice of a loving mother comforting her sick child. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

To anyone listening—to Nurse Lola who was just stepping out the door, to any staff member who might pass by—it would have sounded perfect. Maternal. Warm. The words of a parent who only wanted the best for her child.

But I could hear the threat underneath. The warning. The reminder that this was far from over, that there would be consequences if I didn't continue to play my part.

The blood tests would come soon. The Matron had ordered them, and hospital machinery, once set in motion, was hard to stop. Forms would be filled out. Needles would pierce my skin. My blood would be drawn and examined and analysed, and somewhere in those numbers, in those results, would be evidence of... what?

I didn't understand what my mother meant about the tests showing I was sick. Didn't understand how that was possible when I didn't feel sick, when the fever was fake, when everything was a performance. But I was beginning to understand—slowly, terribly, like dawn breaking over a battlefield—that nothing in my medical history was quite what it seemed.