It was two days later and while back then the trend of events still showed itself relatively well. Now, if they were much more naïve than they really were, they wouldn't be able to deceive themselves any more that things had had a change to take a decided turn on their account. The sad reminder of that their time was running out was some of their companions lying in Salima's bed and on her couch in another room, stricken with this strange weakness. Salima took care of them, as she did with her patients, though she obviously never had encountered a patient with being ill with something so strange. In spite of this, she tenderly cared for Nibs, John, Peter, little Michael and Tiger Lily, with whose health she was most concerned – Tiger Lily, after all, was in some sense, herself, made almost thirty years younger.
Tinkerbell was also ill. She didn't turn into the plush toy that she previously was until the imagination of a boy-man spending his whole long life in bed made her from a toy on his nightstand into a living fairy, but she became as ill as well as her companions. She lay in a small toy bed in which, so many years ago, Salima's doll used to lay, covered with a toy quilt. Salima took it from the attic where she kept the toys she played with as a child, no older than this unusual group whose members were her guests now.
The ill weren't coughing, sneezing or complaining of a headache but their state of health was obviously bad. They couldn't be cured with syrups, pills or injections as it would be possible in the case of an ordinary health ailment – they were just lying weak and pale, apathetic and indifferent to anything, as if their life was pouring out of them, drop by drop. They lay like Jimmy lay for his whole life since the fateful accident back in his late childhood, when he first began to conjure Neverland into existence. Neverland-The powerful illusion, so realistic that it managed to deceive all of them. A mere illusion, a creation from the mind of someone else. Someone who was subconsciously longing to leave his bed and play like the boy he was.
Ah, Jimmy. Jimmy Barrie. Or rather James since he was a grown man now. There was also this other man of the same name now: James Hook. It was at least the name of this man whose face with sudden shock they recognized in the elderly gentleman who accompanied Dr. Junaid when she returned home with him. Though old and wearing the clothes from this place and time, so unlike the usual pirate attire Hook used to wear on board his ship, he was Hook, there was no doubt about that. He bore a close resemblance to their arch enemy. James Barrie's friend was an old version of Hook, the same as Peter Pan was a much younger version of Barrie himself. And later, when they lowered their eyes to the newcomer's sleeve from which no hand appeared, they didn't have any more doubts as to after whom Captain Hook was modeled by Mr. Barrie's sleeping mind. Of course, he could be someone else in this world, in London 2010, but they knew it was him, this man whom they were always fighting.
Shivering with impatient anticipation, they couldn't wait for Salima Junaid to lead him into the room, and for this man to whom they couldn't break their distrust, to start speaking. They wanted to know the whole story coming from his own mouth, as it was.
Salima had said he deserved the truth, anyway. But what about themselves? Was there anything else for them than simply waiting for their inevitable end? For the end of their unreal life? It was Jimmy who was real; they lived only a poor man's version of reality. So they sat and waited to hear the story of the elderly man with no hand. He was just as surprised by their being there as they were but Salima must have enlightened him on who he was going to see in her house; he accepted the truth very easy. He remembered the children from his dreams he shared with her and as such, recognized them easily. Hence his reaction was different than Salima's – he knew what to expect.
His story didn't hide any secrets from them. In fact, it was just what the children already knew from the clippings hanging on the wall of Jimmy's hospital room. They subconsciously expected that there was some mystery that the clippings hadn't revealed but no, Mr. James's (James Hook's; they were used to thinking of him like that) story was basically just a repetition of what they already knew, with an addition of some details he shared with them.
James, being then barely a young Jimmy, just like his friend, went with his other friend, Bobby Smee (another name the listeners smiled at, recognizing it all of a sudden) to the skating rink where they met Jimmy Barrie. And after a short conversation they started to quarrel. Jimmy Barrie got angry at him and called him a pathetic cripple with no hand, like a pirate – the other Jimmy was born with a physical defect, in the place where there should be his hand, there was nothing, though this Jimmy didn't ever hit upon an idea to attach a hook to his wrist, unlike his Neverland counterpart – and then the insulted boy pushed young Barrie onto the ice. Barrie fell, hitting his head and when Jimmy and Bobby's efforts weren't enough to revive him, they called their parents. He told them that their friend just fallen, he never admitted the truth until the 80's when, tormented with the qualms of conscience decided to go to a newspaper to tell how it had really happened. But even then there were not many who would want to believe him, suspecting him of merely wanting to get famous too.
Now he was telling this story for the second time, feeling that he at least partially – although the situation of Barrie wasn't changed by it – redeemed by admitting the whole truth.
First to the newspaper, and now to the children he remembered from his dreams. Dreams in which he was a pirate, he remembered particularly well. And he found it very strange, as he had never imagined himself as a pirate or any other kind of evildoer for that matter. Though, he admitted with embitterment, James Matthew Barrie surely perceived him in his sleeping mind as a villain so that that part was handed in to him. Some of the other boys he had known in his childhood (many were long dead by now) had appeared in their adult versions on board the pirate ship along with him. For instance, Bobby Smee was already dead; this short and silly boy had time to grow up into a man who in turn died of old age last year. The other childhood friends - Eddie Smith, Charlie Murray, Joe Harris, Johnny Winfrey – all of them, regardless of if they were still alive or not, lived as pirates in James Barrie's imagination. In this fabulous fantasy, they were all there.
After having finished his story, James Stuart (who liked to refer to himself as James Hook, because of his inborn defect) was now quite glad that he was found trustworthy enough to be let in on the secret of his friend's fantasy realm. And he no longer regretted what he did as much as he was now aware that his sleeping friend, who shared his name, despite his anger from so many years before had lived a fabulous and magnificent life having adventures as the young boy standing now before him – Peter Pan. Not many people would actually be able to believe the famous sleeping patient had lived any other kind of life than the one he led in his hospital bed – no one in fact but for Dr. Junaid – but he knew that what he did, had its light side as well.
But James Barrie's life was in danger now. He was getting near his end and it was for the reason – because what else could it be?-why the state of health of some of the Neverlanders was steadily worsening. There was a link between the condition of them and the one of James Barrie. Dr. Junaid didn't hide from them that the most famous patient in the whole country was slowly dying. She didn't give them a detailed description of the medical procedures she and her team had made James undergo – like resuscitation – she didn't want to frighten them too much, but she spent the last two days taking care of Jimmy. That was why she was absent now, leaving the children at home alone.
Although Salma didn't hide from them the strange phenomena that were taking place in the hospital. In Jimmy's room to be more precise over the last two days. The temperature in the old man's room was getting colder as it did previously. Nurse Natalie, the one who called herself Iridessa after the change which took over her mind, still was in the mental health ward of the hospital but her behavior changed – she didn't claim she was someone else any more. She just sank into some sort of catatonia, oblivious to what was happening around her.
This was the news Salima shared with the Neverland exiles. The ill were lying in beds but those who managed to remain healthy, were sitting apathetically on the floor in the living room of Salima's house which was covered with a thick fluffy green carpet. It resembled the grass in Neverland which they had had to leave so in such a strange and unexpected way. Their eyes were fixed on the carpet when the door to the living room suddenly opened and Salima's face showed itself in the opening. She was in the hospital taking care of Jimmy for the whole day but now, unheard by the children, she had come back home. On her face there was a strange look which they couldn't identify until they stared at her for a few moments before they realized what it was: excitement. Or at least, that was what filled her voice when she opened her mouth and cried to them, "Come with me, something unusual is happening!"
