Ryan never got to see his sister's last breath. He was taken back upstairs by Elliot's mum before he could even catch a glimpse of her, but he saw the blue lights of the ambulance, and he heard his mum screaming at the paramedics. In all of the chaos, his first thought was how his mum knew to come back, because she'd never been out for such a short time before. It was as if she'd been alerted by his disobedience, and this was his punishment.
"What's happening?" he asked weakly. He was still resting in the neighbour's arms, with his head against her shoulder, and he felt his heart pounding underneath his t-shirt.
"Nothing, darling, you're just going to be staying here for a bit longer, that's all. Just until mummy comes back."
"No… ." She placed him gently down on the sofa. Elliot was staring at him, but he'd been forced into silence by another stern look from his mother.
"It's okay, don't worry, you just get some sleep, yeah? You must be exhausted, and it's about time you two boys had a nice nap."
"But I don't want—," began Elliot, before being quickly shushed once more. Ryan felt the soft blanket being tucked under his arms and he closed his eyes just to take it all in. It was a strange sensation, but ultimately not a bad one, and for just a moment he imagined himself living here permanently, with Elliot as his brother and a brand new mum to hug him and tuck him in and tell him everything was going to be alright.
But that was a wicked thought to have, because he loved his mother, and he loved his sister, and he never should have left their flat.
"Why was mummy screaming?" he asked, suddenly. He hadn't seen her, but he'd recognised the sound of her voice. It was still ringing in his ears. "Is it my fault? Am I in trouble?" His mind was slowly catching up to the situation, though still half convinced this was all a dream. Had she really only been down to the shops after all?
"No, Ryan, you're not in any trouble at all, okay? Your… ." She paused, her smile faltering for a moment before resetting, but Ryan noticed the hesitation. It was the type of hesitation grown ups made when they weren't telling you something. "Everything's fine, sweetheart, your mummy will be back as soon as possible and then you can go home."
"My sister's still at home." Another hesitation.
"She's with your mum, darling, you don't need to worry about her." Ryan said nothing. He still couldn't understand what was going on, but asking more questions was leading him into dangerous territory. Elliot's mum asking where his mum was and when she had left had been too close a call, and if she began questioning things again, Ryan was screwed. He fell silent and closed his eyes. He wasn't tired anymore; his heart was beating too fast and every second felt like further delaying the inevitable moment when his mum would finally return and drag him back home in a cloud of rage. The clock ticked by agonisingly slow, and Ryan pretended to breath along with it. He knew Elliot's mum would leave him alone if she thought he was asleep. There'd be no more questions, no more hesitations, no more concerned looks… just blissful silence.
He hoped he could just sleep forever, and no one would ever have to talk to him, or question him, or scream at him again.
His mum picked him up a few hours later to take him to the hospital. He heard her voice filtering from the kitchen as he slowly woke back up from his nap on the sofa. His heart skipped a beat as soon as he recognised her voice, but it took him a good few minutes to register. She sounded so different; her voice was sodden with tears, but through the cracks and the sobs and the shaking breaths, he heard a calmness and quietness he had never heard before. He peeked an eye open, and saw Elliot's mum comforting her, arms wrapped around her shivering body.
"I'm so sorry," Elliot's mum was saying. "It wasn't your fault." She pulled away just enough to cup her hands over his mum's face. "It was all a horrible accident, there was nothing you could do."
"All I did was step outside for a second," cried his mum. "I just wanted one cigarette away from the kids, you know? I didn't want them breathing in the smoke, but I… ." She broke down into fresh tears and practically collapsed into one of the dining chairs."I didn't know Ryan had gone over to yours, I was— I was so scared when I came back and I didn't see either of them, and then… ." She put her head in her hands and cried for so long that Ryan didn't think she was ever going to finish her sentence. He didn't know what she was talking about, but his stomach sank when he heard his name.
"No, this had nothing to do with you," assured Elliot's mum. "We can't be there to watch them constantly, no matter how much we want to, and anything can happen in just a split second." She rubbed Sarah's back soothingly, then pulled her into another hug. "I should have asked Ryan if he'd got permission to be here," she replied sadly. "I just sssumed, since he's here so often."
"It's okay," said Sarah. "I should have been there." It was the only truth Ryan had heard in the entirety of her speech, but whatever prompted it in the first place still eluded him. He braved sitting up and rubbin the sleep out of his eyes.
"Why are you crying?" he asked. His mum gasped lightly and rushed over to him, pulling him into her arms so tightly that he didn't dare breathe in case she squeezed all the air out of him. He tensed up at her touch, and his arms lay limp beside him.
"My sweet boy, are you okay?" she whispered dramatically, kissing the side of his head before he could pull away.
"What?" She looked at him, tears spilling from her eyes, and cupped his face in her hands the same way Elliot's mum had done to her.
"I need you to come with me, baby, something's happened to your sister." He blinked stupidly, brain barely catching up with things. He was beginning to think his mother had been replaced with someone new, like an alien had come down from outer space and zapped his old mum right out of her body.
"Am I in trouble?" he asked again, waiting for someone to finally reply with "yes" so things could start to make sense again. His mum, however, shook her head.
"No, sweetheart, of course you're not in trouble." She hugged him again, and this time he forced his arms to wrap around her shoulders and hug her back. She stank of cigarette smoke; Ryan caught her smoking on the sofa every morning before she left, staining the wallpaper yellow and making him cough. Despite this, her hug was warm and welcoming, like Elliot's mum. He'd been waiting so long for her to hug him like this, and they were few and far between. She'd surprise him with them, wake up one day in a good mood and scoop him into her arms before nursery, and tell him how beautiful he was and how much she loved him. Ryan treasured those days, but as they wore on, her good mood usually deteriorated and his old mum would return, cold and scary. She'd barely even look at him, let alone hug him.
This time, however, seemed different. His mum wasn't in a good mood, yet she was still hugging him as if she never wanted to let go. She wasn't in a bad mood either, because she wasn't shouting or throwing things, and Ryan had never seen her cry like this before. He didn't want her to stop, if it meant that she'd keep hugging him like this and assure him that nothing was his fault. He wanted to apologise for leaving the flat, but instead he closed his eyes and nestled into her embrace.
"I love you," he murmured. It wasn't exactly what he wanted to say, but he didn't yet know how to put all of his emotions into words, and those seemed like the easiest approximation to telling his mum how relieved he was to hear that he wasn't in trouble, and how much he liked the hug, and how confused he was by everything that was happening, and how sorry he was that she was crying, and how scared he'd been when he'd heard the sirens, and how worried he was about his sister, and how much he wanted to hear her say those words back to him.
"I love you too," she breathed, and picked him up into her arms. He clung to her like a baby, and pretended he was a toddler again, younger than even Chloe was. Too young to talk, or walk, and far too young to understand anything. He didn't want to understand. He just wanted to hold onto his mother and forget the whole confusing, terrifying day had ever happened.
Until they reached the hospital, and Ryan was separated from her almost immediately when a nurse came up to them and took him away to the corner of the waiting room where the bead maze sat. She told him, with a kind smile on her face, to wait there for his mother.
"Why?" he asked.
"She just needs to speak with the doctors for a moment," she replied, in a high pitched tone that Ryan instantly hated. "Which is very boring, so you can stay here and play until she comes back. She'll know where you are, and the receptionist over there will keep an eye on you." He frowned at her suspiciously, but he didn't have a chance to run back to his mum because she'd disappeared. The nurse left him alone soon after, so he was sat in front of a stupid bead maze with no one to tell him what was happening. He crossed his arms to his chest and kicked the small, wooden box in front of him. He wasn't going to play with that boring thing. He needed to know where his mum was, and where Chloe was, so they could all go home and finally get back to normal.
Well… almost normal. His mum was different now, and she'd told him she loved him, which meant that she needed him. He couldn't let her be on her own in a scary hospital, with horrible nurses trying to split them up and hide away his sister.
He stood up. The receptionist was busy talking to a patient, and the nurse was nowhere in sight. He'd seen his mum go through the big double doors on the other side of the room, so that's where he marched off, with a newfound determination to find his family. No one tried to stop him. No one even glanced at him.
The doors were heavy, so he only managed to open up a tiny gap to slip through before they swung closed behind him. The corridor he found himself in was white and shiny like the rest of the place, and his trainers squeaked along the floor. There were signs all over the place, but he couldn't read them yet. He knew his letters perfectly well, but these signs had far too many on them and spelled out words he'd never seen before in his life. Suddenly, a door on his left swung open, and a man in a white jacket nearly barrelled into him.
"Oh! Hello," he said. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm looking for my mum," replied Ryan, truthfully. The man didn't look like the nurse who'd taken him away, and he was probably old enough to read all the signs.
"Oh dear, are you lost?" Ryan opened his mouth to reply, but he was interrupted by a sudden wailing noise from somewhere beyond the corridor. He recognised it from the ambulance outside their flat.
"That's my mum," he said and began to walk towards the noise, but the man held him back.
"Why don't I take you to reception and I'll find out where your mum is," he said, his tone reverting to the same one the nurse used when she sat him down at the bead maze. Ryan ripped his arm away and scowled at the man.
"No, I'll find her myself." He was starting to piece together what had happened, in the only way that made sense to him: aliens had come down to Earth on a spaceship, with flashing blue lights, and were slowly taking over everyone's minds. They'd crash landed outside his flat first, and now they were infiltrating the hospital, making everyone talk weird and try to grab him away from his mum. They must have abducted Chloe in the process, which was why his mum was so sad.
"I can't let you wander around the hospital on your— OW!" Ryan kicked him hard in the shin.
"You can't abduct me, alien freak!" he shouted, before darting down the corridor, blood pounding in his ears and muffling the sounds of shouts behind him. He could tell they were chasing him, but he didn't care. He could run faster than all of them.
He'd seen an episode of Doctor Who once. It had been set in a hospital, just like this one. The Doctor had saved them all using one of those big, round machines that made loud clunking noises and had a million different buttons to press. Ryan just had to find the room holding it and start mashing the buttons together until it exploded, and killed all the aliens. He'd have to grab his mum first, and Chloe if she was here too, then they'd all be heroes! They'd save the world from alien mind control, and his mum would hug him again and tell him how brave he'd been and how much she loved him.
"Mum!" He saw her up ahead, fighting off two nurses and a doctor. She was screaming at them, fists raised, as one of them tried to pin down her arms. The other two were trying to calm her down in the same tone of voice that every single person in the hospital seemed to have. It was the alien voice, and they were trying to kill his mother.
"Get off her!" Ryan ran up to the crowd of people, but another person grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back.
"No, sweetheart, why don't we get you something to eat?" Ryan stared incredulously up at her, before realising it was the same woman who'd sat him down in reception. She had the same brown bob, and dazzling white teeth that made her mouth look too big for her face. His mum was swearing loudly at the other aliens, who were trying to lead her away into a separate room. Ryan was having none of that, and he smacked the nurse so hard on the arm that she let go of him.
"Bitch!" he screamed at her, like his mum did down the phone to the lady who worked at the job centre, or to the neighbour two doors down who let her dog shit outside their flat, or to whichever character she hated most on Eastenders.
"Give him to me." Ryan wheeled around and saw his mum marching towards him. She was still red in the face, eyes puffy from crying, but she'd quietened down just enough to notice his presence. "Don't grab my fucking child," she spat at the nurse, who was rubbing the sore spot on her arm; to Ryan's satisfaction, he saw it turning a bright shade of red.
She took his hand and dragged him through another door. The nurses thought better than to stop her, but Ryan caught them peering through the window. He stuck his tongue out at them, before looking up at his mum in quiet excitement.
"I know what to do, mum," he began. "I can kill the aliens for you, so we can all go home—."
"Shut up," she hissed. Her hand suddenly squeezed his so tightly that he felt her nails digging into his skin. He let out a small whine and tried to pull himself free.
"You're hurting me," he said.
"Look at her." He stopped pulling, stared at his mum, and noticed her gaze was firmly fixed ahead of them. He finally turned his head, to see what she was looking at, and was met with the terrifying sight of his little sister. Her tiny body lay flat out on the bed, in nothing but a nappy, and every inch of her skin was covered in wires and bandages and white stickers and bruises. Ryan barely recognised her underneath this new layer of horror. He timidly stepped forward, to get a better look at her face.
It was ghostly pale, almost blue, and her eyes were firmly closed. The side of her head was bandaged up, but he could still see the bloodstains underneath. He didn't dare touch her, in case she shattered underneath his fingertips.
"Chloe?" he tried, watching for her eyelids to flutter open and her mouth to break into a gap-toothed grin.
"She won't wake up," whispered his mum. She stood glued to the spot, glaring unblinkingly down at her children. "She's dead, Ryan."
"Huh?" Ryan had heard the word "dead" many times in TV shows, but never in real life. In a TV show, "dead" meant someone wouldn't wake up, and everyone around them would cry about it, or else they'd cheer if a villain was exploded by the hero. The "dead" that Ryan was faced with in the hospital room felt too quiet to match either of these definitions, and he waited patiently for Chloe to stop sleeping.
"She's dead," repeated his mum, slightly louder. Her voice was still shaking, but this time he recognised the hiss of anger that sent a shiver down his spine and made him freeze in place. She moved towards him, and he felt a bony hand on his shoulder, clawing into his skin until he thought she'd rip it off.
"Look what you did," she said, her eyes burning down on him with a fury he'd never seen before. The mum he'd met an hour ago, the one who'd hugged him tearfully and assured him that nothing was his fault, was long gone, if she'd ever been there at all. He recognised the old mum, the real mum, but only the scariest part of her had taken over and turned her into a monster.
"You killed her."