Psion Delta Read Online Free PDF Page A

least fifteen minutes. Finally the door opened, but it wasn’t Dr.
Rosmir. It was a boy of about seven or eight. He wore a hospital gown identical
to Sammy’s, chewed gum, and held a blue racquetball. He bounced it twice as he
came in, dribbling it off his hand like it was a basketball. He had a very
small nose and one of his eyes always seemed to drift off in the opposite
direction of where the other eye stared.
    “Oh,
hey,” the kid said when he saw Sammy. Then he blew a large pink bubble between
his lips. “What’re you doing in here? Are you a wacko?”
    Sammy
frowned at the boy. “No. I’m waiting for someone to come back very soon. Are you
allowed to be in here?”
    “Sure!”
the boy said. “I own this place.” He bounced the ball a third time, and as he
did so, his right shoulder and facial muscles twitched badly enough that he
missed the ball and it hopped away from him, resting between a garbage can and
the equipment cabinet. “I own the whole hospital.”
    “Sure
you do. What’s your name?”
    “Nope,”
the boy answered matter-of-factly.
    “What
is it?”
    “Nice
try.” The kid gave Sammy a melodramatic glare as he retrieved his ball. Then he
sat on the floor and bounced the ball off the wall in a well-timed rhythm.
“Strangers . . . ” he added, shaking his head.
    For
some reason Sammy found the beat of the bouncing to be exceptionally grating,
especially when the boy’s right side jerked up after every few throws.
Sometimes his tic wasn’t too bad, other times the twitching made him miss a
catch.
    “Do
you always come in here to do that? Bounce the ball?”
    “Every
day. Sheesh, I told you that I own this place.”
    “Right.
And you don’t want to tell me your name?”
    This
time the boy didn’t answer, but kept throwing his ball against the wall and
catching it. Sammy wondered if he’d scared the boy and thought about
apologizing. “So where do you sleep?” Then he realized that question sounded
like something a pedophile would ask. “What I mean is, do you live here?”
    Again
there was no answer. He couldn’t see the boy’s eyes, but noticed how the ball
smacked the wall and rebounded with perfect rhythm. The right-sided jerks had
stopped, too. Had the kid gone catatonic? Sammy made another attempt at
conversation.
    Again,
no response.
    “Will
you please say something?” he asked with an edge of frustration in his voice. Where
are you, Rosmir? He rubbed his temples to calm himself, but it didn’t work.
“Can you please stop bouncing that stupid ball!”
    The
kid turned and scowled. Then he threw his ball and hit Sammy square in the
forehead.
    Sammy
cursed at the kid as he grabbed his forehead where it stung. “Okay, get out!”
He stabbed his finger at the door. “I’m serious. Leave right now!”
    But
the boy didn’t move.
    Sammy
hobbled up from the exam table and ushered the kid out the door with a firm
grip on his arm. The kid stood outside the room scowling. “Jerk!” Then he
walked off in a huff. “Big, stupid jerk!”
    Sammy
didn’t respond, but checked up and down the hall for Dr. Rosmir. No sign. “Are
you kidding me?” he said aloud as he closed the door again. He picked up the
boy’s ball and lay back on the examination table so he could toss the ball
against the ceiling and catch it. When he got bored with that, he began
blasting it from hand to hand. After another fifteen or twenty minutes, someone
tapped on the door.
    “Finally.”
    He
got up and opened it. Someone blew in past him and slammed the door shut so
hard it hurt Sammy’s ears. A lady leaned against the door, panting for air.
Just as quickly, she turned and looked at the door as if there were a peephole
there; only there was no peephole.
    “No
one coming east . . . or west. Coast clear.” She reached up to her temple and
pretended as if she were holding down a button like on the older coms that
required touch activation. “All quiet on the eastern front,” she announced.
“Move