Who's sorry now?
an excerpt

Ronnie lay tightly parcelled up in a hospital bed with stiff sheets and hospital corners. His head ached. It was bound in a large dressing, that bulged fatly on one side. He couldn’t seem to move his neck.

‘I’m alive,’ he thought. He wondered if he had got away with it. Were they dead? He couldn’t relax, till he knew.

He tried to ask the nurse the next time she rustled past, but she was under orders not to tell him anything in case the news prejudiced his recovery.

‘Sleep now,’ was all she said, nodding her odd-shaped cap at him. ‘We’ll know more in the morning.’

Poor young boy, she thought. Orphaned. She wondered where he would live now. Would he go to an orphanage? Her Mum had put her oldest brother in an orphanage, and now he had gone to Australia, for a New Start. She had never seen him, and now she never would. She shed a tear, for herself, for her mum, for the orphaned boy in the bed.

He wondered if they suspected him, if they knew he had done it. He squinted out of his good eye, trying to see if they had sent a policeman to guard him. If only he knew! Then he could relax, and sleep forever. He wouldn’t care if he never woke up. He was so tired. Eventually, he slept.