Cobb

 

   The doctor had just completed his round of patients in ward A, and left to go onto ward B where the matron was making use that everything, meaning the patients were all in their place.
   Back in ward A life returned to want passes for normal in the village hospital. The re were six beds on the ward, four of them were occupied at the time. One chap had his head bandaged up, another had a hospital visitor sitting by his bed in a rocking chair, she was busy knitting, while a third lay in bead eyes wide open staring up at the ceiling.
    “Psst” said the fourth patient leaning out of bed.
    The patient stirred and moved his head looking at the other patient.
    “What are you in for mate?”
    “I don’t know, I can’t remember much.”
    “Oh an amnesia case!”
    “I don’t know, they keep asking me questions; they want to know all about me.”
    “That’s going to be difficult if you can’t remember much. I’ve got an in growing toenail it’s very nasty, doctor said they’re going to operate in the morning, how long have you been here?”
    “Three, for weeks, months, its difficult to tell.”
    “Crikey, you must have it bad. See that chap over there?”
    “Yes.”
    “He’s got a hospital visitor, well that’s what they say, but she’s been sat in that chair and told to keep an eye on him.”
    “Why should they do that?”
    “Perhaps they think he might become suicidal. Hello he’s waking up.
    There is an old woman sat in a rocking chair busy knitting, and watching over the patient in the bed. The man wakes up and sits up in the bed.
    “How you feeling son, you’ve had a nasty experience” the woman tells him. 
    “Where am I?”
    The woman tells him that he’s in the hospital, getting up out of the rocking chair she puts her knitting down and goes for the doctor.
    “Hello he’s getting out of bed, he’s coming over here!!”
    “Cobb?”
    “What are you doing here?”
    “And you?”
    “I can’t remember much.”
    “How long have you been here?”
    “Three, for weeks, months, its difficult to tell.”
    “What happened to you, what are they doing?”
    “They keep asking me questions, they want to know all about me.”
    “You told them?”
    “No….I don’t know…I’m so tired I must sleep.”
    The patient grabs Cobb by his pyjamas “This is important, who brought you here, how’d you get here, who brought you?”
    “I was in Germany, I remember going back to my hotel, I went into the bedroom I think I went to bed…I was here!”
    A doctor appears and asks the patient what he’s doing out of bed.

They don’t like patients getting out of bed and moving about. The patients tells the doctor that there’s nothing the matter with him, but the doctor wants to make sure and takes the patient for a medical.
    “A friend of yours is he?”
    “What?”
    “Him, he’s a friend of yours is he?”

    Cobb gets up out of bed.
    “Anyway he helped you remember anyway.”
    Cobb approached the bed and looked down at the patient “If anyone asks I jumped out of the window…alright?”
    “A?!”

    Suddenly an alarm sounds, it’s Cobb, he jumped out of the window, he’s dead!

Chambers

    A man of medium height, age early forties, dark hair, about 5 feet ten inches tall pulled on the wrought iron bell pull. From somewhere a bell tolled, and the front door of the green dome opened with an electronic hum. Standing in the foyer was a man of diminutive height, baled-headed and dressed in black tails. The man bowed, and gestured for the man at the door to come in, he did so, and was promptly lead through a pair of open French doors, up a short ramp where a pair of steel doors slid open. The diminutive man lead the way through into a large purple walled domed chamber, he stood at the top of the ramp, the doors sliding shut behind him.
    “Please do not stand on ceremony, come n, come in” bid a man sitting in a black globe chair behind a grey curved desk.
    Slowly the man walked down the ramp.
    “I think our new guest would like some tea” No.22 said to his butler.
    The man walked passed the butler as he walked up the ramp and out through the open pair of steel doors, which closed behind him.
    “You have a most impressive office” the man said looking about him.
    “Perhaps you would care to sir down” No.2 offered and pressed a button on the control panel of his desk.
    A disc slid away in the floor revealing a hole though which rose a black leather chair.
    The man circled the chamber, looking at this studying that “Why the ordinary bicycle?”
    “Oh the Penny Farthing, I’ve really no idea. Just part of the fixtures and fittings I expect, like the Astro Lamps.” No.2 replied.
    Chambers approached the desk “Where am I?”
   The pair of steel doors opened and the butler pushed a tea trolley down the ramp and set out the tea things on a small table which rose up through a hole in the floor, then withdrew by the same way he had come.
    “Perhaps you will do the honours” No.2 suggested.
    Chambers looked at the man sat in the black round chair, the man with light brown hair, in his early fifties, wearing a double breasted blazer and grey flannel trousers, oh and a pair of canvas shoes.
    “Where am I?”
    No.2 climbed out of the chair and approached the small table “I’ll pour.”
    “Where am I and why am I here?” Chambers asked.
    No.2 busied himself with pouring out the tea “didn’t the waitress at the cafe tell you?”
   “She said something about the village” chambers replied taking the offered cup and saucer.
    “Milk?”
    “Just a splash.”
    “Sugar?”
    “Just one lump.”
    “You are in the village” No.2 told his visitor as he reclined back into his chair.
    “The village, and why have I been brought here?”
    “David Chambers, now it seems, late of the Forgiven Office. Where do you think your were going?”
    “I don’t like it here, I want to leave!” Chambers said placing the cup and saucer on the table, the tea untouched.
    “Oh you don’t like it here, you want to leave, well I suppose we could send you back” No.2 suggested “how would that sit with you?”
    Chambers said nothing.
    “Chambers now late of the Foreign Office, turned traitor. We found the micro film in your briefcase most interesting, and I can tell you that it’s is more preferable here than it is elsewhere. Behind the iron Curtain for example.”
    “If you have the micro film, then you have everything” Chambers said.
    “Not quite, far from it in fact.”

    The Prisoner woke up lying in a hospital bed. An old woman who had been sitting knitting in a rocking chair told him she would go and fetch a doctor. Seeing another patient in a bed across the ward he got out of bed, it was Chambers.
    Chambers looked at the man “You, what are you doing here?”
    “I could ask the same of you” the Prisoner said “why didn’t you come and meet me? I waited and waited but you never turned up, I would have talked you out of it.”
    “I didn’t come because I was most likely on my way here, although I did not know it at the time.”
    “Why are you here, who brought you?”
    “They want to know all about me.”
    “You told them?”
    “What do you think?”
    “What are you doing out of bed?” the doctor asked.
    “I want to go, there’s nothing the matter with me.”
    “Why should I?”
    “For your medical, the after effects can be pretty nasty, so I advise you to.”
    “Very well.”
    The Prisoner reached for the dressing gown lying on his bed, he put it on and followed the doctor to the examination room where he was given a pair of well worn slippers.
    “My size?”
    “Naturally.”
    After his medical the doctor pronounced the Prisoner to be absolutely fit. And that he could go home in the morning. Also that he would be given new clothes, as his old ones had been burnt. 
   Suddenly, as the Prisoner was being escorted back to the ward, an alarm sounded.
    “Its Chambers” an orderly reported to the doctor “he’s jumped out of the window..he’s dead!”
    In the purple walled domed office the yellow ‘L’ shaped intercom began to bleep, No.2 eased himself forward out of his chair and picking up the intercom announced himself.
    “Number 2, what is it, what do you want?”
    “Supervisor here, Chambers jumped out of a hospital window, he’s dead!”
    “Good.”
    “Didn’t you hear me sir? Chambers, he jumped out of a hospital window, he’s dead!”
    It was then that the penny dropped! The pair of steel doors slid open and No.6 came storming down the ramp.
    “Chambers!”
    No.2 placed the intercom back on the desk “Chambers....if he had met up with you, none of this would have happened.”
    “And who prevented that?”
    “Chambers would have been behind the Iron Curtain now.”
    “Pleased with yourself..aren’t you.”
    “What we do here has to be done, it’s them or us, so we do it to them before they do it to us!”
    “Chambers was a good man.”
    “Oh don’t give me that Number 6, the man was going to defect. You wanted to meet up with him in order to try and talk him out of it, don’t protect Chambers memory, it’s not worth it.”
    “Who else?”
    “Who else?
    “Who else am I likely to meet here?”
    “You never know who’ll you’ll meet, good day Number 6.”

Be seeing you