A Superhero Can Be Locked Up But His Spirit Can Never Be Imprisoned!!!

Don’t Be Scared, Be Prepared has a whole chapter about how to escape when you’ve been locked away for no reason. It tells you all about the Count of Monte Cristo, who was thrown into a secret cell in a prison on an island in the middle of a sea full of sharks. In the end he escaped, got his revenge and got really rich. He tapped on the wall of his cell with a spoon so that other prisoners would know he was there. One of them heard him and dug a tunnel right into the count’s cell. They became friends. Then this new friend gave the count a secret treasure map just before he died. The prison guards wrapped the dead man up in a sack so they could throw him into the sea, but the count had changed places with the corpse. The guards threw him into the sea, thinking he was dead, but he cut himself out of the sack with a secret knife, swam away, found some treasure, got rich, got married and got revenge.

He made it sound easy.

Except you really need a dead body to make this work.

Plus I had a feeling that in this hospital they don’t throw you into the sea when you’re dead.

I didn’t have a dead body.

But I did have a spoon.

I tapped on the radiator.

It rang.

I listened.

No one replied.

I tapped again. This time I seemed to hear the tap of the spoon shiver along all the twists and turns of the pipe leading to the great boiler room, echo in the boiler, swing back out through the heating pipes to all the radiators in the building, ripple through the hot-water pipes into the sinks where the surgeons washed their hands, and the cold water pipes where people filled the drinking jugs and the vases of flowers, travel under the floorboards, behind the skirting boards, behind the ceilings and in the walls, whispering to doctors, nurses, cleaners, visitors, patients, cooks, porters.

Not one of them answered.

Maybe I just wasn’t doing the right kind of tapping on the radiators. Maybe it wasn’t enough to make a noise, you had to send a message. In the back of Don’t Be Scared, Be Prepared there was a section on Morse code. I tried to figure out how to send a cry for help and some information about where I was, but I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I was curled up in bed, listening to an inexplicable tapping noise.

Someone had answered me!

I slid out of my bed and crouched down next to the radiator, ready to tap back when the tapping stopped. It didn’t stop. It wasn’t coming from the radiator.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Maybe from the door?

No.

From the walls?

No.

A tap dripping?

No.

I pressed my face against the glass to see if there was something out in the corridor. Yes. A little dark creature was pecking at the door of Tommy-Lee’s room.