Fast Flight
Authors: George Ivanoff
A high-octane adventure series for children written in partnership with the Royal Flying Doctor Service
A chance for a new lease on life means the stakes are high on this flight!
Dillon loves playing cricket and is forever getting in trouble for his messy room. He's just a normal kid â except for the fact that he has a rare genetic disorder and desperately needs a liver transplant. Finally, the call that Dillon and his family have been waiting for comes. But it's 12.30 am and Dillon needs to get from his home in Adelaide to the hospital in Melbourne. An urgent flight with the Royal Flying Doctor Service is the only option.
Â
For Brendan Wells, whose real-life story inspired this fictional tale.
â G. I.
Four years ago â¦
âDillon squinted into the light. Otherworldly light! He could feel the power flooding over him. Through him. Dillon blazed through time, speeding into the far distant future. As he stepped out of the time-travelling light box, he gazed in awe at the fantastic world around him.'
âWhat did I see?' asked Dillon, quivering with excitement.
âThere were impossibly tall buildings, flying cars and hover shoes,' continued Dad. âEveryone looked happy. Everyone looked healthy. Because in this future world, there was no illness or disease. The clever doctors had fixed it all.'
Dillon smiled up at his dad. âI like this story best.'
âI think I do, too,' said Dad. âI like imagining you as a time traveller.'
âI like imagining a future world with no sickness,' added Dillon.
âYes,' agreed Dad quietly. âYes, indeed.'
âIs there more?' asked Dillon, anticipation plain on his face. âWhat do I do in the future?'
âOh, you have lots of adventures, of course,' said Dad, getting back into storytelling mode.
âTell me, tell me,' pleaded Dillon.
âWell, it seemed that Dillon wasn't the only time traveller,' continued Dad. âHe was followed into the future by the super villain Bilirubin, who had sinister plans to take over the galaxy. It was up to Dillon and his almighty light box to save the day â¦'
Four years later â¦
Dillon squinted into the light. Otherworldly light!
He remembered the tales Dad would tell him when he was younger. But he was eleven now. He could make up his own stories.
Sometimes he imagined he was journeying to a distant planet. Or that the light was part
of a time-travelling device, whisking him off into the future. Or that it would give him powers â make him different in a good way. In his mind, the light could do anything he wanted.
But reality was very different. In real life, he needed the light to make him ordinary. To stop his skin from being too yellow. To help his body get rid of the toxic bilirubin.
Bilirubin. It really did sound like a super villain from a sci-fi movie.
Although Dillon would still make up stories about his unusual situation, they no longer had the calming effect they used to. But at least they were a distraction.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts and looked at the book in his hands. Try as he might, he just couldn't concentrate
on it today. He closed his copy of
The Time Machine
and put it on the surrounding ledge.
He sighed as he glanced around. The timer was counting down the hours, minutes and seconds. He still had forty-five minutes to go.
Dillon was sitting in a light box, wearing nothing but underwear. His one metre square space was enclosed by four walls, reaching to the height of one and a quarter metres â just up to his head when seated on his little plastic stool. Each wall was made of four Perspex boxes, and each box contained two long ultraviolet lamps. The whole setup had been constructed especially for him by a medical technician from the Women's and Children's Hospital in Adelaide. It was a bit
bright, but Dillon was used to it. After all, he'd been under the light for a portion of every day for eleven years, four months and thirteen days.
âUnder the light.' That's how Dad referred to it. Dillon preferred to think of it as being
in the light
.
The walls were a bit like shelving units, with a flat surface that created a ledge. There was enough room to put stuff there. Stuff to keep him busy while he sat in the light box for four to six hours every day. Across the ledge today were a short stack of books, two sets of Lego, a model of a Royal Flying Doctor Service aeroplane, some DVDs, a laptop computer and, as always, the digital timer, its glowing green numerals counting down the minutes.
Dillon had a love/hate relationship with the timer. He despised it for the endless moments spent in the light box. But he loved it when the numbers got below an hour. He would sneak glances at the timer from the corner of his eye. He would groan and growl at it when it seemed to be moving too slowly. He would smile at it, when it showed less than what he expected. He had even been known to punch the air with a triumphant âYES!' when it got to zero.
He glared at it now, willing it to go faster. Then he looked away, his eyes drawn to the model aeroplane. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands. If he were younger he might have flown it through the air around his head, making engine noises. Instead, the flight took place in his mind. He gave
the plastic propeller a spin then put the model down again.
What am I going to do now?
Dillon sighed.
Maybe I could watch a DVD?
His eyes scanned the movies Dad had placed there for him. Mostly cartoons. Dillon sighed again, bigger and louder and huffier.
I'm not a little kid anymore
, he thought.
I'm almost twelve.
His eyes came to rest on
Star Wars Episode III
. He groaned.
Why just put one of the Star Wars films? And why number three? Dad knows I like to watch them in order.
He slotted the DVD into the laptop anyway. He had seen the movies often enough that he could even quote the dialogue in many of the scenes.
As the film played, his mind wandered again. This time ⦠to the reality of his situation.
The cold, hard facts filled his brain. He had spoken to so many doctors over the years. He had spent hours on the Internet researching his condition. And from a very young age, he had done a lot of eavesdropping.
Adults have this thing about sugar-coating the truth for kids. They find ways of making bad things seem not as bad. But when they are alone, or they think that kids aren't listening ⦠well, that's when the truth comes out. Complicated and devastating.
Once at a specialist appointment â after he had been examined, after he had answered the cheery doctor's questions, after he had been given a lollipop and told to go out into
the waiting room to play â the door wasn't completely closed. Everyone thought he couldn't hear.
That was the first time he heard the words Crigler-Najjar Syndrome.
Even back then, when he didn't know what it meant, it had sounded scary.
But that's what he had â Crigler-Najjar Syndrome, or CNS for short.
Dillon had been born with this rare genetic disorder. So rare, that less than one in a million people had it. The syndrome affected his liver. It was unable to process and get rid of a toxin called bilirubin. Bilirubin was in everyone's bodies. It was a by-product created by the breakdown of old red blood cells. But unlike Dillon, normal people had livers that worked properly and removed the
toxin from the body. The bilirubin would build up inside Dillon, making him sick â and if it wasn't removed, it would kill him.
That's why he had to sit in a light box. It wasn't ordinary light, it was ultraviolet. This type of light was able to get rid of the bilirubin by dissolving it. The problem was, more of it kept building up.
The other thing about CNS was that it made you look weird.
Dillon didn't have any white in his eyes. His black pupils and blue irises floated in a wishy-washy egg-yellow sea. His skin was also yellow-tinged. People were always staring at him or asking him questions.
Why are you so yellow?
What's wrong with your eyes?
Are you sick?
Are you some sort of freak?
People didn't realise how much their comments could hurt.
Back in his light box, Dillon could feel himself getting anxious. His heart was beating a little faster than normal. His palms were slightly tacky. And his mouth was dry.
He hated being different. He wished more than anything that he could be like everyone else.
But wishing didn't work. He knew that way too well.
Dillon remembered wishing with all his might â¦
Two years ago, when Dillon was nine, he had come very close to disaster.