The Midnight Gang

My name’s Amber, and at twelve I had a broken leg, a hospital bed by the window, and the worst birthday in recorded history.

Lord Funt Hospital, children’s ward, Room 7.

The other kids were asleep or drugged.

The night nurse, Matron, had a face like a slammed door and a voice that could curdle milk.

Lights out at 8 p.m. sharp.

Anyone caught talking got moved to the “naughty corner” (which was just a cupboard with a chair).

At 11:59 p.m. on my birthday, the cupboard door creaked open.

Out stepped five kids in pyjamas and slippers:

Tom (concussion, head wrapped like a mummy)

Robin (tonsils out, voice like a broken kazoo)

George (asthma, carries a nebuliser like a handbag)

Sally (diabetes, pockets full of jelly babies)

And the leader: Nelly, age unknown, officially in for “observation” (unofficially the smartest kid in the northern hemisphere).

They called themselves the Midnight Gang.

Their mission?

To give every kid on the ward the best night of their life before morning.

They wheeled my bed into the corridor like a pirate ship.

First stop: the hospital roof.

Tom had nicked Matron’s master key (he said concussions make you light-fingered).

Up twelve floors in the service lift, then out onto the roof where London glittered like spilled pocket money.

Nelly produced a birthday cake made entirely of hospital jelly and custard creams.

We sang “Happy Birthday” so loudly the security guard downstairs thought it was a fire alarm.

Second stop: X-ray department.

George turned the machine into a disco.

Sally used the big light as a spotlight while Robin did stand-up comedy in his squeaky post-tonsils voice.

We took skeleton selfies (my leg glowed like a lightning bolt).

Third stop: the pharmacy.

Not to steal medicine; Nelly just wanted the bubble-wrap.

We popped it for twenty straight minutes.

Best fireworks ever.

Fourth stop: Matron’s office.

This was the dangerous one.

Matron kept a locked drawer full of confiscated toys.

Tom picked the lock with a paperclip and his teeth.

Inside: footballs, water pistols, a drone, even someone’s Switch.

We liberated the lot and delivered them back to their owners like midnight Santas.

We were halfway down the corridor when the lights snapped on.

Matron.

Arms crossed.

Face like thunder.

Silence.

Then she did the last thing any of us expected.

She smiled.

“Birthday girl gets one free wish,” she said.

“Better be quick. My shift ends in ten minutes.”

Nelly didn’t miss a beat.

“We want a midnight feast in the playground. All of us. Now.”

Matron looked at me in my wheelchair, jelly still smeared on my chin.

“Granted,” she said. “But I’m supervising. And I get first pick of the chocolate biscuits.”

Turns out Matron used to be a Midnight Gang member thirty years ago.

Broke her arm falling off this very hospital roof trying to fly with an umbrella.

She’d been waiting for a new gang to show up ever since.

We feasted under the climbing frame until dawn.

Matron told stories about the old days (how they once turned the morgue into a roller-disco).

When the sun came up, my leg still hurt, but my heart didn’t.

Matron tucked us all back into bed, pulled the curtains, and whispered:

“Same time tomorrow night. Bring better biscuits.”

I spent six more weeks in that hospital.

Best six weeks of my life.

And every night at 11:59 p.m., no matter how sick you are, if you listen very carefully at Lord Funt Hospital, you can hear five sets of slippers and one sensible nurse’s shoe hitting the corridor floor.

The Midnight Gang is still recruiting.

Bring jelly babies and a dream.

The night shift starts soon.