Silent Child

by Sarah A. Denzil

  “I have his birth certificate,” I said.

  “And a death certificate,” Dr Schaffer continued. “I’m no expert in these matters but I know it might be difficult at first. All of Aiden’s records show him as deceased and that will slow the whole process down. But what we’ll do is test his eyesight, hearing, and vitals in hospital. Then you can arrange for your own dentist, optician, and physiotherapist when the paperwork has come through.”

  I let go of the balled up material. “Thank you. I appreciate it. Now, can I see him?”

  I needed a few minutes with him before calling Rob’s parents. Perhaps it was selfish, perhaps it was reasonable; I didn’t know at the time and I didn’t care. I didn’t dwell on my feelings, I was protecting my son. The last thing he needed was to be bombarded by well-meaning visitors and professionals. I followed Schaffer and Stevenson through the corridor, avoiding the stares from the nurses walking up and down. For the first time I realised that there were other children on the ward. I tried not to stare into the rooms as we walked along, but through open doors I saw giggling children and fathers making silly faces. There were pots on arms and legs. Broken limbs. They were normal reasons for a child coming to hospital. And when they went back to school they’d get all the signatures and doodles of their friends. They’d have fun stories to tell—“…and then next-door’s Doberman chased me over the fence but I caught my jeans and face-planted…”—and scars to show off. They would be louder and more boisterous for a while, emboldened by their escape from ‘death’. But not my son.

  “Hey, Aiden.” I kept my voice bright and cheerful as I entered the room. Aiden sat with his back propped up against the headboard. He had a cup of juice in his hand and he sipped on it slowly. I walked over to the bed, cleared my throat as I moved the chair closer to him, and held back tears. I was determined to avoid thinking about what he had been through. I would not. I could not. “I bet you’re sick of people bothering you when you’re trying to watch cartoons.” I let myself really look at him this time. I took it all in: the rich brown of his eyelashes, the boniness of his shoulders, the thick, straight hair. They melded with my memories of the dark-haired boy with scrapes on his knees and a grin on his face. Now there was only a neutral, placid expression on his face. Every one of his movements was slow: the turn of his head, blinking, reaching out to the table next to him for his drink.

  The baby moved inside, kicking its feet. I longed to take Aiden’s hand and place it on my bump for him to feel, but I only put my own hand there instead. “That’s your little sister saying hello. You see, you have so many people wanting to say hello. And you know I would have come sooner, but I didn’t know where you were. I’m sorry, Aiden. I’m so sorry I didn’t know where you were. I’ll never not know again, I promise. We’re going to fix it all, you know. We’re going to mend it together. You and me. We’ll be a team again, like we were when we lived at Nana’s house, remember? We fought crime, you and me. You were Superman, obviously, you had the cape. I was just your sidekick but you made sure we caught the baddies every time. We’re going to do that again, I promise.”

  And that was as much as I could say without breaking down. For another five minutes I watched cartoons with my son. I rested my hand on the bed next to him, and although his eyes flickered towards the movement, he didn’t flinch away. Still, I didn’t try to touch him.

  I found him oddly self-possessed then. I knew the doctors thought he was in shock, but he didn’t seem shocked or afraid. He seemed comfortable in his own skin. He seemed quite at ease ignoring us all and casting his attention to what mattered the most to him: cartoons. And who could blame him? He’d been hurt by someone—an adult. Why would he want to interact with more adults after that happened to him? I didn’t blame him for ignoring us all.

  It was Jake who brought me out of the spell cast over me in that quiet room. “Emma, honey. You need to call them.”

  I nodded my head. What time was it? I hadn’t checked the time on my phone for what felt like hours. I’d given Jake my handbag and forgotten all about it. He handed it to me now, after I crossed the room on unsteady legs. I pushed my hair away from my clammy forehead and reached for my phone inside the bag. It was almost seven. We’d been here just under three hours. Sonya and Peter would be sitting down to eat their dinner at this time. I pictured them in back of the B&B. Peter was tall and broad like Rob—a boxer’s physique, which was something he used to do as a hobby in his youth. Sonya was a slip of a woman; stooped, thin shoulders on top of two matchstick legs. Her voluminous blonde bob always made her look a bit like a lollipop. The two of them dressed in Marks and Spencer cashmere sweaters and ironed jeans. They were the epitome of a nice, normal countryside couple.

  The thought of telling them what I needed to say made me light-headed and nauseated. But I thought of how they had loved Aiden when he came along. We would walk to the B&B after school and Sonya would come running out with a box of Liquorice All-Sorts and a comic book. Aiden never really liked liquorice and they always got him the wrong comic book, but he was always grateful and laughed at Peter’s bad jokes. They took him to the farms outside the village to see the lambs, and to the rural shows when they came around every year. They held his little hand and pointed out all the sights for him to see. They bought him candyfloss and little trinkets for him to keep. I stepped out of the room and found a quiet space to call. When I placed the phone against my ear, I started to cry.

  “Bishoptown Bed and Breakfast,” Sonya answered.

  “Sonya, it’s Emma.”

  “Emma, dear, you sound terrible.” She sucked in a breath. “Is it about Aiden?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a sob on the other end of the line. “Peter. Peter, it’s Emma. It’s about Aiden.”

  I imagined him hurrying through to their living space in his woollen socks. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Sonya, it isn’t what you think. They haven’t found a body. They’ve found Aiden, but he’s alive.”

  There was silence. Eventually, I heard Rob’s dad in the background. Sonya? What’s she saying Sonya? Tell me.

  “He’s… alive?”

  “He’s alive and he’s at St Michael’s hospital. I can’t explain much over the phone, it’s difficult to… You just need to see him and he needs to see you.” I decided to warn them face-to-face rather than over the phone. “And… well… you need to call Rob. He needs to come too.”

  “Okay. Okay… I… Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure, Sonya.”

  “Oh… Oh my, that’s…”

  “I have to go. I’ll see you when you get here.”

  I lifted the phone away from my ear and ended the call, drawing in my own deep breath. I leaned against the wall of the silent waiting room and closed my eyes for a second.

  “Um, Mrs. Price-Hewitt.”

  My eyes opened and my shoulders slumped. Dr Schaffer stood in the doorway with his hands deep in his coat pockets.

  “If you have a few moments it might be a good time to draw some blood. It’s important to run the tests as soon as we can.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “How are you feeling? Are you up to this?” he asked, meaning the blood draw.

  As I followed him out of the waiting room I mulled that question over, and no matter how many times I thought about it, I still didn’t have an answer.

  8

  I got a cup of tea, a sandwich, and yet more explanations of what was to come. There were more tests to be done: x-rays, scans, psychological assessments. A therapist would see him soon. There might have to be an investigation into our home to check it was ‘suitable’. It was all too much.

  Sonya and Peter were in tears at the sight of him, but Sonya was the first to turn to me and nod. They knew. They saw Rob in him just as I had. The phlebotomist took my blood but it wasn’t necessary, not to me. The boy in that room was Aiden, and we all knew it.

  I had almost fallen asleep when the social worker
turned up to talk to me. Jake ended up doing most of the talking. By that point, little seemed to matter to me except for Aiden, and certainly not a cross-examination about me as a mother. By 10pm, my head was spinning but the social worker appeared happy with the interview and informed us that she would ‘pop round’ to the house when Aiden had been discharged from the hospital. Reluctantly, I left Aiden’s room to let him rest, and slipped away from the others, picking up a bottle of water. Outside the hospital, I sat down on an uncomfortable stone bench, and let a pattering of drizzle land on my hair. It would frizz, but I didn’t care.

  “I’ve called Rob.”

  I flinched. Sonya moved like a panther. Her voice cut through my own suffocating thoughts, jarring me back to reality. “Thanks.”

  She sat down next to me, leaving adequate space between us for another person. She wrapped her arms around her body. “It’s really him. I don’t know whether to rejoice or cry for what he’s been through.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “I bet you do.” She turned towards me. “I want to call it a blessing, but… I can’t. The way he sits there, barely moving…” She covers her mouth with her hand. “He was never this quiet. Peter used to call him Chatterbox. He’d tell us all about the spiders and worms he’d collected from the garden. A real boy’s boy.”

  I nodded. “I remember.”

  She shuffled uncomfortably. “Rob will be here in the morning. He’s arranged a leave of absence.”

  “That’s good. Aiden is going to need him. He’ll need all of us.”

  Sonya nodded and bit into her thumbnail. “Where is Aiden going to stay when he leaves the hospital?”

  Surprised, I turned to face her. “He’ll be staying with me. I’m his mother.”

  Sonya lifted a hand like she was trying to placate me. “Oh, I know, it’s just… Well, you don’t live in your parents’ home anymore. I wondered if maybe he’d want to stay somewhere he already knew, like the B&B.”

  I let out a cold, hard laugh. “Absolutely not. Aiden is my son and he’s coming home with me.”

  Her lips tightened into a thin line. “Okay. As long as that’s what’s best for Aiden. He’s all I care about now. All I’m thinking about.”

  “And I’m not?” My chin lifted as I regarded her through the dim glow of the hospital windows around us.

  “Now, Emma, I never said that. It’s just that I know you have the baby coming soon, and Aiden doesn’t know Jake at all, does he? He knows us though. He knows Rob. He knows the B&B.”

  “But that wasn’t where he grew up,” I said. I hated that some of what she was saying made sense. I pushed that thought away. Aiden needed me more than he needed Rob, Sonya, and Peter. “He grew up with me more than anyone else. I was his constant before he…” I struggled to compose myself. “I know I’m going through some changes at the moment, but I was the one to bring him up and it won’t matter where we live or who lives with me, I’m his mother and he’s coming home with me.” I paused to brush away a stray tear. “If that was Rob in there, would you let anyone else take him home?”

  Sonya sighed. “No, I wouldn’t. You’re right.”

  But there was a note of disagreement in her voice. She didn’t believe I was right at all, but I didn’t know why.

  *

  I fell asleep in the chair in Aiden’s hospital room that night. Managing that was a feat in itself, given the uncomfortable nature of the chair and the uncomfortable nature of my pregnancy. But the body takes what it wants, and I wanted sleep. It was Dr Schaffer who woke me after 11pm. Jake slipped my coat over my arms and they ushered me out. Aiden needed rest. It had been a long day for him. While I had slept, Aiden had sat up awake, either watching me or watching television.

  I thought I would feel more human after a night in my own bed, a hot shower, and some real food—not hospital canteen food—but that Friday morning I woke still feeling half-conscious, like I was living in a dream world. It was only the occasional kick from Bump that reminded me everything was real. Aiden really was alive, and he really had been captured and kept like a performing bear. Every time I thought about it, the cereal churned in my stomach.

  Jake took the day off school and drove me to the hospital. It was a day of x-rays and scans. I saw Aiden standing up for the first time, and my breath caught when I realised just how short he was. There was a stiffness to the way he walked, like he didn’t quite know what to do with his legs. I made a joke about how I walked funny because of the bump, but Aiden didn’t laugh. I even waddled as I walked, pretending I was far bigger than what I was.

  “We’d like to take a better look at Aiden’s ankle today,” said Dr Schaffer. “We’d like to check some of his other bones, too, so we’ll be sending him off for some x-rays. Then we’ll draw a little blood, and afterwards a child psychologist is coming to spend some time with him.”

  A prickling sensation worked its way over my skin. “I don’t want him to be a study. He’s not some feral child brought up by wolves. He’s my son, not a name in a paper.”

  “I agree completely,” said Dr Schaffer, tilting his head down to show gravitas. “But I do think that the psychologist will help. Aiden is going to need some therapy.”

  That I couldn’t argue with.

  “Can I be with him during the x-rays?” I asked.

  But before I could answer, the door to the room burst open and a small, surprised breath left my body. I was vaguely aware of Jake turning his head towards me with a frown on his face, but mostly, I stood staring at the man who’d entered. It’d been almost eight years since I’d last seen Rob. We’d spoken around the time Aiden was declared legally dead, but apart from that we rarely made contact with each other, though that didn’t stop Sonya giving me updates of his progression through the army. He had joined shortly after Aiden’s apparent drowning in the Ouse.

  Rob stopped dead just inside the door. His gaze was focussed entirely on Aiden, and I saw a sheen of moisture over his eyes, turning them to glass. He knew, like I had, like Sonya had. He knew this was his son.

  “Aiden,” he whispered.

  I managed to control my breathing, but my heart raced. Rob was a large man, filling the doorway with his bulk. The army had beefed him up even more than the last time I saw him. He wore boots, jeans, and a black leather jacket, well-worn and frayed at the edges. His brown hair was shorter than ever, and his deep chestnut brown eyes were all Aiden.

  “It’s him, Rob,” I said. “It’s really him.”

  My ex-lover’s eyes finally moved from our son to me, and a shiver worked its way down my spine. In that moment I knew he understood how I’d felt as I’d walked into this very same room and seen my son back from the dead, and the intensity of that experience seemed to hit us both. When Rob’s knees began to buckle, I rushed forward and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. It wasn’t anything I thought about. In that moment I forgot all about Jake—who no doubt felt useless standing back watching his wife embrace another man. The problem was, Jake didn’t know what I was feeling as well as Rob did, and it was Rob’s arms I needed around me. Before I knew it, I was crying on Rob’s shoulder, and he was crying on mine, and for the most fleeting of instants, I almost felt as though I had a family again.

  “Mum told me everything before I came,” he said as he pulled back.

  I wiped the tears from my eyes and cleared my throat. “Everything?”

  He nodded. “I’m going to tear that monster apart when I find him.”

  I glanced nervously back to Aiden. “Not here, Rob.” I kept a sharp warning tone in my voice.

  He ran his hands over his face. “You’re right.” Aiden had seen enough violence. We didn’t need to add to it with our words. Rob bent low and opened his arms towards his son, who was hanging back next to Dr Schaffer on the other side of the room. “Hiya mate, how you doing? Remember me? You don’t have to say anything, pal, it’s okay. I’m your dad, okay? Sorry I wasn’t here yesterday. Hey, did you know I fly helicopters now? Remem
ber that helicopter I got for you? It got stuck in Mum’s hair and then we weren’t allowed to play with it inside again, remember?” He let out a little laugh at the memory. I remembered it well. Its propellers had taken a chunk out of my hair. I shook my head a little and laughed. I’d been so mad with them both, but they’d looked at me with the same puppy dog expression and my heart had melted.

  “We should take Aiden to get his x-ray,” said Dr Schaffer, jolting me back to the present.

  “Sure,” Rob said. He turned to Aiden. “Gotta get you patched up, kid. You’ll be right as rain soon. Then maybe I can get you another helicopter, eh?” He glanced across at me and then cupped his mouth with his hand conspiratorially. “We’ll keep it away from Mum this time, though.”

  I wanted Aiden to laugh or smile, or even nod. But there was nothing. His features were completely blank, like a doll’s expression. I wrapped my arms around my body, then followed the doctor and Aiden into the corridor. Sonya and Peter were waiting outside, and gave Aiden a limp little wave as he passed them by. Aiden didn’t seem to notice. Sonya’s hand flew up to her mouth as Aiden turned his head away, and she crumpled into Peter’s arms. It felt like we were walking my son to his execution, the mood was so sombre.

  “I never had an opportunity to say hello,” Jake said, interrupting the silence with a voice that sounded strangely upbeat, given the mood.

  “Yeah, hi,” Rob replied, barely even glancing at Jake.

  My muscles clenched at Jake’s flushed, red face and the hand he’d extended to shake as we walked awkwardly down the corridor, shoulder to shoulder.