This is written by one of my dearest friends, a very sweet girl named Carey. Show her some love.
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Nobody spoke to the little figure, lying in his own private room, at the end of the ward.
He was a cute kid – or had been, in some other lifetime. A solemn, serious looking child with beautiful, big, dark eyes; ringed around with blood and bruises.
Actually, once you looked, it was hard to find places that weren’t scarred or bruised – some of the scars were old and some new. It didn’t seem to matter how old they were – he still flinched when you touched them.
When he’d been brought in he’d looked worse. Tears slipped silently from eight year old eyes, and when the nurse had taken his hand he’d looked up at her with real loneliness and fear. He had a sort of resignation that no kid so young should have. Less than a decade old, and he’d already given up – how fucked up was that?
Still, the nurse realized, he had every reason to feel deserted and hopeless. Nobody had rescued him so far – he’d been here with a broken wrist six weeks ago, and a bleeding head wound six months before that. To the outside world he was a clumsy kid: forever walking into doors and such. But he‘d held the truth … and now they all did.
He was thinking, in the quiet of the hospital. Thinking about last night: That was the last thing he could remember- last night when he’d tripped and broken the vase that sat on the mantel. It’d been there as long as he could remember, and as he’d watched the pieces fall his heart had stopped. The faint smash of glass on carpet was followed by a long and deathly silence before his Dad had come after him. Then the picture went fuzzy.
In the apartment where they lived, there was nowhere you could hide, and tonight Max wasn’t even sure he’d tried. Running was useless and so was fighting back – Forty minutes later, when the neighbours had pulled his Dad off him, he’d been barely recognizable.
The scars didn’t bother him, he mused as he looked down over his own flesh that had been beaten, cut and … burned? He didn’t remember being burned; he must have been too far gone. It was the waiting – the in between bits where no matter how nice his Dad could be, he knew that when he started drinking again, he’d lash out. It was certainty and uncertainty at the same time, which confused and terrified his eight year old mind. Home was supposed to mean safety wasn’t it? He wrapped his arms tighter around his body, doing his best to ignore the strange rippling grind that came from his ribs, but he couldn’t stand it so he let go again with a pathetic sounding whimper, the tears beginning again.
Okay, perhaps the scars bothered him a little.
He wanted to sleep, he couldn’t. He hadn’t slept in so long. He’d sat on his bed in his tiny box room and prayed for the sound of snoring through the adjoining wall, just so he knew he was safe for a few moments. But even then, sleep hadn’t come. If his Dad woke up first, and found something he had or hadn’t done wrong … that was it. You couldn’t run while you were sleeping.
But that was over now, the nurse had said, he really was safe.
He thought his Dad would kill him tonight, he realized with a dull sort of surprise. But the thought didn’t disturb him. He was too tired.
Tired of trying, and knowing that trying would never be enough. Tired of hiding bruises, and having to explain them away. Tired of hearing his mom at two o’clock in the morning (when his Dad was asleep) tending to his wounds and saying she was sorry – surely if she was sorry she would have stopped it. Just once?
Mostly was tired of looking at himself and asking why he deserved this – he was eight years old. He couldn’t have done enough bad things in his lifetime to deserve this. His head knew that, but his heart still wondered.
He needed rest, and he laid his head down on the pillow. The sterile warmth of the hospital was comforting in its own strange way, and he felt protected. He felt himself smile, but there was no conviction to it and it didn’t reach those beautiful eyes.
When he finally fell asleep, it was exhaustion that dragged him under, and he slept with a profound sense of relief. It was really over.
The nurse who’d brought him in watched from the doorway with a bleeding heart. Slowly, she walked over and pulled the blankets up over his shattered frame as he slept.
Bleeding internally, the poor kid wouldn’t make the morning. It had been too much for his little body to take … but she’d stay with him for tonight. The world owed him that.