What was broken
by Cheryl, posted on February 4th, 2011 in Red Writing Hood
I held his small warm hand, squeezing it, trying somehow to take my strength and give it to him by virtue of the connection of muscles and bones and skin.
“You’re going to be okay, buddy,” I said.
His gray eyes shifted to me. A single tear started its path down his cheek before disappearing below his neck brace. The siren from the ambulance was muted, which surprised me, seeing as how we were riding in it. I thought it’d be loud enough to drown out the silent scream in my ears. But it’s when you’re outside, or in your car, it’s supposed to alarm you, to tell you to get out of the way, emergency! Inside? It’s quiet, almost serene.
Except for my heart which beat in my chest like it was afraid to slow down, to be normal. There would be no normal.
Jackson was flat on his back, his small body bruised and beaten, his brown curly hair caked with blood. Four older boys – kids he did not know – had followed him out of school and decided it’d be great fun to grab his backpack and slam him over the head with it, that’d it’d be hilarious to throw him on the ground and kick him, and when he tried to get up and run away, chase him down and jam his face into a wall.
“Hey Mikey,” yelled the dark-haired boy. “What’s black and white and red all over?”
“Dude, it’s a newspaper.”
“No, it’s this little shit,” he laughed, tossing my child like a piece of garbage.
Like he was worth nothing. Like he didn’t have a mother at home watching the clock, waiting to hug her only child when he walked through the door, to hear about his day before she had to hustle off to work her night shift. And when the minutes ticked away, and still she didn’t hear the key in the lock and his voice which still held a trace of a lisp telling her about the cool things they learned about planets that day, well, she knew.
“Mommy?” he’d asked when I’d run the five blocks in my white nurse’s shoes and found him, bloodied and lying in the weeds by the metal fence of an abandoned car repair shop. “Why?”
I’d pulled him into my lap and dialed 911 on the cell phone I’d somehow thought to grab and now we were in the ambulance, his soft voice telling me what happened. And then we were at the hospital where I was supposed to be helping women give birth.
I wanted to sprint up the four flights to Labor and Delivery and tell them all not to do it, to keep those precious babies on the inside, because the world was too hard. It was hard and mean and there was no way to protect their child from pain, the kind of hurt you can’t take away, as much as you want to. As much as you need to.
But instead I was walking alongside the gurney that held my baby as he was rolled on the white tiled floor into the ER. And I felt a hatred so strong as he was put onto a bed it made me breathless, filled me so there was no room for tears.
I wondered what those kids had broken in my son today. Not bones. No.
I looked at Jackson’s face, his left eye now almost swollen shut and blood still crusted around his mouth, and wondered how I would put my child back together again.
This post is fiction based on a prompt – have a character tell a joke and a character cry – from The Red Dress Club. My story was inspired by Nadin Khoury, an incredibly brave boy who was assaulted by seven teenagers – and stood up to talk about it in hopes of saving another child from having to endure it.
Tags: bullying, it's a hard mean world, Nadin Khoury, red writing hood
Leighann Says:
Ericka @ Creative Liar Says:
Well written though!
Jennifer Says:
Cheryl Reply:
May 18th, 2011 at 11:57 pm
I also have a seven year-old who has been bullied, but nothing even close to this – thankfully.
Thank you so much for your comment. I really, really appreciate it.
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