Page 31 of In This Iron Ground
Another silence followed.
“I see.” A pause. “Did they ever touch you, Damien? In any way? Especially whilst you were tied down?” Sam asked.
Damien shook his head vehemently. “No. No way. They don’t even like looking at me.”
“They never hit you?”
“No. I mean…not really. A few slaps and grabs but, like, nothing I couldn’t handle,” Damien replied.
“What you canhandle,” Mia said, sounding angry for the first time. Damien looked at her in surprise whilst Sam lifted a staying hand. Mia breathed out slowly. “Sorry. I just…you shouldn’t be having to handle anything like that, Damien.”
Damien shrugged. “They do it cause I’m bad,” Damien explained, as if Mia didn’t already know, but she looked back at him with pure incomprehension on her face.
“What do you mean? Bad?” she asked.
Damien took a breath and it was like a dam breaking. “They do it because I’m bad. I can’t sit still—school knows as well. I can’t do my homework and at night I’ll have nightmares and wake them up so I need to be tied down. It’s for my own good,” Damien said harshly. Mia stared at him, mouth opened slightly before she closed her eyes as if in pain.
“Damien,” she said slowly, opening her eyes. “I need you to listen, okay? What they did was wrong. There is no good enough reason to tie someone, a child, down. Think—if I told you that was happening to Koko, would you think it’s okay?”
“But she’s not bad.”
“Damien, you aren’t bad!” Mia said.
Damien shook his head. Mia opened her mouth, but Sam cut in first.
“Damien, it’s safe to say that you are never going to see the McKenzies again. That you are never going to be tied down, or slapped, or go unfed ever again,” Sam said firmly.
Damien turned to look her. The words percolated slowly through the thick soil crushing him. “What?”
“We’ll have someone get your things. You’re not seeing them again. Ever.”
Damien started crying. It was too much. It was too much.
Mia held him. Nicola, who was still in the room, explained about where he would be moved to. Sam asked him about how his mood would be after all these changes were made, if Damien was at risk of trying to commit suicide again. No, Damien said, feeling sure in Mia’s arms of the truth of that statement.
He would still be bad, he would still be punished, somehow, or worthy of it, but the immenseness of what he had tried to do was crashing over him.
“Okay,” Sam said. “And if thingsdoget too much, do you have someone to go to, to talk to?”
“Hakan,” Damien said immediately. Even though he didn’t, normally, Hakan’s silence and calm offered the option.
“Good. And is there an adult you feel you can go to?”
“Mia. Cameron. Nicola…”
“Okay. Good. And I’m going to leave the crisis number with you as well, in case you need us again, okay? To use if you suddenly feel like things are getting too much and you’re at risk of hurting yourself in any way. Okay?” Sam explained.
Damien nodded. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. For everything.
“I know, Damien. But you don’t need to be. Use it. That, that anger, that sadness, everything that is going on inside—grab it by the horns and use it. But don’t do it alone. It’s gonna be step by step, but you can get there, okay?” she said.
Damien closed his eyes, feeling like he had swum a hundred miles, the thrashing sea still salty on his tongue.
“Okay. We’ll have a follow-up session in a week to make sure that you’re safe. That okay?” Sam asked. Damien nodded. “Is there anything else you need, Damien?”
Damien shuddered in Mia’s arms. “I miss my dad. I miss my mom,” he whispered, his diaphragm jolting with the force of the sob that followed.
What would they say if they could see him? They had been fighters and Damien was—pathetic.
