Page 32 of In This Iron Ground
Eventually, his tears turned to sleep.
**********
Damien lay in the ghost darkness of the hospital. The phantom glow of the safety lights was floating above him. He drifted in the otherworldliness of the hospital room. Felt the odd stillness of the air, the unfamiliar sounds and smells, the nurses passing like ships in the night.
The doctor had insisted Damien stay overnight for observation, although Damien suspected it had more to do with the fact that social services needed some time to arrange a bed for him. He had been told that, most likely, he would be put in a foster house with several other children rather than with another foster family, which was perfectly fine with Damien. He even got a hospital room to himself for the night, although Damien was convinced Mia had had something to do with that.
Social care kids didn’t get private rooms. Even suicidal ones.
Mia had been adamant about staying the night with Damien, saying that he shouldn’t be alone, but Damien had rejected the offer and almost had a panic attack when she insisted. He had already forced her to save him from himself, to sit there whilst his wounds were gutted and cleaned. He wasn’t asking any more of her, at least that night. Eventually, the doctor had practically forced Mia out, claiming that Damien needed rest.
In the end, Damien settled into a familiar numbness, evading sleep. He had kept waking up in a panic, surfacing from distorted nightmares, believing that he was tied down again.
It would be best, he thought, if he lay there and tried to be as much of nothing as he could.
The attempt, however, was cut short as the door to his room opened suddenly. He barely glanced, assuming it was a nurse, but his heart leapt into his throat as the outline of two people stepped into the room.
For a moment, they were backlit by the light of the hallway and a terror that felt as suffocating as tar choked his throat and lungs. He scrambled to a sitting position because—it was them. The McKenzies. He should haveknown, he should have—
The door closed. The light adjusted. Damien doubled over, weak with relief.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, clutching at the cloth over his still-racing heart.
“Sorry. We didn’t mean to scare you,” Koko said, walking slowly into the room beside Hakan.
“No worries. What’s a little heart attack when you’re fourteen?” Damien joked, then winced as it fell flat, a reminder of the day’s events. “Sorry,” he said quietly, head still bowed.
The word only added to the silence that thickened around them. The same shame from before was bubbling up again, eating away like acid. He heard Hakan and Koko stop and stand a few feet from his bed. Damien took a deep breath before tilting his head up, although he still couldn’t look either of them in the face.
“Did your mom send you to check on me?” Damien asked. “I’m not going to do anything. And it’s not like I’m gonna spill your secret—obviously.”
“That’s not…Damien, that’s not why we’re here,” Hakan said quietly.
“Mom doesn’t even know we’re here,” Koko said. “Well, I mean, she probably does, but we didn’t tell her,” she amended. Her voice was quiet too, as if there were a spell tensing the air of the room that none of them felt capable of breaking.
Damien didn’t reply. The silence stretched. And then, from that odd stillness came a soft noise, like someone was breaking a breath into parts. Damien looked up and—God. A shuddering breath left him. He closed his eyes, but their faces were imprinted behind his eyelids.
Koko, her eyes and cheeks glowing with tears, jaw clenched as she tried to silence the trembling breaths that clogged her throat. And Hakan with that look in his eyes. There wasn’t a word in the English language for that look. As if he were trying to track every clue that could have led Damien to that moment and then projecting the ‘what if’ of his suicide onto Damien’s small frame on that small, white bed.
It was the look of someone who was mourning something that hadn’t happened and blaming themselves for it.
Damien had thought he didn’t have any strength left to cry. But in a moment, he was doubled over, face in his hands, as he tried to find one single breath that wouldn’t rip him apart.
“Damien,” Hakan said, and then Damien was being surrounded. Pulled apart, put back together again as Hakan and Koko climbed on the bed and gripped at him so the current wouldn’t take him away.
They collapsed on the small bed, Koko at his back, Hakan at his front, until Damien was laying not on the bed but on their shaking bodies. Damien could feel Koko’s tears as she pressed her face to the nape of his neck, and Hakan’s wet breath at his throat.
They lay there. Eventually, the quiet smoothed out again.
Damien’s exhaustion was a burning behind closed eyes, a pressure at his temples, but he was warm. Safe. He didn’t know how long they rested there until Hakan shifted slightly, pressing a little closer to Damien’s skin.
“Please don’t do that again,” Hakan whispered brokenly. “Please.”
“Sorry. Sorry, sorr—”
“No, just, no, please. It’s not your fault, God, it’s not—I shouldn’t even be asking that of you, I shouldn’t but I just—please. I-I…Damien,” he stuttered, and Damien had never seen Hakan even remotely like that. He clutched at him as Koko pressed closer to Damien, her arms solid and grounding around him.
“I won’t. I won’t, Hakan, I won’t,” Damien promised, feeling pathetic. Feeling relieved.
