Ryo's POV:
I think maybe part of the reason I kept putting off taking in another child was that I didn't think it would be fair to Dee.
For the two years he pursued me, and for the next six until Bikky graduated and went to college, it was always three of us. I loved it. I loved having a real family again, and I know that Dee loved it too in spite of his complaints, but between our jobs and raising a very troubled kid, I didn't have as much time to dedicate to my partner as I would have liked. He had to share me, and he bore that with a grudging good grace that would have surprised everyone. After all, it had been my choice to raise Bikky, not his. His love for Bikky and his efforts to be a good father never failed to touch my heart.
With Bikky gone, I had been able to finally make Dee the soul recipient of my attention, and I spoiled him. When we weren't working, our time was entirely our own. And as much as we both missed our son, we were enjoying the freedom. Another child would mean Dee playing second-fiddle again.
Life can, at any given time, jerk away everything you have ever known and loved. But it can also turn around and drop an amazing gift right in your lap. In the forms of the Rodriguez brothers, we had two.
But as Nando and I drove to McDonald's that morning, I couldn't help but worry.
I had had a private talk with the boys' counselor the other day, and I hadn't yet told Dee about it. He didn't like her anyway and he would have gone through the roof.
"Ryo, there isn't any doubt in my mind how much you and Dee love these boys. But I'm growing more and more concerned for Miguel's mental state."
"It's only been a few weeks."
"I understand that. But imagine you step on a rusty nail. It's not going to heal up on it's own no matter how much time you give it. It's going to continue to fester until you're in danger of losing your whole foot. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Not really."
"My initial feeling was that Miguel should have been placed in a special facility, somewhere trained in dealing with very young emotionally disturbed children. I changed my mind after consulting with some of my colleagues. They felt that Miguel might never heal if he's taken away from his brother."
"They're right too." I was beginning to see why Dee had a problem with her.
"We also have to look at what's best for Fernando. He needs to live his own life, not always taking care of Miguel. Putting Miguel into a treatment program might be the best thing for both of them. It wouldn't be for good. I'm sure that it wouldn't be more than a few months."
"Right now, I'm sorry, but I think a stable family is the best thing for him. I know you're the doctor, but people wanted to take my first child away from me too for his own good. We toughed it out though and he turned out just fine."
"I'm going to run another battery of tests on Miguel in three months. If he's not showing any signs of progress by then, I'm sorry, but I'll have no choice but to recommend to the courts that he be removed to a treatment center."
Was she right, I wondered, as we stopped at red light? We were doing our best with Miguel, but was it going to be enough? I sighed, and then noticed Nando had grown quiet.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Just thinking." He said with a frown, and held out his hand.
"You should give me a penny for my thoughts now." He instructed.
Laughing, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of change. "Here's a quarter. Your thoughts are worth more than a penny."
"I missed my Mama last night." He put the quarter in his pocket. "I had a dream she was singing to me, but she wasn't really there."
I parked the car in the lot and put my arm around him. "My mother used to sing to me too before she died."
"My Papa couldn't sing. But he said Mama and Miguel sang just like birds. I don't sing so good."
"Miguel liked to sing?" I was intrigued.
"Yes. He sang all the time until." He stopped. "I had a special song. Mama said she named me cause of the song. Miguel knew how to sing it to me too."
"What was the song?"
"It had my name. Someone was playing drums."
"'Do you hear the drums, Fernando?'" I sang out quietly, and he clapped his hands.
"How about after we eat we go buy you your song? Then you can listen to it as much as you want?"
His eyes shown. "Miguel sang it to me when I got hurt, but then he stopped."
"Do you want to talk about that?" I asked him. "About when you got hurt?"
He shook his head no quickly. "But it was a very big monster. He hurt me bad and I cried. Miguel sang to me. Then the next day, he came back, and he hurt Miguel too. Miguel doesn't sing now."
Something about his story was bothering me, outside of the obvious. "So Miguel didn't talk any more after the monster burned him."
He looked at me in surprise. "The monster didn't burn us. That was Grandmama, because we were loud. We were bad, so she let the monster have us. She said so. She said if we made noise again, the monster would hear us and come back. So Miguel, he's scared to make noise." He shrugged. "I said to him 'Miguel, you can make noise now. The monster doesn't know where we live. He can't find us. And now we live with superheroes. You would punch any monster in the nose, right?"
I was trying to digest all of this revelation. "You and Miguel are very safe with Dee and I. No monsters can get to you. Can you tell me how the monster hurt you or what he looked like?"
"No." He was staring at his hands. "I don't remember." He gave me a pleading look that shattered my heart.
"It's okay." I undid the buckles on his safety seat and pulled him into my lap. "When you want to talk about it, I'll listen. The monsters are gone now."
He hugged me, snuggling close.
Somewhere out there was some else who had victimized my boys. What exactly they had done I didn't know for sure, but I intended to find out. As I held Nando, I made a silent vow to stop the monsters from hurting anyone else.
We ate outside in the play area, then Nando ran off to play on the slides. There were two little girls there about his own age, and I watched them scream in fake terror as they hurled the plastic balls from the pit at each other. Both girls tackled Nando at once and buried him completely in the pit as he called for help.
Finally, the girls left with their parents and bored, Nando came back to the table to finish off the last of my hashbrowns. The girls, he informed me, were really undercover Princesses, working for the President to find secret information for the war.
"The war, huh? Who are we at war with?"
He leaned very close and whispered in my ear "France. But Dee is kicking butt."
I groaned softly to myself. The other night he'd been transfixed watching Dee play Civilization on the computer. Dee's main rival had just happened to be France. "He's too young to understand." He had waved away my concerns. "He just likes to watch the video clips."
Right.
I felt a small sense of relief that Dee had no interest in Grand Theft Auto. I could just imagine Nando happily telling someone that his new daddy liked to run people over with stolen cars.
We went to the toy store next after Nando reminded me the purpose of the trip was to get a surprise for his brother. It took him close to half an hour to pick out scented crayons, but he was confident Miguel would like them. "I have to get my other brother something too." He said as we turned to leave. "My biggest brother. Does he like crayons?"
"Well, he used to really like spray paint." I admitted. "He likes music better now, though. We'll buy him something when we go get your song."
No doubt the sales clerk at Waves thought I had multiple personality disorder when I handed her the four CDS we had decided on. Vivaldi for me, Cinderella for Dee (his obsession with 80's hair bands was one of those little flaws you learn to overlook in a loved one) the Best of Abba, and Happy Dagger, a group who specialized in obscenity-ridden death-metal tributes to the Shakespeare's plays. I figured Bikky would love it.
We opened the Abba CD in the car and played it on the way home. Nando really didn't have much of a singing voice, but neither did I. By the time we reached the apartment we were both giggling like crazy, having effectively butched "Fernando", "I Think I Love You", "Dancing Queen", and "Take A Chance on Me." I had to blush at that one, remembering when Dee had called a radio station and had that song dedicated to me.
Back in the apartment, I could hear the Abba CD playing from the boys' room as Dee and I exchanged information about our mornings. The progress he had made with Miguel I found nothing short of miraculous. Likewise, he was disturbed the Nando's story of the monster.
"So Miguel clammed up because of that, because of the other person who hurt him, not because of the cigarette burns."
"That's what Nando says. I mean, he's four and half the time he thinks he can fly. You have to be careful what you believe, but I believe him on this."
"They examined them for sexual abuse at the hospital, did the doll test." Dee rubbed his chin. "But with boys, you know how it is. It's not like with girls, where you can tell for certain usually." We both knew that boys were abused, while not as frequently as girls, a lot more often that most people believed. Not only was it harder to find physical evidence on a boy, though, but boys were less inclined to speak up about it.
Of course in the case of Miguel and Fernando, we couldn't be sure that anything like that had happened. The 'monster' may have only beaten them, and I winced at how that sounded. Only a beating.
Dee put his arms around me and I laid my head on his shoulder, trailing my fingers up and down his chest. Having the children here had left is less time for each other, but neither of us regretted it. Our home felt complete again. Still.
"How about we ask Cal to babysit tonight at her place?" I asked. "She offered when I talked to her yesterday. We could go out to dinner, pick up a movie. Just have a night for us."
"Yeah?" He kissed the top of my head. "Sounds interesting. What else do you have planned?"
Suddenly the apartment walls began to shake.
"#@$#* YOU MOTHER! YOU #$##* the #@(#$# WHO KILLED MY FATHER! I WANT TO DRINK HIS BLOOD AND CRUSH HIS BONES! GOD I FEEL SO ALL ALONE!"
We both jumped a mile high.
"That is NOT Abba!" Dee decided to state the obvious.
"I think it's supposed to be Hamlet." I offered lamely, hurrying down the hall to the boys' room. "CD I bought for Bikky."
The little boys were staring at the CD player, their dark eyes enormous, as I switched off the music. "That was supposed to be for Bikky." I scolded Nando.
"I had to see if he'd like it." Nando protested. "Does he like bad words?"
Miguel glanced at Dee, then back at Nando, and nodded, sliding off the bed and leaving the room. A few minutes later he returned with the photo album. Dee was grinning, giving me a "told you so" look at my amazement. He opened the album and pointed to a picture.
"Dee, I thought I told you to take that one out of there!"
"Why? It's cute." Dee argued. "I think it shows the true essence of Bikky."
Nando extended his middle finger to Dee.
"HEY!"
"What does it mean?" Nando was curious.
"It's a very bad thing to do." I closed the book. "We don't do that in this house."
Nando giggled and made the gesture to Miguel.
"Enough." I looked him in the eye. "It's like saying a bad word. We don't say bad words, either."
"But Dee said it was cute." Nando reminded me, and I glared at Dee, who looked away with a cough.
"Okay Dee, you started this. Why don't you explain your double standard to Nando?" I folded my arms.
"Ummm." He was at a total loss for words. "How was McDonalds?"
"Great. Why can't I do it if Bikky can?"
"Help." Dee said in a small voice. "Come on, I have no idea what to say to him. You're better at this than I am."
"Because we said so." I announced firmly. "We're your parents. We don't have to have a reason."
"Mama used to say that." Nando grumbled.
Miguel had already opened the crayons and there were several drawings on the bed, mostly scribblings, but one was stick figures in a row. Two little ones, and two bigger ones. At the mention of his mother, he picked up one of the drawings and held it out to me.
"Miguel, is that your Mama and Papa?" I asked.
"Yes." Nando answered for him. He pointed to a red smear on top of one the figures's heads. "Mama wore a red scarf. See?"
Miguel carefully took the drawing back and pulled up one of the plastic sheets in the photo album, slipping the picture inside and smoothing the plastic down over it.
"That looks really good there." Dee whispered. "It looks perfect. Do you want us to go get the other pictures developed, like I promised?"
He nodded, and then for just a second, he smiled.
I think maybe part of the reason I kept putting off taking in another child was that I didn't think it would be fair to Dee.
For the two years he pursued me, and for the next six until Bikky graduated and went to college, it was always three of us. I loved it. I loved having a real family again, and I know that Dee loved it too in spite of his complaints, but between our jobs and raising a very troubled kid, I didn't have as much time to dedicate to my partner as I would have liked. He had to share me, and he bore that with a grudging good grace that would have surprised everyone. After all, it had been my choice to raise Bikky, not his. His love for Bikky and his efforts to be a good father never failed to touch my heart.
With Bikky gone, I had been able to finally make Dee the soul recipient of my attention, and I spoiled him. When we weren't working, our time was entirely our own. And as much as we both missed our son, we were enjoying the freedom. Another child would mean Dee playing second-fiddle again.
Life can, at any given time, jerk away everything you have ever known and loved. But it can also turn around and drop an amazing gift right in your lap. In the forms of the Rodriguez brothers, we had two.
But as Nando and I drove to McDonald's that morning, I couldn't help but worry.
I had had a private talk with the boys' counselor the other day, and I hadn't yet told Dee about it. He didn't like her anyway and he would have gone through the roof.
"Ryo, there isn't any doubt in my mind how much you and Dee love these boys. But I'm growing more and more concerned for Miguel's mental state."
"It's only been a few weeks."
"I understand that. But imagine you step on a rusty nail. It's not going to heal up on it's own no matter how much time you give it. It's going to continue to fester until you're in danger of losing your whole foot. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Not really."
"My initial feeling was that Miguel should have been placed in a special facility, somewhere trained in dealing with very young emotionally disturbed children. I changed my mind after consulting with some of my colleagues. They felt that Miguel might never heal if he's taken away from his brother."
"They're right too." I was beginning to see why Dee had a problem with her.
"We also have to look at what's best for Fernando. He needs to live his own life, not always taking care of Miguel. Putting Miguel into a treatment program might be the best thing for both of them. It wouldn't be for good. I'm sure that it wouldn't be more than a few months."
"Right now, I'm sorry, but I think a stable family is the best thing for him. I know you're the doctor, but people wanted to take my first child away from me too for his own good. We toughed it out though and he turned out just fine."
"I'm going to run another battery of tests on Miguel in three months. If he's not showing any signs of progress by then, I'm sorry, but I'll have no choice but to recommend to the courts that he be removed to a treatment center."
Was she right, I wondered, as we stopped at red light? We were doing our best with Miguel, but was it going to be enough? I sighed, and then noticed Nando had grown quiet.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Just thinking." He said with a frown, and held out his hand.
"You should give me a penny for my thoughts now." He instructed.
Laughing, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of change. "Here's a quarter. Your thoughts are worth more than a penny."
"I missed my Mama last night." He put the quarter in his pocket. "I had a dream she was singing to me, but she wasn't really there."
I parked the car in the lot and put my arm around him. "My mother used to sing to me too before she died."
"My Papa couldn't sing. But he said Mama and Miguel sang just like birds. I don't sing so good."
"Miguel liked to sing?" I was intrigued.
"Yes. He sang all the time until." He stopped. "I had a special song. Mama said she named me cause of the song. Miguel knew how to sing it to me too."
"What was the song?"
"It had my name. Someone was playing drums."
"'Do you hear the drums, Fernando?'" I sang out quietly, and he clapped his hands.
"How about after we eat we go buy you your song? Then you can listen to it as much as you want?"
His eyes shown. "Miguel sang it to me when I got hurt, but then he stopped."
"Do you want to talk about that?" I asked him. "About when you got hurt?"
He shook his head no quickly. "But it was a very big monster. He hurt me bad and I cried. Miguel sang to me. Then the next day, he came back, and he hurt Miguel too. Miguel doesn't sing now."
Something about his story was bothering me, outside of the obvious. "So Miguel didn't talk any more after the monster burned him."
He looked at me in surprise. "The monster didn't burn us. That was Grandmama, because we were loud. We were bad, so she let the monster have us. She said so. She said if we made noise again, the monster would hear us and come back. So Miguel, he's scared to make noise." He shrugged. "I said to him 'Miguel, you can make noise now. The monster doesn't know where we live. He can't find us. And now we live with superheroes. You would punch any monster in the nose, right?"
I was trying to digest all of this revelation. "You and Miguel are very safe with Dee and I. No monsters can get to you. Can you tell me how the monster hurt you or what he looked like?"
"No." He was staring at his hands. "I don't remember." He gave me a pleading look that shattered my heart.
"It's okay." I undid the buckles on his safety seat and pulled him into my lap. "When you want to talk about it, I'll listen. The monsters are gone now."
He hugged me, snuggling close.
Somewhere out there was some else who had victimized my boys. What exactly they had done I didn't know for sure, but I intended to find out. As I held Nando, I made a silent vow to stop the monsters from hurting anyone else.
We ate outside in the play area, then Nando ran off to play on the slides. There were two little girls there about his own age, and I watched them scream in fake terror as they hurled the plastic balls from the pit at each other. Both girls tackled Nando at once and buried him completely in the pit as he called for help.
Finally, the girls left with their parents and bored, Nando came back to the table to finish off the last of my hashbrowns. The girls, he informed me, were really undercover Princesses, working for the President to find secret information for the war.
"The war, huh? Who are we at war with?"
He leaned very close and whispered in my ear "France. But Dee is kicking butt."
I groaned softly to myself. The other night he'd been transfixed watching Dee play Civilization on the computer. Dee's main rival had just happened to be France. "He's too young to understand." He had waved away my concerns. "He just likes to watch the video clips."
Right.
I felt a small sense of relief that Dee had no interest in Grand Theft Auto. I could just imagine Nando happily telling someone that his new daddy liked to run people over with stolen cars.
We went to the toy store next after Nando reminded me the purpose of the trip was to get a surprise for his brother. It took him close to half an hour to pick out scented crayons, but he was confident Miguel would like them. "I have to get my other brother something too." He said as we turned to leave. "My biggest brother. Does he like crayons?"
"Well, he used to really like spray paint." I admitted. "He likes music better now, though. We'll buy him something when we go get your song."
No doubt the sales clerk at Waves thought I had multiple personality disorder when I handed her the four CDS we had decided on. Vivaldi for me, Cinderella for Dee (his obsession with 80's hair bands was one of those little flaws you learn to overlook in a loved one) the Best of Abba, and Happy Dagger, a group who specialized in obscenity-ridden death-metal tributes to the Shakespeare's plays. I figured Bikky would love it.
We opened the Abba CD in the car and played it on the way home. Nando really didn't have much of a singing voice, but neither did I. By the time we reached the apartment we were both giggling like crazy, having effectively butched "Fernando", "I Think I Love You", "Dancing Queen", and "Take A Chance on Me." I had to blush at that one, remembering when Dee had called a radio station and had that song dedicated to me.
Back in the apartment, I could hear the Abba CD playing from the boys' room as Dee and I exchanged information about our mornings. The progress he had made with Miguel I found nothing short of miraculous. Likewise, he was disturbed the Nando's story of the monster.
"So Miguel clammed up because of that, because of the other person who hurt him, not because of the cigarette burns."
"That's what Nando says. I mean, he's four and half the time he thinks he can fly. You have to be careful what you believe, but I believe him on this."
"They examined them for sexual abuse at the hospital, did the doll test." Dee rubbed his chin. "But with boys, you know how it is. It's not like with girls, where you can tell for certain usually." We both knew that boys were abused, while not as frequently as girls, a lot more often that most people believed. Not only was it harder to find physical evidence on a boy, though, but boys were less inclined to speak up about it.
Of course in the case of Miguel and Fernando, we couldn't be sure that anything like that had happened. The 'monster' may have only beaten them, and I winced at how that sounded. Only a beating.
Dee put his arms around me and I laid my head on his shoulder, trailing my fingers up and down his chest. Having the children here had left is less time for each other, but neither of us regretted it. Our home felt complete again. Still.
"How about we ask Cal to babysit tonight at her place?" I asked. "She offered when I talked to her yesterday. We could go out to dinner, pick up a movie. Just have a night for us."
"Yeah?" He kissed the top of my head. "Sounds interesting. What else do you have planned?"
Suddenly the apartment walls began to shake.
"#@$#* YOU MOTHER! YOU #$##* the #@(#$# WHO KILLED MY FATHER! I WANT TO DRINK HIS BLOOD AND CRUSH HIS BONES! GOD I FEEL SO ALL ALONE!"
We both jumped a mile high.
"That is NOT Abba!" Dee decided to state the obvious.
"I think it's supposed to be Hamlet." I offered lamely, hurrying down the hall to the boys' room. "CD I bought for Bikky."
The little boys were staring at the CD player, their dark eyes enormous, as I switched off the music. "That was supposed to be for Bikky." I scolded Nando.
"I had to see if he'd like it." Nando protested. "Does he like bad words?"
Miguel glanced at Dee, then back at Nando, and nodded, sliding off the bed and leaving the room. A few minutes later he returned with the photo album. Dee was grinning, giving me a "told you so" look at my amazement. He opened the album and pointed to a picture.
"Dee, I thought I told you to take that one out of there!"
"Why? It's cute." Dee argued. "I think it shows the true essence of Bikky."
Nando extended his middle finger to Dee.
"HEY!"
"What does it mean?" Nando was curious.
"It's a very bad thing to do." I closed the book. "We don't do that in this house."
Nando giggled and made the gesture to Miguel.
"Enough." I looked him in the eye. "It's like saying a bad word. We don't say bad words, either."
"But Dee said it was cute." Nando reminded me, and I glared at Dee, who looked away with a cough.
"Okay Dee, you started this. Why don't you explain your double standard to Nando?" I folded my arms.
"Ummm." He was at a total loss for words. "How was McDonalds?"
"Great. Why can't I do it if Bikky can?"
"Help." Dee said in a small voice. "Come on, I have no idea what to say to him. You're better at this than I am."
"Because we said so." I announced firmly. "We're your parents. We don't have to have a reason."
"Mama used to say that." Nando grumbled.
Miguel had already opened the crayons and there were several drawings on the bed, mostly scribblings, but one was stick figures in a row. Two little ones, and two bigger ones. At the mention of his mother, he picked up one of the drawings and held it out to me.
"Miguel, is that your Mama and Papa?" I asked.
"Yes." Nando answered for him. He pointed to a red smear on top of one the figures's heads. "Mama wore a red scarf. See?"
Miguel carefully took the drawing back and pulled up one of the plastic sheets in the photo album, slipping the picture inside and smoothing the plastic down over it.
"That looks really good there." Dee whispered. "It looks perfect. Do you want us to go get the other pictures developed, like I promised?"
He nodded, and then for just a second, he smiled.