5: 'That Chile Ain't Right'
So, after several days under sedation, the boy from the park was at last fully conscious. "How is he, then?" asked Teresa Morelli, clipping her stethoscope around her neck.
"Pretty good," Verna replied. "No fever, and the wounds are healing cleanly. You were right about him, though, doctor."
"In what way?"
"As my Momma would have said, 'That chile ain't right'. He is just a child - how he talks, how he looks at you. How his folks could let him go off in the woods...!" She sighed.
"Right... When he's stronger, I'll ask Dr Graham for a psychological assessment. Still no idea where he's from?"
"No. He just says where he was found. There's no word from the police?"
"No-one of his name or description has been reported missing. The only people who've phoned asking about him are the Rangers! There's another thing, though, about his clothes: not the Wolf Man outfit, but the shirt - what was left of it, the trousers, shoes..."
"Yeah - they were kind of strange - home-made, old-fashioned," Verna remembered.
"The police think it may be a lead. They'll be making enquiries - tactfully - with traditionalist communities: Plain Quakers, Amish, Mennonites, and so on. They don't like to draw attention to themselves, so it's just possible..."
"A mighty long buggy-ride from the Preserve, though! There's none of them for miles in this county. And I don't imagine they'd take kindly to kids dressing up as werewolves!"
"...Not even a werewolf crossed with Little Red Riding Hood!" added Teresa, recalling Noah's preposterous fancy-dress.
Verna returned with another white-coated woman, who wore black tubes with a shiny silver disc around her neck and carried lots of papers of some kind. "Here's the doctor, just like I promised," she said.
Noah wailed in disappointment and covered his face with his hands, in the hope that this might make him invisible. He had expected Dr Crane, not this sharp-looking lady who must be some sort of Elder.
"Hey, hey!" Verna said, putting her arm around him. "Don't be frightened! This is Dr Morelli: she's been keeping an eye on you since your operation."
"You're not the doctor!" he said, peering warily between his fingers.
The woman smiled, and suddenly looked less stern. "I've been to see you nearly every day! You've been sleeping, that's why you don't remember."
"I want Dr Crane!" he said fretfully.
"Is that your doctor at home, Noah?" asked Verna.
He nodded.
"Well, we'll see if we can call him." (This could be another clue, the nurse thought, or else he's seen too much Frasier on TV somewhere...)
"- Meanwhile, you'll have to put up with me, won't you?" said Dr Morelli, sitting down at his bedside. "You've been very brave!"
"Not brave. I was asleep," he answered with simple honesty.
"We gave you medicines to keep you asleep, because you were injured, and it wouldn't have been good to feel it."
"It still hurts, though."
"I know, but you're getting better now."
She put two ends of the tubes in her ears, and placed the round, shiny end on his thin, bruised chest. It felt cold. "Now, Noah, just you take a big, deep breath... as deep as you can manage... Good boy..."
Then she moved the shiny piece around on to his back, below the dressings on his shoulder-blades, and listened again. He realised that it must be like the bigger set of tubes that Dr Crane used whenever you had a cough.
The doctor scribbled something in a notebook, then gave him a reassuring smile. "There! That wasn't too bad, was it? Your chest sounds much better. We'll soon have you out of here!"
"Where's 'here'?"
"The County Hospital."
"What's 'hospital'?"
"It's where people who are sick, or have had accidents, as you did, come to be cared for. So you've never been to hospital before?"
He shook his head. "No. Where are the trees?"
"What trees?"
He sniffed the disinfectant-scented air, and coughed. "Pine trees."
Verna tried not to laugh. "It's not trees, honey; it's floor-cleaner!"
He looked, and thought; then he thought some more, all the while twisting a lock of wavy brown hair between his delicate fingers. At length, he asked, frowning suspiciously: "Is this The Towns?"
"We're in a town," replied Verna. "Walkerville, Walker County."
The boy's eyes lit up, and he clapped his hands. "Mr Walker! Ivy!"
"Well, it's a pretty common name," explained Dr Morelli. "Many years ago, there were some real wealthy people called Walker who owned factories and land around here, so it was called after them. But they don't live here any more."
"Ivy Walker is my friend!" Noah went on, not really understanding what she had said. "Didn't mean to scare her but she ran away... Then she played the Stump Game and cheated, so I fell."
"So this was the girl you were playing with in the forest?" asked the doctor. She wrote something else in her notebook.
"Yes. She ran away. Maybe 'cause I hit Lucius before, I don't know..."
"Is he another friend you play games with?"
He nodded, then - as if changing his mind - shook his head, then nodded again.
"Ivy went for help," Verna explained. "That's how the Rangers found you. But I guess she didn't stick around in case she got into trouble."
"They don't like people going into the Preserve on account of the wild creatures," added Dr Morelli.
This, at least, was something Noah understood. "I know!" he said. "Creatures are strange! They chase me, but they never catch me. Then they take their skins off and change back to Elders."
"What did you say?"
"- Only I found a skin and put it on, but I shouldn't have, so I fell. Because I was doing a bad thing. And the cloak was the Bad Colour."
"Bad colour?"
"Yes!" He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. "Bad Colour. Like when it hurts. The Bad Colour comes out."
"Red, you mean?"
"Shhh! Don't say! Brings the Creatures. I thought it was funny, but I'm sorry now... truly sorry!" He began to sniff, his face and hands twitching.
"It's OK, honey!" said Verna, stroking his hair. "There are no creatures here!"
Dr Morelli was discomfited by his distress; then she had an idea. "Do you want me to show you a special picture?"
Noah nodded. She opened a large brown envelope among her papers, and drew out a translucent sheet.
It was like a magic lantern slide, or one of the glass plates that Mr Walker used on grand occasions to make pictures in his camera. But it was much bigger and made of thinner material. When she held it up in front of the light, Noah gasped in wonder. He could make out white shapes, resembling parts of an animal's skeleton (he had found those in the woods), but larger. A bit like the front of a Creature, he thought.
"Do you know what this is?"
He shook his head. "Dead animal?"
"It's a picture of you: it's inside you, here" - and she pointed to his chest.
"But how...?" Then he remembered the animals in the village, the raw soreness of his shoulders, the stitched hole in his side: "Did you take my skin off?"
"No: we used a camera with a special light that can shine through you. These bones broke when you fell, see?" She indicated three of the white lines on the picture. "One of them got pushed inward and hurt you badly - stopping you breathing properly. But the picture helped us know what to fix, to make you better."
He grinned. "Clever!"
"Isn't it? We'll need to take a few more special pictures, to find out how you're getting on: is that OK? "
"Will it hurt?"
"No. I'll arrange an appointment with the department. Meanwhile, you must get your strength back - rest, and have plenty to eat!"
"I am hungry!"
"That is a healthy sign, for sure!" said Verna.
And Dr Morelli, gathering up her folders and pictures and notebooks, smiled kindly.
Noah felt much better the next day, and was alert to all the new sights and experiences around him. He thought that taking the special pictures, which were called 'X-Rays', was very exciting, although the man working the camera did not know what to say when he asked whether it would show what he was thinking, if he stuck his head in it. But he liked the chair on wheels best. He rode in that along lots of corridor, because Nurse Verna said it was quite a long walk to the X-Ray Department, and would tire him out. (Hospital was easily as big as the whole village, he realised.) She got cross, though, on the way back, when he started to shriek because he saw a woman in a dressing gown of the Bad Colour. "Bad Colour! Creature!" he had screamed. Nurse Verna told Doctor, and she told him that it was not a nice game to play any more.
"It's not a game!" he insisted.
But she peered at him over the rim of her spectacles, and told him that it upset other people. Well, it would not be his fault if they did not listen, and the Creatures came to get them...
Soon, he was strong enough to walk about in his room and to the bathroom without getting tired, and Nurse showed him how everything worked. He did not understand how water could come out of the wall already hot, without anyone going to the pump with a bucket to fetch it, or boiling it in a kettle on a stove or in a pot over a fire. As for the water-closet... Hospital was a very mysterious place, all right, he thought, after a whole fascinating hour watching the water come and go as he repeatedly flushed it.
"Noah, will you come out of there? You have a visitor!" Verna announced.
He sloped out of the bathroom, tall and gaunt in his hospital pyjamas and a blue checked dressing gown so wide that it wrapped around him almost twice. (It had been donated to the hospital's charity box when its owner had died on another ward, but Verna had not told him that.) She helped him back to bed, so that the visitor could occupy the adjacent armchair.
The visitor was a dark-haired young man, perhaps about the same age as Lucius, but slighter in build. "Um... Hi!" he said, with a nervous smile. "Remember me? Or maybe not... I'm Kevin - Ranger Lupinski. I found you, when you fell. Your friend Ivy had told me someone was hurt..."
"So what do you say to him, Noah?" Verna prompted.
"Thank you, Mr Ranger Lupinski," he said in that sing-song tone small children adopt when they know they ought to thank someone, without really being sure why, and have been taught the words by rote.
"We - Jay and me - we were really worried about you. It's good to see you looking well! Are they taking care of you here?"
Noah did not reply. Small talk was not something he understood, and something was preying on his mind... "Have you seen Ivy?" he asked.
"No, no, I haven't, since... Hasn't she called you, or visited?"
"No," he said mournfully.
"Oh, that's too bad!" Kevin tried to sound flippant, but he was not a little perturbed. What kind of friend was this girl...? Theboy had learning disabilities, had been seriously injured: surely any decent friend would have wanted to find out how he was. And where were the parents, for God's sake?
"I know. I did a bad thing, but... If you see her..." Noah faltered.
"You want me to tell her you're OK?"
He nodded eagerly. "I want to go home. Tell her I want to go home. Tell my Mama and Papa..."
"They don't know you're here either?"
He shook his head. "No. Nobody knows. Nobody goes to The Towns. Not for years and years and years and years."
"So where are they, then?"
"Our village. Like I told Nurse and Doctor, but they couldn't find them."
Verna explained: "He's kind of confused about the name of the village he comes from, and the place you found him."
"Covington Woods?" Kevin said.
"- Is home," Noah interjected.
The nurse shrugged expressively.
"Look," said the young Ranger, "I'll see what I can do. Your friend Ivy knows where to find me. If she does contact the Ranger Station, I'll let you know. I promise! And I'll come and see you again!"
Over the next few days, Noah had more adventures, which he was determined to remember so that he could tell Mama, Papa, and Ivy when he got home. Meeting Dr Graham, a kindly Elder with grey hair, was even better than the special X-pictures. He played games with him, using picture-books and puzzles and words and numbers, and let him play with lots of toys, some of which made sounds and could move by themselves. (He did not know what all of them were meant to be, though, and it upset him that some were the Bad Colour.) Then there were the questions about school, which were much less fun...
"Have you been to school?"
"Sometimes."
"Do you like it there?"
He shook his head slowly. "Not much."
"Why not?"
"Teacher - Mr Walker - says I get things wrong... Don't like sitting still. And the other children... they call me names and laugh. Mama says I shouldn't listen, but I can't not hear. She tells me not to hit them because I'm bigger."
"Do you hit the other children often?"
He bowed his head in shame, and pulled at the cuffs of his dressing gown. "Only when they pick on me, call me 'stupid' and 'crazy'... Sometimes they all gather round, and there's more of them, and I get scared and cry... And they lock me in the Quiet Room."
"What's the Quiet Room, Noah?"
"It's just... Nothing. And I have to stay quiet. 'S horrid."
Dr Graham was disturbed by what he was hearing, but could not let Noah see that. "Do you have any friends?" he asked gently.
"Only Ivy. And Lucius. But they don't like me now, no. Mama said he wouldn't be letting her play with me any more, so I hit him. Ivy made me promise not to strike with sticks, so I didn't. It was Papa's tools... And still all the Bad Colour came out, then he went asleep, and I was sorry, but they put me in the Quiet Room and Ivy hit me... Then I put the Creature's skin on and ran away, and then - Then she ran away too. And I wanted us to play again, but... She cheated and I fell."
Later, in the staff canteen, Teresa discussed Noah's case with the psychologist. It was unusual in their experience, not for his injuries or even his mental difficulties, but for the fact that he seemed to have materialised out of nowhere. Where did he come from? Who was responsible for him? Where would he go when he was well? Someone had to think about these issues.
"I've recommended that he stay in a private ward," she said. "It's too soon for him to have to deal with questions from other patients. This game of 'good' and 'bad' colours, for starters: Verna says that when he passed a patient in a red dressing-gown along the corridor, he started shrieking his head off!"
"Yeah, you're right," Dave Graham answered. "He's not prepared for that kind of interaction. He knows almost nothing of the outside world. I've shown him picture-books and toys, and he's baffled by something as simple as a toy car. He recognises animals, but nothing mechanical. Yet how did he end up at that Preserve? It's miles from anywhere!"
She could not explain that, and did not even try. "So you agree he may be from an Amish or Plain Quaker type community, then?" she went on.
"Of a very isolated kind. Unless his family's simply kept him secluded because of his disability. Even in less traditionalist communities, there can still be stigma attached to having a child with any kind of mental handicap. By the sound of it, they just locked him in a room or cupboard when he misbehaved."
"Poor boy! About his disability: how severe...?"
"While he clearly has a learning difficulty, with some degree of attention deficit, he's alert and inquisitive enough," Dave said. "At present, it's difficult to assess how far his condition has been affected by his environment and lack of appropriate education. But from my conversations with him - the way he talks about 'Creatures' and transformations - he evidently can't separate this fantasy game, or whatever it was his friends involved him in, from reality."
"Some friends!" Teresa commented with sarcasm, and bit fiercely into her Danish pastry.
"Yeah, well... Kids like him are easy to take advantage of - rope into a game, have a laugh at their expense. He admits that he reacts to bullying - hits out. Seems to have knocked some other kid out recently, if I translated him right. But one sees this all the time: others think it's funny to provoke a reaction, so create a behavioural cycle."
"But what do we do with him?" she said. "How do we help him? Physically, he's making an excellent recovery, but we can't find his family or his home, so we've no data on his insurance status. Do you know what I'm afraid of?" she asked rhetorically. "If he has no place to go when he's discharged. He wouldn't last five minutes on the street!"
"I'll see if any strings can be pulled - any of my contacts in education and social services. So many cut-backs over the years, homes closing down... Trouble is, he's too old for most of the schools, and too young to be stuck in some nursing home full of Alzheimer's cases..." He stirred his coffee, thinking, thinking...
Bodies, not minds, were Teresa's field; her knowledge of the special educational needs schools in the county was sketchy. "You say 'most of' the schools. You mean there are a few ?"
"I might as well have said 'all'! Limebank takes older kids - teens through to early twenties, but... it's small - not many residential places."
"But worth a try?"
"Sure: I can give Ros Bannatyne a call, but... I wouldn't want to build up hopes..."
To be continued: Lucius is also on the mend; and Dave and Kevin are helpful again...