Solutions

We're on our way to him. My wife had explained me detailed, what the doctor had said to them before we got into the car. I'm impressed by her ability to remember so much information. My wife had tried to make me stay at home. Maybe it would have been the best solution. But I can't sit at home, while my son's health is in jeopardy. It's a father's job to be there for his sons in such situations. I have been there for Seth. I need to be there for him too. My wife knocks at the door and slowly opens it. In case Ryan's asleep again, we don't want to wake him. Well, he's asleep. Ryan doesn't used to sleep that much, so when he does it means he must feel miserable. But after the marathon that lay behind and the one that lay head from him, it was no wonder that he felt like that. We enter the room.

"Hey sweetie." My wife goes to him and gently wakes him.

"mmm" Is again the only response we receive. He slowly wakes up.

"Hey kid, how are you?" I ask him. Again he only shrugs his shoulders.

"Did you think about what the doctor told us?" My wife sits down on the edge of the bed next to him. I feel the urge to follow suit. But I can't. Ryan wouldn't allow me.

"Never stopped." He answers. In his eyes I see the desperation. Of course he feels uncomfortable about that. But this is no reason to lose hope. I should stop thinking of him as an adult. He's still a kid. Of course he can't handle this. Of course he loses hope over something like this.

"And did you come to a conclusion?" I ask him. My wife is right. His opinion should be our concern. He knows best what he wants. On the other hand, he's a kid. Kids never know what they want. The one second it's ice cream the next one it's a burger. I watch him. He doesn't look at us. When does he do so? Or better I more often see him looking at my wife, than at me. That hurts, but my wife is right. Between him and me is a never ending tension. As I'm the parent it's my job to ease off the tension, but for doing so I should know, what causes it. Right, I know what's causing it.

"Ryan, would you like to tell us?" My wife asks on. Discomfort and anxiety is written all over his face.

"I…I…don't like the idea of surgery much." He mumbles. In the first second I think I've heard wrong. The next one I realize what he had said and the following second the ball of rage in my stomach is once again close to explode.

"Ryan! You can't be serious." I call out. Again I don't notice that I'm intimidating him by my dominant way handling things when I think it's the wrong way that they are handled.

"I…am…serious…sorry." He whispers. I don't realize my wife's glance. I don't realize the fear that's written between his spoken lines. I don't see that he's still a child that can't make such a decision. I again just don't think about what I'm doing or saying, just because I'm overtaxed with him.

"You know what this means or? Six to eight weeks bed only. And we can take care of you then or what?" I look at him and his expression is obvious. But I'm a dyslexic when it comes to read the boy.

"I didn't even ask you to!" He snaps back.

"And what do you wanna do? You won't be able to do anything. There's nobody else." It's questionable whether he or I hit puberty.

"Why do you care? It's not like I'm not used to be alone. It never had been different!" He yells at me. After this sentence my alarm bells should shrill, but I'm too frustrated to hear them.

"And whose fault is it?" I yell back.

"Sanford!" I hear my wife say. She painfully grabs my arm and forces me out of the room.

"What the hell had gotten into you? Haven't you seen how afraid he is, not having the ability to make such a decision?" Her voice is steely. Only now, where my head recapitulates the scene, I'm aware of my mistake.

"I'm…sorry…I…I just don't want him to give up already." I try to explain myself, but that's nothing but a lame excuse.

"And you will have no idea what the tension between you and him causes? Hell, Sandy he's a child. He can't make this decision. The only difference between him and Seth is that we can make all unpopular decision when it comes to him. And believe me, Ryan doesn't wish for anything more right now, than that someone is making this decision for him." I could have seen this, if I haven't been blind.

"You were talking about patience, before we took him in and now? You lose composure at the smallest occasion. This has to stop otherwise I'm not letting you even near to him anymore."

"Kirsten listen, the judge will send someone to Ryan for an expert opinion considering his maturity. Depending on how this turns out, the judge will decide whether Ryan's opinion has an influence in the final decision or not. And we both know how mature the boy is. It easily can be that the judge comes to the conclusion that Ryan is old enough to make such decision on his own. What am I talking about? He will come to this conclusion and then?" I try to make her see the problem. The boy wasn't able to decide this. But if this expert comes here and Ryan builds up is brick wall of pure rationality, it's impossible that this someone thinks of him as a kid. Damn it, we still have problems to see him that way. That's what it makes so damn difficult to handle him. In the first moment you think he's mature enough to know what he's doing and later you realize that he wasn't – that he still was only a kid that is overtaxed with decisions like these.

"Maybe, but that doesn't justify your outburst. Know what? You go home and try to find a solution for the guardianship court and I go comforting him a little. That's what he needs." And with these words she leaves me standing in the middle of the hallway. I'm such an idiot. I feel how wrong my behaviour is. Why can't I stop it? I'm an adult. I should be able to control myself. On the other hand, the boy doesn't talk much, but if he does, his words owe a lot of force. And then we're faced with the fact that we can't do anything in time, only because nobody told us how serious his leg injury really was …is. Damn it, why does everything have to go wrong when it comes to the boy? Why? I turn around, ready to leave. What to do? I have no idea no, but I will when I'm home.

"Sandy, wait!" I hear my wife's voice. She looks disappointed. I wait.

"What's wrong?" I ask her. I thought at least she was able to get through to him.

"He asked me to leave him alone. Well done." She's angry…no pissed matches much better.

"I'm sorry."

"This doesn't lead to anything." She answers. We head for the car and then drive home in silence. When I mess it up, then I mess it up properly.

When we arrive, we go to the kitchen. My wife pours two mugs of coffee.

"And what now? The doctor said we need to decide until the end of this week if we want to have a good result." She starts from new.

"Hey, how's Ryan?" Our son steps into the kitchen. He's still angry with us, because we don't allow him to visit his friend.

"Not good. He needs surgery for his leg." My wife replies.

"Oh…that's not good." He says and pours himself a mug of coffee. "But, with sixteen …is he allowed to make this decision?" He hits the nail's head.

"No and that's a little problem. We can't make this decision either thus the guardianship court has to make this decision." My wife explains him.

"But why is that a problem? I mean they won't say no to the surgery or?"

"That's not to be said. There's a higher risk related to the anaesthesia and Ryan himself isn't really confident with this idea and this might be important for the judge who has to decide about this." I tell him.

"That's crap…I mean bad luck. But…hey wait…uh…I don't know whether you can imagine this or if it's possible to you, but just in case, you should adopt him. Then you would be allowed to make this decision or? I mean legally it means you have the full parental responsibility, or?" I look at my wife. Of course we have thought about this after his father died. But what will he say? Will he like this idea?

"C'mon, he won't be able to say to you that you aren't his parents, because then you are." He looks as if he would like this idea.

"You're right Seth, but I don't think Ryan's ready for this." My wife says.

"But this is an emergency. You don't need to tell him. Just do it and let it slip one day at the dinner table. I promise that's the best way to cover that you've done something without permission." Without permission? I look at me son. "Hey, you can't say I don't tell you everything." He says and then fast disappears in his room again.

"He's right, you know that." I say to my wife, who sits down at the kitchen table.

"Yes, but I also know that our relationship to him, might suffer under this. It's already strained." Her concerns are reasonable.

We go to bed with a lot on our mind. I can't sleep. I can't forget what I've said to him and after thinking about it, it really hurts. I never thought I was able to say things like that. But I am. It would be a natural reaction if he says no to our idea. The alarm clock shrills. I haven't gotten one second of sleep. I slowly get up, take a shower and prepare breakfast. We want to give it another try this morning. If we really want to adopt him, we need to decide this fast. Honestly, I'm not sure, whether this was the faster and better solution, but it was making me feel as if not every hope was lost by now.

We enter his room. Again he's asleep. He looks worn out. I'd liked to know what went on in his head after what I've said, but he'll never tell me. My wife doesn't wake him up this time. We wait until he's ready. It takes quite a while. My wife was right, he's really exhausted. It had been a bad accident with bad consequences.

"Hey baby." My wife is the first one, noticing the boy is waking up. She rushes to his bed and gently strokes his cheek. She already behaves as if she was his mother. Well, emotionally she is. Only the legal part is missing.

"Hey." He says.

"You better today?" She asks him. He shakes his head. Non verbal communication is his language since the accident.

"Listen honey, Sandy and Seth and I were thinking about something. We only want to know what you think about this idea." He nods. "We were thinking about an adoption…I mean your adoption…we adopt you…. What do you think?"

"Why would you do so?" And exactly this sentence can explain, why I think this boy needs more help than we can offer him.

"Are you serious? Ryan, we care about you and we want you to be our legal son." She tries to explain him.

"But this means that there's no court doing your job. So better think about this carefully." He replies. His eyes, his voice like ice. I can't believe that he's as cold as he pretends to be. I can't believe that he doesn't feel anything about this.

"Ryan, about what is this? Is it about what Sandy had said yesterday?"

"Who cares?" We're meeting a thick wall armoured concrete.

"We care."

"But you're doing enough and it's already too much. I don't want to be more a burden than necessary."

"Ryan, can you just forget about what I've said. It was stupid and I didn't think about what I was saying – I didn't do so lately. This here is only about you." I step in now, but his gestures tell me that we can't win at this front, not today.

"Please, just leave me." He answers. He doesn't want to be bothered by anything that can rip any kind of emotion out of him. I know why he ran and this reason is the same, telling him to reject us now. He doesn't want us to get too close, to touch any emotions.

"Ryan, sweetie, you can't do this alone. You'll need someone who's there for you."

"But it won't be you and nevertheless I'm used to do be alone." I never thought that things I was saying to him, would hit him that hard. But they did. They hit him harder than I ever thought they would. I never intended to hurt him. But I did. I failed him. I'm failing him every single day.

"Can't you give us a chance?" My wife asks. She's hurt by his reaction. I can see it in her eyes. But I don't dare to say anything. It would only lead to a new fight.

"It won't work. It…already doesn't work yet." He admits whispering and I can hear the sadness in his voice – the disappointment. After a while of silence we decide it's time to leave. Fact: we didn't reach anything. Solution? Not in sight. Or? Maybe I'll have to make some phone calls again, meet his social worker. Maybe we still can reach something, although I don't own this hope anymore. There's only this last straw we can hold on. One straw. If this leads to nothing, we have lost everything: Ryan, his health, our family and our own son. There's so much depending on this that I can't allow myself to fail. I have to win this fight. I have to find a solution. And I will, for my wife, for our own son, and for our other son.