Summer Brother

by Jaap Robben

  “That’s enough, Bry,” Mum said softly, so as not to wake Lizzy.

  When I brushed the dinosaur below his eyes, Lucien began to sniff and flap his hands.

  “No teasing.” Mum pulled me away from the bed.

  “I wasn’t teasing. He likes it.” Mum made me let go of the dinosaur.

  “So,” she said after a while. Dad had already headed for the coffee machine. “You sit here and keep your brother company. Mum’s just popping out for a smoke.”

  I nodded.

  “And no arsing about, okay Bry?”

  “I won’t, honest!”

  Mum checked to make sure her cigarettes were in her shoulder bag.

  “Shall we?” Lizzy’s mother asked.

  “I could do with one, that’s for sure.”

  They usually sat in the smokers’ room, leaning in close across the corner of a table. One nodding as the other spoke, because they were always in agreement.

  They had only been gone a minute when Lucien began to flap around and call out in panic.

  “Hey, don’t worry. I’m here, okay?”

  “Nging-nging-nging.” He wobbled on his bum like a Weeble. “Shhhh, you’ll wake Lizzy if you keep on like that.” There was no calming him. “Mum will be back in a minute.” I stroked his cramped pinkie. “Look. Just like Mum does it.” Suddenly he grabbed my three middle fingers. I wanted to shout for help, but I knew a nurse would come and she would fetch Mum and Mum would have a go at me for not being able to leave me alone with Lucien for a minute. “Let go!” I tried to pry open his fingers with my free hand. “Stop!” With a quick twist of his arm he flipped me onto my back and pulled me onto the bed. I knocked the plastic lamp from his bedside cabinet. It fell to the floor and broke, his beaker clattering down behind it. Lizzy jerked awake and began to scream.

  “Don’t!” I shouted. “Let go of me!” He forced my fingers so far back that he almost tore them clean off my hand. A rumble came from deep inside his chest. “Stop, stop, please,” I begged. “I won’t ever touch you again.” Lizzy fumbled for a tuft of hair to tug, but only found a bald patch above her ear. Lucien’s mouth was at my cheek, his breath wet in my ear. For a second, I thought he was trying to say something. Then his teeth cut deep into my earlobe. I screamed. Wailed. Punched his face, his chest. I fought for all I was worth. “My ear!” Lucien held on so tight that I dragged him with me as I fell and slammed into the ribs of the radiator. Pain seared through my back. Lucien lay beside me on the floor, his neck at a strange angle. The floor was a frozen pond as he tried to scramble to his feet. He convulsed, twitched, kicked his legs. I crawled out of reach but couldn’t lean on my hand. My fingers felt heavy and slack, like they weren’t even mine. I hid under the table against the wall, stuck my pounding fingers in my mouth, blew on them. Pressed my other hand to my ear. Blood dripped onto my shirt. Lizzy’s mother stormed into the room first. “What’s the matter, love?” Then she spotted Lucien lying there and clasped a hand to her mouth. Mum was right behind her.

  “Oh, no! Oh, my darling.”

  Zoubida and a male nurse came running in. All I could see were their legs moving fast.

  “Darling, darling!” Mum tried to kneel down next to Lucien, but he kicked and snorted. Zoubida pushed Mum aside. “Out of the way, please.”

  “Oh, darling. Look at the state of you …”

  “Have you got him?” Zoubida asked.

  “Yes,” a man’s voice replied. “One, two, three.” They lifted Lucien back into bed.

  “Ow!” Zoubida shouted. “Got me by the wrist.”

  “Should we get someone else in?”

  “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  They called for a third nurse anyway. “Oh, darling, oh my,” Mum sobbed. Dad’s work boots clomped into the room. “What’s going on here?”

  “Lucien …” Mum cried.

  “For fu— Where’s Bry?”

  “I don’t know. He was supposed to be watching Lucien.”

  “I’m here.” But Lizzy began wailing like a siren. The brake on her bed was kicked loose and her mum bumped her into the doorpost and out into the corridor.

  “Where did all that blood come from?” Dad asked.

  “We’ll attend to that in a moment,” the man on the other side of the bed answered. A trolley was rolled in. “Sedation,” Zoubida commanded.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Giving him an injection to calm him.”

  “No!” Mum screamed. “No, no, no!”

  She screamed in Dad’s face as if he hadn’t heard. “They’re going to knock him out.”

  Zoubida had a different voice for everyone in the room. “Perhaps it would be better if you stepped into the hall for a minute,” she said calmly.

  “I! Do! Not! Want! This!”

  “It’s standard procedure,” Zoubida said.

  “You do this all the time? Whenever our backs are turned?”

  “Easy now,” Dad ventured.

  “Do something, Maurice. They can’t abuse my boy like this.”

  “We are not abusing your son in the slightest. This is purely to calm him down. For his own good.”

  “No, no, no!” Mum screamed. Dad steered her out of the room. The door slammed shut behind them.

  I crept out from under the table, still unable to lean on my right hand. Then I saw Lucien. His wrists and his legs were strapped to the bed, held tight with velcro. He was struggling and twisting like a fish that has to flap back into the water or die on dry land. A little beard of blood ringed his mouth.

  A syringe was pricked into the lid of a little bottle, the plastic tube sucked itself full and the needle was pulled out. The nurse held it in the air and tapped three times with her finger. Liquid shot from the tip. Lucien’s face turned in my direction, but his eyes rolled back in his head. No sound came out of him when the needle pierced his skin. “Stop!” I cried. “You can’t do that!” Two of the three backs turned to face me. “Where did you spring from, all of a sudden?” Zoubida picked me up and carried me out into the corridor, where my parents were standing. “And now this …” I heard Mum say, and felt her hand brush my cheek. “What happened to you?” I heard her asking questions. Dad tried to take me from Zoubida’s arms, but she said she could manage and carried me into a side room. Mum and Dad followed but stayed outside.

  “What happened?” Zoubida asked.

  “I was trying to calm Lucien down,” I said. “After Mum left, he started shouting.”

  Zoubida walked over to the wash basin, squirted soap on her palms, let it foam all the way up to her elbows, then rinsed it off under the tap. “Where does it hurt?”

  “My back. And he grabbed my hand.” I held up my throbbing fingers, but you couldn’t see from the outside how much they hurt.

  “And your ear?” Zoubida reached for a metal cabinet. The front rolled open like a garage door. She took out an orange case, laid it on the desk, flipped the lid. From what looked like a box of tissues, she pulled two rubber gloves, flapped them about a bit, and pulled them on, letting go of the wrist with a thwack.

  “Now, let’s see …” She rolled a stool toward me and sat down on it. “That doesn’t look so good,” she mumbled in my ear. “Where’s your earring?”

  “My earring!”

  “It’s been pulled out.” In a flash, the pain got much worse. Zoubida stood up and went to fetch my parents. “You’ll have to take this little guy to Accident and Emergency.”

  “Accident and Emergency?” Dad asked, examining the side of my head. “For a cut in his ear?”

  “He’ll need stitches to be on the safe side.”

  “Can’t he get by with a dovetail?”

  “I think the wound is too big for that.”

  “It hurts,” I sobbed. “Where’s my earring?”

  “That’ll cost us.�
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  “Your insurance will cover it,” Zoubida said.

  “Yeah, only …” Dad began. “We’re kind of between policies for our Brian here.”

  “Oh,” Zoubida said.

  “But if it really needs doing …”

  Zoubida took another look at my ear. “Do you want me to see what I can do?”

  “You sure you know how?” Mum snapped.

  “I’ve done it all too often,” Zoubida answered, as if she was letting us in on a secret. “We can’t go running to A&E every time a resident has an accident. I should be able to patch this up neatly enough.”

  Mum and Dad seemed to think it was a good idea.

  “Fine. If all goes well, you won’t see a thing once it’s healed.”

  “Oh God,” Mum said as Zoubida ripped open a plastic wrapper and took out a curved needle.

  “Perhaps it’s best if you wait outside.”

  “I’m staying right where I am!” Mum bit back.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it,” Zoubida said.

  “I’ll be outside with your mum, Bry.” My father’s hand on my shoulder. “Your ear will soon be good as new.”

  Mum continued to protest but I could hear in her voice that she wanted to be convinced. “Mum will be out in the hall,” she said, out of nowhere.

  The room went quiet. Only the low drone of Dad’s voice through the door, and Mum’s teary answers coming thick and fast. Zoubida gave me a shot to numb the pain. “Ow!” It felt like a wasp sting.

  “That will take a minute to kick in. Shall I take a look at these in the meantime?” Her rubber fingers felt my own. “Are they throbbing? Tingling?”

  “Can you tell just by touching the outsides?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “Try moving them.” She pulled each finger in turn, then gently bent all the joints in my hand. I yelped as quietly as I could so Mum wouldn’t come charging back in. “Nothing broken,” she concluded. “Just badly bruised.”

  “Bruised?”

  Maybe I should have yelped louder.

  Zoubida smeared ointment on my fingers, as thick as if I’d stuck them in the jar. Once they were bandaged, she told me I had to hold my hand up when I walked. I didn’t feel the stitches go in at all. My bandaged ear made me feel deaf but I was pleased now everyone could see something bad had happened to me.

  I thought it had gone quiet in the corridor because Mum had let Dad comfort her. But the two bucket chairs by the door were empty. “Do you know where they went?”

  “Come with me.” Zoubida let me walk ahead of her as she guided me through the corridors. “Keep your hand up, remember.”

  “We don’t have to go past Lucien’s room, do we?”

  “No, we don’t.” We stopped outside a grey door in a corridor I had never been down before. Zoubida let me knock.

  “Then you shouldn’t be sending interns to take care of him,” I heard Mum say as we walked through the door.

  “That is not the case,” said a woman with black spiky hair who was sitting at the other side of a big desk. It was the nurse who had given Lucien the injection.

  “Oh, my little lamb.” I reached out to Mum, but she kept me at arm’s length first to take a look at my ear. Then she tried to peek under the edge of the plaster. I gave a little moan when she touched it, though I couldn’t feel anything much because of the anaesthetic.

  “I managed to stitch it up nice and neat,” Zoubida said proudly. Mum nodded, Dad thanked her. “It’s just a matter of keeping it clean for the next few days. A cotton bud and a drop of Betadine will do the trick. And a fresh plaster every day. In two weeks’ time you can make a doctor’s appointment to have the stiches removed.”

  Dad took a look under the plaster too, as if he was peering into a long, dark tunnel.

  “Ah, could’ve been worse,” Mum sighed, and pulled me to her breasts.

  “Ow … My back,” I groaned. She took a quick look under my shirt and spread her legs so that I could stand between them.

  “See you next visit, Brian.”

  I waved Zoubida goodbye.

  “All right then,” said the woman across the desk. “Shall we continue this conversation with just the three of us?”

  “Brian stays right here,” Mum said. “He can tell us what happened.”

  “Fair enough,” the woman said. “Okay, as I explained, this is not the first incident we’ve had.”

  “These are my boys. They like to play a little rough and sometimes accidents happen. Isn’t that right, Brian?” She nodded so that I would nod too.

  “I was only trying to stroke him.”

  “Brian will say sorry to Lucien in a little while and, as far as I’m concerned, that will be the end of it.”

  “Why do I have to say sorry?”

  Mum acted like she didn’t hear.

  “Mrs. Chevalier, you are well aware that this is not an isolated occurrence.”

  “Those interns of yours,” Mum interrupted, “think they’re Florence bloody Nightingale, but they have no idea how to handle my boy.”

  “Our interns only fulfil a supporting role and are supervised by a member of staff at all times. And besides …” The spiky-haired woman loosened the buttons on her cuff and rolled her sleeve up to the elbow. “We also need to discuss this.” It looked as if a muscle was hanging off the bone. “This is what Lucien did last Tuesday, when we were bathing him.” Four bloody crusts in a patch of greenish yellow. “And here. An earlier incident.” Another patch, closer to her elbow, mostly yellow, topped by a little round scab. “I have worked here for twenty-three years, Mrs. Chevalier. I don’t believe you can class me as an intern.” Mum zipped her bag open, shut, then open again.

  “And who says it was Lucien who bit you, and not one of the others?”

  “I say.” The spiky-haired woman did not blink or take her eyes off Mum’s face.

  “If you knew how to handle my son, things like this wouldn’t happen.”

  “We are used to the occasional snap or nip from Lucien, but in recent weeks he has been biting as hard as he can. It’s happening more often, to say nothing of the harm he can do with his hands. In years to come, his strength will only increase. A solution is called for and, in our view, he needs medication. It’s an option we’ve discussed in the past; one you have refused to consider. But letting this go on until something even more serious occurs is a risk we cannot take. For the sake of his fellow residents,” she counted on her fingers. “Our staff. And, of course, Lucien himself.”

  Mum rummaged in her bag. All three of us looked to see what was coming. A hanky. She clenched it in her fist as she zipped up her bag again.

  “And so …?” Dad asked, his lips so tight and narrow that only small words could fit through.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your solution?”

  “No drugs,” Mum said, softly but stiffly. “At home he was always a sweet, calm boy.”

  “I am happy to believe that,” said the woman. “But we have to base our conclusions on how he is functioning in this environment.”

  “You heard what I have to say,” Mum said.

  “There are very good sedatives available. Medicines that can also help improve Lucien’s quality of life on a daily basis. That can ensure his safety. And the safety of our other residents.”

  “No,” Mum said, as if she had taken a while to think it over. It came with a short, sharp shake of her head.

  “Some parents prefer physical restraint to medicine, but that is not something we recommend. Many of the residents are afraid of Lucien at mealtimes, so we already sit him at a separate table most days. He currently shares a room with Lizzy, but she is a vulnerable young girl. In one instance he almost succeeded in attacking her.”

  “Almost …” Mum repeated.

  “And today he did succeed.
” The woman looked at me.

  “That was just my boys and their rough and tumble.”

  “I was only trying to stroke him.”

  “Bry!” Her voice like the tug of a leash.

  “Honest!” I shouted indignantly. “I was trying to calm him down. The same way you do.”

  The spiky-haired woman gave a condescending smile. “And what are your thoughts on the situation?” she asked Dad.

  “God, well, uh …” He rubbed the side of his nose. “It’s her decision. But if it was up to me …” He raised his hands. “There’s a reason we brought Lucien here. On days when I wasn’t home, there were plenty of times when she couldn’t handle him either.” Mum squeezed the blood from her knuckles.

  “Our proposal,” the woman on the other side of the desk said, “is first to see how Lucien responds to the medicine, then step it up to a dosage that has the desired effect.”

  “Never!” Mum leapt to her feet. “You will do nothing of the kind. He’s my boy!”

  “We are doing everything within our capabilities to take care of your son. I understand that this is a complex situation. It’s the same for every parent.”

  “No, it isn’t!” You couldn’t hear it in her voice but Mum had started to cry. “Lucien’s coming home with us today. And he will never set foot in this place again.”

  “I understand that you are upset, Mrs. Chevalier. But you cannot simply remove Lucien from our care.”

  “He’s my son.” Mum spat out her words. “I decide what happens to him.”

  “Of course you do. Which is why we are having this conversation.” The woman signalled to Dad. “Mr. Chevalier?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Dad said, and spread his arms as if Mum was a sheet of glass that could crash to the floor at any minute. “Easy now, Milou.” Mum swatted his hands away. “Loulou!” Dad pleaded.

  “It’s your fault Lucien is in this place.” She might have meant both of us, but she only looked at me. “And now this.” Her breasts were trembling with anger. She walked out, slamming the door so hard that the filing cabinets squeaked.