Taking it Back

“Let’s go for a walk.”

The words tumble out of my mouth. I’ve said them a thousand times, but this time it’s different. I am different. Everything is different and the world will never be the same again.

He looks at me and time stands still.

I wonder what is going through that mind of his. 

There was a time, when he was small and the world turned in a different direction, it wasn’t about his thoughts. We explored together and I delighted in the unfolding mystery that was him. We were in the moment and he was a gift that made everything work. He made me whole when I hadn’t realised how fractured I had become.

My world.

My son.

The way I was with him as a boy was blasphemy. I worshipped the ground he stood upon. Gazing upon his round, innocent and joyous face was to behold perfection. My heresy brought us both down.

I could never let go of that. The image of his perfection. I never wanted that to end. I held onto an impossible dream and I never let go.

The accident hit me hard. 

It was my fault. 

An entire family amassed to spell that out to me, and they did so mercilessly and without end. They were relentless in their pursuit of my punishment, as though they could make a better job of the living hell I had constructed for myself. I already knew. I was the one with the passion for motorbikes. I was the one that sat him on the tank of my sportsbike, when he was tiny, and let him play there whilst his mother stared balefully at my recklessness. All she saw was danger, whereas I saw life and joy.

It was a silly accident really. Nothing grand or spectacular. He wasn’t going fast. One minute he was travelling along on two wheels, the next the ‘bike folded up from underneath him. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did. No one at fault. No one to blame. Just one of those things.

These things happen.

There wasn’t a mark on him. He was still my beautiful boy. Lying there peaceful and helpless. Once again, he needed me, but that need was a travesty and no passing phase. There was no happy ending to be had here.

I brought him home as soon as I could. My fault. My responsibility. My burden. My son.

Taking care of him was everything. His care filled my days, my nights and my life. This was my life. He was my life, only he wasn’t him anymore, and so I ceased being me.

I looked at that face of his and only when he was asleep did I see the echo of what he had once been and the promise of who he should have become.

That promise. It was that promise that made me do what I did. I did it because I had to. I did it for him.

Only, I did it for me.

I did it to escape from the life I no longer wanted or valued. I did it because I wanted him to be something. Anything was better than what he had become. I did it because I could. I did it because I was at my wits end and I had nowhere left to go. My perfect boy was gone and instead I had a constant reminder of what could have been and of how badly I had failed him. 

I wanted to die, only he anchored me to this world.

He anchored me to a world I wanted to depart from for five long years. Five years wasn’t an eternity, I knew that. It was the certainty of a lifetime living this existence that crushed my soul and made me want to cease living.

The punchline of the joke is that all I did was delay the inevitable. I tried to cheat fate and I thought no one would notice. That I could get away with something that nobody else could.

I broke the law. Not just some stuffy law of the land. I broke God’s law and I am damned. But then, I was damned from the moment that ‘bike folded from under my only child and threw him callously to the ground like some petulantly discarded ragdoll.

All it took was a simple implant and a series of injections.

So simple and so easy was this terrible capitulation. 

There was no noticeable difference in that first week. I sat there and stared at my boy, willing him to come back to me. Wanting to see a sign. Needing him to open his eyes and smile at me the way he always did. That was what I wanted. That was all I wanted.

That smile.

The smile he bestowed upon me. The one that lit up my entire world and gave me the energy and the will to go out into the wider world and smash it. To live. For him, and only him.

A whole week passed with my seldom leaving his side. I could not. I dared not miss that magical moment that heralded his return. 

He was coming back. I could feel that with a certainty that would not be denied. I had sailed across the Styx and returned with my boy. His soul was in there. Even now there was a tiny piece of technology calling out to each and every bit of my son and learning who and what he was and understanding what it was to be him. Nanobots were travelling his body in a voyage of discovery, communicating with his enhanced brain. Putting him back together. Fixing him. 

Making him better.

It wasn’t quite a week. It felt much, much longer.

On the sixth day he moved. The faintest ghost of a smile passed fleetingly across his face and then the index finger on his right hand bent once. Twice. A third time. It were as though it was beckoning me. Come here. Come and see. Your son is returning to you.

The next day nothing happened. But I knew he was there. That it was only a matter of time. He was coming back and everything would be right in the world again.

In the following week, his progress was remarkable. He didn’t speak. I so wanted him to speak, but then you have to be careful what you wish for.

I was so happy as he began to move and when he sat up, well I could not contain myself. I had some sort of ecstatic breakdown. I was possessed with the spirit of happiness. I was jubilant. I danced. I sang. I was all over the place.

Then I hugged my son for all I was worth. I took him in my arms and I held onto him and I never wanted to let him go.

He did not hug me back. 

Despite my joy, I did not tell a soul. I knew I had stepped over a line and I had to keep this under wraps. This was not something I could share. I had no idea how I could reintroduce my son into the world. I thought of miracles. This was a modern day miracle. The problem was that in this modern era there was no belief that could make this miracle work. There would only be questions and questions and a despicable reluctance to accept him in the world again. As I saw the reality of his existence, I saw the stark reality of his post-accident existence. He had been written off. He had been reduced to a hidden matter of record, dying a protracted death and taking me along for the ride.

In the third week he learned to walk. I say in the third week as though it took him a week to learn to walk. I helped him to his feet. He walked a couple of faltering steps, stumbled and then fell. He waved me away as I tried to help him up. I wanted to help him up. That wave of his. The dismissal. That crushed me, but I kept that from him. I did not want to be selfish. This was about him, not me.

It took three more attempts and he had it.

“Wow!” I said quietly, “that was really quite something. How you feeling? Good?”

He nodded.

From the outset he understood me. He took everything in with a keen eye and an even keener interest. His silence was unnerving. He consumed everything around him and he used it. Hoovering up all the stimuli, but giving nothing in return. He was holding back and I became increasingly frustrated at him for this. 

I had done this for him, and yet he was not talking to me. I needed that. I needed him.

Things changed once he could walk.

I would hear him in the dead of night, moving around in the house. After the years of his immobility, there was something strange about hearing sounds of life downstairs. I would ask him about it. Was he OK? Was he hungry? All he ever did was shake his head. Denying me again and again.

Two weeks later, he spoke. For all of my anticipation and want, I wish that he hadn’t. That was when I knew I had made a mistake.

“I…” he said.

The sound of his voice sent a thrill of electricity through me. My entire body jerked and then I cried. I cried and I cried. The release of that moment frightened me. I don’t remember how I ended up on the floor. I just let go. I’d been holding it together for so long and then I wasn’t anymore and it all came out.

“Water?” 

He was stood over me. I looked up at that man’s body, and nearly laughed at the ridiculousness of its toddler pose and that single worded demand.

“Sure,” I said as I found my feet and padded to the kitchen to fetch him a glass of water.

“Better,” he said. 

His voice certainly sounded better, but it wasn’t his voice. I’d tried to prepare for that. That there would be some differences. This difference left a gaping hole though and in that hole was so much pain and uncertainty. Still, this was progress and I couldn’t be selfish. I had to focus on what I was being given, not upon what I lacked. Something was better than nothing. 

I barely registered the speed with which his language accelerated. Small children are fascinating when they hit that phase of language growth. That is a magical age and yet we treat it like it’s no big deal. I suppose that creates normality for the child, but we miss so much joy in our existence. We miss out on so much.

He went from single word communication to the real deal in the space of a day. 

It was frightening.

That night. That last night. I lay awake. I could not sleep. I dared not sleep. I lay there hoping that he would not leave the house. I didn’t know what I would do if he left the house. I also didn’t know what I would do if he came up here, to my bedroom.

I had no clue what to do about any of it.

I lay there and listened and as I did, I realised that he did not sleep. He probably didn’t need to sleep. Or did he? As I thought about it, I understood that it was entirely plausible that he had overlooked his body’s need for sleep. A human cannot go without sleep very long before they become unstable. Sleep is vital in order for a person to survive. 

The other part of him did not need sleep and now it was interfaced with something that was becoming unstable and descending into madness.

And this was what all of this was.

Madness.

I had dreamt of the impossible and that impossibility had eluded me. I had dared to believe that I could play at being a god. I created a life where there had been none. Not as it was anyway. 

I found myself smiling at the ceiling and enjoying that smile for the simple thing that it was. I smiled and I acknowledged the gift that I had been afforded as I had lived the delusion of the last few weeks.

Hope.

I had dared to hope and for a while, I had been happy again, and in my happiness I had remembered my boy as he was. I took the time to remember my son as he had been and somewhere in those moments I had finished with my grief.

I had let go.

Now I knew what it was that I had to do.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I said to him after breakfast.

He looked at me. Studying me. Always studying me. Those eyes of his held no warmth. The lack of warmth rendered them glass. Twin cameras and nothing more.

Eventually he nodded, “yes, let’s go for a walk, father.”

Father, not Dad. He’d called me Daddy for such a long time and I’d called him Red. He was my little Robin Red Breast. He would always be my Red.

This was our first foray out into the world. I felt heavy as I got ready. Heavy and unfathomably sad. I put a brave face on though, and I banked on him knowing everything, but not fully understanding it all.

“Where shall we walk, father?” he said in that voice of his.

“Oh,” I said, “the usual, I think.”

“OK,” he said in that voice.

That voice was flat and emotionless. He was him, but he wasn’t. He was an approximation of my son, but without the emotion. A clever fake. I didn’t think he had a soul. I hadn’t brought him back over the Styx after all, instead I had brought an imposter.

I may have brought the devil himself into this world.

I had to know though. I couldn’t do what was needed without knowing. I was still me after all. I was more me than I had been in over five years. I’d remembered my son, and this thing walking at my side was not him. What was left of my son resided in me and it was that which gave me the strength that I now needed.

“Do you remember this place when you were five years old?” I asked him.

Three miles into our walk, we had come to a halt in the woods. The day was fresh and clear and the dappled sunlight played through the leaves and branches above and around us. There was something about the rays of light shining through the darkness of the woods that uplifted me and as I asked him about that day so, so many years ago I could see that little boy, my little boy, the delight on his face as he saw the tree before us. Clambering up in his wellies that were too big for him. Making his way along the branch that was made for him to sit on. Gleaming at me as he sat there, wearing his red jumper and swinging his legs back and forth in glee.

“Daddy! I did it!”

I froze.

Those were the words that he had said as a boy, but they were alien coming from the thing that he had become.

I turned to the monster I had created.

“Do you remember how it felt back then? To climb that tree?” I asked it.

“Felt,” it said flatly as it processed this concept and came up blank.

If I had ever had an ounce of doubt, the last of those grains of doubt were slipping from me, but still I pressed on, “he had the most beautiful smile, you know. I lived for that smile. He reminded me what it was to be good, how important it was to be good in this world.”

It listened to me intently and I imagined my words being processed. Being used.

“Can you smile for me now, Red?” I asked him earnestly, “if there really is anything of you left in there, find that smile of yours.” I took both his hands in mine and squeezed, “Please, that’s all I ever wanted from you was that smile of yours, do it for me, one last time.”

That smile would make all the difference. All the difference in the world. 

I didn’t think it would find it within itself to smile. I didn’t think the smile was there. Not anymore. The smile had been lost as soon as the wheels came away from the tarmac. That was when my son left this place. Only I could see him still, laughing and giggling on that bough and lighting the world up. That was all I ever needed and I had it still. Always had.

Only one of us would walk out of these woods. 

I never thought this outcome was certain, but maybe I was kidding myself one last time. That was why I had come here, to this place, to make my peace, one way or the other.