Voices mumbled over my head and it seemed like days, months before any of it made any sense. Heat filled my skin, then cold. Water dripping, rolling one way and then another. Sunshine and night sky where moonlight bathed me in silver.
Smells of food. Blandness in my mouth. Harsh scrubs against my skin, bodies leaning over me. Women’s voices. Here a word that made sense. Some left me puzzled.
Disposable. Delayed development. Severely retarded. No comprehension.
Found wandering the streets of London. Cheapside.
No more than…six, maybe seven.
Been here nearly five years. No significant change in neurological status.
Sweet natured child. Never….tantrums.
Always smiling. But sad. Beautiful lavender eyes, pretty boy.
Sunshine on my face. I opened my eyes in a big room with other children, staring, sitting, rocking on the floor on mats with adults dressed in green pants and tops who moved amongst us in a harried fashion.
Giant windows over heat registers let in a multitude of sunlit rays, big puffy marshmallow clouds adrift in it. I yawned; I was fair knackered, rubbed my eyes and that brought my arm into view. I was wearing what the adults wore only mine were faded as if they had seen many types of washing.
I was seated on the floor with my knees tucked under me, my hands at my side and there was a plastic band on my right wrist. I played with it, rolling it around until the little scratches on it made sense. Aidan. Smyth. Age 10. Cauc. Blood type AB+. DOB UNK. Rel. UNK. DX. Severe mental delayed development.
Some of it I understood and the rest I puzzled over. I knew my name was Aidan but not much else. I remembered a boy named Ned and dying, the light and then nothing but fragments of thoughts.
I stood up and wobbled. My balance was off, as if I had forgotten how to stand or even walk. I cleared my throat, said hullo a few times to make sure my voice was working and approached one of the busy adults. I tugged on his pants leg until he swiveled around, exasperated. His name was Peter Lithgow, R.N.; I saw it on his name-tag.
“Where am I?” I asked and his eyes grew wide and astonished. He grabbed my arms and held me with a grip hard enough to bruise.
“Oww,” I complained. “You’re hurting me!”
He rolled my wrist and read the tag on it. “You’re Aidan Smyth.”
“My name is Aidan. I don’t remember my last name.” I was astonished that my words came out making sense; they had a strange slur to them as if I hadn’t spoken in some time.
“Holy bloody King George,” he said and dragged me towards a door with a window in it. Unlocking the knob, we went through to emerge in a long corridor with overhead lights and other doors heading towards the end where there was an office of glass so that whoever was inside could see from four directions into all the rooms. Inside were four people, dressed in white and green scrubs. They saw us coming and met him before we reached their door. A man and a woman stepped forward. “Pete, what’s wrong?” both of them studied me and frowned.
“He looks different, somehow. That’s Aidan Smyth. The boy found abandoned in Cheapside?”
“He is different, Doctor Phillipson,” Peter agreed. I stared. Now, I was frightened and my body trembled with it. I pressed closer to his side, felt his heat.
Said, “I’m scared.” My words created a furor. Both of them dropped to their knees and crowded me, asking a million questions that piled up on me and made me retreat into a dark little room in my mind.
When I finally came back to awareness, I was seated in a chair in an office. It had framed diplomas on the wall and a small fireplace roaring merrily along. The doctor I had seen in the observation room was sitting behind the fancy desk writing notes on a yellow legal pad and the scratchy pen irritated my ears.
His name was on his desk and on the framed certificates, Michael Aaron Phillipson, MD, Doctorate of Psychiatry, Surgeon and a whole host of alphabets after his name. His voice was melodious with an upper crust accent. He greeted me with a smile. “Hullo, young Aidan. I see by your eyes that you are alive again. How do you feel?”
“Can you tell me where I am?”
“In Holbrooke. An orphanage, state home for the developmentally disabled. You’ve lived here for five years. Can you tell me what you remember?”
“I remember my name. Aidan. A boy named Ned who was my friend. We both died. When I was five.”
“Died? Do you remember Ned’s last name? How you died?” He leaned forward and touched my forehead, came around and picked up my wrist. Felt the throb in my arm. “Your pulse is good,” he mused. “Eyes clear. Speech clearly not aphasic. How old are you, Aidan? Do you know your surname?”
“I’m five. No. I don’t know. Where is home? Can I go home?”
“We don’t know where you lived before, Aidan. A police officer found you lying in a rubbish heap in the slums of East London. With two scars on your body. Looks like you fell on something that pierced your chest, lungs and belly. Do you remember that?
“You’ve obviously suffered some severe trauma and come out of it. We’re going to run some tests on you, place you in another centre as you are definitely not mentally impaired.”
“Do I have a mummy and a dad?”
“I don’t know, Aidan. We advertised for you and the police looked to see if a child like you was missing. We found nothing.
“The matron will set you up to meet some specialists at Bethlehem Hospital. And you look like you’re about ten, Aidan, not five.”
“Will it hurt?” I was filled with trepidation.
“No, Aidan. The tests don’t hurt.” He studied me and said something under his breath and I automatically translated and answered him the same.
“You understand me?” he asked and I nodded. “You speak German?”
“I do?”
He rattled off a few other phrases and I understood all of them. “Spanish, French, Italian,” he said and opened the door to call in several of the other staff who spoke to me in their tongues and I knew them all.
“What year is this?” I questioned, suddenly tired to the point of exhaustion as if using my brain was more exercise than ditch digging.
“1973,” the doctor answered. “Are you tired?”
“I want to sleep,” I admitted and he took my hand. Led me to his couch and settled me onto it. He covered me with a hand crocheted throw and sat with me until my eyes closed in sleep.