Joe kicked… stop it there.
Mostly however, it is very reassuring, a feeling like coming home. He no longer feels fuzzy, just puzzled and worried.
Where are they?
He has been here a long time. He knows, because all the cuts Joe dealt him have healed.
Weeks? Months? Years? If it was years you would have grown,
Clare.
But do you grow when you're asleep?
Are they being kept out?
He tries to go back over the obscure days, but there is not enough in them to make sense. He cannot remember, he cannot remember… so he returns to the morning again, when he got up early and watched the sun rise. Find them in that day, bring them back… going through the day slowly (blanking quick that out that didn't happen not now) to Kerewin in the Tower… she turns away, shaking, so go on, on to the night-time, through the night-time, happening by nappening.
He won't let it overwhelm him. He couldn't stop it before, the day happened again and again, inexorably, but now, but now-
He reaches the doorframe again, and the hard hand pressing his hurt against it, and then his own slow drifting blow.
He can't see where it lands. He can only hear the man's high scream. It hits him near the waist… can you kill somebody hitting them with glass in the waist? Are they crippled?
His head hits the doorpost again.
Can you break ears?
He is whimpering uncontrollably when the nurse arrives, and shaking uncontrollably by the time the pediatrician gangles in. He can see enough to know they are exchanging mysterious words, and though he begs with one clasped hand, they don't know the sign and they can't read his eyes. The needle slides into his vein, and he can't do anything about the night closing over again.
But it's the last fling of horror, the final clawing grasp of the night.
Piri, who has come over the hill to see Marama: (she is recovering valiantly, though worried sick she says by what has happened, and how are Ben and Luce behaving? Not fighting, tell them please no… and, o dear, look after Pa, take care of him for me, don't let him get upset and excited, and
"Course, Ma. Fine, Ma. No trouble, Ma. For goodness sake stop worrying Ma, and get some rest, eh? What'll all these fellas," pointing in a swathe at the other three elderly ladies, all lacking visitors, so snoring with their mouths and ears wide open, "think of us?"
Marama retorts, What does it matter what they think? The whole world and her brother knows…) takes time before he goes back, to try yet again to see Simon.
The other times the doctors and staff have smiled blandly, and said he's as well as could be expected, off the seriously ill list, and progressing normally.
Which says fat bugger all, thinks Piri. We're still family, he tells himself stoutly. If I could be sure that shitarse would stay away, I'd ask for Himi. He's too good a kid to waste, however damaged he is… but if Joe comes back, ahh it'd never work. That mutt would always stick a finger in. Or his fist.
"Uhh hello," he says to the head nurse, avoiding her eyes, "would it be possible I see…" and before he gets any further the nurse gushes.
"O good, Mr Tainui isn't it? Would you come this way please? Doctor won't be a moment, and I know he'll be glad to see you." Doctor? What about Himi?
The nurse turns and beckons from further down the corridor, by the door at the end.
"Would you come in here now, Mr Tainui?" she says, her smile all teeth.
He expects distortion, disfigurement: maybe an inert and helpless log of a child.
What he gets is one astounded Simon.
O yeah: his hair is gone to a fine gold fuzz, and there's a set of godawful purple-red scars welting the side of his head, and those neat dark circles he'll produce on the slightest provocation ring his eyes, and make them look inhumanly large, and he's whiter than the sheet he's sitting on, and it looks like (squeezing his eyes narrow and checking fast) he's lost three more teeth — mouth hung open, eyes fixed on him.
"Am I unwelcome? Or don't he know me now? his heart shrinks inside him.
One eye isn't tracking properly either, but damnall Haimona! do something! Don't just stay static like that,
and the child shrieks, flinging his arms wide open, and the bloke sitting by the bedside gets an ear full of fist.
One thing about having four kids: you know when you're wanted, needed hard.
After a while the hoha dies down. The doctor rubs his ear ruefully. Simon burrows in against Piri as though he'd like to get inside him, arms and legs wrapped round all he can reach. Piri murmurs to him, questions he isn't supposed to answer, endearments for his heart, "E taku her piripiri, what you been doin? What they done to you, eh? Gentleheart, we miss you, you been feeling bad alone? Lonely, e tawhiri? Never mind, ease up now, Piri's here, Piri's here."
It takes a long time even for Piri's practised hands and voice to get him calm again, he is so hungry for the affection, the cuddling, Piri thinks. '
Well, I suppose all these fellas are kind enough, but they wouldn't have time to hold him and that… holy hell! What a room! Bare except for two sticks of furniture, no colour, no nothing for him… and why's he all by himself? Just as bloody well I called by.
The doctor's been silent all this while, just fingering the ear Simon clouted every now and then, and watching them with a detached sort of grin on his face.
"Come on e Himi, sit round now boy."
and stops, realising at last that the boy isn't responding to his voice, but to the movement of his hands.
"If you yell loudly, he'll pick up some of it," says the doctor softly. "He's got residual hearing in one ear."
"Ah Christ," says Piri. "Ah Christ, this isn't fair."
He doesn't yelclass="underline" he catches Simon's eye and then asks him fingerfashion. You can't hear me? and the boy says No.
"Christ," says Piri again.
He takes a felt-tip out and writes on the back of his tobacco pack, I AM V. SORRY ABOUT THAT, LOVE, YOU WANT ANYTHING? and the boy snatches the pencil and box as though he's been starved of them.
Once he's got hold of them however, it takes him a minute to get them settled to write on, and longer to print the words. The printing is awkward and cramped and slow.
Piri says in a cold voice,
"When I get hold of my cousin, I'm gonna beat his head in and see how he likes it."
The other man doesn't comment, watching the child narrowly.
He says in his soft accented drawl,
"A week ago, he couldn't really write. Or read… two months ago I would have said he'd never communicate in any way again. He's getting better very quickly, you know."
piri, bitterly:
"Not long ago he could read and write better than my ten year old, and now look at him."
"Given enough time, and the right kind of care, he'll read and write as well as ever he did, I think."
"Yeah?" says Piri, with a world of doubt behind the sound. He looks down at the note Simon is holding for him.
JOE OK AND WHERE AND K PIRI HOW LONG I HERE CAN I COME HOME
"Don't worry if it's a bit scrambled," says the doctor. "He's getting there, but it takes him time."
The boy keeps his eyes fixed on Piri's face in a disconcerting unlevel stare.
Piri looks over it, over to the doctor.
"I can make it out, but it's not how he used to do it. And bloody hell, would you believe the first thing he asks is how that prick is?"
And while the doctor blinks over that, Piri writes swiftly,
JOE'S FINE. HE'S IN JAIL. I DON'T KNOW WHERE KEREWIN IS. YOU BEEN IN HOSPITAL FOR TEN WEEKS, HIMI, AND YOU HAVE TO STAY IN A WHILE YET.
The boy reads it, and reads it, and reads it again, as though the words don't make sense, while Piri begs him in his heart not to ask any more questions.
These bastards haven't told him anything, and no way am I going to be the one who breaks his heart. How can I say he hasn't got a home any more? That Kerewin's knocked down her Tower and apparently gone for good? Or that my triple-dyed shit of a cousin isn't his father any more?"