"Hanging on by his fingernails. God knows how."
"Please," said Holly. "He's been through so much."
"We're doing what we can, ma'am. What's his pulse rate?"
"I saved him from the devil and you made him deaf, you deaf bitch!"
Mickey shot Elliot a quick look. Two of the officers had him in the doorway, holding his arms, while a third was handcuffing him. "Did he hurt you?" Mickey asked Holly intently.
"Just a-slap on the face. A knock on the head. Nothing serious." But the vision in her left eye was blurred and she was trembling like a startled pony.
"Okay," said Mickey, taking hold of her hand and giving it a squeeze. "I won't be a moment."
"It's all right. I'm not going anywhere until I know that Daniel's okay."
Mickey went across to Elliot Joseph. He kept his back turned to her, so Holly couldn't see what he was saying, but he nodded his head from time to time as if he were talking to Elliot Joseph quite calmly. Only the complicated jumble of anxiety on Elliot Joseph's face gave Holly any idea that Mickey might be threatening him.
Elliot suddenly threw himself wildly from side to side. "You can't touch me! You can't touch me and you fucking know it! You touch me-you lay one single finger on me, go on!"
Nod, nod, nod,from Mickey.
"I got rights. I got fucking human rights and tribal rights and you touch me, you just fucking touch me once, and you're finished. You and that deaf bitch who made my boy deaf. I'll get the both of you, I swear it."
Nod?
"You're out of your mind. That's my boy over there, and if I beat that devil out of him, you ought to be giving me a fuckingaward."
Nod, nod, nod?
"Well, she's my wife and she tried to stop me beating him and that was not in the boy's best interest, was it? If your boy had that devil in him, what wouldyoudo? Nothing, I'll bet, you faggot."
Nod.
"She had it coming. She dropped the fucking supper and she had it coming. A woman drops your fucking supper, what are you supposed to do? Say, like, 'Thank you very much, no problem, I'll just eat it off the rug'?"
Mickey turned to one of the officers. The officer's face was round and bland like a self-confident cheese, no eyebrows and tiny, colorless eyes. He unholstered his baton and handed it over. Mickey smacked the baton in the palm of his hand,smack, smack, smack,although Holly couldn't hear it.
"So what are you going to do?" Elliot Joseph demanded, defiantly lifting his chin. "Hit me? You better just try, you faggot. I got human rights and I got Wallowa rights."
Mickey gave no perceptible nod this time, but he must have said something because the cheese-faced officer suddenly reached up and seized Elliot Joseph's bandanna, wrenching his head back. Then he clamped his other hand around Elliot Joseph's throat.
"Wob you doib, mab, I carn breeb!"
Mickey took a step to the right. Elliot Joseph tried to purse his lips but he was gasping for breath and so he couldn't. Mickey tilted the baton way back over his shoulder, paused, and then cracked him straight in the mouth. Blood flew up against the door, and the cheese-faced officer flinched as his cheek was sprayed with scarlet squiggles.
One of the paramedics looked up from the floor. She glanced toward the doorway but didn't make any comment about what she saw there. "The kid's stable," she told Holly. "We should be able to move him now. Do you want to come along?"
Hard Words at theDoernbecher
It was well past five o'clock before Dr. Sokol came along the corridor to tell Holly that Daniel was going to survive.
She had been sitting for three and a half hours in the visitors' lounge at the Doernbecher Children's Hospital. She had started to type out her reports on her laptop, but her head was throbbing and she couldn't focus without squinting, so she closed it up. She knew that she should have gone home, but she couldn't-not if Daniel was going to die-and so she stood by the window while the rain gradually trickled down in front of her face, and lightning flickered in the distance.
Every time the lounge door swung open she looked up with a nervous jump. She knew that it couldn't be Elliot Joseph, but she couldn't stop herself. She had been jostled and punched plenty of times before, but Elliot had done more serious damage than a few bruises. He had made her question her competence. If she weren't deaf, maybe she would have heard him muttering threats behind her back. Maybe she would have picked up some subtle intonation in Mary's voice, some plea for help that she simply hadn't been able to detect by lipreading.
The lounge door opened and Dr. Sokol appeared. He wasn't much older than Holly and had a blue-shaven head and rimless glasses. He was still wearing his green theater robes and he looked exhausted.
"Well, it was touch and go a couple of times, but the kid's going to live."
"How bad is it?"
Dr. Sokol wiped his neck with a towel. "About as bad as you can get. Let me tell you, I've had to deal with kids who were hit by semis, and eventheyweren't as badly traumatized as Daniel. He has a skull fracture, a broken collarbone, seven broken ribs, a broken pelvis, a fractured ankle, a ruptured spleen, and a damaged liver. That's not including all of his lacerations and contusions."
"You say he's going to live ."
"It's too early to say if he's going to make a comprehensive recovery. We had to relieve some pressure on the brain tissues as soon as they brought him in, and in the long term I'm worried about his mobility. His father must have used him as a trampoline."
"Jesus," said Holly.
Dr. Sokol lifted his finger and thumb, pinched only a half-inch apart. "He wasthisclose to the cemetery, believe me."
Holly didn't know what to say. Dr. Sokol sat down, breathing with the deep steadiness of a man who was doing his best to keep his self-control. Then he said, "I thought Children's Welfare were supposed to keep an eye on situations like this make sure that things like this didn't happen."
Holly sat next to him. "We try to do our best, Doctor. But we have very limited resources and very restricted rights. The law is overwhelmingly in favor of children being taken care of by their natural parents, and it isn't at all easy to define where careless parenting ends and calculated cruelty begins."
"Careless parenting? Elliot Joseph has a long-term history of alcoholic psychosis. He seriously believed the kid was possessed by a devil. Judging by Daniel's general condition, he must have been whipped and beaten several times before, over several months at least. What clearer definition of constructive cruelty do you need than that?"
"He was beaten before?"
"Pretty consistently, I'd say."
"I never saw any bruises and his mother never said anything."
"I thought you people were trained to see the signs."
"I never saw any bruises, ever! My God! Don't you think I would have done something about it if I had?"
Dr. Sokol looked at her for a long time. He didn't say anything, but she could guess what he was thinking. She could also tell that she had shouted too loudly. When she shouted too loudly, her voice became even more distorted than usual. Her speech therapist had told her, and so had Daisy: "When you're upset, Mommy, you sound like you're drowning."
Mount Hood