They’d cut his clothes off him. While he was laying on a bed in the ER, while they checked him, while they ran fluids into his arm and took blood samples. They cut his clothes off him and put them in a plastic bag. When Emily arrived at St Luke’s, her boy was wearing a hospital gown and trying to sit up.
It worked.
She waited at the doors to be let in. She gazed at him through the glass as a doctor checked his vitals and wrote on a chart. She thought of the ritual she had performed – the mound of hair and dry wood, the blood that had turned the small bones black – she thought of it and of Larkin’s warning to her, and fear gripped her chest so tight it was hard to breathe.
John Deacon was striding across the corridor to meet her. He held out his hand and she saw rust stains on his fingers, and she wondered if it was Danny’s blood.
‘Thank you,’ she said to him.
‘There’s no need,’ he said, and he smiled and squeezed her hand but there was something in his eyes.
‘Did you talk to him?’ Emily asked.
‘Barely.’
‘Did he say anything?’
There it was, that look again. ‘He’s confused,’ John said. ‘He—’
‘Mrs Yates?’ A young nurse was there now, smiling, motioning towards the doors. ‘Please, this way.’
John took his hand back and stepped away, and then Emily was being ushered through those doors and he was there, Danny was there.
He was filthy. There were great streaks of dirt on his face and hair, but that was okay. She would wash him. She would help him into the shower and she would scrub it all away. Whatever he had been through, however he had gotten here, he would be cleansed.
‘Mrs Yates?’
Those words again, only spoken by someone else this time.
By Danny.
‘Honey, it’s me,’ she said, moving closer. She held his hand, her fingers wrapping around his like they always had, like muscle memory.
He withdrew his arm to his chest and stared at her. ‘What are you doing here, Mrs Yates?’ he asked her. ‘Where’s my mom?’
Emily paused. ‘Danny, it’s me.’
‘I want to see my mom.’
‘I don’t …’
The doctor beside him placed a calming hand on his bare shoulder and said, ‘Danny, this is your mom.’
‘That’s not my mom,’ Danny said, shaking his head. He recoiled along the bed, his gaze darting around the room. ‘That’s not my mom.’
Emily felt that fear in her chest bite down again. This time hard enough to hurt.
‘Danny,’ she said. ‘Danny, listen—’
‘I’m not Danny!’ he screamed suddenly, thrashing out with his arms and kicking his legs.
‘Stop calling me that!’
The doctor moved closer, forcing Emily to step back. Someone put their hands on her shoulders and gently guided her away from the bed. She watched as they tried to pin him down. Danny bared his teeth like a dog.
‘Wait—’ she said.
Someone handed the doctor a syringe. ‘Hold his arm steady,’ he said.
‘I’m Will!’ her son cried as the needle pierced his skin. ‘My name is Will!’
