ruu

tw / implied child abuse

July 11th, 1990’

So I just turned nine.

I’m used to writing with my right hand, but they stuck it in a really hot oven, and the skin hasn’t healed all the way back yet. I’ll try not to smear the ink on my hand. They’ll start asking me what happened.

I have a cast over it so it’s going to be okay. It still hurts, but not as bad as the first couple of days, that’s a relief. I think the doctors were getting tired of my crying. I couldn’t help it. For the first couple of days my arm had really hurt and it kept bleeding, every-time I looked at it, I felt like vomiting.

Studying human anatomy, they resort to graphing their own skin. How barbaric.

John pauses, shakes his head and scratches his word out. He doesn’t yet want to reveal his festering cynicism towards humans.

I wanted them to cut it off, maybe axe it again, but that hurts too much. Too messy. I think they hate when I bleed everywhere. They get frustrated, as if it’s not supposed to happen with me.

Anyway I try not to cry that much anymore. It just happens.

The scribbling stops abruptly as John perks up, hearing footsteps approaching his door, he slips his pencil between the pages and shoves the notebook underneath his pillow. He draws his blanket up his shoulders, wrapping it around his body, sitting up on the bed, pressing his back up against the pasty, blank, white wall.

John settles his hands on his lap as he crosses his legs, sitting criss-cross applesauce.

Doctor Abraham enters his bedroom, slipping his glasses to the bridge of his weird looking nose, he dawns a black lab coat, signifying his importance - or maybe that’s just what John believes, he doesn’t know the hierarchy here. Not for sure. What he does know is that Vogelbaum is his father, that’s what he’s been told. He doesn’t have any reasons to question it.

A trinkle of surprises twists into Doctor Abraham’s expression. “You’re expected to be asleep already, John.”

John rocks side to side, avoiding the doctor’s concerned gaze, he absently runs his hand up the wrist of his cast, wetting his lips. “I’m sorry, sir. I was just about to go to bed.”

“May I see your arm?” Doctor Abraham asks, approaching the boy’s bed, extending his hand out expectantly before John could even give his consent. “Did they clean and change your stitches today,” he queries as John places his arm in his grasp with little choice, sitting still as the doctor loosens the cast, the sound of tearing velcro resonating as he undoes the straps.

“Yes, doctor.” John answers quietly, glancing over at his pillow so he wouldn’t have to see his wounds and he has to crinkle his sensitive nose up as the smell of burnt flesh burns at his watering eyes.

Doctor Abraham twists his arm, scrutinizing the peeled flesh, the slowly progressing self-healing on his wrist wrapping around his forearm seemed to be backed up, perhaps the repeated ministrations of shoving the boy’s hand into the thousand degree furnace wasn’t the grandest idea.

“It’s best to do it again before going to bed, we don’t want to risk infection,” is what the doctor eventually comes away with, releasing the boy’s arm, grinning at him. John gives him a crooked smile back, unsure of what to truly make of that.

HELP ME???