Simone sat beside the little boy’s hospital bed holding his hand and stroking his hair gently. He was awake, but gazing up to the ceiling blankly.
“I’m here with you, Sweetheart,” Simone whispered. “I’m not leaving you. I’ll be near for as long as you want me to be.”
The doctor entered the room.
“Mrs. Willis, it’s getting close to the end of visiting hours,” the doctor told her. “You can visit him tomorrow.”
“I’m not leaving him, Doctor,” she said firmly. “He’s got no one. Please let me stay with him, just until his relatives arrive.”
The doctor paused in thought on the idea. “All right. I suppose it will make our job a bit easier if there is someone keeping an eye on him through the night. But be careful. One unhappy being is enough for my plate.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
The doctor left the room. Simone returned her eyes to the little boy with a smile.
“Sweetheart?” Simone said softly. “My name is Simone Willis, what’s your name?”
The little boy didn’t answer, but continued to stare up to the ceiling without expression or sound. It was as though his little spirit was desolate, lost in a world that knew no one, no where and didn’t know where to be found.
******
I awoke the next morning in the lounge chair where I had fallen asleep the night before. I stood up and quickly moved to the main bedroom to discover our bed had not been slept in. I was starting to feel very annoyed. This was not like Simone who was well known for her dependability. But now was the time for my firm, husbandly leadership to put a stop to this, once and for all.
I dropped Zoë at her school, then continued on to the Box Hill Hospital*.
I found Simone asleep on her arms by the little boy’s bedside, holding his hand carefully and securely. The little boy was awake, still gazing up towards the ceiling.
“Simone, what on earth are you doing?” I niggled her. “Don’t you realise we would be worried about you, and how do you think Zoë felt this morning not seeing a familiar face at the breakfast table? She asked me when you were coming home.”
She woke up and half turned to me sleepily.
“Joel, don’t lecture me,” she sighed wearily. “I don’t need it.”
“Well, what do you expect me to say?” I continued feeling quite peeved with the whole situation. “You didn’t come home last night. How do you think I feel?”
Simone turned to the little chap.
“Look at him, Joel,” she smiled at him as she gently lined some strands of his very dark brown hair with the tip of her finger. “Look at his eyes. Don’t you think he has beautiful eyes?”
I observed the little boy closely. “Yes, he is quite handsome.” I stopped to pause in thought towards my wife. She was always a very charitable type of lady. “You love him, don’t you, Sim?”
She nodded with a smile. “Yes.”
I turned to look at my watch. “Look, I have to head off to work. Old Mrs. Raynor will turn me into a toad if she is without her spectacles one more day. Someone has got to make the world see the light. ”
I kissed her, then left the hospital room. There was nothing more I could do to put a halt on Simone’s strong devotion to this young lad, for the moment anyway.
******
When I arrived home from work that evening I found Simone sitting alone at the kitchen table in total darkness. The evening meal, which normally was ready and waiting for me, was not even given a thought. I turned on the light.
“Simone, why are you sitting here in the dark?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
I began to feel inwardly more livid as I sat down at the table. “His relatives arrived, didn’t they, Sim?”
She lowered her head.
“Didn’t they?” I demanded to know.
She nodded, and then broke down into tears.
I sighed. “What happened?”
“She took him away.”
“Who took him away?”
“This woman. I don’t know who she was.”
“I don’t want to say I told you so, but I told you so. It had to happen.
He wasn’t our child.”
“I love him, Joel. Why did God have to let this happen?”
“Don’t blame God in this!”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Stop overreacting!” I ordered. “You wouldn’t be saying this otherwise.”
By this time, my frustration had increased a couple of notches. “I knew this was going to happen, I just knew it. He wasn’t our child. I just wish you would realise that.”
I stood up from the table feeling very annoyed. “I’m going to order some takeaway for dinner seeing that you’re not in the mood at the moment to think about it.”
I left the kitchen firmly. I knew this was going to happen. I just didn’t know how to put a stop to it, other than asking God to help her see reason.
******
The next morning I entered the kitchen. Zoë was busy eating her cornflakes. Simone was staring down into her cup of tea gloomily. I sat down at the table, turned to her and sighed.
“Simone, please talk to me,’ I insisted. “I don’t like seeing you like this.”
“He’s such a beautiful little boy,” she began. “He looked like a young prince just lying there. He looked so helpless and unhappy. I wanted to see him smile, but he couldn’t. He never said a word the whole time, just kept gazing towards the ceiling, like he didn’t know what was going on, or didn’t seem to want to care what was happening around him. But there was something in his eyes, something that really blessed me. Then, she came in. She took him from his bed, said thankyou for looking after him, then left. She didn’t even let the nurses finish feeding him.”
“It’s over now, Sim. We have to live our own lives now. You have a wonderful daughter and a husband who loves you. You have to get on with your life now.”
Simone stood up left the kitchen for the lounge room.
“Daddy, will you help me get a present for Amy’s party this Saturday?” Zoë reminded us. “Mummy forgot yesterday.”
I stood up and followed her. She was sitting on the couch, in sad thought.
“Simone, you forgot about Zoë,” I reminded her. “You said you would take her shopping for her friend’s birthday.”
“I’m sorry, Joel. I’ll go this afternoon.”
“Simone, please stop this!” I insisted. “You’re not being very responsible at all. This isn’t like you. You’re usually very dependable.”
“I just,…feel so let down.”
“I understand, Darling, but you need to stick with reality. He wasn’t our child. He is with his proper family now. You need to just leave his life in God’s hands now. But you can still love him. You can pray for him.”
She turned to me with a smile. “Yes, I can, cant I? I can pray for him.”
“Did they find out his name, or anything about him?”
“His name is Dale.” She turned to me with a smile. “I can pray for Dale, cant I, Joel?”
“Yes, you can.”
******
It was an August morning, a month later when our daughter, Zoë, opened the front door to notice the little six-year-old boy, whom Simone had taken to at the accident, sitting on our concrete porch step, wearing only underpants and a ragged, old brown jumper.
Zoë bellowed out to us. “Daddy, there’s a boy sitting here on our doorstep. Quickly!”
Simone and I rushed out to the front verandah. Simone anxiously picked up the child, which resulted in him immediately screaming out in resistance, trying to escape from her arms. She hurried him into the house and placed him on the lounge room floor. He ran to the corner of the lounge room, still screaming in terror. Simone looked down at his legs.
“Joel, look! Look at his legs. He is covered in marks, and how could she leave him dressed like that without trousers or shoes on his feet? And that horrid jumper he has on. It looks like it’s ready for the ragbag. What kind of woman is she?”
Simone moved towards him, but he squeezed himself into the wall in absolute terror of us. Calmly, she tried to settle him with her soft motherly voice that I knew all too well.
“Dale, Sweetheart. No one is going to hurt you. You don’t need to be afraid. No one is going to hurt you. You remember me, don’t you? I sat with you at the hospital last month.”
He continued to scream in terror until he fainted from fright. Simone picked him up again and carried him to the main bedroom. She laid him on the bed.
Simone prayed hard. “Oh, Lord Jesus, hold him in Your arms.”
She turned to me as I stood near her, still trying to grasp all of this so early in the morning.
“Joel, could you go and find something of Zoë’s old clothes? I think she may have an old pair of slacks in her drawer which may fit him.”
“You can’t put him in girl’s clothes, Sim,” I replied, absolutely horrified at the thought. “That’s just not done.”
“I’m taking him to the hospital anyway so it doesn’t matter. We can buy him some clothes later. He needs something better than this to wear.”
I left the room, then returned with some of Zoë’s clothing. Simone was staring in shock and horror after she had removed his ragged jumper. She covered her mouth with her hand at the sight of his little battered body.
“Joel, look at him. He wasn’t like this a month ago. He has bruises all over him.” Simone was determined. “Joel, the minute we admit him to hospital, we’re filing an application to adopt him.”
I turned to her protestingly. “What? We can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because he is not our responsibility.”
“Don’t give me that, ‘am-I-my-brothers-keeper' bit. All you have to do is look at the state of his little body.”
“But where is his father?” I asked. “Where is his family?”
“He has no family,” she snapped back, then said quickly, “Joel, if we don’t adopt him, they’ll make him a ward of the state and I refuse to have that beautiful child in an institution. If his father hasn’t turned up by now then he is obviously not around or he doesn’t care.”
“Simone, we can’t adopt him.”
“We can!” She began to persuade me in the only way a woman could persuade a man. “You love him, don’t you?”
“Yes, but….”
“Can’t you see by all those marks that he needs us, and needs God too?”
I sighed. “Let me sleep on it. Meanwhile, I will need to phone the police. They’ll need to be told. They’ll need a description of that woman you saw at the hospital last month, so we may need to go down to the station.”
Suddenly my world was being turned upside down. Emotional blackmail is a deadly mechanism, especially if you are a Jesus Freak. The old bible verse ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ can be also used against you, so I was wary. I was afraid for us as a family, but also deeply fearful of what heart deep lesson God was going to redeem in us through this youngster. How could I, as a grown man, stand to be emotionally mellowed by a six-year-old child?
******
That evening, I sat down at the kitchen table to think deeply over a cup of hot tea. Was I wrong? Was God trying to tell us something? Am I being selfish about all this? I am only wanting to stick with reality, not show any lack of compassion for the boy. Is this something God needs us to do?
Simone entered and sat down near me.
“Joel, what are you thinking?” she asked me gently.
“Maybe, it’s me, Sim. I mean, I’m the one who is uncaring, unsympathetic, uninvolved. You know something? I feel like Joseph, the very minute he was told that Mary was carrying the Holy Son of God inside her. He probably felt like I do now,…like a goose.”
“He doesn’t need sympathy. He needs a family. You saw the state he was in. He wasn’t treated at all with love. Just think. We can share the Lord Jesus with him.” She looked at me with begging eyes “Please, Joel? Please let him be our son?”
“But we’ll be taking on a great responsibility,” I pointed out. “Child abuse is a very touchy subject. Wouldn’t there be people especially trained to deal with such cases?”
“Would Christ treat a child as a case? Every child needs love. Please Joel?”
I sighed in defeat. “Okay. All right. If it’s okay by the authorities, it’s fine with me.”
“You’re a wonderful man, Joel.”
“I know that.”
She turned to kiss my cheek. I sighed, but still felt a little twittery about the idea.
Suddenly, I knew that my very comfortable life had now become a package of apprehension and uncertainty, of what we would be in for with this little boy. He had already had six years of a previous world that was unknown to us. What did he fear? What were his thoughts? He never spoke to us, nor did we know anything of his family, where his dad might be and who was the female driver who died at the accident scene. We only presumed it was his mother.
He didn’t respond to us. It was as if he didn’t know how to respond to us. All I could do was wait to see what God had planned, for us as a family, and why we were the ones to be chosen to become involved in him.
******
I stood by the little boy’s hospital bedside that afternoon watching Simone, who was sitting beside him, stroking his hair with her fingers. He gazed up to the ceiling without expression, without words, without any movement in his eyes, even towards us.
“Dale?” she said softly in his ear. “Mummy’s here. Remember me? I stayed with you after your accident and I held your hand. May I hold your hand now?” She carefully lifted his hand to hold it cupped in her own. “Sweetheart, we have some news for you. We are adopting you. You’re going to live with us. We’re setting up a room of your own with your own toys and some books and nice clothes. It will be your room.”
She watched him in heartbreaking despair as he continued to gaze at the ceiling with his sad and little, brown eyes. Simone lowered her head to cry. I leaned over to comfort her touching her shoulder.
Just then, Dale’s eyes slowly moved to look at my wife with a reaching heart of concern.
He lifted his little hand to touch a tear rolling down her cheek. “My Mummy!”
Simone looked up and then smiled at him through her tears.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. I’m your mummy.”
Dale did not say a word after that, but gazed up at us blankly.
******
A few days later, when the adoption papers had been completed and authorised, we signed the hospital release forms.
Simone took his hand gently and led him out to our car. Dale followed us, willingly without dispute, to wherever we were taking him, in total trust of us, yet he was silent and reticent as he sat in the backseat, on his way to his new home.
******
After we arrived through the front door of our home. Simone began to gently lead Dale down the hallway to his new bedroom, which she had decorated suitable for a little six-year-old boy.
Dale did not respond to the colours of all the little boy things, or the many toys that lay around the room. Instead, he moved slowly to the very corner of the room and sat down cross-legged with his head lowered.
“Dale, you don’t need to sit on the floor,” Simone said, gently. “You may sit on your bed if you’d like to.”
He did not answer her nor move in response to her suggestion.
Simone moved towards him, “What did the nasty woman do to you?”
He looked up to her and became frightened, then scrambled under the bed screaming in terror.
Simone spoke in a soft voice. “Dale, no one is going to hurt you. You don’t need to be frightened anymore. We love you.”
“Maybe, we’d better leave him, Sim,” I suggested. “It will give him a chance to become familiar with his room.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I guess you’re right.”
We began to leave him alone. Simone turned to him worriedly before she left his room.
******
Later that first evening, Zoë entered Dale’s room to find him still sitting in the corner by the wall with his head lowered without any expression. He cautiously looked up to her.
“Dale?” Zoë said, “You’re my little brother now. Please be my friend. I want to be your friend. Would you like to see my doll? Her name is Janie. Mummy bought her for me. Would you like to see her, Dale?”
He did not answer her, but continued to gaze up to her without any expression.
I entered his room. “Come on, Zoë. It’s your bedtime now. You’ve got school tomorrow.”
“I was just telling Dale about Janie, Daddy,” she replied.
“Good girl, but you need your sleep.”
As I left with her, I turned to the sad little boy, who lowered his head again without any expression. What was he thinking and why was he not responding, even to another child? All we could do was ask God to touch his little heart.