"I SEE DARKNESS WHERE YOU SEE LIGHT"
In the depths of the Venezuelan jungle a teenage boy is found alone and terrified, clothed in nothing but a bathrobe, clutching a rusted kitchen knife in his left hand, the right one too ruined to move.
...
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I SWEAR WHEN THEY THINK I'M ASLEEP I HEAR YOU ON THEIR TV SCREENS.
• EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO — 1 DAY POST RESCUE •
"So what can you tell us?" Chan sat inside the hospital room with Felix. He was highly sedated, barely able to move, using his eyes to look around. Chan gave his good hand a gentle squeeze. So far, he hadn't let anyone but Chan touch him.
The doctor cleared his throat, before pulling some scans up on the screen. "Well, his bone density test put him at nineteen, as did his puberty markers, so that is something we know for sure. As for other things..." Chan held his breath. He knew, realistically, that there was a lot that had been done to Felix. But the boy looked so innocent laying in the hospital bed that he wasn't sure if he wanted to hear it.
The doctor continued. "We had to heavily sedate him for his medical, as you can see; he's still coming off it. His medical indicated sexual assault markers. It also indicated physical abuse markers in the form of bruises, welts and some cuts. We've loaded him on antibiotics for his hand and we'll have to wait for the infection to subside before we fix it surgically."
Good God, Chan thought. This poor boy had already been through so much. Now he was in a foreign hospital with people he didn't know, about to be loaded on medication and subjected to surgery to fix his shattered hand. He felt his eyes sting with tears. What was wrong with the world that some people ended up like this?
"As for his cognitive development..." The doctor continued. Chan almost couldn't believe there was more. "We have only seen a short glimpse of Felix before he was sedated for his medical, but when touched he became increasingly agitated and violent. As far as anything else, we haven't seen any evidence of personality, no speech and little intricate motor function. Currently, we've put his cognitive function at a peak of about five years old, possibly younger."
"Brain damage?" Chan asked, "Are you saying he has brain damage?"
The doctor nodded. "Due to the extent of the abuse he has suffered, it wouldn't be unlikely for him to have suffered some type of brain damage. Once he's completely off the sedatives, we'll recheck his neurological functions and have him complete some basic IQ tests, if he'll cooperate."
Chan took a moment to process everything he'd been told. Because of one evil man, a child had lost years of his life. He'd lost the chance to grow up, to experience things that all teenagers experienced. He'd lost most of his childhood. Chan could barely stand it.
"Okay...okay. Do I-should I be here for when he comes out of his sedatives?" He asked. Chan was the only one who'd been allowed to touch him so far. Anyone else who came close to him was snarled at, and he had a tendency to gnash his teeth at them. Dog-like behaviours. He'd obviously been treated like one.
The doctor nodded. "I think that would be best. He seems to respond well to you and that's a good sign."
***
Felix came out of his sedation with a start.
As soon as he spotted the doctors in the room, he began to snarl and bare his teeth. He thrashed against the cuffs that held him to the bed. Chan approached him, laying a hand on his good arm. "Hey, Felix..."Felix stopped thrashing a little and looked up at Chan through long eyelashes.
"He responds to his name, that's also a good sign.." The doctor noted.
"Hey Felix, we just want you to do a couple of things for us, okay?" Felix was definitely listening, though he made no move to answer; either in gesture or with speech. "We just want to see what you know, because you can't seem to tell us anything at the moment, can you?" He was almost expecting Felix to answer, but all he did was blink. "Do you think you can do that for us? I'll stay right here the whole time."
Felix didn't answer. But his eyes flicked over to the doctor, then back to Chan. And then he stopped struggling. Chan took that as a yes and motioned for the doctor, who dragged a small tray table over to Felix's bed and uncuffed his wrists. He didn't make any moves to snap at the doctor and didn't try to strike him, but Chan didn't notice the way his muscles tensed when the doctor approached. The doctor placed down a laminated sheet of paper, a bunch of shapes printed on it.
"Okay, Felix. With your good hand, do you think you can point to the circle for me?" Felix glanced at Chan, who nodded at him to go ahead, and he jabbed his finger at the picture of the circle.
"Okay, that was great. Now can you point to the square?" Felix did so. He was able to point to the correct shapes and even follow a very simple pattern. But when the patterns got harder, he couldn't keep up. He was able to match very basic words with pictures, but he wasn't able to say the words. They weren't sure why. It could be that he couldn't speak at all. Maybe the abuse had done something to his larynx, but maybe he wasn't talking due to the trauma he'd endured.
He wasn't able to read the passages they'd set out for him, but he could point to the words he did recognise.
All in all, they put his cognitive age at five or six years old.
But he was alive.
His brain, functioning at the rate it was, did have the capacity to improve.
"Look, we think his cognitive function is due to being taken at a very young age and growing up in that kind of environment." The doctor stated. He'd pulled Chan aside, out into the hallway, so as not to speak in front of Felix. "At the moment, we believe he does have the capacity to improve his cognitive function, though we predict he will always be behind others his age." Chan could feel the tears sting at his eyes again.
"We have no concerns about vision problems, he seems to see just fine, though we won't know anything about his capacity of his vision until he can tell us. We also don't have any concerns about his hearing at this time. Whether he will speak or not still remains to be seen."
