The Anatomy of You

Chapter 15 - The Appointment

Attempting to make it to the psychiatric appointment in one piece was a lot harder than Safi thought it would be. The baby fussed the whole bus ride there and had a diaper explosion as soon as they got into the hospital.

"Oh God. Braxton, how long were you holding all that in?" Safi gags as she changes the baby's diaper in the bathroom stall. A clean butt and a potty break later, they finally get upstairs to the psychiatric unit.

Safi brings Aaron into one of the interview playrooms before strapping a sleeping Braxton onto her chest with the baby carrier.

"The doctor is going to come in and talk to you, okay? They will ask you a few questions so don't be afraid to answer them. I'll be right outside the door," Safi says to Aaron. Aaron nods and turns to go sit at the drawing table, but pauses for a moment. He turns back around to give Safi a hug and kisses Braxton's head.

The cuteness sets Safi's ovaries on fire, but she couldn't think about all that right now. She walks out of the room and sits on the bench across the hall.

"You must be Safiya. I'm Dr. Laila Devorah, the head of the psychiatric department here. Is Aaron in the room?" a small voice speaks.

Safi looks up and sees a petite woman standing in front of her.

"Ah yes, he's sitting at the drawing table. I don't know if it's in his file or not, but Aaron is mute. He won't speak to anybody, but he does respond to yes or no questions." The small woman looks at Aaron through the window.

"I'll try my best. Best case scenario, we get him to speak a word or two. Worst case, he completely shuts down."

Dr. Devorah disappears into the room immediately and Safi finds herself alone in the hall again. She looks down at Braxton who is still asleep in the carrier. She puts a hat on his mostly bald little head before pulling out her phone. She had several missed calls from her mother whom she had not spoken to since everything went down.

She decides to call her mom tonight when things were a little calmer.

"Safi?"

Safi looks up and sees Eman standing there with an incredible look of confusion on his face.

"You really do have kids. I thought I was just seeing things."

"What are you talking about?" Safi asks perplexed by his words.

"Well I was walking by your place to try and patch things up with you and I saw you leaving with the baby and a little kid. I didn't know you were a mom. I mean, you definitely don't look like you just had a baby," Eman chuckles checking out Safi.

"They're not mine. Some stuff happened and they ended up in my custody. Why did you come to my place? More importantly, why do you keep coming around? I thought you didn't want to compete with the "other men in my phone", whoever they are." Safi scoffs, rolling her eyes.

"I want to apologize for that. I was immature and intimidated by your beauty. Let me make it up to you. Go on another date with me sometime please," he said with an innocent look in his eyes.

Safi opens her mouth to retort, but Braxton begins to fuss and cry. That's when reality set in. She has priorities now with these two boys in her life.

"Now is no longer a good time for me. I've got a lot going on with this one and his older brother. I'll consider it when my life isn't about diaper changes and hot wheels."

Safi gets up and walks to the cafeteria for warm water for the baby's bottle who is now full out melting down.

She can finally hear herself think after popping the bottle in Braxton's mouth. Safiya carries him back to the psychiatric ward and sees Dr. Devorah walking out of the interview room with her files.

"Ah Safi, I just finished the evaluation. This little guy has been through a lot." Dr. Devorah pulls out a drawing of a house with a couple of scribbles in front of it.

"I asked him to draw his family in front of his house. He drew himself, his mom and his baby brother. Then he drew this person a little away from himself and his family. I thought maybe he drew his dad, so I asked but he shook his head no. So the next thing I thought was maybe an uncle or something. That's his grandfather."

Safi pauses for a moment as she notices that the drawing of the grandpa looked more like a monster than a person like the way he drew himself and mom.

"I think the grandfather has been abusing him, but he stopped responding when I asked him."

Safi looks through the window at Aaron, seeing him still at the table playing with some blocks now.

"I want you to bring him again the day after tomorrow. I'm going to see if a different approach will help us get a little more out of him. For now, I need to get this to the detectives. I know the mother was arrested. Hopefully, they see she hasn't done anything wrong to these children and release her."

Dr. Devorah walks away hurriedly and Safi enters the playroom.

"You ready to go, Aaron?" Safi asks with a smile on her face. He runs over to her, grabs her hand, and pulls her over to the table. There was a picture of a flower on the table and Aaron hands it to her.

"Aaron, it's a beautiful flower. How about we go home and I hang it up on the fridge?"

Then everything went black...