“Hugo…Hugo, stop it!” I begged, but he didn’t. He just kept crying, kept banging, and I knew immediately I’d done the wrong thing by yelling. He didn’t like yelling, never had. I took a deep breath, forced myself to calm down. I could do this. I’d helped him a hundred times before. Sometimes, it felt like I was the only person who ever had.
Shuffling forward on my knees, I wriggled out of my coat, a bomber jacket with lots of padding, and wedged it behind his head in between strikes. I held it in place with my arm outstretched, making a conscious effort not to touch him. He needed space. Silence. The grip his mind had over him would let go soon. It always did. I just hated that it had to grip him at all.
As expected, his body started running out of energy. Each thump against my coat yielded a little less power than the last. I breathed a gentle shh, hoping he didn’t find the sound too overwhelming.
“Oi, oi!” The call from across the park made me turn my head. “State o’ that! Fucking spazz.” I ignored the taunts and laughter being fired from the vile mouth of Justin Thomson and his equally cretinous followers. Instead, I scooted to the side, blocked Hugo from their line of vision.
“Total eclipse!” One of them shouted, like I hadn’t heard that one a thousand times. They were too stupid to be original.
“Oi, sumo! Init time to get the spastic back to the mong ward?”
“It’s okay, Hugo,” I whispered, ignoring the pieces of shit behind us…and the pain they caused. I hated that their words affected me, though I’d never let them know it.
They soon left after failing to gain a reaction, no doubt to find someone else to persecute.
“Ah, Helen…” The sound of Hugo’s voice jolted me into action faster than a shock of electricity to my heart. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep doing this.”
I released my grip on the coat, lowered myself to his level. “Do what, Hugo? Tell me what’s wrong.” Carefully, I rested a hand on the top of his arm. He didn’t seem to mind, so I pressed a little firmer, rubbed it gently.
His hands went up, hiding his face, and it was then I saw the marks. “Oh…” Hugo… His name dried on my tongue as I reached out to take his arm. He let me, didn’t resist when I curled my fingers around his wrist and lowered it down to his knee. His skin was marred by several cuts inside his forearm, uneven lines of red crisscrossed above the wrist. It was difficult to see where some ended and others began as dried blood and fresh bruising blended the image together. “Did you do this?” I knew he had. Don’t know why I’d asked.
He turned his hand over and looked away from me as if he felt embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”
I grabbed his other arm, the one closest to me, and snuggled into it. “You don’t ever need to say sorry to me.” He didn’t need to say it to anyone. “We should go and see someone, though. I’ll come with you to the doctor.”
“No,” he said, his tone insistent. “They’re not that deep. They’ll be fine.” He didn’t know that. I didn’t know that. I did know that pushing Hugo so soon after a meltdown would only tip him straight back into one, though.
“Why’d you do it?”
My cheek was resting on his arm now. I felt his shoulder shrug against me. “Anger. Hatred. Desperation. I dunno. Feel fucking stupid about it now.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Justin’s right. I am a fucking spazz.”
Regret swelled in my stomach. I’d hoped he hadn’t heard them. “Justin’s an ignorant bully. You know better than to take notice of him.”
Rain started falling, just a light drizzle, the drops pattering lightly on the roof of the bandstand. If it got any heavier, we’d need to move to the centre.
“I’m scared, Heli,” Hugo said so quietly I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly.
“Scared? Of who?” I could only think of his parents. They were cruel with words, blamed Hugo for his problems, and I thought they were shit excuses for human beings…but I’d never believed Hugo was in actual danger in their care.
“Myself,” he admitted. “The future. Mrs Armstrong said a diagnosis would help, that knowing why my brain works the way it does would help me understand, find ways to live with it. But…I don’t wanna live with it, Helen. I don’t wanna feel like this forever. I wanna grow out of it. Get better. I hate going to bed every night not knowing what mood I’m gonna be in the next day, whether I’m gonna wake up fucking paralysed with fear. I can’t do that for the rest of my life. I can’t.”