Shape of the Question

 I got up carefully and moved past him and out of the room. I walked past him out to the hallway and stopped not sure where he wanted me. He closed the door behind me. How thoughtful I thought. Shutting the door so my anguished cries (my notions always drawing on the dramatic side of life) won’t wake my younger brothers. I looked down the hallway towards my mother. ‘Is he all right?” I started to ask. “Of course not!” Came my fathers angry but harsh and I suppose slightly hushed voice from behind me. “What a ridiculous question.” I stopped talking and stood there in the cool evening hallway. The temperature in the hallway was somewhat lower here out of my bed. ‘He is all right,” my mother said, looking at my father with a slightly challenging expression. “They are going to keep him in, at least overnight.’ She said. “For observation.” I nodded slowly as if I understood the complexities of the meaning entailed in the simple phrase,‘for observation’.  Then it started.

“No thanks to you and your dangerous behaviour,” my father opened with. “Just what did you think you were doing?” Now, that was of course a sort of direct but seriously implied ‘rhetorical’ question. There was not meant to be an answer, but especially there was not meant to be any response, sound or movement from me. I didn’t get that. I began to immediately present my well-considered defence. Well-considered, in that, I had been thinking very seriously of all that had happened, and had, carefully and concisely, constructed a sensible, and appropriate explanation, to the actual sequence of unavoidable events, which led to the unfortunate circumstances of the injury to my younger brother. My honest mistake was that I thought by asking his question, my father actually wanted to listen to my explanation. So I opened my mouth with ‘Getting the kite out of…..”

I was taken by surprise by the slap across the ear, that sent me flying slightly into the hallway wall, which immediately acted as a catcher and stopped me dead in my tracks. My head continued on an collided with the wall as well. Now I was hurting instantly on both sides of my head. I think my mother had shouted angrily,“Laurie!” It was hard to tell above the ringing that resounded in my ears and skull. You know those sudden percussive high pitched deafening ringing that blocks out all sounds. The ones which seem to pulse. Similar to the fading, chiming of a rung bell. Except this ringing wasn’t actually fading. Just ringing very loudly. I tried to move my jaw and clear my ears. My eyes had also filled with water and through the weeping lenses, I believe I saw my mother walk angrily into her bedroom and shut the door. Something had obviously happened between my parents, in that split second and the brief moment after, which unfortunately I had failed to notice, due to my preoccupation with my pain and situation.

(Continued tomorrow)