Rip - Trust (Completed)

Regression

Like on the previous day, Rip was quiet and listless for the remainder of the day. So, on advice of his son Samuel, Mr Dutton rang the family's old physician to do a home visit in the evening.

Rip did not protest, but refused to answer any questions and did not he let him perform any of the usual tests. The doctor decided it was best not to push it and talk with Mr Dutton instead.

"I think it was some kind of unusual stress response," Dr Brady, told him when the boy was back in his room and the men sat outside on the porch. "Somehow his brain must have told his body to just shut down and go asleep. It probably was the only way he could cope with what he saw. He needs rest, let him rest, I gave him something, I don't think he will wake before the morning. I would suggest getting a trauma specialist for him, at some stage as well."

"He is not gone mad, is he?" Mr Dutton asked fearfully.

The doctor sighed "they are unhelpful terms, John. His mental health is impacted by the trauma he has experienced, and from what you are telling me there was not just the one event. Those burn marks you describe on his chest were made on purpose. God knows how long this was going on. How come no one noticed? Did he not go to school, and where was his mother in all this? Quite frankly I do not understand why he did not get the help he needed any sooner?" Dr Brady said sadly.

"I think they tried after the incident, but he wouldn't engage. At least that is what I was told. He refused to talk about it. He hasn't talked to us either. I discovered the scars only by accident. He hid them extremely well and I suspect there are more," Mr Dutton told his doctor.

"Get him help John," the doctor said.

"Can he be helped?" Mr Dutton asked.

"Oh god, yes. He's young. You just have to be patient, John. And make sure he feels safe. Your job is to make him feel safe and protected. Forget about everything else. It sounds to me as if he was making good progress until recently, what has changed?" the doctor asked.

I spanked him, Mr Dutton thought but did not tell his doctor.

Rip woke up sobbing in the middle of the night, he could not remember what he had dreamt off but woke with an unbearable sense of loss and sadness. He got up and went out onto the balcony to breath in the cold night's air and look at the stars, as so often before when he woke up in this state. 

His uncle, a light sleeper by nature and age, woke when the boy opened the balcony door. He had been worried that Rip might wake up during the night and get scared again, so he wanted to be close by and had decided to sleep in one of the deck chairs on the balcony. "Get your blanket Rip, it's cold" the man told him, and the boy obeyed before sitting down in the chair beside him. In silence, they watched the night sky turning slowly into the morning but only Rip eventually fell back asleep being soothed by his uncle's silent presence.

They tried hard to let things get back to normal. Things were not the same though; the boy had retreated back into his shell and presented in more or less the same way as he did in the beginning of his stay with them. He was formally polite, as hardworking as ever and obedient. The initial underlying sense of defiance and hatefulness that radiated from him in the early days however was replaced by an overwhelming sense of sadness that weight heavily on everyone. He spend time with the horses but it seemed he took no pleasure in them.

Mr Dutton had been in regular contact with Samuel who became increasingly concerned not only by his father's account of Rip's condition but even more so by his father's discomfort of the situation. Fearing that the placement could break down after all, he managed to talk his father into a phone consultation with a therapist who happened to be a close friend of his and therefore was prepared to not report back to social services about the past events, as long as she was assured that the boy was safe with his father from now on.