Word Count : 2765
Warnings : Mental Illness, Violence, Mild Abuse. Strong Language.
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Phil's POV
Dan's been my brother for 4 years now, by that I mean me and Mum adopted him. He'd been at the care home for 2 years when we took him. He was there because his parents abandoned him and he had no other relatives he knew. It wasn't until I went to go meet Dan at the care home for the first time I knew why his parents abandoned him. We were sitting in the car and I was about to get out when Mum stopped me.
"Phil sit down there's something you should know." she said not bothering to hide the worry in her voice. I slowly sat back down in the car seat and she continued.
"Well, you know we're taking Dan home in 2 weeks, but there's something you need to know before you meet him for the first time, Dan's a bit special..."
"You mean he has brain damage Mum." I said
"Yes, and he has trust issues, his parents abandoned him when he was 14, he couldn't look after himself, the neighbors walked over to the house after 2 weeks of seeing his parents fleeing cause they hadn't seen Dan since then. The door was ajar and when they went upstairs to Dan's room they found him dehydrated and starving to death on his bed. He was conscious but only just and he was covered in his own sick and urine. His parents had told him to stay in his room for being naughty and not to come out for anything until they told him he could or he'd be beaten, so he didn't go out for food or water thinking his parents were still in the house. There was a little girl in the house next door who said at night she could hear a voice in the next house crying and repeatedly asking for 'mummy and daddy', but after about a week and a half she said it stopped. I don't know if he'll like you Phil." she replied.
"Well it's worth a shot." I sighed in shock.
Mum went into his room first and I had to wait outside. While I was standing outside I listened to her trying to persuade him to meet me. Eventually I heard her calling me in and I opened the door slowly. Mum was sitting in a chair next to his bed and Dan was sitting on his bed leaning against the wall clutching a plush dinosaur. He looked down when I walked in and I noticed he started trembling. When I sat down in the chair next to mum he looked up.
"Hi!" I smiled trying to make him as comfortable around me as possible.
"Hello." he replied in a small voice clutching onto his dinosaur tighter.
"My name's Phil, what's yours?" I asked
"Dan." he said.
"How are you Dan?" I said, he looked down again and I saw tears forming in his eyes.
"Please don't hurt me..." he whimpered.
"I'm not going to hurt you, I want to be your friend." I replied. He looked up.
"Nobody's asked to be my friend before. Mummy and Daddy didn't want to be my friend either, that's why they left." he stated.
"Well I'm not going to hurt you, I'm going to be your friend." I said
"Promise?" he asked.
"Promise."
Dan came home with us 2 weeks later. For that first day he just wanted to stay in his room until at about 7pm when Mum managed to coax him downstairs. He sat on the same couch as me but he was pressed right up against the arm as if he were afraid I would hurt him, then I remembered, he was afraid I would hurt him. At about 8pm he wasn't pressed up against the arm anymore, in fact he'd fallen asleep with his head on my shoulder. Mum woke him up at 8:30 and helped him back to bed. I'd be lying if I didn't say I missed the weight of his head on my shoulder. I went to bed at about 9pm, but was woken up by Dan an hour later, Mum was in bed and I could hear his voice.
"Phil..." I heard him whimper, I groaned and slowly trudged my way over to his room, when I pushed open the door I heard he was crying, I didn't really know why until I walked over and saw he'd been sick all over himself and he'd pissed the bed. I sighed, walked into Mum's room and shook her awake.
"Dan's been sick and he's pissed the bed." I said sleepily and started walking back to my room.
"Language." she warned. I lay in my bed a few minutes later and just listened as Mum tried to calm Dan down and clean him up, but I heard him throw up again a few seconds later. I was just drifting back off to sleep when my bedroom door opened. I looked and saw a terrified looking Dan standing in the doorway clutching his dinosaur again. He wasn't covered in his own sick anymore and he was in a clean pair of pyjamas.
"Your Mother said I have to sleep in here tonight because I was naughty and was sick all over my bedroom." he whispered bowing his head, but I noticed tears were falling down his face and his knuckles were white from how tight he was holding the plush. Mum walked past him and put a camp bed on the floor. She gently pulled Dan over and laid him on the make-do bed, put a blanket over him, then walked back out. I turned to look at Dan and saw he was lying on his side crying silently still clutching onto his dinosaur.
"There's nothing wrong with being sick you know." I said hoping to give him some kind of comfort as he was obviously upset from being sick.
"Mummy and Daddy would hit me every time I was naughty, they said being sick was a very bad thing, they made black marks all over me and they made me bleed, being sick means I'm a naughty boy." he whispered. I was taken aback, his parents had obviously drilled it into his head that throwing up was a bad thing. "Forgetting to use the toilet deserves being hit around the head by Daddy too."
"Oh Dan..." I sighed, I didn't really know what else to say.
"When is your mother going to punish me for being bad? I'd rather it now then later." he said, his fringe was covering his eyes but I could still see the tears silently making their way down his face.
"We're not going to hurt you for being sick and peeing the bed Dan it's not your fault." I said rubbing my eyes. He didn't say anything for awhile so I turned back over so I was facing the wall. I looked back at him about half an hour later to see if he was asleep, he was, but a pile of sick was on the floor, I guess he'd learned to throw up quietly when he lived with his parents. Sighing I walked over to the bathroom, grabbed three towels, wet two of them and walked back into my bedroom. With the first towel I gently wiped the puke away from his mouth making sure I didn't wake him up, then with the second one I wiped up the sick on the floor, then with the third one I dried the wet surface. I slowly made my way downstairs, threw the towels into the washing machine and went back to bed,
Dan came out of his shell a bit more as the weeks went by, but he still thought certain things were bad. Like before Mum called him out of his room for food, he walked down the stairs and sat down. Me and Mum ate while he just stared at his plate, at first we thought it was cause he wasn't hungry, until a little while later when he spoke.
"Can I eat now please?" he asked Mum in a small voice, I stopped eating and stared at him.
"What?" she gasped.
"Mummy and Daddy told me when I could eat, sometimes they'd call me down for food and then they wouldn't give me anything, other times they'd throw the leftovers at me when I was asleep, another time they made me beg, and then most of the time food would be there, but I wasn't allowed to eat it until they said I could." he whispered.
"Dan how long were they doing this to you?" she asked
"One time Daddy put a knife through my stomach, when Mummy took me to hospital she said a bad man had hurt me on the street." he said. Both me and Mum couldn't believe what we were hearing. We just stared at him for awhile until Mum spoke.
"Um, yes, yes of course you can eat sweetie, you don't need to ask here." she said.
At first it wasn't that obvious Dan had special needs, but the more he came out of his shell the more you could tell, he became more and more childlike, and he trusted me more, but one day I broke that trust, it was like I took a chain saw to his confidence and just ripped it in half. I went downstairs one morning to a note from Mum.
