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“Now, Mrs. Jameson, Christian Helms has a lot of special needs.” The social worker was trying to get the older woman to understand that Christy wasn’t your normal patient suffering traumatic brain injury. According to his medical file, eight years ago, he had been injured in an automobile accident that had killed his parents. He had awakened from an eleven-day coma unable to speak, or communicate in any way. He had sustained extensive damage to the motor portions on the left side of his brain, leaving him a hemiplegic. His visual and auditory centers were damaged as well. Light and sound were physically painful for him. Even whispering, voices could drive Christy to screaming fits that made his condition worse. He spent much of his time sedated.
“I quite understand, Mr. Reed. I’ve read his file. I think we’ll make do.” Gloria Jameson and her husband, Ralph, had taken a liking to Christy Helms from the moment they saw him. Had he not suffered his horrible accident, Gloria was quite sure he would be breaking hearts on some college campus now. The young man had spent the past eight years like this, his face twisted, his right arm and leg withered from disuse. “And I think we’ll only use the drugs as a precaution.” She glanced at Christy, sitting dazed in his wheelchair. “We’ll just have to adjust our schedule to suit his needs, won’t we, Ralph?”
“That’s right. Whatever the boy needs.”
Victor Reed shook his head. Christy needed constant care. The Jamesons were nice people, very sincere, but Christy had already been turned over to the state by his aunt and legal guardian because he was just too much to handle. In the group home where he lived, there were just too many residents, not enough staff, and no one had the time to deal with Christy, so the best way to deal with him was to keep him sedated during the day, and hope for the best at night. If the person sharing his room snored, or talked, or listened to music, Christy would scream until he was sedated again.
“In fact, we’ve got just the way to start our time together,” Gloria said.
“What’s that?” Reed said, not really caring. He was quite sure, within a week, the Jamesons would be back, all apologies, and Christy would return to the only routine that suited him, a life filled with drugs and the deadening of the senses.
“We’ve got a cabin up in Door County. We’re going to take Christian up there for the summer. It’ll be quiet, and peaceful, and we can get to know one another and start our routines on the right foot.” She turned to Christy. “Does that sound good?” For his part, Christy showed no reaction, his latest round of sedatives having been administered only a half hour before.
A couple days later, after some initial bumps, the Jamesons packed Christy and all his things in to their van and driven to northeast Wisconsin. The drive had been quiet, uneventful, because they had given Christy a set of headphones attached to a CD player. On the disc were different kinds of white noise, ocean waves, rain. They didn’t really seem to make much of a difference until one track, ten minutes of birds singing got him to visibly relax. Gloria had made sure the track with the birds on it, whippoorwills according to the track listing, repeated until they arrived.
The first few days had taken some adjusting. It was clear Gloria and Ralph Jameson understood just how much they had taken on when they took Christy Helms in to their home. They had a hospital bed installed, with a baby monitor so that they could hear if something was wrong. Ralph and a couple friends had redone the guest bathroom in their summer house so that it could accommodate a wheelchair. The heavy light-reducing curtains had been added, even though a part of Gloria Jameson was sad because the windows in the guest room faced south and the guest room always looked so bright all summer long.
The previous evening, Gloria had been sitting on the porch, drinking coffee in the gloaming, when she’d heard the sound of whippoorwills singing in the trees. She knew the boy loved that sound. It seemed to be the only sound that didn’t send him raving. She and her husband decided to try and bring him out the next night. He might like to be outside with the whippoorwills singing around them. When Christy had awakened a little while later, Gloria had been chattering away when she mentioned her plans to let Christy outside to hear the birds. She was quite sure that Christy understood nothing she said. All the same, at the moment she had said, “Won’t it be nice to hear the real birds, Christy?” she noticed a change in the boy. It was almost as if he were sitting up and taking notice.
Now she was walking in front as her husband pushed Christy’s chair down the hall, and just after she opened the door, and the cacophony of birdsong washed over them, she looked at Christy and her heart skipped a beat. Was he smiling?
They stood in the dooryard. The birds were so loud in the trees around them, you couldn’t hear anything else. In a few months, it would be the grackles, of course, a far less inviting sound than the whippoorwills’ dirge. She glanced down and, for a wonder, Christy's eyes were closed.