Chapter 3: My Scarred Past
Twenty years earlier
The sun was beating down on the playground as MacLeere sipped the putrid coffee. This was the sixth time he had visited the orphanage, and he was still observing the younglings. He felt that he had a good list of which ones he was interested in, but there was one final test: a test of determination and cunning. Unbeknownst to the orphans, he was watching each one perform some everyday things, like catch a ball, interact with others and become subject to authority. If he could only have one child, he wanted to make sure he would choose the right one.
Two children were playing hopscotch, one male and one female. They both happened to be on the list, which interested MacLeere and drew his attention to them. The female he had grown to know quite well, and she had become accustomed to see him on the bench in his white lab coat every Friday. The male, however, he truly did not know, but was fascinated by him.
They were now engaged in a heated discussion, stemming from which foot you should hop on. Any adult would have seen that this conversation was meaningless, but this was most important to the two children.
“You’re supposed to use your right foot, dummy!”, said the female.
“No, it’s your left! And you smell, pigface!”, the male retorted.
“You… You idiot!”
She slapped him across the face and stormed off. This was regular between the two, apparently.The attendants knew that they were fairly good friends, so none of them said anything.
MacLeere wasn’t interested in the friendship, however: he was interested in the boy’s reaction. He first babied his face, which would be normal for any male in shock. The following thing surprised him, though: instead of sulking like most men would do, the boy instead had an expression of anger and disgust, and began to do the hopscotch course on his right foot. He completed it, and spat on the ground. John barely heard him mutter:
“There, jerk-face. There’s your right foot.”
That was the one reaction that MacLeere had never predicted. Rather than think that he was in the right, the boy adapted himself to cope with the criticism and made it through. This was a hard quality to find in adults, let alone children. He got up and approached the still-steaming child.
“Excuse me. I was wondering what made you do that?”
The boy turned around to gaze upon the scientist towering above him. Unlike the many other children at the facility, this one did not cower in fear, but treated MacLeere like an equal.
“Do what, mister?”
“Do what she told you to do. Weren’t you right? Why didn’t you show her she was wrong?”
The boy thought for a minute.
“Well, mister, I guess I just thought that there wasn’t a point to showing her I was right. I wanted to show her how stupid it was to do it her way.”
“So, that’s it? You didn’t feel for a second that she might’ve been right, and that you were trying to justify yourself?”
The boy looked confused.
“I mean, you didn’t think you were the one who was wrong, did you?”, MacLeere corrected himself.
“Nope. I know I’m right, but now she knows she’s wrong.”
MacLeere was puzzled by the boy’s response. Maybe this kid could be of some use, he thought. He asked him one final question before he left:
“Tell me, kid, what’s your name?”
“My name’s Jae. What’s yours?”
“Nice to meet you, Jae. Mine’s John. I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Jae went off to play with some other kids, forgetting completely about the man in the white lab coat who was silently and diligently observing this all too different child.
“Calm down, Madeline! I’m asking you to tell me about the kid’s past, not to steal from a bank!”
“Calm down? I will NOT ‘calm down’! Do you honestly expect me to hand over some poor child to you so you can conduct your experiments? Had you told me about this earlier, I would’ve told you to stick it up your-“
“Yes, I know, but there was a good reason for not telling you! It’s highly classified information, and I can’t just go telling everybody, now can I?”
MacLeere was fuming, distressed and confused all at the same time. Since when did Madeline Jones even care about kids? Since when did she care about this one particular kid? I mean, sure, she had talked about the Child Protection act earlier, but John knew that she had sent some kids to abusive homes in the past. Why was this so different? He wouldn’t be abusing the child by any means. All he wanted was an explanation.
He cleared his throat.
“Madeline… Why the sudden interest? I did say that I was going to adopt the kid as my own, right? Doesn’t that mean anything?”
“Considering how well you treat yourself, you should be able to see why I’m so mad; the child would be worse off, wouldn’t it?”
The question was rhetorical, so John ignored it.
“Look, all I’m asking for is some backstory. Could you please just let me know?”
She looked hesitant. Obviously, she still needed convincing.
“Look, if it’s about money…”
“John, it’s not about the money! It was never about the money! It’s-“
She stopped short. She sat back down: the discussion had gotten her pretty riled up. She put her head in her hands and said softly,
“I… I just can’t let him go, John. It’s too painful…”
The room fell awfully silent for about a minute. MacLeere swore he could hear his heart beating louder than the clock ticking at the back of the room.
“Madeline… How did you two meet? Where did you find Jae?”
She gave in. She poured out the story and looked at the wall past John, never showing any emotion.
“One day, I was working in the office when a friend of mine called me on the phone. I hadn’t talked to her in years, since she was a military wife and had moved away long ago; I’m surprised she still remembered my number. She told me that there had been an explosion in a nuclear plant about fifty miles out of town. Now, I know what you’re thinking: nuclear plants are obsolete. They have been for fifteen years, ever since we discovered how to generate power from carbon dioxide. Well, there was only one nuclear plant left, being used for God knows what by the military. To make a long story short, my friend told me that the situation there was critical, and she had to tell someone. She lived in the base right next to the plant, and was worried sick about her husband that worked there. Now, I know some of this has some loose ends, but just hear me out till the end; I’ll explain later.
Anyway, she hung up, and that was on my mind for about thirty minutes until something else came along; I completely forgot about it. I know, that’s harsh, but I had things to do. Well, about a week later, I got a call from the military, some Colonel that had a name that I can’t pronounce, and he told me to come get a child that had been orphaned off base. Not one to argue with higher-ups in the government, I went without question to the coordinates that he relayed me. I was told never to tell a soul where this was, nor of the events that occurred thereafter.”
She paused, and MacLeere shifted uneasily in his seat.
“Look, the only reason I’m telling you this is to get you off my back. I don’t care what they do to me, anyway; I’ve had enough of secrets.
So, I get to the base, and am escorted to a small bungalow. It looked as if it had been slightly burned. At least, that was my initial thought, until I realized that it was the only house still standing in a sea of nuclear devastation. The plant had exploded three days earlier. Fortunately, they had cleared away the radioactivity, but they were left with a huge incident to cover up. You may have heard about the plane that crashed into a warehouse. That was what they used for a meltdown.
I entered the house, and the first thing that struck me was the smell. It smelled like burnt, decaying bodies. The second thing was the state of the house: everything w
as burnt. The outside had been relatively intact, but the inside was a mess. Just as I was trying to figure out why I had actually come here in the first place, I heard a noise. I went into what had at one time been a kitchen, and I saw a little boy, no more than three years old. He was sitting beside two charred corpses. I assumed they were his parents. The attendant that had come in with me whispered that the kid hadn’t eaten in two days, and didn’t want to be taken away from his parents.
I slowly crept up past the burnt kitchen table, and spoke softly to the child, telling him he had to go, that he had to eat, that his parents were gone. I told him that they were in a better place; the expression on his face was the hardest thing to watch that I had ever encountered. He looked so helpless…”
She paused again, this time with a tear streaming down her left cheek. Her voice started to tremble.
“Then he finally spoke. All he said was his name, and that was too much. He said his name was Jae. I asked him what his last name was for my report later on; he replied with “Hawk”. Hawk was the last name of the friend that called me the week before, John. This was my friend’s child.”
John was speechless. Sure, she had left out some key parts of the story, and he had tons of questions to ask, but the biggest one was answered: why she didn’t want him to have Jae. She didn’t want to let go; she wanted to protect the boy.
He swallowed hard.
“Madeline, I… I didn’t know… I’m so sorry.”
She wiped away the tears she was fighting off, and replied with her voice still slightly trembling.
“There’s no way that I could ever leave him, John. No way at all. That’s why I can’t let you have him. I just can’t…”
MacLeere sat in thought for a while. Ages it seemed like. He was trying to think of something to say. Something that would ease the pain. Something that-
And that’s when it hit him: he needed a psychologist. He still needed a psychologist!
“Madeline… how high did you go in psychology, anyway? I can’t remember now.”
She sniffed.
“My masters. Why?”
He grinned.
“Well… I may have a solution for you.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
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