Chapter 10
Sometimes when bad things happen people won’t talk about it. When Granny got sick nobody told me until she got taken into hospital.
Not knowing the truth can make things worse. I have a vivid imagination, so if I don’t know the truth I’ll imagine the worst possible scenario.
‘It was an accident’ is all anyone would tell me. But I didn’t know what ‘an accident’ meant, it could mean anything. ‘A traumatic brain injury,’ they said. I didn’t know what that meant either. I just wanted the truth. What happened to my friend Ronan?
We were in Mrs O’Neill’s form room; Ronan in his wheelchair, his mum and dad, Mrs O’Neill and me.
No one was being honest with me. Mr and Mrs McCoy looked haunted standing there.
Silent like their son. Of course they knew what had happened to Ronan, but I could see it was too painful for them to squeeze words out.
Mrs O’Neill must have known too but was holding back.
I looked up at them. I’m not an angry person but I felt angry then.
‘It’s OK,’ I said, ‘you don’t need to tell me what happened.’
Maybe I thought that would break their silence, that they’d see the unfairness and include me in the truth. But no. They nodded as if excluding me was the right thing to do. I was just a boy, after all, what business had I in knowing what horrific thing had happened to my only friend in the world?
With air that felt like fire as it passed my lips I said:
‘I don’t want to hear it from you. I want to hear it from Ronan and he’ll tell me when he’s ready.’
Mrs O’Neill raised her eyebrows. I was supposed to be the boy who never spoke up for himself.
I was the boy who was the best friend of Ronan.
Ronan the leader. Me the follower. But in that moment, in that room, with Ronan in front of me and nothing making sense, I put all my focus on my friend and not on the people who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tell me the truth.
I knew what they were thinking; how could I possibly imagine this boy, their son, Mrs O’Neill’s student, my friend, would ever be capable of speech again?
But I knew Ronan. I knew him better than they did.
And Ronan was always honest with me. He knew what had happened to him, even if his brain was injured like they said.
He trusted me. I trusted him. If anyone were to tell me the truth I needed it to be him. He just wasn’t able to tell me yet.
‘Brendan …’ began Mrs McCoy.
‘I’ll wait for however long it takes,’ I said, not taking my eyes off Ronan.
Because, to me, every word of a person’s own story is like a beat of their own heart.
I could even picture the scene somewhere in the future; I would be sitting opposite Ronan and he would be telling me his story from across the room.
And years later, in our old age, still the best of friends, we’d reminisce about the time I let no one speak for him until he could speak for himself and I’d be absolutely convinced, as I thought back over the years, that with every word Ronan spoke when he told his story for the first time, I could hear the beat of his heart.
‘It’s his story,’ I said, ‘I want him to tell it.’