Cry Silent Tears: The heartbreaking survival story of a small mute boy who overcame unbearable suffering and found his voice again. Joe Peters

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СКАЧАТЬ managed to get to his feet but his whole body was on fire as he ran around the garage, screaming with a mixture of pain and terror, unable to escape the flames that clung to him, his movement making them burn fiercer. The other men, including Derek, all came running out of the office and stared in horror. It was as though time had frozen as they all stood there in shock, watching Dad. Every second seemed like an hour as the flames grew more ferocious, fanned by the wind, which returned through the doors once the blast had died away and took a firmer hold on their victim. As I struggled with the locks of the Capri door, desperate to get to him, all I could see was him running around and his screams filled my ears. I thought no one was doing anything to help him but I found out later that Derek had been struggling with a fire extinguisher, unable to get it to work.

      A neighbour from across the road, who had heard the explosion, came running in through the entrance, grabbed Dad and threw him onto the floor, trying to beat the flames out. I finally managed to get out of the Capri and ran across to where Dad was lying. By the time I got there the flames were out and everything was black and charred. His whole body was shaking and convulsing and going into shock. Derek grabbed me and covered my eyes with his hand before I could see Dad’s incinerated face close up. I remember the smell, though – a sickly smell of burned flesh and choking smoke. I could hear the sound of sirens coming closer and people running around as I struggled to get free, kicking and biting, frantic to get to my dad. Derek kept holding me tight so that I didn’t get in the way of the rescuers, protecting me from the full impact of the sight.

      The ambulance men lifted Dad onto a stretcher and loaded him into the back of the ambulance.

      ‘Let me come with you. Dad, tell them to let me come!’ I cried, tears streaming down my face, but the ambulance men said no, they couldn’t have a child on board.

      Derek phoned my Aunt Melissa and she rushed over within a few minutes. She tried to comfort me as best she could but she was too worried about her brother to think clearly about anything. To me at that moment it felt like the whole world had ended in that explosion of horror. I was just five years old. I wanted my dad back.

Chapter Four ‘Turn Him Off!’

      The ambulance carried Dad off at full speed, all sirens blaring. I watched it go and then Aunt Melissa led me up the road to her house and phoned Marie to let her know what had happened. When Marie arrived, I remember lots of hushed whispers and glances that I wasn’t meant to see. Melissa’s husband Amani, a big Nigerian guy, kept staring at me and I remember I felt uncomfortable and didn’t want him there.

      ‘When can I go to the hospital to see my dad?’ I kept asking. I knew his burns must be hurting a lot. I could remember clearly how much it had hurt when Mum had pressed my hand against the flat of the iron, so I thought I could imagine what agonies my dad must be going through after being completely engulfed in flames and I wanted to go and try to comfort him. I couldn’t get the image of him running around the garage on fire out of my head. I didn’t like being parted from him when I was so worried about what was going on. I felt exposed and vulnerable. All the bad things that had ever happened to me had always happened when he wasn’t there to protect me and I didn’t know how long it would be before he was able to come out of hospital and be there for me again. I kept asking the adults questions but none of them had any answers for me. Everyone was crying.

      Marie took me home a few hours later. Being with her always felt more like being at home than when I was in the house where my mother lived. I was in a state of complete shock, unable to take in what I had witnessed and the pictures that kept going round and round in my head, having no idea what it was all going to mean to me. It didn’t occur to me for a moment that my dad might actually die; I didn’t know what death was at that age. I was worried for him and horrified to have heard him screaming so terribly, but I assumed the doctors would make him better and he would be back to look after me soon with nothing more than a few scars to remind us of that terrible day – just as they had made Thomas and me better when we had been burned.

      Marie tried to talk to me and prepare me for what might happen. ‘Sometimes, when people are very badly hurt,’ she said, ‘they die and they go to Heaven to be with God. It’s a beautiful place, and they can look down on everyone they love and watch out for them from up there.’

      I listened, but as if she was telling me a fairy story. I didn’t for one moment think that she was saying this might happen to my dad. I was just waiting until I could see him again, convinced that he would make everything all right once the doctors had fixed his burns.

      I wasn’t allowed to go in to visit him until three days later. I don’t know if the hospital had been permitting visitors before that, but Marie must have known Mum would be there and perhaps she didn’t want to take me in and risk her snatching me away. Or maybe she had thought it would be too traumatic for me to see Dad in that state but I just nagged until she gave in. She must have been as shocked by the accident as I was, even though she was a grown-up. All her instincts must have been to run to be by the bedside of the man she loved, but I suppose she was nervous about Mum starting a fight on the ward. By the time she did take me in to see him they knew that he was going to die and she must have decided I should be given a chance to say goodbye. He was already brain dead but I had no idea about that as I walked in holding tightly to her hand.

      I clung to Marie as we passed through the seemingly endless corridors of the hospital, constantly on the watch for Mum, expecting her to jump out round every corner we turned. When we finally reached the intensive care ward it was all quiet, each bed surrounded by equipment that buzzed and blinked as it supported the lives of the patients it was attached to. We stopped beside a bed and I tried to work out what I was looking at. The bandaged figure lying unconscious on the mattress with tubes coming in and out of him didn’t look like my dad. At first I didn’t believe it was him. I thought they’d made a mistake and brought me to the wrong bed.

      ‘Where’s Dad?’ I asked Marie. ‘What have they done with him?’

      ‘This is your dad, Joe,’ Marie said gently and I could see there were tears glinting in her eyes.

      It must have been just as upsetting for her to see him like that as it was for me but she had to stay brave and not break down in front of me. A nurse was standing by the head of the bed checking something on a monitor, and she gave me a sympathetic look.

      I turned again to the bandaged figure on the bed. Parts of him were covered in clear bags of fluid, which seemed to me at the time to be dripping and seeping with blood and raw flesh but it was probably just that I could see through them to the terrible burns underneath. The machines made a heavy sighing sound, and Dad’s chest was moving up and down but his face was so heavily bandaged that I couldn’t see his eyes or his mouth.

      ‘Dad?’ I said tentatively, but the word came out funny, as if it was catching in my throat.

      ‘He can’t talk,’ Marie explained, stroking my hair.

      I started to back away from the bed, overcome with horror at the sight before my eyes. Marie must have realized that she had made a mistake in giving in to my nagging and bringing me to the hospital, but it was too late by then. Suddenly Mum appeared on the other side of the bed, making me jump and shiver with fright, certain she was going to launch herself at us as she always did on her visits to the garage. But she was behaving differently this time, playing the traumatized young wife for the benefit of the watching nurse. It didn’t last long. Her grief changed to anger as soon as we were left alone round the bed. I could see from her furious face that she certainly wasn’t pleased to see Marie.

      ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ she snarled as soon as the nurse was out of earshot. ‘He’s my fucking husband, not СКАЧАТЬ