Damon

Connor Kirkpatrick walked along the sidewalk and kept his head down. He was cold and he was starving, but he couldn’t lose focus on his mission. He’d been walking for hours and he couldn’t let his mother down. She needed him and if he needed to walk more, he would.
Sitting down for a few minutes, he looked up at the street names. Some of the words were too big for his eight-year-old vocabulary, but he could make them out. His momma had been teaching him to read since he was little. When they’d gotten away this time, she said it was important to keep up with his education. Before that, she’d been too hurt to do much more than keep Mr. Ormond happy. And that wasn’t all that easy or often either. The street name was High Street. The other one was…Board, no it was Broad Street. He didn’t think he was ever going to find the one called North Fourth Street.
The phonebook had said there was a clinic at that street and that they would give out medicine if someone needed it. Connor wasn’t sure what his momma needed, but he thought that anything was better than what she had right now, which was nothing.
He looked across the street and saw a man in a heavy coat go in a tall building with a lady. Connor thought it would be warm in there and looked to see if anyone would see him. He thought if he could just get warm for a little while then he’d have no problems going on to the other street.
He crossed at the light and made his way along the front of the building. There was a man there in a uniform and it almost made Connor turn and run in the other direction, but his back was turned as he was facing the couple. Connor pulled open the door just enough for his slight body to fit though and darted inside. As soon as he made it to the other side of the room, he slid under one of the benches. Just as he thought it would be, he was warm.
Connor huddled tight under the bench, trying to make himself as small as possible. He watched for anyone to notice him. No one seemed to have seen him, but he knew that he’d not be able to stay long. His momma needed him and he had to get back to her. The warmer he got, the drowsier he got until he fell asleep.
~~~
“Dr. Grant, it’s David on the line. He is saying something about a runaway. He wants to know if you’ll come down and have a look at him. He’s afraid the boy looks like someone has hurt him.”
“Where is he? I’m about to go out, Tansy. Can you ask him where the kid is and why he hasn’t called Children’s Services?” Damon just wanted to have this day end.
It had been a hell of a week and he had never been so happy to have Friday roll around. His brothers and he were going to go to dinner at his favorite restaurant and he was having a thick, juicy steak and lots of sour cream on his baked potato. He thought he might even drink a beer or two as well. It wasn’t every day that one turned thirty-five.
“He said the boy is asleep under one of the benches in the lobby,” Tansy told him sadly. “He said it’s the holidays and he doesn’t want to call Services if he doesn’t have to. David is worried that the kid is hurt.”
“I’ll go down and see,” Morgan said as she bundled up the twins. “I’m on my way out anyway. Your mother and I are going to go to the Polaris and make sure the decorations are up for the benefit in two weeks. If I have any trouble, I’ll have David give you a call.” Morgan moved to the elevator as she spoke.
“Thanks, sweetie. I’ll make sure there is something extra special in your stocking this year. And if I can’t get Nicky to get it for you, I’ll get it.” Damon loved his sisters-in-law, and Morgan would always have a special place in his heart.
He was going down the hall toward the elevator himself ten minutes later when his cell when off. The first thing he heard was a high-pitched scream then Morgan begging for someone to calm down. He skipped the opening doors and his brothers standing there waiting for him to enter and took off for the stairs. He would lose the connection if he took the elevator, and he was afraid of something happening.
“Damon, get down here quick. He’s hurt bad and he won’t let me touch him. Oh, God, Damon, someone hurt him bad,” Morgan said as she came back on the line.
Damon went back up the one flight of stairs and grabbed his bag off the floor of his office. He was back down the stairs and was slamming out of the stairwell when he heard a kid scream. He knew that sound. It was pain, pain and terror. Coming out of the stairwell, he walked up to where his brothers were standing and moved his way to the front.
“Enough,” Damon barked. The boy snapped his mouth closed, but he never stopped whimpering. “I’m a doctor and I’m going to see what all the shouting is about. You’ll not move or you may hurt this nice lady here, you understand?”
Wide-eyed terror looked back at him. Damon saw the tiny nod of the little boy’s head. He went down on his knees and made his way toward him. He could see the blood now. It pooled under him where he had been lying. Damon couldn’t see where he’d been hurt, but could see enough to know it was extensive.
“This is my medical bag. These men are my brothers and they won’t hurt you either. This is Spencer and Byron and my baby brother Jamie. This pretty lady is Morgan, the man behind her is another brother, Nicky. You have any brothers or sisters?”
This time, a negative shake of his head.
“My name is Damon Grant. I’m going to get a little closer to you and have a look at your arm. Don’t move, I don’t want you to hurt you anymore, all right?”
Damon reached slowly toward the boy and crawled on his knees a bit closer. This close, Damon could see that he was underweight and that he looked like he’d been out in the cold for a while; his lips and face were chapped. Moving slowly, Damon gently wrapped his fingers around the boy’s forearm and settled down on his own feet.
“Are you hungry? I can get one of them to go and get you something to eat and drink. It won’t be much, just a candy bar with chocolate and a bottle of water, but they’ll go get it for you now.”
Damon heard one of them move and was glad they understood. He also knew that they’d bring the boy just what he’d asked for, too. He opened his bag and pulled out his stethoscope. He put it to his ears.
“I need to take your shirt off…I forgot your name.”
“Connor. Connor Joshua Kirkpatrick. And I’m eight, not stupid. I want to go now, all right? I didn’t take anything and my momma needs me. I have to get to the clinic for her.”
“No, I can see that you’re not, Connor. I’m sorry. Next time I’ll be honest with you. Is your momma hurt too? Like I said, I’m a doctor. Maybe I can help her too. Can you tell me where she is? And maybe her name?”
This time, when one of his brothers moved, he knew it was to make a phone call. They would call their mom to come and help with this now. Damon smiled at Connor.
“Yes, sir. Charlotte Kirkpatrick, but everybody but the bastard calls her Charlie. But I can’t take you to her. She said that we had to stay off the grind and lay low. I ain’t going…I’m not going back to that man and neither is my momma.”
Damon thought he meant off the grid, but thought it best not to correct him. He could see the hatred on Connor’s face and wondered if this “bastard” was the one they were hiding from. He pressed the scope to Connor’s chest and listened to his healthy-sounding heart and then checked his pulse. It was a little fast, but Damon figured it was because he was scared. He felt someone tap on his arm and turned to take the candy bar and bottled water from Jamie.
“You can have these as soon as I have a look at your back. Your heart is fine and your pulse is a little slow but not dangerously so. I can see that you’re bleeding, Connor. Would you mind turning around for me?”
He wasn’t sure he was going to do it, but he moved slowly, if not a little cautiously, to face the wall. There was a little blood on the coat, so Damon took it by the collar and pulled it off his shoulders. The shirt beneath was saturated. Morgan hissed at the sight but said nothing. Damon didn’t want to hurt Connor, but the blood had dried in a few places and he was afraid it had stuck to whatever wounds were under it.
“Connor, are you bandaged up or does your shirt lie on your wounds? I need to take this shirt off, but I don’t want to hurt you to do it. Some of the blood is sticking to you.”
“Momma taped me up with some white material when we came through Iowa. She was hurting pretty bad by then, but she got worsted as we came over. I didn’t want her to look at it no more. It made her cry.”
Damon took out a pair of scissors. He decided that cutting the shirt away would be better. He nodded to Morgan who was crying softly next to him.
“Morgan has some little boys about your size and she’ll give you one of their shirts when I’m finished. I’m going to cut this one off you. She’s going to go and see what we can find up in my office. There might be a shirt or two up there and if not, I got a few gowns we can put over you until we can replace your shirt.”
Morgan’s twin sons were only two years old, not nearly big enough to share a shirt with this child, but she needed something to do. And Damon wanted the boy to think everything was going fine and that he’d leave as soon as Damon was finished with him.
Cutting away the bandage and shirt was hard. The padding was thick and there was a great deal of it. When Damon finally got to his skin, it was everything he could do not to pull the little boy into his arms and hold him. He heard his brothers curse behind him and knew that they felt the same way.
The wounds were both fresh and older. Someone had taken a wide strap, probably a leather belt, to his back and had done it hard enough to draw blood. Some of the cuts oozed; a few of them bled profusely. There was bruising as well and a few of those had been caused by something wider and more blunt. Through all his examination, Connor never muttered a sound.
“He said he was going to hurt her more if I didn’t lay still and take it like a man. Men don’t get beat up with a belt. It’s okay that he hit me when he wasn’t hurting Momma. But he lied. He hurt her in places a girl shouldn’t get hurt. If I ever see the bastard again, I’m gonna kill him dead.”
While Connor was still turned with his back away, Damon took out a syringe and filled it with a sedative. He didn’t want to harm Connor, but he needed him to be out when he had to stitch up the wounds. But he stopped short of putting the drug in the water bottle when Connor struck up a deal.
“I’ll take you to my momma so you can help her, but you can’t tell no one where we are. He’ll find us soon enough, she said, but if she is not hurting so much then we can go faster. I got me a bat hid out, but I’m just a little kid and maybe if you help us both, we can stay gone. He told us if we run again, he was gonna kill us anyway.”
“All right. You have a deal. But Connor, I want something in return. A deal is two way, right? I want you to tell me all you can about the bastard that did this to you and your momma. Because if I see him first, I’m going to be the one killing him.”
Connor turned and looked at him. Then he looked at the men standing behind him. He knew they were being sized up and he had never been more proud in his life as he was at that moment. Morgan came back then and she went into Nicky’s open arms and let him hold her.
“He’s a mean bastard and he has a gun. He hit my momma with it one time. If he comes at you, he don’t play fair. I don’t want nobody to get hurt ‘cause of us.”
“You don’t worry about us. And once our mom finds out what he’s done, he won’t stand a chance. She’s about as mean as they come when it comes to someone hurting kids. Trust me.”
“Damon Grant, what a thing to tell a young man. But he’s right. And as soon as we can get it figured out, I’m going make him wish he’d never messed with what’s mine. You must be Connor. My name is Margaret Parker. Let’s go get your momma, shall we?”