A SELF DISCOVERY NOVEL

Lost & Found

Chapter 7: Raising Jordan

“Adoption isn’t just a childhood experience, it’s a life-long experience.”― DaShanne Stokes

Jordan lay heavily bandaged and sedated in his hospital bed and reflected on his misfortunes.

The pain killers were starting to recede like the tide to reveal the actual gravity of the injuries. His ribcage felt like it had a shard of mirror wedged inside it and every breath wanted to pause and preen itself as it went past. He wished he could stop breathing for a while. His vision felt permanently clouded, like looking through a veil smudged by a thick ink stain. His speech slurred like a hopeless drunk. His head felt encased in concrete as his harness prevented even the slightest movement of his neck. Jordan felt like an abandoned, badly cracked jar held together by old sticky tape and thread.

But the worst part of him lay hidden under all the bandages.

His mind.

He was having a severe panic attack of feeling abandoned. He knew these attacks well. They normally crept up on Jordan when he least expected.

Jordan’s first living memory was one such panic attack.

It happened when Jordan was just four years old. He had just been admitted to a new school by his foster parents, who lived in Goa. The school was far away, and Jordan was dropped there by a driver and then picked up in the afternoon again. This one day, his driver did not arrive. The school had slowly emptied. Parents picked up their kids and left while Jordan waited anxiously, looking for his driver. Eventually, Jordan was the last kid left, and the school was now empty. The only person left was the school's watchman, who made Jordan come and sit inside his tiny guard room and wait.

It’s unnerving to be a new kid in a school full of kids and teachers that you don’t know at all, but it morphs into a cemetery when it empties, and you are the last one left. It slowly started to get dark, and the dread of being left all alone slowly drowned him in fear, and he broke down and started to cry. After what seemed an eternity, his driver showed up and took Jordan home.

Jordan never forgot that feeling of dreadful hopelessness.

Jordan spent his first few years moving from foster home to foster home in Goa. How he got to Goa remains a mystery to him to this date. The Pastor told Jordan that his biological parents could not look after him because they were too poor, so they had requested the Church to become his guardians. The local Church in Verna in South Goa allocated Jordan foster homes and paid the families to provide for his schooling and basic needs. Jordan lived in these homes like a little paying guest; treated well but never really made to feel part of the family. Most of his caregivers were kind, but some also took him in grudgingly. He was like the dogs in the village houses- part of the family but kept apart from being a family.

Jordan kept changing schools to accommodate his various foster parents. One day in one of those many schools, the Principal asked to meet him in his office without much warning. Jordan was a good student but was always worried that he would have to abruptly leave and move to another school for the foster parents' financial or locational convenience reasons. So a call that day from the Principal was not a very welcoming thought.

Jordan entered the office and saw that there were two other people in the room beside the Principal. They were both foreigners. Their names were John and Anne Zappa. They had come from London, England, to meet Jordan.

Jordan instantly felt at ease in their presence. They began by complimenting Jordan’s excellent grades and how much they had enjoyed reading Jordan’s essays that he had recently submitted to their publication in London.

Jordan loved to write whenever he felt scared or lonely. He would write about nature and his love for traveling, and dreams of exploring the world. Sometimes his essays would be published in the school newsletter, and the teachers would then share them wider to other sister-affiliated schools and journals. It was one of these chance occurrences that led John and Anne to find Jordan.

Then the Principal announced the real reason for the meeting. John and Anne wanted to adopt him and take him with them to London!

Anne held Jordan’s hands and explained how she and John wanted to adopt him in a soft, kind voice as they did not have any children of their own. She showed him pictures of their house in London and their labrador Molly and how they would love to have him come and stay with them.

Jordan smiled but wanted to clarify one thing, so he asked for permission to ask a question from the Principal and then looked at John and Anne and said, “Thank you, But for long can I stay?”

Jordan was tired of moving homes and was hoping that they would keep him for a few years at least. John walked up to Jordan, put his arms around his shoulder, and said, “Forever, son.”

Jordan felt a tremendous sense of relief at hearing those words. It was as if he had felt shade for the first time in his life from the scorching sun. He just looked at John and Anne, smiled as wide as he could, revealing his missing front tooth, and said Yes!

It took some time for all the paperwork, but Jordan was packed and on his way to London six months later. He was eight years and two months old.

Jordan was feeling sleepy with all the war in his body between pain and the drugs. But his mind was the worst hit. The trauma of the accident kept playing again and again as he relived the accident and the venomous cold words he exchanged with Stephanie before the crash. Detached cruelty was Jordan’s most lethal weapon. He had learned to wield it as an antidote to feelings of inadequacy that haunted him all his life.

He fell asleep, thinking how the past was a constant pebble in his shoe.

To be continued…

Be Open Says;

So pleased to present you 1 of Be Open Golden Stories created by: Svaina S.

Approved by Be Open’s Editors: A Shayens Abran