As I rush onto the children's ward, with its waft of minestrone and dated mural of Mickey Mouse, Joe meets me with eyes that are round and knowing and deep brown sad.
I adjust his feeding tube and ache to reach him. Touch him inside. Tell him the answers to the questions in his soul. But there are none. How can there be? For him …
He sits and looks, his bony head resting against the black wings of his wheelchair, with its orange embroidered, "Yes."
"Did you have a good weekend?" I ask inanely, my eyes purposely sliding away before he can swing his head to the "No," sewn on the other side of his headrest.
Joe can't help it but he makes me feel uncomfortable. The guilt snakes and worms and wriggles inside me until all I can do is look away from him - time after time.
The other nurses tell me, "You're good with kids."
It's one of the reasons why I changed jobs. That and to save face ...
But I'm useless with Joe. I can't ever make him laugh or even smile. My jokes dance like tumbleweed as he paralyses my humour with his soulfully wise stare.
"You're one of our regular inmates, aren't you, Joe?" I show off to this month's medical students, who grip their clip boards and curl their NHS lips into eager-to-please smiles.
How I long instead to tell them of my dream for Joe. To give him one easy weekend, squashed with skateboarding, greasy burgers, bowling with his mates, arguing with his brother ...
But there are no carefree days for Joe. Instead, he can only sit and look. Watch a world swing by, in which he doesn't fit, can't join in.
Someone's mistake on a maternity ward, one desperate night twelve long years ago, robbed Joe of a voice. Someone's mistake stole his chance to swallow. Someone's mistake burgled his right to move, walk, run free.
And now Joe must live with that. Sitting in his "Yes" and "No" chair, gazing at a busy world as if it is a delicious ice cream he can never lick.
It was easier when he was little. When he first came onto the ward and I'd got over the shock of seeing him, I could chat away, sing nursery rhymes, hold his hands together in a clap.
But he's twelve now and I don't know how to be with him.
Someone's mistake has disabled me as much as it has him.
Sometimes I dare to visit that dark place locked inside me and try to imagine what life must be like for him. To not speak out, to not eat, to not read or write, or even run after the school bus. Even just the idea, burns like acid through my mind.
And sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I'd a gram of the courage that Joe shows every day. The courage to own up ...
But I'm too proud, too worried, I'd lose my standing. That I'd lose face, I suppose.
Yes, I should own up. To that dreadful, stupid, mistake I made, twelve long years ago. On a frantically busy night when I worked in the delivery suite.
You see, that mistake is as hard for Joe to live with as it is for me …
Copyright © 2008 Rob Richardson. All Rights Reserved.