“He isn’t damaged,” Harrison said, and there was steel in it, a sentence he had clearly had to make somewhere.

“He hears perfectly.

He reads two grades above level.

He understands every word anyone says.

He’s had four specialists and the current term is selective mutism secondary to trauma, and the honest medical position is that nobody knows when or whether it resolves.

“What I need to know from you is this.

There have been five people in this job in two years.

Two of them were unkind to him.