Kate was halfway down my front walk when Paige screamed. It was a short, piercing cry, the kind that made my hand tighten automatically around a baby even before my mind had decided there was anything wrong. Kate stopped for a fraction of a second and glanced back at me. I smiled, because she was already exhausted, already late for whatever brief escape she and Ryan had planned. But the sound stayed with me after she climbed into their SUV.
“Go,” I called. “You two need the break.”
Kate gave me a tired smile. “She barely slept last night. If she gets fussy, just do whatever you normally do.”
Ryan was already behind the wheel, staring at his phone. He lifted one hand in acknowledgment when I looked toward him. Kate kissed Paige’s forehead, adjusted the pale green sleeper around her shoulders, and hurried away. Before she reached the passenger door, she turned back once.
“You’re the one person I trust with her,” she said.
At the time, I took it as a compliment. I had no reason not to.
The SUV disappeared around the corner. I carried Paige inside and closed the door with my heel. The house suddenly felt unusually quiet. Ben had gone out to help a friend with a fence, and Tess, my grown daughter, was spending the weekend at her apartment. It was just me and my six-month-old niece, exactly as I had expected when Kate called that morning.
I warmed the bottle Kate had packed. Paige drank three small swallows, then turned her face away. I tried again. She pressed her lips together and made a thin, unhappy sound.
“Not hungry?” I asked.
She answered with another whimper.
I lifted her against my shoulder and rubbed her back. Her little body felt tense under the fabric. Usually Paige relaxed when someone held her upright. She liked being carried from room to room, especially when sunlight moved across the walls. That morning, she seemed interested in none of it.
I walked past the front windows with her tucked against my chest. Outside, maple leaves trembled in the breeze. I paused near the glass, hoping the moving shadows would catch her attention. They did not. Her eyes remained squeezed shut, and the small sound coming from her throat had become continuous.
I tried the teething ring Kate had packed. Paige shoved it away.
“All right,” I murmured. “We'll find out what is bothering you.”
I sat down. She cried harder.
I stood again.
I walked.
I rocked.
Nothing helped.
Then I shifted my grip, sliding one hand underneath her lower body so I could bring her higher against my shoulder.
Paige screamed.
I froze.
There was something different about that cry. It wasn't the angry protest of a hungry baby or the exhausted wail of someone who had missed a nap. It came abruptly, violently, as if I had touched something that hurt far more than either of us had realized.
“Okay,” I whispered. “I won't move you.”
I sat slowly on the sofa and kept her exactly where she was.
Her breathing came in tiny, uneven pulls against my neck. I felt my own heartbeat speeding up. My mind began running through possibilities. An ear infection. A stomach problem. Fever. A pinched finger. Something trapped inside her clothing. A twisted toe. A diaper that had become uncomfortable.
I moved my left hand a few inches.
Paige did not react.
I changed the position of her shoulders.
Nothing.
Then I allowed her lower body to settle slightly farther across my arm.
She screamed again.
I looked down.
The pain was below her waist.
I carried her into the spare bedroom and placed her on the changing table as carefully as I could. I didn't lift her hips any more than necessary. Her cheeks were wet. Her hands were balled into tiny fists against her chest.
“I know,” I said softly. “Aunt Ally knows something hurts.”
I began opening the snaps on her sleeper. The first caused no reaction. Neither did the second. When I reached the third, Paige suddenly stiffened.
I stopped.
For several seconds I watched her legs beneath the fabric.
Her right leg moved.
Her left didn't.
A cold sensation traveled through my fingertips.
I slid the fabric upward instead of pulling it down. Her diaper looked normal. There was no blood. Nothing immediately obvious explained the way she was guarding one side of her body.
I touched her right shin through the sleeper.
She kicked.
I barely brushed the fabric over her left thigh.
Her face crumpled.
“Oh, God.”
I opened the remaining snaps with shaking fingers and eased the fabric away from her diaper line. Her right thigh appeared first, round and moving. Then I exposed the left.
I stopped breathing.
A dark bruise covered much of the outside of Paige's upper thigh. It wasn't a little mark from bumping into a toy. The center was deep purple, with reddish edges, and the skin around it looked swollen. Her left thigh appeared noticeably thicker than the right.
For one foolish second, I searched for a harmless explanation.
Maybe the diaper had pinched her.
No.
Maybe the car seat buckle had pressed against her.
No.
Maybe Kate had already seen it.
That thought barely formed before Paige tried to move.
She screamed.
I pulled the sleeper loosely back over her and lifted her using both arms, keeping her lower body supported as evenly as possible.
My phone was on the living-room table beside the bottle.
Kate's name was near the top of my recent calls.
I stared at it.
My first instinct was to phone her. Ask whether Paige had fallen. Ask whether something had happened overnight. Ask why she had not mentioned the bruise.
Then I looked at Paige's face.
Whatever explanation Kate had, I could get it later.
Right now, my niece needed a doctor.
I checked the clock.
Kate and Ryan had been gone less than half an hour.
“I'm taking you to the hospital,” I told Paige.
She made a faint sound against my shoulder.
That sudden quiet scared me more than the screaming had.
I grabbed her diaper bag, my purse, and my keys. Getting her into the infant carrier was agonizing. Every tiny adjustment made her whimper. I supported her injured leg while lowering her into the seat, then fastened the straps as carefully as I could.
“Almost done,” I whispered.
The buckle clicked.
She cried.
I nearly stopped.
Instead, I checked the straps, shut the door, and hurried around to the driver's side.
Memorial General was roughly twenty minutes away. I made it in eighteen.
The drive felt much longer.
Every bump in the road made Paige moan. I kept glancing at the small mirror above the back seat. Her eyes remained closed. At one red light, I caught myself whispering at the signal as though it could hear me.
“Come on. Change.”
My phone rang through the car speakers.
Kate.
Her name appeared across the dashboard.
I stared at it.
I couldn't safely explain everything while driving, so I let it ring. Thirty seconds later she called again. I ignored that one too.
Then a message appeared.
Everything okay?
I waited until I reached the emergency entrance.
Paige is hurt. I'm at Memorial General pediatric ER. Come now.
I sent it and ran inside.
A security guard saw the carrier and immediately came toward me.
“She's injured,” I said. “Her leg. I don't know what happened.”
He opened the emergency doors and called for a nurse.
Within moments, Paige disappeared behind a curtain.
The questions began almost immediately. Her name. Her age. Allergies. Parents. Medical history.
“Relationship to patient?” the nurse asked.
“I'm her aunt.”
“Legal guardian?”
“No. Her parents left her with me this morning.”
“What happened?”
I swallowed.
“I don't know.”
The nurse looked up.
I heard how terrible that answer sounded.
“I didn't see an accident,” I added quickly. “She was already crying when my sister brought her. It got worse after they left. I found the bruise when I tried to change her.”
The nurse entered something into the computer.
“What time did her parents leave?”
“Around nine forty-five.”
“And when did you arrive?”
I looked toward the wall clock.
“Ten fifty-six.”
She typed again.
A pediatric doctor named Dr. Aris came in a few minutes later. She examined Paige's head, arms, abdomen, and neck. Paige tolerated most of it.
Then the doctor reached the injured side.
She stopped before touching it.
“Did you notice this when Paige arrived at your home?”
“I didn't undress her.”
“Was she moving both legs?”
I thought back.
Kate had been holding her. The sleeper had covered most of her legs.
“I don't know.”
The doctor nodded.
“Did she fall while she was with you?”
“No.”
“Off a bed? Sofa? Changing table?”
“No.”
“Anyone else in the house?”
“No.”
“Pets?”
“We have a cat, but he was upstairs.”
“Did anything catch her leg?”
“Not that I saw.”
Dr. Aris looked at the nurse.
It lasted barely a second.
I noticed.
“What?” I asked.
“We need imaging.”
“Do you think it's broken?”
“I don't want to guess before we have the X-ray.”
She didn't have to say anything else.
My phone vibrated.
Kate.
This time I answered.
“Where are you?” she demanded.
“Memorial General.”
“What happened?”
“Paige has a serious injury to her leg.”
There was a pause.
“Her leg?”
Something about those two words unsettled me.
Not Is she all right?
Not What happened?
Just her leg?
“She has a large bruise on her thigh,” I said. “She's in pain when she moves. The doctor is doing X-rays.”
Silence.
Then Ryan's muffled voice sounded in the background.
Kate lowered hers.
“Could you have pinched her getting her into the car seat?”
“No.”
“I’m just asking.”
“Get here.”
“We're coming.”
The call ended.
I stared at the phone.
A few minutes later, the nurse came through the curtain.
Then Dr. Aris returned.
She wasn't smiling.
Paige was beside her, her injured leg supported and padded.
“Is it broken?” I asked.
Dr. Aris pulled a stool closer.
“Yes.”
The word was quiet.
It still seemed to shake the entire room.
She turned the monitor toward me.
I didn't know how to read an X-ray, but I could see that the long bone in Paige's thigh was not intact.
“This is a fracture of the femur,” Dr. Aris explained. “The pattern is spiral.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the bone experienced rotational force.”
I looked at Paige.
She was six months old.
She couldn't walk.
She could barely sit without support.
“Could she have done that herself?”
Dr. Aris paused.
“No.”
“By kicking?”
“No.”
“Rolling?”
“No.”
My mouth went dry.
“Then somebody—”
The curtain opened.
A woman with an identification badge stepped inside.
“Ms. Ally?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Dana Walsh. I'm with county child protective services.”
I stared at her.
She sat across from me.
“Because Paige is a non-mobile infant with a serious unexplained fracture, the hospital is required to make a report.”
My hands went cold.
“Are you saying somebody hurt her?”
“I'm saying we need to determine how she was injured.”
She looked down at her tablet.
“And we need a complete account of everyone who had access to Paige before she arrived here.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 2: The Doctor Confirmed the Fracture, but My Sister’s First Question Made Me Wonder Whether She Already Knew More Than She Had Said
The Cry That Made Me Stop Moving, and the Bruise I Found Beneath My Niece’s Sleeper Before I Understood What It Meant
Part 1 of 8
