The Wrist

Greta's sick call turned out to be the least of it, because two hours later Jonah wouldn't stop crying every time I touched his left arm, and by the time we got to the emergency room his wrist had swollen to nearly twice its size.

"When did this happen?" the ER doctor asked, gentle and direct, turning his small arm carefully under the light.

"I don't know," I said, and hated how true that was. "He was with our nanny most of the day."

The X-ray showed a hairline fracture, fresh, the kind that comes from a small wrist being pulled or twisted hard and fast. But it wasn't the only thing on the film. The radiologist circled two more spots, both healed, both weeks old at least — a rib, and a hairline crack in the same wrist that had apparently broken once already and knit back together without anyone in a doctor's office ever seeing it.

"These didn't happen today," the doctor said quietly, and I understood, in the particular sick-drop way you understand things you should have caught sooner, that Jonah had been hurt before, more than once, and I had handed him over smiling every single morning without seeing any of it.

The hospital's mandatory report went out within the hour. A caseworker would want to see the nursery, the camera, everything, within the week.

I called Greta's cell four times that night. It went straight to voicemail every time, a full mailbox, no way to leave a message at all, like she'd already known exactly how this particular Tuesday was going to end before either of us did.