through the door to see him sitting on the couch, his face slack with fear. The door to the nursery was closed as if he’d shut it against the child’s crying. She was sick, every membrane on fire with fear, as she threw open the door. The baby sat in her crib, bright red from crying, her arm bent horribly, unnaturally. She grabbed her child and ran, screaming, “What did you do? What did you do? Look what you’ve done!” He sat there, mute, his arms outspread. She didn’t look at him again as she ran with her screaming, injured child in her arms.
She didn’t, she couldn’t wait for an ambulance. As gently as she could, she put the baby in her car seat. The little girl’s cries felt like knives, cutting and killing her inside. Her own tears felt like they should be blood. She tried to keep her voice measured, cooing as she drove. “It’s okay. It’s okay, my love. Mommy’s here. Mommy’s here.”
In the emergency room, the doctor took the child from her arms and she followed him as he rushed her into the belly of the hospital to the pediatric floor. She prayed; she prayed that her baby’s doctor, who alternated between the Little Angels clinic and the hospital, would be here today. Her prayers were answered and in minutes her daughter was under his careful hands.
“Oh my, little girl. What has happened to you?” he said quietly. She could do nothing but stand mute beside them.
“Mom,” he said gently. He never used her name when he was attending to the baby. “I know this is scary, but I’m going to ask you to go wait outside so that I can fix this little munchkin right up. You’re very upset and frightened right now and she knows that, she can feel it. Can you be very brave and wait outside?”
She nodded against her will and allowed herself to be shepherded outside by a nurse. The nurse, a young woman with bright blue eyes behind thick horn-rimmed glasses, looked at her with equal parts sympathy and suspicion. There was judgment there, too. Cold and certain. Could they think I’d hurt my daughter? she wondered through the fog of her fears. Could they think that?
It seemed as if her chest would explode from the sheer force of the emotion churning there as she watched the doors to the examining room. The baby’s crying had gone from screams to whimpers and then there was silence. She felt paralyzed, lashed to the orange plastic chair on which she sat, unable to bring herself to investigate the silence. Then, after a hundred years, the doctor emerged.
“She’s going to be fine,” he said gently, sitting beside her and putting a hand on her knee. He went on about the delicacy of a broken bone in a toddler and all the special considerations they would take when setting it and how they would need to proceed with the healing of it. The words She’s going to be fine repeated in a loop in her mind until her heart had accepted the information and started to return to its normal rhythm, until her blood started its passage again, bringing her back to life. She had been suspended in her terror, hovering between life and death, until she knew her child was no longer in pain.
“It’s okay,” he was saying to her, looking into her eyes. “It’s going to be okay.”
But there was something else in his eyes, too. There was worry and there was suspicion in an expression that was normally so kind and warm.
They were at the hospital for most of the night, as the child was sedated and her arm was set in the tiniest cast. The doctor stayed with them until it was time to go home. As she was preparing to leave, the doctor touched her arm and looked at her with an expression she couldn’t read.
“You love your child more than anything, don’t you?” he asked her, sounding so sad.
“More than anything.”
“Are you going to be able to protect her?” It seemed like such an odd question, especially since it was the echo of the question her own aching heart was asking.
“Anybody wants to harm this child, they’ll have to kill me first.”
He nodded. “Let’s see it doesn’t come to that. Make sure you follow up on pressing those charges. And I’ll see you at the clinic on Thursday—or before, if there’s any problem.” His voice had gone stern and she nodded obediently.
“I wish,” she said as he turned away from her, “that she had a father like you.”
He looked at her strangely, seemed about to say something, then decided against it. He smiled at her, a warm, comforting smile full of compassion. “So do I. So do I.”
Whenever she thought of that moment, it filled her heart with a renewed hatred for the man who’d hurt her child. It cemented her resolve against his constant begging for forgiveness, his constant pleading for a minute, just a minute with the baby, and then his raging against her when she denied him. It had been an accident, hurting the baby. He’d never meant to hurt her, he claimed. He’d seemed contrite enough. But she kept thinking about what the doctor had asked her. Are you going to be able to protect her? The only way she could be sure the answer was yes is if she kept him out of their lives.
She might have been dozing a bit, but something jarred her and she transferred her grip from the phone to the baseball bat. She lay silent, adrenaline running, listening to the night. The baby shifted in her sleep and sighed. She heard the slightest snap, more like a ping, the sound of a metal spring straining, as if the screen door were opening, ever so quietly.
He’d never been quiet before. He’d always come banging. She felt her throat tighten and she quietly got off the bed, the phone forgotten, the bat heavy in her hand. She walked to the doorjamb and peered out into the small living room of her apartment. From there she could see the front door. The lock looked too flimsy suddenly and she cursed herself for not having installed the dead bolt and chain as the police had recommended. She hadn’t been able to afford it. The window beside the door was gated, but it hung over a landing that anyone could reach by a flight of stairs.
Did she just see his shadow move in front of the window? The curtains were drawn but the streetlight in the parking lot shined bright throughout the night and sometimes she could see the shadows of people passing on the way to their own apartments. She listened again and heard nothing. She was about to relax when she heard it again, that straining metal spring. Was he standing outside her door, inside the screen? Her breathing came more quickly and her chest felt heavy.
She looked at the phone she had left on the bed and thought about calling the police. But she couldn’t face them coming here for nothing again. He’d already gone by the time they arrived earlier. And even though they took her report again respectfully, she was starting to feel like the little boy who cried wolf. If she called them again, and it really was nothing, she’d be so embarrassed. She gripped the bat with both hands and moved toward the door.
She moved quietly, slowly. He’d always come loudly, she reminded herself. He’d never tried to quietly break in and hurt them. Or her other worst nightmare, steal her baby. In the area, three children had gone missing in the last year. Every night, their little faces looked out at her from the television screen, their bright smiles, their sweet eyes like a haunting. Gone from their homes, each of them. None of them found, not even a trail to be followed. Every once in a while she’d hear on the news that there’d been a sighting in a mall or at a rest stop or an amusement park. But then the lead would go nowhere. She thought more than a little about those parents, the gaping holes in their chests, their lifetime of horrible questions and unspeakable imaginings. Maybe the only thing that kept them alive was hope, the only thing that kept the razors from their wrists and the guns from their mouths was the idea that they’d open their doors one day and see their child again. She couldn’t imagine the crippling grief for a child who might be alive somewhere, unreachable, or might be dead…never knowing what would be worse.
She was close to the door now, just three feet away, standing beside her secondhand couch. She hadn’t heard anything as she crept toward the door, so she stood frozen like a statue with the bat poised.
