Chapter 4: What the X-Ray Showed
The emergency room was quiet for a Thursday night.
A nurse named Donna took Ethan from my arms with the practiced ease of someone who had done it ten thousand times, and I stood at the admissions desk filling out paperwork while Lily sat in a plastic chair against the wall, still in her uniform, her hands folded in her lap.
I had told her to come.
She'd hesitated at the car door.
"I don't want to cause more trouble," she'd said.
"You're a witness," I said.
"Get in."
The x-ray confirmed what I already knew.
A hairline fracture in Ethan's radius — the smaller of the two bones in the forearm.
The attending physician, a tired-looking man named Dr.
Osei, set the image on the light board and pointed to the line without drama.
"How did this happen?" he asked.
"I don't know exactly," I said.
"I wasn't home."
He looked at me steadily.
"Who was with him?"
"My wife."
A pause.
"Is your wife here tonight?"
"No."
Dr.
Osei looked at Ethan, who was sitting on the exam table eating a graham cracker a nurse had given him, his arm already in a temporary splint.
Then he looked back at me.
"Mr.—"
"Calloway.
Victor Calloway."
"Mr.
Calloway, I'm required to file a report when I see an injury like this in a child this age.
A hairline fracture in a fourteen-month-old without a witnessed fall or a clear accidental mechanism—" He stopped.
"Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
"Yes," I said.
"File it."
He studied me for a moment, as if he'd expected resistance.
"There'll be a follow-up from child protective services.
Likely within forty-eight hours."
"Good," I said.
"I'll have my attorney contact them first thing tomorrow."
I gave him Lily's name as a witness.
He wrote it down without comment.
In the waiting area afterward, Lily and I sat side by side with Ethan between us in a borrowed hospital crib, sleeping now, his splinted arm resting on a folded blanket.
"She's going to say I did it," Lily said quietly.
"I know."
"She's going to say I'm making everything up.
That I'm trying to stay in the country.
That I have a reason to lie."
"I know that too."
She turned to look at me.
"And?"
"And I have a notebook with four months of dated entries, a doctor's report, and a photograph I took of your forearm tonight before we left the house." I looked at her.
"Did you know I took that?"
She shook her head.
"The mark from where she grabbed you.
It's documented." I paused.
"Lily, I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer honestly."
She waited.
"Is there anything else?
Anything you didn't write down because you were afraid to?"
She was quiet for a long time.
Long enough that I didn't push.
Then she said: "There's a woman.
Her name is Mrs.
Hargrove.
She lives two houses down.
She came to the door one afternoon when you were traveling.
Ethan was crying and I had him outside on the front step trying to calm him down.
She asked me if everything was alright." Lily paused.
"I told her yes.
But she — she gave me her number.
She said, 'If you ever need someone to call.'"
I looked at her.
"Did you ever call her?"
"No.
I was afraid."
"Do you still have the number?"
She reached into her uniform pocket — the same pocket where the notebook had been — and produced a folded square of paper.
I took it carefully.
"Get some rest," I said.
"Tomorrow is going to be a long day."
What I didn't tell her was that my phone had buzzed twice during the x-ray.
Both times: Serena's mother.
May you like
And once, a number I didn't recognize — a downtown exchange I'd seen before on documents from Serena's family attorney.
She hadn't wasted any time.
