At first, I didn't want to believe what I was seeing.<\/p>\n
The beige substance was on Paige's thigh.<\/p>\n
It looked like adult makeup.<\/p>\n
Not baby lotion.<\/p>\n
Not the kind of cream someone might use during a diaper change.<\/p>\n
Makeup.<\/p>\n
I leaned closer.<\/p>\n
I could still smell that faint floral scent.<\/p>\n
It reminded me of the powdery fragrance of cosmetics.<\/p>\n
That made no sense.<\/p>\n
Paige was six months old.<\/p>\n
She had no reason to have makeup on her leg.<\/p>\n
I tried to think of an innocent explanation.<\/p>\n
Something that might have rubbed onto her skin by accident.<\/p>\n
Something from her clothes.<\/p>\n
Something I had misunderstood.<\/p>\n
But the coating looked too deliberate.<\/p>\n
It covered the area in a way that made me uneasy.<\/p>\n
And underneath the color, her leg didn't look right.<\/p>\n
I was already worried about how little she had moved her left leg.<\/p>\n
Now I could see that the same thigh appeared larger than the other.<\/p>\n
Swollen.<\/p>\n
That was the word I couldn't avoid.<\/p>\n
The left thigh looked swollen.<\/p>\n
I felt my stomach tighten.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know what was underneath the beige layer.<\/p>\n
But I was afraid of touching her.<\/p>\n
She had already screamed when I adjusted my hold.<\/p>\n
She had reacted badly to movement.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to cause her any more pain.<\/p>\n
Still, I needed to see what I was dealing with.<\/p>\n
There was a clean baby wipe on the changing table.<\/p>\n
I picked it up.<\/p>\n
I remember looking at the white material.<\/p>\n
It was such an ordinary thing.<\/p>\n
Something used countless times every day by people caring for babies.<\/p>\n
There was nothing frightening about a baby wipe.<\/p>\n
Nothing about it that should have changed my understanding of the morning.<\/p>\n
But I was nervous holding it.<\/p>\n
I moved toward a small section of the beige coating.<\/p>\n
I did not try to clean her entire leg.<\/p>\n
I only wanted to see what was beneath it.<\/p>\n
I touched the wipe to the skin.<\/p>\n
Very lightly.<\/p>\n
Then I passed it across a small area.<\/p>\n
Paige screamed immediately.<\/p>\n
I stopped.<\/p>\n
I remember looking at her face before looking at the wipe.<\/p>\n
Her reaction was worse than I could dismiss.<\/p>\n
The slightest contact had hurt her.<\/p>\n
I didn't try again.<\/p>\n
I didn't need to.<\/p>\n
The white wipe now had beige makeup on it.<\/p>\n
I stared at the color.<\/p>\n
It had come away from her skin.<\/p>\n
There was no question that something had been applied to her thigh.<\/p>\n
I looked back at the spot I had cleaned.<\/p>\n
And I saw what the coating had been hiding.<\/p>\n
A bruise.<\/p>\n
Dark purple.<\/p>\n
The surrounding skin had red and blue discoloration.<\/p>\n
It wasn't a tiny mark.<\/p>\n
It wasn't something I could easily explain as ordinary irritation.<\/p>\n
The colors were unmistakable.<\/p>\n
And the area was swollen.<\/p>\n
I remember feeling my hands begin to shake.<\/p>\n
I looked from the exposed skin to the makeup on the wipe.<\/p>\n
Then back again.<\/p>\n
The difference was awful.<\/p>\n
One moment, the area had been covered with beige cosmetics.<\/p>\n
The next, a dark injury was visible.<\/p>\n
I didn't need anyone to tell me that makeup could hide discoloration.<\/p>\n
I could see it happening in front of me.<\/p>\n
That is what frightened me most at first.<\/p>\n
Not simply that Paige had a bruise.<\/p>\n
It was the combination.<\/p>\n
The bruise.<\/p>\n
The swelling.<\/p>\n
The way she avoided moving that leg.<\/p>\n
And the thick coating that had been placed over the skin.<\/p>\n
I couldn't explain why anyone would put adult concealer on a baby's thigh.<\/p>\n
I couldn't explain who had done it.<\/p>\n
And I couldn't explain how she had been injured.<\/p>\n
Those questions remained unanswered.<\/p>\n
But I knew enough to be scared.<\/p>\n
I had been told Paige was teething.<\/p>\n
I had believed her crying came from sore gums.<\/p>\n
Yet here she was, unable to tolerate even a gentle touch to her thigh.<\/p>\n
The explanation I had accepted no longer made sense.<\/p>\n
I kept looking at the bruise.<\/p>\n
The colors were so different from the beige makeup that had covered them.<\/p>\n
Purple.<\/p>\n
Red.<\/p>\n
Blue.<\/p>\n
I remember those colors because they made the truth impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n
Something was wrong with Paige's leg.<\/p>\n
Something significant.<\/p>\n
I thought about the way she had screamed when I held her.<\/p>\n
I thought about her fists tightening.<\/p>\n
The sweat in her hair.<\/p>\n
The stiffness of her body.<\/p>\n
And the little left leg that barely moved.<\/p>\n
Those details had seemed separate while I was trying to comfort her.<\/p>\n
Now they belonged to the same problem.<\/p>\n
I wasn't dealing with an ordinary fussy baby.<\/p>\n
I was dealing with a baby who was in pain.<\/p>\n
Real pain.<\/p>\n
Pain that seemed to come from an injured, swollen leg.<\/p>\n
And someone had put makeup over the injury.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what that meant yet.<\/p>\n
I was not going to pretend I did.<\/p>\n
I didn't know who had applied it.<\/p>\n
I didn't know when it had been applied.<\/p>\n
I didn't know how long Paige had been hurting.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what had happened before Kate arrived at my house.<\/p>\n
But I knew what I had found.<\/p>\n
And that was enough.<\/p>\n
I stopped using the wipe.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to remove any more of the makeup.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to keep touching the injured area.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to change the appearance of something a doctor might need to examine.<\/p>\n
My hands were trembling badly enough that I had to concentrate on what I was doing.<\/p>\n
I placed the wipe aside.<\/p>\n
Then I looked at Paige again.<\/p>\n
She was still upset.<\/p>\n
She couldn't tell me what had happened.<\/p>\n
She couldn't point to the pain.<\/p>\n
She couldn't explain the bruise.<\/p>\n
All she could do was cry.<\/p>\n
And suddenly I felt ashamed of how long I had kept thinking about teething.<\/p>\n
I know I was working with the information I had been given.<\/p>\n
I know I had tried to help her.<\/p>\n
But looking at that injury, I wished I had understood sooner.<\/p>\n
I wished I had recognized the difference in her crying before I tried the bottle.<\/p>\n
Before I walked around the living room.<\/p>\n
Before I shifted my hand.<\/p>\n
But I couldn't change those minutes.<\/p>\n
I could only decide what to do next.<\/p>\n
I knew I wasn't qualified to determine what kind of injury she had.<\/p>\n
I couldn't tell whether the bone was damaged.<\/p>\n
I couldn't tell how serious the swelling was.<\/p>\n
And I certainly couldn't tell whether moving her might make things worse.<\/p>\n
I needed someone who could.<\/p>\n
A doctor.<\/p>\n
Not later.<\/p>\n
Now.<\/p>\n
That decision came clearly.<\/p>\n
I didn't need to debate it.<\/p>\n
I didn't need to keep searching for explanations.<\/p>\n
I didn't need to wait for Kate and her husband to return from shopping.<\/p>\n
There was a baby in front of me with a painful, swollen leg and bruising that had been covered with cosmetics.<\/p>\n
I wasn't going to treat that as a normal diaper problem.<\/p>\n
I wasn't going to keep trying to calm her at home.<\/p>\n
I knew she needed medical care.<\/p>\n
I was frightened.<\/p>\n
That is the simplest way to say it.<\/p>\n
But once I decided to take her to the hospital, I felt I finally knew what I was supposed to do.<\/p>\n
I needed to move carefully.<\/p>\n
I needed to keep her as comfortable as possible.<\/p>\n
And I needed to get her examined.<\/p>\n
I reached for a blanket.<\/p>\n
I wrapped Paige gently.<\/p>\n
I tried to avoid putting pressure on her leg.<\/p>\n
Every movement made me conscious of how small she was.<\/p>\n
She couldn't help me.<\/p>\n
She couldn't tell me which position felt better.<\/p>\n
I had to be cautious for her.<\/p>\n
I picked her up.<\/p>\n
I kept thinking about that small patch of exposed bruising.<\/p>\n
The rest of the coating was still there.<\/p>\n
I had touched only one section.<\/p>\n
I wanted the medical staff to see it.<\/p>\n
I wanted them to know exactly what I had seen and exactly what I had done.<\/p>\n
That seemed important.<\/p>\n
I had no idea what they would think when I told them.<\/p>\n
I only knew I needed to tell the truth.<\/p>\n
The entire truth.<\/p>\n
The bottle.<\/p>\n
The crying.<\/p>\n
The sudden scream.<\/p>\n
The leg that barely moved.<\/p>\n
The powdery smell.<\/p>\n
The beige makeup.<\/p>\n
The bruise underneath.<\/p>\n
I wasn't going to leave anything out because it sounded strange.<\/p>\n
Especially not the makeup.<\/p>\n
I looked at the baby wipe again.<\/p>\n
I could still picture the beige color coming away.<\/p>\n
I knew I would remember that moment for a long time.<\/p>\n
A small movement of my hand had shown me something nobody had mentioned when Paige was dropped off.<\/p>\n
And I could not understand why.<\/p>\n
I grabbed the diaper bag.<\/p>\n
Then my phone.<\/p>\n
I made sure I had Paige supported.<\/p>\n
I was taking her to the pediatric emergency room.<\/p>\n
I had no diagnosis.<\/p>\n
No explanation for the injury.<\/p>\n
No answer about who had covered it.<\/p>\n
But I had a responsibility to the little girl in my arms.<\/p>\n
And for the first time that morning, I was no longer trying to make her crying stop with ordinary comforts.<\/p>\n
I was trying to make sure she got the help she needed.<\/p>\n
At first, I didn't want to believe what I was seeing. The beige substance was on Paige's thigh. It looked like adult makeup. Not baby lotion. Not the kind of … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37748,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37728\/revisions\/37748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}