I used to believe that if my son needed me, I would always be able to protect him.<\/p>\n
I believed that because I was his father.<\/p>\n
Because I loved him.<\/p>\n
Because I thought love and being careful were enough.<\/p>\n
Then Noah called me at work.<\/p>\n
I was sitting in a conference room with a budget presentation on the screen.<\/p>\n
There were papers scattered across the table.<\/p>\n
Someone had left coffee sitting long enough for it to go cold.<\/p>\n
I remember the smell.<\/p>\n
I remember the dry marker on the whiteboard.<\/p>\n
I remember almost everything about that room.<\/p>\n
What I cannot remember is a single number from the presentation.<\/p>\n
My phone vibrated against the table.<\/p>\n
I looked down.<\/p>\n
Noah.<\/p>\n
I let it ring.<\/p>\n
I was supposed to be paying attention.<\/p>\n
Then the phone vibrated again.<\/p>\n
Same name.<\/p>\n
My four-year-old son.<\/p>\n
I picked it up.<\/p>\n
"Hey, Noah. What's going on?"<\/p>\n
Nobody answered.<\/p>\n
At first, I thought the connection was bad.<\/p>\n
Then I heard him breathing.<\/p>\n
He was trying not to cry.<\/p>\n
I knew that sound.<\/p>\n
I had heard it when he fell off his bicycle.<\/p>\n
I had heard it when he woke from a bad dream.<\/p>\n
But this was different.<\/p>\n
He sounded afraid to make any noise.<\/p>\n
"Daddy?"<\/p>\n
"I'm here, buddy."<\/p>\n
"Can you come home?"<\/p>\n
I straightened in my chair.<\/p>\n
"What's wrong?"<\/p>\n
He started crying harder.<\/p>\n
Then he tried to stop himself.<\/p>\n
That frightened me more than the crying.<\/p>\n
"Where's your mom?"<\/p>\n
"She's gone."<\/p>\n
I looked toward the conference-room door.<\/p>\n
"Is somebody there with you?"<\/p>\n
"Travis."<\/p>\n
Travis was Lena's boyfriend.<\/p>\n
I knew his name.<\/p>\n
But I had never expected to hear it spoken the way Noah said it that afternoon.<\/p>\n
"What happened?"<\/p>\n
Noah took a shaky breath.<\/p>\n
"He hit me."<\/p>\n
My fingers tightened around the phone.<\/p>\n
"Who hit you?"<\/p>\n
"Travis."<\/p>\n
I pushed my chair backward.<\/p>\n
The legs scraped against the floor.<\/p>\n
"Where did he hit you?"<\/p>\n
"My arm."<\/p>\n
I was already standing.<\/p>\n
Then Noah said the words I would remember for the rest of my life.<\/p>\n
"He used a baseball bat, Daddy."<\/p>\n
I stopped moving.<\/p>\n
A baseball bat.<\/p>\n
My four-year-old boy.<\/p>\n
Those two things did not belong in the same sentence.<\/p>\n
"Does your arm hurt?"<\/p>\n
"Really bad."<\/p>\n
"Can you move it?"<\/p>\n
He did not answer that question.<\/p>\n
Instead, he started whispering.<\/p>\n
"He said I can't cry."<\/p>\n
My stomach turned.<\/p>\n
"What do you mean?"<\/p>\n
"He said he'll hit me again."<\/p>\n
I could hear somebody moving in the background.<\/p>\n
Then a man's voice came through the phone.<\/p>\n
Loud.<\/p>\n
Angry.<\/p>\n
"Who've you got on that phone?"<\/p>\n
Noah made a small sound.<\/p>\n
The man shouted again.<\/p>\n
"Hand it over!"<\/p>\n
Then the call ended.<\/p>\n
I stared at the screen.<\/p>\n
For a second, I did not understand what had happened.<\/p>\n
The room was still there.<\/p>\n
The presentation was still on the wall.<\/p>\n
People were still sitting around the table.<\/p>\n
But nothing in that room mattered anymore.<\/p>\n
Someone asked whether everything was okay.<\/p>\n
I looked up.<\/p>\n
"My little boy has been hurt."<\/p>\n
Nobody spoke.<\/p>\n
"I have to go."<\/p>\n
I was already walking toward the door.<\/p>\n
My son was four years old.<\/p>\n
He was hurt.<\/p>\n
And the man who had hurt him was still there.<\/p>\n
I used to believe that if my son needed me, I would always be able to protect him. I believed that because I was his father. Because I loved him. … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41413","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\/41413","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=41413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41423,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41413\/revisions\/41423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}