Bright Blue: Why Mommy Can't Sleep

The story, in third person.

Mommy's classes ended on Thursday and since that time she had really been enjoying time with her son, Cricket. They went to the park Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Cricket was pretty impressive with his mobility. Running everywhere, up and down hills, mastering the slide, impressing total strangers with his climbing ability. So Sunday when he was at his grandparents, Mommy hurried everyone along. "I think it's going to rain soon! Let's get moving!"

At the park, Cricket did all the park things and totally ignored the astro turf hill, the one kids slide down on cardboard boxes, or just their pants. Mommy knew she and Cricket had gone down the hill before, so when he headed toward the hill, she let him climb to the peak of the hill. Previously they only went down half the hill. Mommy remembers the sun glinting off the hair of a little girl, trying to go up the hill one more time, but instead this girl was nabbed by grandmother. The little girl said, "Sweet niblets!" and everyone laughed, the nabbing grandmother, the little girl, the Mommy, her parents and even the Cricket because everyone else was laughing. Mommy will always remember this little girl saying sweet niblets.

Once Mommy and Cricket reached the top of the hill, she watched the little girl and grandmother walk away, she scanned the bottom of the hill to make sure it was safe, she swooped her child up into her arms and kissed his bonny face. "Do you want to go down the hill?" she asked him. She smiled at her own parents at the bottom of the hill and put Cricket between her legs. They pushed off.

She still doesn't know what she heard first: the snap of her child's bone or her father yelling "Stop!" but she stopped. Instantly. Picked up her child and ran down the hill, hugging him to her chest and he cried, cried. "Did you hear a snap?" Mommy's own mother asked her. Mommy said I don't know, even though she knew she heard a snap. The child continued to wail. Mommy's father, the one who yelled stop, was an orthopedic surgeon. "Is it broken? Is it broken?" she asked over and over again.

"I don't know. I don't have x-ray eyes. It feels okay," he said.

Mommy sat on a park bench and prayed "OmyGod" over and over again, kissing her child's head. He stopped crying, and she believed his bone couldn't be broken if he stopped crying. They tried to see if he would stand. But he wouldn't. He started crying again. His leg was shaking. So everyone decided it would be best to get x-rays. And they did. But x-rays weren't conclusive, and Mommy laughed and laughed. But still Cricket would not stand, and Mommy's dad, the bone doctor, said it was best to treat the child, not the x-ray. And sometimes fractures don't always show up immediately, and maybe he did see something on the fibula. And so that's how Cricket ended up in a bright blue cast, from his toes to his hip.

And that's how it ended up that Mommy can't sleep at night for hearing the snap of her child's bone as he sat between her legs.