I have this recipe for traditional chicken cacciatore — the kind made with white wine and stock and lots of veggies and that’s not just chicken in tomato sauce. I had some drumsticks in the freezer that had chicken cacciatore written all over them. I would cook this dish the next time Ed was home early enough to take care of the kids before dinner. I was really looking forward to it.
And then it happened! Ed was on his way home earlier than usual about a week ago and I had thawed the drumsticks and had all the ingredients on hand. Operation cacciatore was on.
Everything was bubbling away on the stove, Ed was playing with Mary and the bigger kids were fighting. Just as Ed turned his attention to the bickering, Mary hurt herself somehow and began crying. He was able to comfort her, but when he put her back down to play, she leaned on her right arm and started crying again.
“I think Mary hurt her arm,” Ed said, bringing her into the kitchen.
“What? How? I’m sure she’s fine.”
He sat her in the high chair, right arm hanging limply at her side. I’m not the kind of mother who rushes her kids to the doctor for no reason. Maybe she banged her arm and it was a little sore. Let’s just give her some time, right?
I offered a toy to her right hand, but when she reached up to take it, she put her arm back down and used used her left hand instead. Then, with her left hand gripping the toy, I held out a small cup of raisins next to her right hand. She put down the toy and reached way across with her left arm to get at the raisins. Huh.
“She feels a bit warm,” I said, “Was she hot like this before?”
“A fever is a sign of a broken bone,” Ed said, iPhone in hand, “And doesn’t her hand look a little swollen now?”
I thought maybe it did.
“I think I should take her to Sick Kids right now,” he said.
But. But. My cacciatore!
“Fine,” I said. “Let me take her. She might to want to nurse for comfort. Let the chicken simmer for 15 minutes, take it out of the pot, reduce the sauce, return it to the pot, sprinkle with parsley and serve.”
I grabbed an apple and a yogurt cup for Mary and we were on our way. Strapping her into the car seat was not fun. She cried hard for the first five minutes of the trip and then nodded off.
The timing was good, though. Most people hadn’t had time to go home from work, discover their sick and/or injured children and bring them back down to Sick Kids emergency. We flew through triage and the next thing I knew a nurse was weighing Mary and examining her arm.
The nurse moved her hand up and down Mary’s arm, pausing at the elbow and Mary screamed. I mean, she SCREAMED. “I know, I know,” the nurse cooed. Then, looking at me, “Please go back to the waiting room.”
Wow, I thought, her arm really was hurt after all. Maybe she has a broken elbow. Good think Ed made us come down here.
That’s when I noticed Mary reaching for the board book I brought with her right arm. Weird. She was turning pages and pointing and laughing like a totally normal toddler. We were ushered into an examination room then and told to wait for the doctor.
So we waited. And waited. And, omfg, we were still waiting. I tried to send Ed a message updating him on our progress, but there was no cell service. I also tried to keep my now perfectly normal and active toddler from swinging off the blood pressure cuff or unraveling an entire roll of examining table paper. “Reach up to the sky!” She reached up and did this totally adorable tip-toe-with-head-tilted-back-move. “Clap hands!” She clapped hands. “Touch your toes!” Yep, you guessed it, toes were touched and she was perfectly fucking fine what the hell. I knew we shouldn’t have come.
I was trying to buy a couple minutes of peace by sticking a boob in her mouth when another nurse popped her head in. “Is she moving her arm now?” Um, yes … “Okay, that’s good. Just wait a bit longer; we want to make sure she has a full range of movement.” What? How did they…?
Like yogurt spilled on your best wool sweater, it took a while for the truth to seep into my brain matter, but then there was no getting it out. The elbow exam that had made Mary cry so hard it tugged on my own thread-bare heart strings was not an exam at all. Mary must have had a dislocated elbow and the nurse was actually resetting it. The crying, the sudden recovery: it all made sense.
Then why were we still here? Why didn’t the nurse tell me what she was doing? And why is there no cell service in this particular room? I looked down at the green sheet they gave me, the one they called “the injury prevention” form. Oh boy. I wasn’t born yesterday and I wasn’t raised by perpetually good, honest and optimistic people. (Okay, my mother is totally good and honest and optimistic all the time. I guess I take after my dad.) The answer to all those questions was suddenly the most glaringly obvious thing in the world.
I don’t have to spell it out for you, do I? I was clearly being held on suspicion of child abuse and I needed to make sure I held firm to my story. Injury prevention form, really? How did I fall for that? The nurse didn’t tell me she had fixed Mary’s arm because she didn’t want me going anywhere, OBVS. But this concrete encased room with no freaking cell reception was the icing on the child abuse allegation cake. For fuck’s sake, I didn’t even know how it happened. It looked bad, real bad.
At long last, a doctor came in to check on Mary.
“Oh, it looks like the nurse was able to reset her elbow. She has full range of motion and doesn’t need an x-ray after all.”
“So, er, her elbow was dislocated?”
“Yes, it’s a nurse maid’s elbow,” she said, “It’s very common. I see three of these a night. You’re free to go.”
“Oh!” I started fumbling around. “Don’t you want …? I mean, I filled out …”
“Oh, do you have that green paper? Sure, I’ll take that, I guess. Have a good night.”
And that was that. I gathered up Mary and our belongings and, stealing a glance over my shoulder, got the hell out of that hospital. When I got home, there was chicken cacciatore waiting for me.
* * *
The very next day, she got her hand stuck between the radiator coils at my parents house. My brother started to move toward her to help.
“NO! DON’T TOUCH HER!”
I ran over and gently eased her little hand out from the rad.
“I’m sorry, man. I just didn’t want you tugging on her arm.”
Because you’ve got to know that the next time that happens, I’m going down.