9pm.
"It's just a bump from daycare, it's not broken," Mike told me as he dropped off the car and Gavin for the night. He had a little makeshift sling made from a pillow case, and was sleeping in his booster seat. I lifted him out and he woke sharply, holding his arm with his good hand. As I laid him in bed, he cried out and began sobbing. 15 minutes later we were all sitting in the ER, slumped with other sleepy people and scribbling out medical forms. Wrapped in a blanket, Gavin slept on our laps. A teenage girl with home-inked tattoos and a shaved head sat near us, wearing a shirt that read "Baby Girl" in glittering pink plastic gems and holding a 5 day old preemie on her lap, unlit cigarette hanging from her lips. A blonde woman with a small pregnant belly sat hunched over, wincing in pain and shuffling to the desk periodically to ask if anyone could help her. A beefy young man with a trucker cap and one shoe limped by under his small wife with what looked like a snake bite to the foot.
11pm.
The technician couldn't find a fracture, but kept pointing to the elbow on the x-ray and muttering with his colleague. Gavin quietly asked Mike to wipe the tears off his cheeks while he held his arm bent in front of him.
1am.
A nurse put us in the linen cubby beside the ambulance entrance while she scrounged up a doctor. "We can't see a fracture, but he's only 4 and the area around the joint is still cartilage, which doesn't show up on the x-ray. There's a lot of swelling around the joint, indicating that he might have smashed the bones of his forearm and broken the cartilage. Either that or it's Nursemaid's Elbow, which means we'd have to straighten the arm and force the bone back under the tendon, but he's not holding his arm the way he would be, which also points toward a break. We'll get him in a splint and send you to an orthopedic surgeon for a better look at it." Scribbled on the paperwork they handed us was a simple diagnosis in ballpoint pen: broken elbow.
And so the kiddo starts at his new preschool this week with a battle wound. A formidable first impression. Especially if he keeps wearing his pointy-eared snood as a sling over his cast.
update, 8/24: Not broken! Splint was removed after 3 days, child is gingerly recovering mobility.
