Fractured Limb, Broken Heart

Yesterday's emotional distress over Ariel was replaced, immediately upon publishing that post, with upset of the other kind, the physical kind, and this time with regard to Elan. This is because seconds after I finished writing, the phone rang, and it was the school.

"Margo? This is Helen. From the school?"
"Hi. What's up?"
"Elan fell. And his arm...doesn't look right. I think he needs a doctor."
"Is that him screaming in the background?"
"Yes."
"I'll be right there." Click.

I knew he'd broken his arm, however it had happened. I knew, because she'd said it didn't look right. With a sprain you can't really tell from the outside. A break? You know by looking at it.

I knew this despite the fact that none of my brothers or I, as far as I can remember, had ever broken a bone. As kids, we got stitches on the kitchen table. But casts? Never. (This is either testimony to our good luck, or the fact that we're just not that athletic. But we play killer Scrabble.)

Rather, I knew about the "look" of a broken limb from "The Babysitters Club." The one where Claudia breaks her leg? The mental impression that description made stuck with me forever, only to be yanked from my subconscious when completely necessary. Much obliged, Ann M. Martin.

I drove like a fiend, and within moments, Elan was in my arms. He was, to say the least, hysterical, obviously in tremendous pain. He'd gone down a baby slide, a slide much too small for him, and somehow, in a freak accident, had fallen funny, landing on his arm. He was convinced he'd twisted it, and was begging for us to "untwist it," to "put it back in." This had led Bernice to believe he had that condition in which your elbow dislocates frequently, that this was a common occurrence, that I knew how to pop it back together. I shook my head. This arm is broken, I told her, pushing back both tears and dizziness. You will not cry, I ordered myself. You will not get sick.

Because the arm was grotesque. My baby, my little Elan, was sitting there, holding a forearm that looked inverted, that dipped down in the center, that looked as though the elbow were sticking up an inch or two from his wrist, where only blond baby hairs should have been. His arm looked hollow, bizarre, save for the sweet, familiar, even-toned toddler skin covering it, reminding me who it belonged to. How important that arm was.

I'm going to the hospital, I said, holding Elan bride-over-the-threshold style and making for the car. I'll drive you, said Bernice. I didn't argue, simply climbed into the backseat next to Elan, hovering over his car seat with my body in a half-hug, kissing his wet eyes and trying to sound in control, trying to hide the shakiness of my voice, the beads of sweat rapidly forming on my nose.

Elan's main concern wasn't the physical pain, though he felt plenty. He was worried about the treatment, the unknowns to come in the next few hours. He doesn't enjoy unknowns. He asked me how the doctors would be fixing his arm - would they use magic? Would I be taking him to that doctor both he and I didn't like that one time (a dentist - for another post)? Would they pop it back in? How long would he need to wear the "giant Band-Aid" for?

He was so exhausted from the tumult that he periodically quieted down, dropped his head on my shoulder, and fell asleep. The ER took care of us right away, taking X-rays, confirming the fracture of two bones, giving him Tylenol with Codeine and a splint. He never left my lap, handled everything with an inner strength, a resolve to get through this I didn't know he possessed. Y met us at the hospital, and distracted Elan through waiting periods by regaling him with tales of his journeys in the jungles of East Asia, battling wild animals in search for the legendary, extremely rare Nightingale Blue Butterfly (I don't know where he comes up with this stuff).

The ER staff told us that the break wasn't terrible, and that he wouldn't likely need more than the splint, that we should try to get to an orthopedist in the next few days, which was extremely reassuring. However, once our family practitioner saw Elan's X-rays, he urged us to go to the orthopedist immediately, and got us an appointment. So after I'd taken Elan home, set him up on the couch with lunch and loads of therapeutic candy, and told him he'd been through all he would have to until the next morning - I had to tell him the opposite.

The orthopedist was about a hundred years old, and was wearing a cast himself, about which I wasn't sure how to feel. He had a staff of what seemed like millions of young hipsters in scrubs, who helped him to hold children down while jamming and sealing their bones back into place - on this day, Elan's bones. After a traumatizing series of morphine shots, Elan managed a quick, stoned nap, and then was woken up to have his arm broken again for a cleaner adjustment and casting. We were not allowed in the room during the procedure, much to our chagrin. When I asked why, we were told that we would probably pass out, and then they wouldn't know who to take care of first. I probed one of the younger guys, and he suggested that "I wouldn't really want to be in there with my kid all screaming and stuff!" I let him know that it wasn't really about what I wanted - it was about what was best for Elan. That we were tough. I could handle it. They said no.

Y and I stood outside the door while they worked on Elan's arm, listening to him scream - albeit in terror, not pain - unable to touch him, for what seemed like hours but was probably only ten minutes. We couldn't look at each other, couldn't bear the expressions on each other's faces. Hearing our son feel that way was the worst either of us had yet experienced, though we knew rationally that he'd be absolutely fine in a few minutes. He was just so...Little. Too little. Yes, people, kids, went through much, much worse. We knew it could be so much worse. But this was our personal, family high to date, and for us, it stunk. It reeked.

We were informed that because he was so young, his bones so malleable, he'd recover beautifully - that an adult with the same break would need surgery. In two months' time, he should be healed. We saw the before and after X-rays side-to-side, how the bones, once again, were straight, and that was sort of cool. At least it would have been, had they not belonged to our child.

Elan chose a glow-in-the-dark cast and a navy blue sling, which goes with everything - my boy has good taste. We went straight to the toy store and must have spent $600 on comfort gifts. He was the king for the day, promises of toys had gotten through some of the worst moments, and the reward seemed to genuinely cheer him. I saw him smile for the first time in eight hours.

But the sight of him in a cast, in a sling, his eyes rimmed red from a combination of tears and fatigue - it was horrible. Adorably wrong.

That evening, he talked and talked and talked about what had happened, trying desperately to understand how his bones could have broken when they seemed so very hard. Elan is nothing if not a scientist - the whys and hows of his world so much more important to him than the whats. He and Ariel hugged and kissed before bed, professing their love for each other, the little one stroking his brother's bad arm, and my heart broke for the umpteenth time that day.

But Elan was so tired. I tucked him into a mattress next to my bed, safety-pinned a blanket of padding to his cast, propped it up on a pillow. I kissed his entire face, admiring his thick eyelashes, the complexion so fine and delicate that you could make out the purple vein structure underneath. I was relieved but dreading the night - we'd been warned that it would really hurt once the morphine wore off, and even the prescription for more codeine served as small comfort against that thought.

"Mommy?" he asked, relishing my attentiveness, "Can we talk about this more in the morning? Because I really don't understand how my bones broke. I think they were twisted. And if they aren't broken anymore, how come I need this cast for six or eight weeks. And when will I get stickers to put on it. And who will color on it. And do I need to wiggle my fingers EVEN IN MY BED? So can we talk about it when I wake up?"

Yes, baby. And you're sleeping right next to my bed. If you need me, I'm right here. If it hurts, wake me right up and I'll give you medicine.

He was already asleep.

I went downstairs, where Y was trying to watch mindless TV, to detox, looking as though he'd been through a war. He asked how I was, and I burst into tears. I'd managed to hold it in all day, to present a face of utter calm, and the release was both inevitable and necessary. Out of sheer stress and misery, Y and I had been snapping at each other in the car and at each medical facility, taking our nagging helplessness out on each other.

Now, though, we could breathe again, and he hugged me close, laughing gently, telling me how kids break their limbs all the time and bounce back, how the orthopedist's office had been his second home as a child. I told him how, irrational as it was, I'd spent the last few hours trying desperately to figure out the way in which this was all my fault, because I was certain it was, that it had to be. I knew it wasn't, but I also, in my heart, knew it somehow was. Crazy. Ridiculous. The weight of Jewish motherhood.

"It's funny," Y said, wiping tears from my cheeks. "When I met you, I never pegged you for a crier."

I sniffled and smiled. "Silly rabbit. That was before we had kids."