My Grandson…

There was a heavy diaper underneath, and under that another folded liner, strange and bulky in a way that made no sense. My fingers fumbled at the adhesive tabs.

The second I opened the diaper and lifted the fabric away, I froze.

For one single, impossible moment, my mind refused to understand what my eyes were seeing.

There was a narrow elastic band buried deep into swollen flesh where no band should ever have been on a baby.

The skin around it was angry and dark, puffed from pressure. He was so tiny. So impossibly tiny. And someone had left that there.

My vision blurred.

“No,” I whispered.

My hands started shaking so violently I had to grip the edge of the changing table to steady myself. Noah let out another thin, terrible scream, and that snapped me back into my body.

I grabbed the phone with one hand and him with the other.

My first instinct was to call Daniel.

My second was stronger.

Hospital.

I wrapped Noah in the nearest blanket without bothering to fasten his sleeper, snatched my purse and keys, and ran.

I do not remember locking the front door. I do not remember backing out of my driveway. I do remember driving with one hand on the wheel and one hand on the car seat beside me, talking to Noah the whole time in a voice I barely recognized.

“We’re going, baby. We’re going right now. Stay with me. Stay with me.”

The drive to Riverside Methodist usually took twelve minutes.

I made it in seven.

I parked crooked by the emergency entrance and ran inside carrying him against my chest. The automatic doors slid open. Cold hospital air hit my face. A woman at the front desk started to say something about checking in, but one look at the baby and at my face and she was already calling for a nurse.

“My grandson,” I said, breathless. “Something is on him. It’s cutting into him. Please.”

A nurse in navy scrubs was beside me in seconds.

“Come with me.”

I followed her past the waiting room and the television no one was watching and the row of people holding ice packs or paperwork or their own fear. She led me into a triage room where another nurse was already snapping on gloves.

“What’s his name?” the first nurse asked.