My son and his wife asked me to watch their two-month-old baby while they went shopping. But no matter how I held him or tried to calm him, he kept crying uncontrollably. I immediately sensed something was wrong. When I lifted his clothes to check his diaper… I froze. There was something there… something unimaginable. My hands started shaking. I grabbed him and rushed straight to the hospital.

Laura looked down at her daughter, shocked. “Emma?”

The little girl wrapped both arms around her mother’s leg and cried harder.

“I just wanted to hug the baby!”

My heart sank with sickening certainty.

Laura’s face drained of color.

“What are you talking about?”

Emma buried her face in the cardigan and wailed.

“He was crying and crying and I squeezed him so he would stop and I didn’t mean to!”

No one moved.

Megan covered her mouth. Daniel leaned back against the wall as if the strength had gone out of his knees. Dr. Patel crouched slowly, carefully, until he was level with the child.

“Emma,” he said in that same maddeningly calm voice. “Did you mean to hurt the baby?”

Emma shook her head violently.

“No! I love babies!”

She sounded outraged by the possibility.

And that was somehow the most awful part of all.

This wasn’t malice.

It wasn’t rage.

It was ignorance wearing love’s clothes.

Laura covered her own mouth with both hands and made a small broken sound behind them.

“Oh my God.”

She turned toward Daniel and Megan with tears spilling freely now.