The investigator came to speak with me after the medical team had begun arranging Paige's additional tests.
She introduced herself and explained that she was gathering information about the circumstances surrounding the injury.
Her manner was calm.
She didn't raise her voice.
She didn't act as though she'd already decided what happened.
That helped.
I was frightened enough without feeling that I had to defend myself against something I didn't understand.
She asked whether we could speak away from Paige's bedside.
I looked toward the baby.
The nurse was nearby.
Kate and Ryan were still at the hospital.
I wanted to stay with Paige.
But I understood why the investigator needed to speak privately.
I agreed.
We moved into a quieter room.
There was a table and a couple of chairs.
I sat down.
The investigator opened a notebook.
She asked me to confirm my name.
"Ally."
She asked my relationship to Paige.
"I'm her aunt. Kate is my older sister."
She wrote that down.
Then she explained that she wanted to hear the events in my own words.
She didn't want me to guess.
If I couldn't remember something, I should say so.
I nodded.
That was exactly what I wanted.
I had spent the entire morning trying to keep the facts separate from my fears.
I didn't want to stop now.
She asked me to start with the drop-off.
I told her Kate had brought Paige to my house that Saturday morning.
I said it was around nine.
Kate and Ryan were going shopping.
I had agreed to babysit.
The investigator asked whether both parents had come to my door.
"No. Kate brought Paige inside. Ryan stayed in the car."
She looked up.
"Did you see Ryan?"
"Yes."
"Did he get out?"
"No."
"Did he speak to you?"
"Not that I remember."
She made a note.
I thought about the morning.
I had barely paid attention to Ryan.
He was simply waiting for his wife.
That was how I'd understood it.
The investigator asked how long Kate had been inside.
"Maybe five minutes."
"Was Paige crying during that time?"
I thought carefully.
"She wasn't screaming like she did later."
"Was she upset at all?"
"I can't say she was completely comfortable."
I paused.
"I didn't see anything that made me think she needed a hospital."
The investigator nodded.
She asked what Kate had told me about Paige.
I repeated the explanation about teething.
That Paige had been restless.
That the night had been difficult.
The investigator asked whether Kate had mentioned a fall.
"No."
"An injury?"
"No."
"Any reason to be careful with Paige's left leg?"
"No."
I could hear how strange the answers sounded.
The hospital had found a fracture.
But I had been given no warning that the baby might be injured.
I remembered how I had held her.
How I had walked around the living room.
How I had assumed that all she needed was comfort.
I felt my eyes beginning to sting.
The investigator paused.
"Do you need a moment?"
I shook my head.
"I'm okay."
I wasn't really okay.
But I wanted to finish.
She asked what happened after Kate left.
I explained the first twenty minutes.
The whimpering.
The bottle.
The refusal to feed.
The walking.
The crying that kept getting worse.
Then I described the moment I adjusted my hand.
My voice shook.
"I was supporting her lower back. I moved my hand a little, and she screamed."
The investigator asked whether Paige had been dropped.
"No."
"Did you hit her leg against anything?"
"No."
"Did she fall from your arms?"
"No."
I looked at her.
"I was holding her carefully."
She nodded.
"Tell me what you noticed next."
I described Paige's stiff body.
Her clenched fists.
The sweat in her hair.
The way she seemed to be in terrible pain.
Then I explained why I took her to the changing table.
I had wanted to check her diaper.
I had thought maybe her clothes were bothering her.
I still hadn't understood.
When I described the difference between her legs, the investigator looked up.
"Which leg was moving less?"
"The left one."
"Are you certain?"
"Yes."
I remembered looking at both legs.
The right moved while she cried.
The left barely moved.
That detail was clear.
She asked whether I had tried to bend the leg.
"No."
"Did you try to test whether it was broken?"
"No. I was afraid of hurting her."
She made another note.
Then I told her about the smell.
Floral.
Powdery.
The sort of scent I associated with makeup.
The investigator listened without interrupting.
I explained that I had opened Paige's green sleeper.
That I was checking the diaper area.
That I noticed a beige coating on her left thigh.
I hadn't understood why it was there.
I still didn't.
The investigator asked what I did next.
"I used one clean baby wipe."
"Where?"
"On a small part of the coating."
"How many times?"
"Once."
"Did you keep wiping after she cried?"
"No."
I could feel myself gripping the edge of the chair.
"She screamed. I stopped."
The investigator asked what the wipe showed.
I described the bruise.
The dark purple.
The red and blue discoloration.
The swelling.
The makeup that had come away on the wipe.
I had been trying not to cry.
But saying it all again brought back the changing table so clearly that I had to stop speaking.
I could picture Paige lying there.
Her tiny left leg.
The beige coating.
The terrible sound she made.
I covered my mouth for a moment.
Then I lowered my hand.
"I'm sorry."
The investigator shook her head.
"Take your time."
I looked down at the table.
I remembered how desperately I had wanted an ordinary explanation.
Something I could fix.
Something that would make her comfortable.
Instead, I had discovered an injury no one had mentioned.
I told the investigator that I stopped touching the area.
That I wrapped Paige carefully.
That I brought the diaper bag and my phone.
That I drove straight to the pediatric emergency room.
She asked whether I called Kate before leaving.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because Paige needed help."
I paused.
"I was scared, and I didn't want to wait."
The investigator wrote that down.
She asked whether I had spoken with Kate afterward.
"Yes. From the hospital."
I explained the conversation.
How I'd told Kate about the fracture.
How I'd asked whether anything happened the night before.
How Kate said Paige was fussy because of teething.
The investigator asked whether Kate had given any explanation for the broken bone.
"No."
"Did she say she knew about the bruising?"
"No."
"Did she explain the makeup?"
"No."
I looked toward the doorway.
I wondered whether Kate was speaking with someone else right now.
Whether she was trying to remember the night more clearly.
Whether Ryan had thought of something.
I hoped one of them had.
The investigator turned to another page.
"Who had access to Paige before she came to your house?"
I looked at her.
"Kate and Ryan."
"Anyone else?"
"I don't know."
She nodded.
"Let's start with the people you know were there."
I told her again that Kate and Ryan had arrived together.
Kate brought Paige inside.
Ryan remained in the car.
The investigator asked how long they stayed.
I told her Kate had been inside for about five minutes.
She asked whether Kate seemed rushed.
I thought carefully.
"She seemed eager to get going."
"Did she seem upset?"
"She looked tired."
"Anything else?"
I hesitated.
Because I was beginning to remember the morning differently.
Not because I had discovered some dramatic new event.
But because the small things were no longer quite as easy to dismiss.
Kate had looked exhausted.
She had described a difficult night.
She had said she trusted my judgment if Paige became difficult to settle.
And she had left without mentioning an injury that doctors later found serious enough to require additional tests.
I told the investigator all of that.
She listened.
Then she asked,
"What did you understand your sister's last remark to mean?"
I looked at my hands.
"I thought she meant I could decide what Paige needed if she became fussy."
"Did she specifically tell you to seek medical care?"
"No."
"Did she tell you not to?"
"No."
I looked up.
"She didn't say anything like that."
The investigator nodded.
I was relieved.
I didn't want an ordinary sentence turned into something it hadn't been.
The remark bothered me now because of what happened afterward.
But I couldn't claim Kate had been warning me about a fracture.
I had no proof of that.
The investigator asked whether I had seen the diaper bag before.
"Yes. Kate brought it."
"Did you look inside it?"
I thought about the morning.
"No. I had the bottle and what I needed. Then everything happened so quickly."
"Did anyone else handle the bag while Paige was with you?"
"No."
"Where is it now?"
"At the hospital."
I described where I had left it beside my chair.
She wrote that down.
I thought about the bag again.
How ordinary it had seemed when Kate handed it over.
How I'd carried it from my house to the car.
Then from the car into the hospital.
It was one of the few things that had traveled with Paige through the entire morning.
I hadn't thought of it that way before.
The investigator asked whether I'd used any cosmetics on Paige.
"No."
"Did you have makeup near the changing table?"
"Not that I remember."
"Did you put any lotion or cream on her left thigh?"
"No."
I answered each question as carefully as I could.
She asked whether I had cleaned the rest of the coating.
"No."
"Did you photograph it?"
"No."
I felt suddenly worried.
Should I have?
I had been so frightened that I hadn't even thought of taking a picture.
I asked her whether that had been a mistake.
She told me the hospital had documented the injury during the examination.
I felt a small amount of relief.
I didn't want anything important to be lost because I hadn't known what to do.
The investigator continued asking about Paige's care before the hospital visit.
Had she been left alone?
No.
Had I noticed any accident?
No.
Had anyone else held her?
Not while she was with me.
Had I heard anything unusual before the crying began?
Nothing I could identify.
I understood what she was doing.
She was trying to establish a timeline.
Not just when I discovered the injury.
But who had been responsible for Paige at each point.
That made sense.
And it frightened me.
Because I could account for the time Paige was with me.
I could describe almost every important movement.
But I couldn't explain what happened before nine that morning.
I didn't know when the bruise first appeared.
I didn't know when the bone broke.
I didn't know when someone applied the makeup.
Those answers belonged somewhere outside the part of the day I had witnessed.
The investigator closed her notebook for a moment.
She looked at me.
"Is there anything else you remember?"
I thought about Kate's arrival.
The tired face.
The diaper bag.
Ryan in the car.
The explanation about teething.
Then I thought about something I hadn't mentioned clearly.
"Kate told me she had changed Paige that morning."
The investigator opened the notebook again.
"How do you know?"
"She said it when the doctor was asking about the injury."
"Did she tell you that at the drop-off?"
"No."
"What did she say at the hospital?"
I tried to remember the exact conversation.
"She said Paige had cried during the morning diaper change."
The investigator wrote that down.
I continued.
"She said she thought the baby was tired."
"Did she mention seeing the swelling?"
"She said she hadn't really noticed it."
"Did she mention the makeup?"
"She said she hadn't noticed anything like that."
The investigator looked up.
"And how did you discover the makeup?"
I explained again that I'd opened the green sleeper and noticed the beige coating while checking the diaper area.
She nodded.
I could see why the difference mattered.
Kate had changed Paige that morning.
I had changed her shortly afterward.
During my attempt, I had noticed a swollen leg covered with a thick cosmetic substance.
Kate said she hadn't seen either.
I didn't know how to reconcile those two accounts.
I couldn't tell whether the coating had already been present when Kate changed Paige.
I couldn't tell whether Kate had overlooked it.
I couldn't tell whether there was something about that morning I still didn't understand.
I had no answer.
The investigator didn't ask me to invent one.
Instead, she returned to the timeline.
"What time did Kate and Ryan arrive?"
"Around nine."
"How long did Kate stay inside?"
"About five minutes."
"How soon after they left did Paige become upset?"
"About twenty minutes."
"Was Paige with you continuously?"
"Yes."
The investigator wrote for a while.
I sat quietly.
There was something difficult about watching another person write down the events of a morning that had felt so frightening.
To her, they were details to establish.
To me, they were memories that kept returning.
The bottle.
The walking.
The scream.
The wipe.
The bruise.
The hospital.
The fracture.
I knew those things weren't going away.
The investigator finished writing.
Then she explained that the medical team would continue caring for Paige while the hospital gathered the information needed to understand her injuries.
I nodded.
I wasn't asking for anyone to be blamed without evidence.
I wasn't asking the investigator to tell me what had happened before she knew.
I wanted the truth.
And I wanted Paige safe while that truth was being established.
She asked whether I had any questions.
I looked toward the closed door.
"Can I go back to her?"
The investigator nodded.
"Yes."
I stood up.
My legs felt stiff from sitting.
I picked up my phone.
For a moment, I glanced at the screen.
There were no answers waiting there.
Just the same ordinary contact names.
Kate.
Ryan.
People I had known long before that Saturday.
I put the phone away.
When I returned to Paige's room, I saw her resting beneath the hospital blanket.
The nurse was nearby.
Kate sat beside the bed.
Ryan stood a little farther away.
I didn't know what either of them had told the hospital staff.
I didn't ask.
Not then.
I walked to the other side of the bed and looked at my niece.
Her tiny hand was resting palm-up beside her.
I placed one finger gently against it.
She curled her fingers around mine.
I stayed still.
I had spent the day trying to understand what she couldn't tell us.
And after all those questions, there were still things no one could explain.
But I knew one thing with certainty.
Paige had needed someone to recognize that her crying meant pain.
I had recognized it.
I had brought her to the hospital.
And now the people caring for her were looking for answers that I couldn't find on my own.
I looked at the green sleeper folded with her belongings.
Then at the diaper bag sitting nearby.
Both had come from my sister's house.
Both had seemed completely ordinary that morning.
I turned back to Paige.
I didn't know what the investigation would uncover.
I didn't know what the additional X-rays would show.
I didn't know whether Kate or Ryan would remember something that explained the injury.
Those questions belonged to the work still being done.
For now, I kept my finger beneath Paige's tiny hand.
I watched her breathe.
And I stayed beside her while the hospital continued trying to understand what had happened before she arrived at my house.
Click here to continue reading: PART 9: The Additional X-Rays Revealed Something the Doctors Couldn’t Ignore, and I Began to Fear What Paige Had Already Endured
My Sister Left Her Six-Month-Old Daughter With Me That Saturday, and One Strange Thing She Said Kept Coming Back to Me
Part 8 of 20
