I went straight to the hospital.
I didn't make another attempt to feed Paige.
I didn't try to walk her around until she settled.
And I didn't wait to see whether the pain would pass.
I had already seen enough.
The drive felt different from any ordinary trip I had made with a child.
Paige needed help.
I knew that.
I also knew I had to be careful.
I kept thinking about how sensitive her leg had been.
The smallest touch had made her scream.
Even the movement of my hand while holding her had caused a severe reaction.
I didn't want to make anything worse.
I was aware of every moment between leaving the house and reaching the pediatric emergency room.
Not because anything else happened along the way.
But because I wanted her to be examined as soon as possible.
I had never expected to be taking my niece to the hospital that morning.
I had expected a few hours of babysitting.
A bottle.
A diaper change.
Maybe some crying because her teeth were bothering her.
That was all.
Now I was carrying a six-month-old baby whose thigh was swollen and bruised.
And the bruise had been covered with makeup.
I couldn't stop thinking about that part.
I had seen bruises before.
Everyone has.
But I had never expected to find adult concealer spread across the injured leg of a baby who couldn't even walk.
The makeup was what made the situation so difficult to understand.
A bruise might have an explanation.
An injury might have an explanation.
I didn't know what Paige's explanation was.
But covering the discoloration with cosmetics raised questions I couldn't answer.
I kept remembering Kate's tired face.
Her explanation about teething.
The diaper bag she had placed in my hands.
And what she had said about trusting me to make a decision if Paige became difficult to comfort.
At the time, it had sounded ordinary.
Now I had made a decision.
One Kate might not have expected when she left.
I was taking Paige to a doctor.
I still did not know whether my sister understood how badly the baby was hurting.
I didn't know what Kate had seen.
I didn't know what her husband had seen.
And I didn't know who had applied the concealer.
I wasn't going to invent answers simply because I was scared.
That mattered to me.
I wanted to stay with what I knew.
What I had personally seen.
What I had personally touched.
What Paige had done.
The difference between those things was important.
By the time I reached the emergency room, I had one clear purpose.
I needed the medical staff to understand what had happened after Paige was left with me.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
I brought her inside.
The diaper bag was with me.
So was my phone.
And Paige was still the only thing I really cared about.
I wanted someone to examine her leg.
I wanted someone to tell me what kind of injury could make a baby react that way.
I wanted to know how serious it was.
But I also understood that the staff needed the facts.
They couldn't work from my fear alone.
So when I spoke to the nurse, I explained the morning as clearly as I could.
I said Paige was six months old.
I said my sister and her husband had left her with me while they went shopping.
I explained that Kate had told me the baby had been teething.
I told the nurse Paige had become upset soon afterward.
I had warmed a bottle.
Paige wouldn't take it.
I had held her.
I had tried walking with her.
And then, when I adjusted the hand supporting her lower back, she had screamed.
I explained how severe the reaction had been.
I told the nurse that Paige had become stiff.
That her hands had clenched.
That her hair had been damp with sweat.
I didn't want any of those details overlooked.
They were part of what I had seen.
Then I described what happened at the changing table.
I explained that her left leg had barely moved while she cried.
I told the nurse I had opened the green sleeper.
I had begun checking her diaper.
And that was when I noticed the strange smell.
I described it as floral and powdery.
The kind of scent I associated with makeup.
I said there had been a thick beige substance on Paige's thigh.
It looked like concealer.
I explained that I had used one clean baby wipe.
Only once.
Only across a small section.
I wanted the nurse to understand exactly how much I had touched.
I didn't want anyone thinking I had scrubbed the injured area.
I hadn't.
I had stopped as soon as I saw what was underneath.
Then I told her about the bruise.
The dark purple coloring.
The red and blue discoloration around it.
The swelling.
And the way Paige had screamed when the wipe touched her skin.
It was difficult to say everything aloud.
Not because the facts were complicated.
They were horribly simple.
The difficult part was hearing myself describe something that had happened to a baby I loved.
A baby who had been left in my care for an ordinary shopping trip.
I remember being careful not to claim I knew more than I did.
I hadn't seen Paige get injured.
I couldn't say when it happened.
I couldn't say who had put makeup on her thigh.
I couldn't say why.
Those were questions.
Not facts.
But the crying was a fact.
The swollen leg was a fact.
The makeup was a fact.
The bruising underneath it was a fact.
And I needed the nurse to know all of it.
It would have been easier to focus only on the injury.
To tell the staff that Paige was crying and her leg looked swollen.
But that would have left out something important.
Someone had applied cosmetics over the discolored skin.
I had seen the evidence with my own eyes.
I couldn't pretend that detail didn't matter.
Even though I didn't understand it.
Even though I was afraid of what it might mean.
I kept my explanation straightforward.
I didn't accuse anyone.
I didn't try to guess what had happened before Paige reached my house.
I simply told the medical staff what I knew.
Eventually, the attending resident examined Paige's leg.
I watched closely.
I had been hoping that someone with medical training would finally be able to explain what I was seeing.
I wanted answers.
I wanted reassurance if reassurance was possible.
Most of all, I wanted Paige to receive proper care.
The resident looked at her leg.
Then I noticed a change in the doctor's expression.
It wasn't the sort of change I wanted to see.
She had been examining a baby with a painful injury.
Now she looked more serious.
I paid attention immediately.
I was waiting for her to speak.
When she did, she focused on something I hadn't been able to ignore.
Paige's age.
The fact that she was only six months old.
The fact that she could not walk.
The resident explained that an injury in a child who wasn't yet mobile needed a careful account of how it had occurred.
I understood what she meant.
Paige wasn't a toddler running around and falling over.
She wasn't old enough to walk.
That made the circumstances of the injury especially important.
And nobody had given me an explanation for it.
The resident also mentioned the cosmetics.
Someone appeared to have covered the injured area with makeup.
Hearing those words from a doctor affected me differently from seeing the beige coating at home.
At the changing table, I had been frightened and confused.
I had recognized the bruising and understood that Paige needed medical care.
But I had still been trying to make sense of it by myself.
Now a medical professional was looking at the same problem.
And she was treating it seriously.
I looked at Paige.
She was so little.
Six months.
That was all.
She couldn't tell the doctor what happened.
She couldn't explain the injury.
She couldn't answer questions about the makeup.
Someone else would have to explain those things.
And at that moment, I couldn't.
I had come to the emergency room hoping someone could tell me why she was hurting.
Instead, the examination made me understand how many questions still had no answer.
How did Paige injure her thigh?
When did it happen?
Who knew she was hurt?
Why had the discoloration been covered?
I had no reliable answer to any of them.
I thought again about the morning.
Kate arriving exhausted.
The explanation about teething.
Her tired smile.
Her trust in my judgment.
Then Paige refusing the bottle.
Crying harder.
Screaming when I moved my hand.
The left leg barely moving.
The scent of makeup.
The beige coating.
The purple bruise.
Each detail had seemed to lead to the next.
And the final detail had brought us here.
To a hospital.
To a doctor examining my niece.
To questions that could not be answered by saying she was teething.
I looked at the resident.
I wanted to ask whether Paige would be all right.
I wanted to ask how badly she was hurt.
I wanted to ask what would happen next.
But the doctor's explanation had left me struggling to speak.
My mouth felt dry.
I knew what I had seen.
I knew why I had brought Paige in.
And I knew I had done the right thing by seeking medical help instead of waiting.
But knowing that didn't make the situation less frightening.
The resident had not told me exactly how Paige was injured.
She had not identified who applied the makeup.
She had not provided an answer to the question that was beginning to trouble me most.
What had happened to my niece before she was brought to my house?
I couldn't answer it.
Not then.
All I could do was remain with Paige and tell the truth about everything I had witnessed.
I had started that Saturday believing my sister's baby was simply having a difficult morning.
Now I was standing in a pediatric emergency room while a doctor explained why her injury required an explanation.
I no longer believed teething had caused what I had seen.
I no longer believed ordinary comforting would solve the problem.
And I could no longer pretend that the makeup was an unimportant detail.
Whatever had happened before Paige arrived, it had left her hurting badly enough to scream when I touched her leg.
That was what I knew.
That was what the doctor was examining.
And that was where the answers had to begin.
Click here to continue reading: PART 5: The Doctor Ordered X-Rays of Paige’s Leg, and I Began to Understand Why She Was Asking So Many Questions
My Sister Left Her Six-Month-Old Daughter With Me That Saturday, and One Strange Thing She Said Kept Coming Back to Me
Part 4 of 20
