He hesitated, then tapped near the middle.
“Here. And here. But it’s not normal hurt.”
Clara sat across from him.
“What is normal hurt?”
“When you fall. Or bump something. Or when it throbs.”
“And this?”
He swallowed.
“This feels like something is wrong.”
Clara did not tell him to stop being dramatic.
She did not smile.
She did not say children were resilient, which adults often say when they are asking a child to endure something alone.
She just looked.
At his fingers.
At the way he held them slightly curled.
At the way his face tightened when his wrist shifted.
At the edge of the cast where the plaster sat hard against skin.
“Since when?” she asked.
“The second day.”
Clara’s eyes lifted.
“Not today?”
He shook his head.
“The second day.”
That answer made her quiet.
Clara had raised two children and cared for three grandchildren.
She had sat in waiting rooms, filled out intake forms, and watched nurses listen to symptoms adults almost dismissed.
She was not a doctor.
But she knew the difference between a child avoiding discomfort and a child negotiating with pain.
That night, Patricia and Andrew went out to dinner.
It was supposed to be nothing special.
A table at a local restaurant.
An hour and a half away from laundry, bills, and the steady exhaustion of parenting.
