The room stayed suspended like that for a long time.
No one knew where to put their anger.
At a child? Impossible.
At Laura? Easy, but incomplete.
At Daniel and Megan for hiring someone they barely knew? Cruel, but not wholly false.
At the whole brittle scaffolding of modern parenting that asks exhausted adults to perform competency while sleep-deprived and isolated and then punishes them viciously for any crack? That was harder, because systems do not stand in hospital rooms where you can yell at them.
Eventually Cynthia, the social worker, came back in. She spoke quietly to Laura. To Daniel. To Megan. She explained procedures. Questions. Mandatory documentation. Child services would still need a report, though the injury pattern and the child’s statement shifted the nature of it. An accident was still an injury. Lack of intent did not erase the fact of supervision gone wrong.
Daniel signed something.
Laura signed something else with a hand that could barely hold the pen.
