Part Two: The Sound
I was in the kitchen when it happened.
My mother had asked me to check on the potatoes, which was the task she assigned when she wanted someone nearby without quite wanting company. I was standing at the stove with a fork when I heard the sound from the living room.
There are sounds that you categorize before you understand what you’re categorizing. The thump was heavy and wrong — not the thump of furniture moved or something dropped, but the thump of a body hitting a floor with force, and then, immediately after, a sound that my body processed before my mind caught up: my son’s voice making a sound that was not crying and not screaming but something stripped-down and animal, the sound of someone trying to breathe and finding they couldn’t do it properly.
I was in the living room before I had decided to move.
Leo was on the floor, curled on his left side, his knees drawn up and one arm pressed against his ribs. His face had gone the particular color that faces went when the body was in serious pain and redirecting resources — white with a grayish undertone, his lips pale. He was trying to breathe in small, shallow increments, each one visibly effortful.
Ryan was standing four feet away.
He was twelve years old, my sister’s son, a boy I had known his entire life and bought birthday presents for and driven to soccer games on occasion. He was standing with his hands at his sides, and his expression was the thing I have returned to many times since, the thing that still doesn’t sit right in any category I have for a twelve-year-old: he looked calm. More than calm. He looked satisfied, in the way of someone who has done a thing they intended to do and found it went as planned.
“What happened?” I said.
My voice came out steadier than I felt, which was a function of adrenaline rather than composure.
“They were playing,” Dana said. She was on the sofa. She had been on the sofa. She had not moved.
“Playing,” I said.
“Boys get rough. He probably just had the wind knocked out.”
I was already crouching beside Leo. I put my hand on his face, then on his side where he was holding himself, and felt the way he flinched even from light touch. I knew — not medically, not with any clinical certainty, but with the body-knowledge of a mother who was looking at her child’s face — that this was not wind knocked out.
“Leo. Can you hear me? Look at me.”
His eyes found mine. He was conscious, present, but the effort of speaking was beyond him right then. He moved his lips. I couldn’t hear the word.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ve got you.”
I stood and reached for my phone.
