At first, I didn't want to believe what I was seeing.
The beige substance was on Paige's thigh.
It looked like adult makeup.
Not baby lotion.
Not the kind of cream someone might use during a diaper change.
Makeup.
I leaned closer.
I could still smell that faint floral scent.
It reminded me of the powdery fragrance of cosmetics.
That made no sense.
Paige was six months old.
She had no reason to have makeup on her leg.
I tried to think of an innocent explanation.
Something that might have rubbed onto her skin by accident.
Something from her clothes.
Something I had misunderstood.
But the coating looked too deliberate.
It covered the area in a way that made me uneasy.
And underneath the color, her leg didn't look right.
I was already worried about how little she had moved her left leg.
Now I could see that the same thigh appeared larger than the other.
Swollen.
That was the word I couldn't avoid.
The left thigh looked swollen.
I felt my stomach tighten.
I wanted to know what was underneath the beige layer.
But I was afraid of touching her.
She had already screamed when I adjusted my hold.
She had reacted badly to movement.
I didn't want to cause her any more pain.
Still, I needed to see what I was dealing with.
There was a clean baby wipe on the changing table.
I picked it up.
I remember looking at the white material.
It was such an ordinary thing.
Something used countless times every day by people caring for babies.
There was nothing frightening about a baby wipe.
Nothing about it that should have changed my understanding of the morning.
But I was nervous holding it.
I moved toward a small section of the beige coating.
I did not try to clean her entire leg.
I only wanted to see what was beneath it.
I touched the wipe to the skin.
Very lightly.
Then I passed it across a small area.
Paige screamed immediately.
I stopped.
I remember looking at her face before looking at the wipe.
Her reaction was worse than I could dismiss.
The slightest contact had hurt her.
I didn't try again.
I didn't need to.
The white wipe now had beige makeup on it.
I stared at the color.
It had come away from her skin.
There was no question that something had been applied to her thigh.
I looked back at the spot I had cleaned.
And I saw what the coating had been hiding.
A bruise.
Dark purple.
The surrounding skin had red and blue discoloration.
It wasn't a tiny mark.
It wasn't something I could easily explain as ordinary irritation.
The colors were unmistakable.
And the area was swollen.
I remember feeling my hands begin to shake.
I looked from the exposed skin to the makeup on the wipe.
Then back again.
The difference was awful.
One moment, the area had been covered with beige cosmetics.
The next, a dark injury was visible.
I didn't need anyone to tell me that makeup could hide discoloration.
I could see it happening in front of me.
That is what frightened me most at first.
Not simply that Paige had a bruise.
It was the combination.
The bruise.
The swelling.
The way she avoided moving that leg.
And the thick coating that had been placed over the skin.
I couldn't explain why anyone would put adult concealer on a baby's thigh.
I couldn't explain who had done it.
And I couldn't explain how she had been injured.
Those questions remained unanswered.
But I knew enough to be scared.
I had been told Paige was teething.
I had believed her crying came from sore gums.
Yet here she was, unable to tolerate even a gentle touch to her thigh.
The explanation I had accepted no longer made sense.
I kept looking at the bruise.
The colors were so different from the beige makeup that had covered them.
Purple.
Red.
Blue.
I remember those colors because they made the truth impossible to ignore.
Something was wrong with Paige's leg.
Something significant.
I thought about the way she had screamed when I held her.
I thought about her fists tightening.
The sweat in her hair.
The stiffness of her body.
And the little left leg that barely moved.
Those details had seemed separate while I was trying to comfort her.
Now they belonged to the same problem.
I wasn't dealing with an ordinary fussy baby.
I was dealing with a baby who was in pain.
Real pain.
Pain that seemed to come from an injured, swollen leg.
And someone had put makeup over the injury.
I didn't know what that meant yet.
I was not going to pretend I did.
I didn't know who had applied it.
I didn't know when it had been applied.
I didn't know how long Paige had been hurting.
I didn't know what had happened before Kate arrived at my house.
But I knew what I had found.
And that was enough.
I stopped using the wipe.
I didn't want to remove any more of the makeup.
I didn't want to keep touching the injured area.
I didn't want to change the appearance of something a doctor might need to examine.
My hands were trembling badly enough that I had to concentrate on what I was doing.
I placed the wipe aside.
Then I looked at Paige again.
She was still upset.
She couldn't tell me what had happened.
She couldn't point to the pain.
She couldn't explain the bruise.
All she could do was cry.
And suddenly I felt ashamed of how long I had kept thinking about teething.
I know I was working with the information I had been given.
I know I had tried to help her.
But looking at that injury, I wished I had understood sooner.
I wished I had recognized the difference in her crying before I tried the bottle.
Before I walked around the living room.
Before I shifted my hand.
But I couldn't change those minutes.
I could only decide what to do next.
I knew I wasn't qualified to determine what kind of injury she had.
I couldn't tell whether the bone was damaged.
I couldn't tell how serious the swelling was.
And I certainly couldn't tell whether moving her might make things worse.
I needed someone who could.
A doctor.
Not later.
Now.
That decision came clearly.
I didn't need to debate it.
I didn't need to keep searching for explanations.
I didn't need to wait for Kate and her husband to return from shopping.
There was a baby in front of me with a painful, swollen leg and bruising that had been covered with cosmetics.
I wasn't going to treat that as a normal diaper problem.
I wasn't going to keep trying to calm her at home.
I knew she needed medical care.
I was frightened.
That is the simplest way to say it.
But once I decided to take her to the hospital, I felt I finally knew what I was supposed to do.
I needed to move carefully.
I needed to keep her as comfortable as possible.
And I needed to get her examined.
I reached for a blanket.
I wrapped Paige gently.
I tried to avoid putting pressure on her leg.
Every movement made me conscious of how small she was.
She couldn't help me.
She couldn't tell me which position felt better.
I had to be cautious for her.
I picked her up.
I kept thinking about that small patch of exposed bruising.
The rest of the coating was still there.
I had touched only one section.
I wanted the medical staff to see it.
I wanted them to know exactly what I had seen and exactly what I had done.
That seemed important.
I had no idea what they would think when I told them.
I only knew I needed to tell the truth.
The entire truth.
The bottle.
The crying.
The sudden scream.
The leg that barely moved.
The powdery smell.
The beige makeup.
The bruise underneath.
I wasn't going to leave anything out because it sounded strange.
Especially not the makeup.
I looked at the baby wipe again.
I could still picture the beige color coming away.
I knew I would remember that moment for a long time.
A small movement of my hand had shown me something nobody had mentioned when Paige was dropped off.
And I could not understand why.
I grabbed the diaper bag.
Then my phone.
I made sure I had Paige supported.
I was taking her to the pediatric emergency room.
I had no diagnosis.
No explanation for the injury.
No answer about who had covered it.
But I had a responsibility to the little girl in my arms.
And for the first time that morning, I was no longer trying to make her crying stop with ordinary comforts.
I was trying to make sure she got the help she needed.
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: I Carried Paige Into the Pediatric Emergency Room and Told the Nurse About the Makeup, Then the Resident Examined Her Leg
My Sister Left Her Six-Month-Old Daughter With Me That Saturday, and One Strange Thing She Said Kept Coming Back to Me
Part 3 of 20
