Page 143 of The Single Dad

“So there’s nothing else wrong?” Riley asks.

The doctor shakes her head. “Nope. No other damage, no further injuries. A nice, clean break.” She holds out one of the x-rays in front of Archie so that he can see. “You see that?”

Despite the pain he’s still in, Archie does seem intrigued by the x-ray. “Is that m-my arm?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s… my skeleton?”

“It sure is.” The doctor taps the section of the image where the break is visible. “You see that? That’s what we have to heal up.”

The reminder of the break seems to disturb Archie, who begins to sniffle again, his momentary distraction over. My jaw clenches, and I’m unable to relax, no matter how hard I try to let my muscles go limp.

“Unfortunately, we are going to need to put a cast on it,” the doctor says.

I nod stiffly. “Understood.”

“It won’t take very long,” she continues. “It might be a little uncomfortable at first, but luckily, it will only need to be on for a few weeks.” She gives Archie a kind smile. “The worst part will be the itchiness. We’ll give you a sling to go with it, in case you need it.”

“A c-cast?” Archie says, hiccuping. “What’s that?”

“It’s a big, chunky bandage that will keep your arm nice and still while it heals,” the doctor explains.

“You can choose the color,” Riley says, trying to sound upbeat. “And all of your friends at pre-K are going to be able to sign their names on it. Won’t that be fun?”

The door opens, and a few nurses enter the room, toting a cart full of supplies. The doctor turns to me and Riley.

“You can stay if you’d like,” she says, “but the more people in the room, the more crowded he’s going to feel. Would you mind waiting out in the hallway?”

“No problem,” says Riley. She stands up, looking at me with a question in her eyes; more slowly, I follow suit. The two of us step out of the room, closing the door behind us.

For a few moments, as we linger in the hallway, there’s silence.

Then Riley says, “Poor kiddo.”

I can’t manage more in response than an incoherent grunt.

“I feel bad for him,” she continues. “It sucks, getting hurt like that.” She glances at me, her eyes round with worry. “Are you okay? Everything’s going to be alright, you know. There were no injuries other than—”

“I know,” I snap, cutting her off. “I heard. I was there, same as you.”

She stares at me in disbelief, taken aback by the harshness of my words, and I fold my arms, turning away from her. Guilt is tugging at me, straight to my core, and I’m unable to shake it. The negative emotions have to take some kind of direction, or I feel like they’ll tear me apart at the seams.

“If you’d been doing your job, maybe we wouldn’t be here. You should’ve been paying closer attention to Archie.”

Chapter 45

Riley

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I stand frozen, stunned and stung, shaking my head.

I know that this isn’t my fault. It was a freak accident; it could’ve happened to any of the kids at the park. It wouldn’t have been right to try to stop Archie from playing with his friends, and nobody could have predicted that things would go wrong like this.

Cole was there, too. If he thinks it was so preventable, why didn’t he take action?

He’s hurting, I tell myself. He’s stressed. He just had to see his kid in pain. That’s the worst thing anyone could feel.

But that doesn’t excuse the bite in his tone, or the coldness in his glare. He may be struggling with this, but it doesn’t give him the right to be an asshole.

---