Healing. I’ve never liked the word healing, as it implies wound and wound implies victim, and if there is one thing I’m sure I’m not, it is a victim. I strongly resist the unconscious cultural shaming definition that has evolved to include victims as whining, blaming, disempowered, duped fools. Equally resistant am I to the victim mentality, the habitual thought process that attributes blame to others, celebrating self-pity while consciously feeding on other’s pity; the self-absorbed, manipulative, learned helplessness that shirks all responsibility for outcomes and disempowers its owner, leaving a bitter resentful shell of a human being.

And yet…. in early 2012, a year prior to my cold morning at the barn, evil had reached into our home and I, along with my babies and Dan, had become just that, legally, culturally, and socially defined victims.

It started like this: eight-week-old Kalvin had been fussy on a Sunday. We thought he was going through the same fussy stage Grace had been through the week before. The books said fussiness reached its peak at six weeks as babies became more aware of their surroundings. Kalvin and Grace were exactly six weeks old, adjusted for their early birth. But still, he was really fussy. We thought about switching him to sensitive formula thinking his distress could be caused by gas. We checked for any loose clothing strings, tags or zippers, anything that could be irritating him. We gave him a bath to try to settle him down. The only position that seemed comfortable for him was over my shoulder with his weight supported by my hand on his bum. Kalvin cried off and on all day Sunday until he finally fell asleep exhausted that night. Then he slept much of Monday.

Tuesday morning I awoke with a long list of things to do: a plethora of errands, a client call for my life coaching business, and a piece of writing I wanted to complete. After loving on Grace and Kalvin and getting them ready for the day, I rummaged in the crawl space above the garage for my old hockey equipment; my friend Robin needed props for a display at an art gallery. The ten-year anniversary of the 2002 Olympics was a week away and the resort town Park City, Utah, which had been one of the major venues for the Games, was gearing up for a celebration. When I left Park City after closing ceremonies, I never dreamed I would return one day as a resident, I never could have predicted the decade to come: a move to India to study meditation, a return to attend Stanford Business School, a move to Minneapolis to work for a medical device company where I met and fell in love with a man from Boston, Dan, who loved to ski, ride horses, and play guitar; another move to California for Dan’s job, and yet another move to Park City to settle in the ski home he’d bought almost a decade earlier, to which we added a cat, a dog, and now twins.

On that Tuesday, January 31st, 2012, Mary, who helped with the babies during the day, arrived just after eight thirty a.m. and I left to give my hockey equipment to Robin. I was gone less than thirty minutes when Mary called, her voice full of concern. Mary was twenty-four, heavy set with blond hair and blue eyes. As the eldest of five kids raised in a LDS family in Idaho, she had spent most of her life raising her siblings. When Mary started with us a few months before the twins were born, she had just returned from Mormon mission and was the picture of piety and nurturance.

Over the phone, Mary told me Kalvin screamed in pain when she put a sock on his left foot. I normally dressed Kalvin and Grace in footie pajamas, but Mary liked to dress them in socks and shoes. I told her I was coming right home. When I got there, Mary’s face mirrored her voice. She looked worried and a bit saddened. I undressed Kalvin. Not only was his foot swollen, but his lower leg was swollen from the knee down. I laid him on the bed, and sat watching his tiny, telling, baby movements. I felt a slow panic rise from my gut. His left leg wasn’t moving much, or really at all. I called the pediatrician. The receptionist said to bring him in for a two thirty p.m. appointment.

Our pediatrician, Lena, was booked so we saw Monica, who examined Kalvin and said she thought it might be osteomyelitis. “You should take him down to Children’s Primary Hospital for scans,” she said. “Today.”

I tried not to panic, but if his condition was that serious, I wanted Lena’s opinion as well. While waiting for her, I pulled out my cell phone to show Monica a picture of a bruise I’d discovered on Gracie’s face two weeks earlier. Of the bruise, Aubrey said Grace had bumper her face on the side of the crib during the night. Aubrey was the night nurse whom we hired, on the advice of my brother who has twins of his own, to attend to Kalvin and Grace from nine p.m. until six p.m. four nights a week. In addition to my brother, a dozen blogs and a half-dozen books for parents of multiples encouraged new parents of twins to get as much help as we could afford. We could have afforded more help than Aubrey, we chose not to. We could afforded to have the babies sleep downstairs, in a guest room, but we wanted Kalvin and Grace close. The nursery was directly off our bedroom, the babies’ cribs were less than fifteen feet from where we slept, with only a door separating the two rooms so we’d hear the babies when they cried at night. We wanted to hear them, we wanted to get up with them; and, we wanted help, especially for the nights when Dan traveled.

Aubrey had been one of two-dozen applicants for night nurse position. According to her resume, she’d been a nurse at Salt Lake City’s premier children’s hospital for ten years. After speaking with her by phone multiple times, Dan and I met Aubrey at a café in Park City. She was thirty-one years old, from Orem, Utah with long brown hair and brown eyes. For our first meeting, she dressed in the role of an English nanny: a mid length jacket under which she wore a conservative top, long dark skirt, nylons and flats. We spoke to her for over an hour; she seemed professional. Grace and Kalvin would be the ninth set of newborn twins for whom she had cared. We’d call all eight sets of parents, plus four more references. We’d run two national, but not international, background checks.

Of the bruise, Aubrey said Grace had bumped her face on the side of the crib during the night. But the explanation didn’t seem right to me. Maybe Aubrey had herself had accidently bumped Grace on the crib or on a doorway in the dark or on the changing table. I wasn’t certain what had happened, but I’d sensed a lie. “I don’t like this,” I’d said, over and over, to Dan, to Aubrey, to my parents, and to Mary. “I don’t like this.”

“I’m going to get Lena right away,” Monica said. Her doctor demeanor was calm, but her eyes were wide with alarm. When Lena arrived, the angst was palpable and the slow panic I’d been trying to control unleashed itself with a surge of adrenaline. My breaths quickened and my muscles tensed as I instinctively reached for Kalvin.

“Take them to Children’s,” Lena said. “I’ll call ahead and let them know you’re coming. Take them now. I’ll come down when I can.”

*

I tried to breathe and not cry as I drove Kalvin and Grace down the mountain to the children’s hospital in the Salt Lake valley. Dan was in Philadelphia on business. I called him on the way.

“I know it was Aubrey. It had to have been.”

“Don’t blame anyone until we have more facts,” Dan said.

“What do you mean? Of course it was her. Who the fuck else would have done it?” I was scared, angry, and confused, and I desperately wanted to be in the backseat holding my babies instead of driving.

When we arrived at the hospital, I asked that the babies be checked in under false names. I didn’t want Aubrey finding us or accessing Kalvin and Grace’s medical records. As we were shown to a room, I wondered about all the germs I was exposing my babies to in the kid’s emergency room. So much for the giant bottles of hand sanitizers I had spread around the house. When two nurses took Kalvin away for x-rays, I sat holding Grace. Maybe he is ok, maybe it is an over-reaction. “It’s going to be okay baby girl,” I said to Grace. “It’s going to be okay.” If she hurt him, I’ll kill her. “You’re okay Gracie girl.” Maybe Kalvin is just fine too, maybe it’s all going to be okay. What if it isn’t?

A short time later, the nurse brought Kalvin back, and soon thereafter, the doctor entered.

“Your son has a broken tibia,” Dr. Kadish said, pointing to the x-ray. It looked as if a horseshoe-shaped piece of bone had sheared off the lower part of Kalvin’s left leg. I felt my stomach tighten as if I was going to throw up. What the? “Technically, its called a distal tibial metaphyseal fracture.”

“How, how can that happen?”

“It would take a significant amount of force.”

I was too stunned to speak.

Dr. Kadish continued. “We have a saying here, babies who don’t cruise, don’t bruise. Usually, in cases like this, it is not an accident,” he said, shaking his head. I stared at this stranger, willing my stunned mind to process what he was saying. My baby’s leg was broken. It took a significant amount of force to break my baby’s leg. It was not an accident. Therefore, it was intentional. Despite what I had said to Dan earlier about knowing it was Aubrey, my brain simply did not compute intent. It had to have been an accident.

“Could it happen from getting his foot stuck in the side of the crib?”

Dr. Kadish shook his head.

“What if he rolled off a changing table and she went to catch him?” But I knew before he answered that my babies weren’t rolling with that much force.

Every time I tried to truly understand what he was saying, my thoughts deflected and ricocheted in a new direction. It was as if my cognition was a trapped and cornered prey, refusing to accept the obvious ending. So I kept asking the same questions, again and again: “What if he twisted out of her hands, what if it got it stuck in the crib, what if….”

Dr. Kadish looked at me, took a breath. “Babies bones are malleable and very difficult to break. The force it would take to do this is indicative of abuse. In cases like these, we want to do a CT scan and a set of full body x-rays. On both twins.”

Abuse, there was the word. Someone had hurt my babies. I looked Kalvin’s face, his blue eyes were focused on a fluorescent light in the ceiling. I looked at Grace. Her face was shockingly serene against the chaotic violence of the moment. I looked back at Kalvin, then again at Grace.

“Sarah?”

I had forgotten they were in the room.

“Yes, yes, x-rays, okay.”

As I walked down the hall, the other parents and kids, nurses and doctors, they all became background figures in some parallel present. My babies and I were alone, despite being surrounded by noise and people, we were alone as I carried Kalvin and the nurse carried Grace down to the CT scan room.

“Lay him here,” one nurse said pointing to a tiny cradle on the retractable table. Then two nurses used Velcro straps to secure Kalvin’s little head to the cradle. Kalvin didn’t like that at all. He screamed. Tears rolled down his cheeks and mine as I tried to tell him it would be okay. But nothing about any of it was okay. The nurse gave him sugar water, and I held up an ice cream cone shaped light toy that someone had handed me. Kalvin has always loved light, and the spinning colors seemed to distract him from the restraints.
Eventually, he settled down.

“We’ll try to start now,” the nurse said from behind the window. I held his binky in his mouth with one hand as my infant was slid into the machine. With my other hand, I held Kalvin’s tiny perfect fingers while the machine clanked and rattled and bombarded my baby with radiation. With no free hands, my tears simply dripped onto the table, forming a small puddle. And then Kalvin started to cry again and the nurse came through the speakers, saying, “We’re almost there, just a few more minutes, just keep him calm, just try to keep him still.”

No, how about you just stop this wretched thing. Please. But I didn’t want him to have to start again, so there was nothing to do but wait until it was over. “It’s okay buddy, you’re okay,” I said over and over. Finally, I heard a someone say “All set,” and the table retracted. I unstrapped Kalvin as fast as I could and held him to my chest.

“I’ll hold him,” a nurse said and reached for my baby boy.

The fuck you will. I couldn’t bear to let him go, but then Grace appeared with another nurse for her scan, and I couldn’t leave her alone in that room, in that machine. Reluctantly, I handed over Kalvin and took Grace in my arms. She was asleep. I gently placed her on the table and helped the nurse use the Velcro straps once again to immobilize my baby girl. Gratefully, Grace slept through the entire scan and I could breathe.

The x-rays were so much worse.

I watched as my babies were taken into side-by-side rooms connected by a control panel room full of screens. I cried as their naked bodies were held, contorted, and manipulated on cold metal tables while each and every bone in their bodies was x-rayed. I paced from room to room, shredded by my babies’ cries, unable to comfort either one with anything but my voice: “Its okay, Buddha bear, it’s okay. It’s okay baby girl, it’s okay Gracie girl, it’s going to be okay.” At each break in the process, I rushed to whichever baby I could and held his or her chilled body to my chest. Then the lead-apron clad nurse reached for my little one and it began again.

The only bright spot was when Grace pooped on the x-ray tech, which I figured was her only way to let people know what she thought of all the manipulation. And that moment, I was proud. But then the awfulness began again. Grace, my baby girl, screaming, red in the face. Kalvin, screaming in pain or in frustration or fear or confusion. Tiny limbs stretched against cold unforgiving tables. Stop pulling her that way, can’t you see she’s crying? Just stop will you? Just give them a minute? Jesus.

Finally, it ended. I held them both, one in each arm in our private cocoon.

“You can go back to your room now,” someone said.

I stood, cradling both babies, as we slowly walked passed the nurses’ station with its busy hum of quiet beeping, muted conversations and bright computer screens. Down the white hallway, we passed rooms where lethargic weary looking kids and the faces of worried parents stared back. Finally, we reached our own room. I walked in and gently shut the door with my foot, blocking out the noise and images of my tiny babies, naked, cold, and pleading for comfort. I sat, put my nose to Kalvin’s hair and inhaled. Then I did the same to Grace. Their smell calmed me.

Forty-five minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Dr. Kadish entered followed by a nurse. I tried to read their faces. Were my babies okay? Were their brains okay? Was there more? I instinctively pulled Grace, asleep in my arms, closer to my chest. Mary was now holding Kalvin, who was also fast asleep.

“So, it’s good news,” Dr. Kadish said right away. I exhaled. “The CT scan is normal, there’s no damage to their brains.”
I think I actually smiled.

But in the next breath he said, “However Kalvin has the same injury to his right leg.”

Of all the terrible moments of the day, that one never fades. I stopped breathing and in the silent absence of breath, I could feel my heart beating. I can still feel the pause, a suspended stillness like the stretched silence after a lightning strike before sound of the thunder begins. Because in that moment, I suddenly knew evil existed. The shadow creatures of my childhood nightmares that pulled themselves up off the pavement or out of walls and with a horrible screeching screaming howling sound took and dragged a spirit off somewhere, they weren’t just the creative product of Hollywood, or the uninhibited imagined fears of a young mind. Those creatures were real, alive in the present moment, smiling, talking sweetly, acting professionally, laughing and joking under a veil of attractive normalcy while infants screamed in pain and babies’ bones broke. Evil, smiling, laughing, joking, pretty evil.

Then the suspended moment of silence delivering it’s dark epiphany was gone and anger hit. Strong, powerful, unrelenting, and immaleable. Hard rage moved through my body, stiffening my back, energizing my legs. I was upset in fundamental way that made me want to jump up, hit something, fight something, do anything; but I was still holding Grace.

“Both of my baby’s legs are broken?” It was half cry, half scream. I didn’t recognize the voice coming out of me as my own. It was something else, something raw and primal. Then it couldn’t have been an accident. But some remnant, displaced fragment of my old mind desperately wanted to believe it was. What if BOTH feet had gotten caught in the crib’s railing, what if Aubrey had accidentally dropped him, what if he’d rolled when she was changing him, what if, what if, what if.

“It’s called a buckle fracture, a metaphyseal fracture,” he said, pointing again to the x-ray.

I saw his lips moving, I heard the words, but I didn’t understand.

“With babies this young, there should be no long-term repercussions. They heal so quickly.”

It had to have been an accident. Why would she do that? It must have been an accident. Why the fuck would she do that? To babies? I asked a dozen times more how it could have happened.

“It’s unlikely it was an accident,” Dr. Kadish responded back a dozen times.

“Exactly what kind of motion would cause those injuries?” I finally asked, trying to reconcile reality and hell.
A sad resigned look darkened Dr. Kadish’s face. He held his two hands out in front of me, balled them into fists side by side with thumbs together, and twisted them in the opposite directions while pulling them apart. “It would take someone pulling and twisting his leg with a significant amount of force. It would take the kind of force that is more than an accident.”
I stared at him.
“I’m sorry, we’ll be back in a little bit with Tylenol for Kalvin.”
I felt nauseous, then incredibly angry, then numb, then nauseous, then white-hot searing mad. I put Grace in her car seat and reached for Kalvin. “You’re okay baby boy, you’re going to be okay.” He stared back at me, then turned his head to look at the lights. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I cried softly into the top of his head. A few minutes later, a wave of anger hit again and I wanted to find Aubrey. I wanted to find her alone, in a dark alley. I sat and let it pass through me. I could do nothing else. Softness followed. Gratitude. I lifted Kalvin up and studied his face. His cheeks were gigantic, bursting it seemed out of the front and side of his face. Amidst his burgeoning cheeks, the bridge of his nose seemed small leading to open round nostrils. His lower lip was plump and his upper lip dipped perfectly in the middle. His chin was a gentle U-shape amidst the fat of his cheeks and neck. Kalvin stared back at me with deep blue eyes as I studied his face, before tipping his head back to once again look at the lights. I kissed the soft skin of his fat cheeks.
At some point, Lena arrived. Seeing her face, there in the hospital, broke a dam within me and I burst out crying again, a horrible, plaintive cry. Which made Mary cry. And Mary doesn’t cry.
That’s when I remembered.
This had happened before.
In early January when Grace was five-weeks-old, she’d awakened at two-thirty a.m. screaming. Aubrey was holding her when Dan and I opened the door that separated our bedroom from the nursery. Grace had never screamed like that before. I took her from Aubrey and held her against my chest, trying to soothe my baby girl back to sleep. Then I took her into our bedroom, where Grace dozed before waking up again, screaming.

At six-thirty a.m., Dan and I had called Lena who agreed to meet us at the office at eight a.m. Grace had a slight fever and was clearly uncomfortable. We assumed the antibiotic in the breast milk due to a case of mastitis was upsetting Grace’s stomach. We switched both Grace and Kalvin to formula. That was the beginning, though I didn’t know it at the time. Then the bruise on the face. And now Kalvin.

In the hospital, memories of the past mixed with the present: I should have known. Of course I should have known. Grace. Then Kalvin. How could I not have known? I should have known!! But some self-protective mechanism finally succeeded in blocking that accusatory voice so I could focus on my babies. The next few hours passed in a surreal blur of waiting and knocks on the door. The nurse brought Tylenol for Kalvin. A social worker named Tim arrived, asked a few questions and left. Another social worker arrived. Police arrived asking questions. “Did you hurt Kalvin and Grace? Do you know who did?“ I told them it was Aubrey. Kalvin and Grace slept and drank bottles and stared at the bright lights and strange voices. Then the police took me into a separate room for questioning while Mary watched my babies. When I returned, Mary left to be questioned, and I stayed. I struggled to comprehend that it wasn’t an episode of some television show I was watching. My baby’s legs were really broken. The bruise on Grace’s face was not an accident. Aubrey intentionally hurt my babies. My beautiful, newborn, happy babies.

Another social worker wandered in, asked questions, and left. A woman from Department of Child and Family Services with red hair arrived, asked questions, and left. Nurses came and went. Eventually someone said they wanted the babies to stay in the hospital.

“We know they’ll be safe if they are here,” said Detective Jack Towline. It was the worst thing anyone has ever said to me.
The “rational” side of my brain understood this stranger with his badge and his gun was just doing his job; he didn’t know me, he didn’t know the circumstances. But his implication was horrendous.

“You know, part of me understands you are just trying to protect the babies, and I even appreciate that,” I told him in as steady a voice as I could muster. “But there is no fucking way I’m leaving my babies, here, alone after what they’ve been through. I’m going to call my husband and then I’m taking them home.”
Once out of the room, the tears came again.

“Just take them home,” Dan said. “Take them home. They’ve had enough, you’ve had enough, just take them home.” It was midnight in Salt Lake, two a.m. in Philadelphia where Dan was trying to change his flights to get home.

I walked back into the babies’ room, feeling a random moment of strength and conviction. “I’m taking them home,” I told Detective Towline. “You’re welcome to come or to stay at the house, but they need to go home and sleep in their own cribs.” Then Mary and I packed up the babies and took them to the car.

Detective Towline followed me home in one car, a Department of Children and Family Services worker followed in another, and a sergeant was waiting in our driveway when I pulled up to the house. It was now 2 a.m.

“I’m Sergeant Brad Williams,” he said as I stepped out of my car. He wore khaki cargo pants, black boots, and a black jacket with “SHERRIFF” written across the back in bold white letters. Older than Detective Towline, the sergeant had white hair, a white mustache, frameless glasses, and a pleasant avuncular smile. Still, he was here, at two am to investigate a crime scene and determine if I hurt my babies.

“Sarah Tueting. Nice to meet you, sergeant. I’ve got to get the babies to bed. You are all welcome to come in and wait.”

I stepped around him and released Kalvin’s infant seat from the backseat while Mary released Grace’s. Upstairs in the nursery, we changed them into fresh diapers, pajamas, and wrapped them in swaddle blankets. Then I laid them down side by side in the crib they shared, bent over, and kissed their foreheads. Grace’s eyes fluttered open for a moment, then closed. Mary left while I lingered. Kalvin and Grace were home, safe, they would be okay. Right? I rested my elbows on the edge of their crib and watched as they instinctively turned their heads toward each other. Even in sleep, they held each other. They were so peaceful, so serene with their soft skin baby fuzz hair. Downstairs, I heard muffled voices.

I gathered myself, kissed the babies again, shut the door to the nursery and walked down to engage the strangers in my house. Detective Towline and Sergeant Williams were standing in the living room, talking quietly with the red haired woman from DCFS. On the dining room table, a black case had been opened and it’s contents spread out: a camera, a few small vials of black ink, a notebook, some papers, other odds and ends.

“You don’t mind if I take some pictures, do you?” Detective Towline asked.

“Be my guest. But the babies are sleeping so I’d prefer you not use flash in the nursery. The guest room has the exact same crib, it’s just through that door.”

The two men looked at each other as I stared back.

“I’m going to head out,” the woman from DCFS said. “Call me if you need anything.” I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or the men until she handed me a business card. Then she said, “I’m sorry. I hope Kalvin will be okay.”

I felt the tears come and shook them away. “Thank you.” Then I walked her to the door.

“Perhaps you can tell me what happened,” Sergeant Williams began when I returned. I glanced at the gun on his belt. It looked hard, dark, and cold. I wondered if he’d ever had to use it. Then I looked at the handcuffs, also attached to his belt, folded neatly in a leather case. I was sure he’d used those before. Sergeant Williams watched me watching him. He’d seen a lot, of that I was sure.

I once again walked through the events starting with Kalvin’s fussiness on Sunday through the visit to the hospital. As I spoke, I could feel Sergeant Williams studying me, studying the house, taking it all in. He asked clarifying questions along the way, occasionally writing in a small notebook that had materialized from one of the pockets of his cargo pants.

When I finished, he seemed softer, before asking more questions, about Dan, Mary, the babies and our routines.

“So you think it was the night nurse, Ms. Aubrey Anderson,” he finally asked.

“Yes, I do.” My jaw tightened, I was trying to control my anger.

“Why do you think it was her?”

“Because who else would it be?” From the guest room, I heard Detective Towline’s phone ring followed by muted conversation. “What I don’t know is why?”

“Why do you think?”

“I have no fucking idea.” It was the second time I had sworn. “Sorry, I just, I really don’t know.” He smiled then, still watching me.

“Do you mind if I look around some?”

“Help yourself.” He looked passed me toward the stairs. “The nursery and master bedroom are upstairs. There’s a guest room through that door with a crib where Grace naps, and two more guestrooms downstairs. Help yourself.”

I poured myself a glass of water and sat at the kitchen counter, listening as doors opened and shut, phones rang, and quiet conversations ran their course. Eventually, both men returned to the kitchen.

“So, we’ve got to go, but we’d really like for Mary to stay the night so that nobody is alone with the babies. Can she do that?” I looked back at Detective Towline. It was the second time he’d implicated the babies wouldn’t be safe with me alone. I could feel my eyes squint and my mouth go hard. Asshole.

“Yeah, I can ask her to stay.” Mary lived in a cabin on our property. She had gone home to shower and call her parents while I answered questions. She was planning on coming back in the morning but I knew she’d return if I asked. We both wanted to be close to the babies anyway.

“Okay, that would be good, just as a precaution really. To protect both of you,” Sergeant Williams added.

“Yeah, that’s fine.” I shook my head. He was gentler, but still. I called Mary and asked her to come back. She said she’d be up to the house in a few minutes.

I sat at the dining room table while both men wrote in their notebooks and fussed in the black case. As Detective Towline reached to replace the camera, he knocked over a small glass vial that had been sitting on the edge of the table. Black dots scattered across the maroon and white wool of our dining room rug.

“I’m sorry.” His eyes widened slightly.

“Don’t worry about it.” Black ink doesn’t much matter in the scheme of things.

“No, I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up.” Be sorry for the implication I hurt my kids, not black ink, I thought but all I said was, “It’s fine.”

“Do you have some paper towels? I don’t think it will stain.”

“Really, it’s fine.” I repeated. I could feel the Sergeant watching the exchange.

“Can I use those?” Detective Towline asked, pointing to the paper towels next to the kitchen sink.

“Yeah, I’ll get them.” I stood up, retrieved the roll and handed it to Detective Towline who bent down and rubbed at the ink. After a minute, he stood up.

“Okay, that looks pretty good. We’ve got to go. We’re heading down Salt Lake to interview Aubrey.”

“You’re going to interview her now?” It was almost three am.

“Yes. We’ll follow up with you tomorrow and we’ll want to talk to Dan when he gets home.”

“Yeah, that’s fine.” I showed them to the door. Sergeant Williams turned to shake my hand.

“We’ll talk to you tomorrow, try to get some sleep.”

“Thanks.”

But I didn’t sleep that night. I laid awake and felt my body’s reservoir dip below red line. I had been fighting a sore throat that was now raging. My voice had become increasingly more horse. At five a.m. I called my brother.

“Jon,” I croaked when he picked up.

“What? What’s wrong?” His voice was pure panic.

“The babies,” I cried. “She hurt the babies,” but my voice was broken and incomprehensible even to myself.

“What? Say that again. What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

I tried to breathe. “She broke Kalvin’s legs,” I cried. I was gasping for air, but gaining no oxygen. My lungs weren’t working, my diaphragm had spasmed. I tried again to take a deep breath; it came in fits and starts. “She hurt my babies.”

“What?” he screamed, but his voice was raw so I knew he had heard me. “Are they okay? Is Kalvin okay? What happened? Where are you?”

I couldn’t respond, I just cried into the phone, a strange horrible cry. Suddenly it was too real. What I didn’t want to know, that a fellow human being had intentionally hurt my babies, suddenly became real with violent and startlingly clarity.

“Sarah, are you okay? Are the babies okay?” His panic escalated. I could feel his fear through the phone and he seemed to be talking through tears. Slow down Sarah, slow down, I told myself. Breathe. You have to breathe.

“We’re home,” I stuttered. “They’re okay, their brains are okay. Dan is in Philadelphia, the police left a few hours ago.” Though I was talking as loudly as I could, my voice was gone; and I forced the sentences out in a hoarse whisper.

“Police? Jesus, are you okay? I’ve got clinic today, I’ll cancel my patients and come out.” I started crying again and held the phone away from my face. “Sarah, do you want me to come out?” I didn’t respond. “Have you called Mom and Dad?”

“No,” I strained. My voice was truly gone.

“Call Mom and Dad, I’ll make a few phone calls and call you back.” Then he hung up.

“Hello? Hello?” My dad answered. There was already anxiety in his voice. Parents don’t like early morning phone calls. Before I could answer, my mom picked up. “Hello?” she said. They must have been on different floors of the house.

“Mom. Dad,” I said in a hoarse whisper.

“Sarah, what’s wrong?” “What’s wrong?” They were talking over each other.

“Kalvin…he…Aubrey…she hurt them. She broke Kalvin’s legs, my baby’s legs are broken.”

“Where are you? Is Kalvin okay? Where’s Grace?” The upset in my dad’s voice was foreign and scary. Nothing rattled my dad. But this did, this had, and I could feel it as much as I could hear it in his voice.

“Sarah? Sarah, hon, are you there?”

Then I experienced a strange moment of clear rational calm, it’s appearance as quick and unpredictable as the anger and rage.

“I’m home, they’re sleeping, their brains are okay, they’re okay,” I said through the hoarseness. “They’re going to be okay.” If I said it enough, maybe it would be true. “They’re going to be okay. The doctor said they would be okay.”

“Sarah, it’s going to be okay,” my dad repeated back.

“I let her hurt my babies, I didn’t protect them.” The calm had come and gone. I was crying again and couldn’t breathe and wasn’t sure anything I was saying was intelligible. All I knew was nothing was okay.

Then my mom who usually lets my dad do the talking, interrupted my crying and said with a sudden fierceness I had never heard before, “This is not your fault! Sarah? Do you hear me? This is NOT your fault.” I couldn’t respond. I needed to hear that more than I needed to hear anything in my life. But I couldn’t respond. My voice was gone. And, I knew it was my fault. I let the monster into my house, I trusted a monster with my babies while I slept. I didn’t know. I should have known. The crying, the bruise, the pain, the fear they must have felt. I didn’t know. Of course it was my fault.