Broken

Imagine you're in your most familiar and comfortable environment: at home. It's Saturday evening; you're feeling relaxed and good about things. It'll be dinner time soon. You run, as you do a million times a day, from the living room to the hall, en route to the kitchen. You can't even remember why now. You probably should have slowed down a bit: you slip slightly on the hall floor (which remains arguably your parents' greatest DIY achievement to date, but that's not really relevant). Never mind: you're always running around, falling over and crashing into things.

Oh, but hang on a minute. Something's different this time. Fear, confusion and an overpowering sense of injustice are competing with excruciating discomfort in a sudden, almighty battle for your attention. You've had countless cuts and bruises before but you weren't ready for the astounding pain now bursting from your leg like a shapeless, violently angry beast exploding through your every sinew.

It really hurts, basically. Also, you're only three years old.

So you scream and scream for at least an hour; the closest your voice can possibly come to expressing the sheer terror of your situation. But the only people who can help you don't seem to understand. They're concerned that you fell over; keen for you to feel better. But they clearly don't fully appreciate your plight: they eat their dinner before taking action. So do you, to be fair.

Your Mummy and Nana eventually take you to the hospital, by now convinced that this crisis is more extreme than usual. Your Daddy stays at home to look after your little sister, although it should be stressed that he is equally concerned for your welfare. (He's also rather handsome, but that's not strictly relevant either.) Their discussions about you prior to this excursion have become increasingly fraught and anxious, which is curiously reassuring and worrying at the same time. They speculatively mention something about sprained ankles. But their anxiety can't accelerate as fast as the howling agony in your leg.

Now imagine that you get to the hospital and see a doctor, whose concern is sufficient for him to insist on having you taken to an ominous room where a huge contraption is employed to aim a lens at you and capture your skeleton. What new agony is this? You do not enjoy being x-rayed. Nana, temporarily separated from you and Mummy, will later comment that she easily found you during this torture, simply by following your screams.

Ultimately, though, this ordeal serves its purpose: Mummy's horrified understanding of your suffering is at last complete when the doctor shows her the picture of what was once your shin bone; twisted, splintered, useless.

Broken.

* * *

Of all the people to whom I am grateful for their generous and sympathetic reactions to this incident, the one to whom I owe the most thanks is our other daughter. The one who remains bipedal. By the time my wife returned home with our poor little casualty in plaster from hip to tiny toes, our youngest was not quite asleep, but had mercifully consented to being bathed and becalmed, all without the usual input from Mummy. I'm certain that our second-born forgave her mother's absence on account of an understanding of the seriousness of the situation. Which is quite emotionally mature for a 21 month-old.

We pulled out the sofa bed in the living room that night; Mummy shared this with the patient while I shared a bed upstairs with our youngest. None of us slept much though. Harrowed, we were, and overcome with trepidation at what was to follow.

The next 24 hours actually went better than expected, if I'm honest. I was encouraged by some extremely understanding colleagues to abandon the day at work for which I dutifully arrived on Sunday morning. Our brave little soldier displayed more stoicism than we could have hoped for in the circumstances, aided by a steady flow of visits and sympathy from friends and family. But this could only last so long: have you ever tried keeping a three year-old still for more than a day? Or perhaps you've attempted to keep an inquisitive one year-old away from her three year-old sister for more than a day? It's a logistical nightmare which promises to go on for weeks. Having only recently mastered using the potty, our daughter is now tragically compelled by her plaster cast to hold her leg at such an angle that her wee trickles up it rather than into the potty. I'm open to solutions to this.

By Monday afternoon, frustration had set in. The well-documented under-plaster itch had already reared its ugly head, as had the inevitable tedium caused by nothing but sedentary activity. Today she got a paper cut from her umpteenth drawing of the day. This led to hugely disproportionate distress. I think what we were looking at here was a touch of emotional leakage: the upset thus far heroically contained by her stiff upper lip had found its escape through the paper cut. It was sad to see, but at least interesting from an amateur psychology point of view.

Shortly, we're off to the hospital to get the temporary plaster cast replaced by by a harder, longer term version. I think they're also going to x-ray it again. I am not looking forward to this (see above). We're selling it to our daughter as a chance to scratch the itch during the blissful window between casts. We've also promised to request a pink one this time. I really hope they do pink, which is not something I thought I'd ever say.

In case this story is yet to convince you of the perils of running in the hallway, consider the following: yesterday, during one of her understandably more self-pitying moments, my daughter looked at me and said: "I don't want to have a skeleton anymore, Daddy."