“Mommy… it hurts when I go p.e.e.”
My six-year-old daughter was sitting in the bathtub when those words came out.
Emily had spent the afternoon like any ordinary Sunday: coloring at the kitchen table, eating only half her grilled cheese sandwich, and trying to convince me to let her watch cartoons for another ten minutes before bath time.
So when she began to cry, it took me a moment to understand that this wasn’t an ordinary tantrum.
“Don’t touch me there, Mommy. It hurts.”
The sponge fell from my fingers.
I quickly wrapped her in a towel.
“Did you fall at school?”
She shook her head.
“Did somebody hurt you?”
She threw her arms around my neck.
“I don’t know.”
Then, barely above a whisper, she said:
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
An unfamiliar coldness spread through my stomach.
I called my husband.
Jason didn’t pick up.
I tried four more times.
Still nothing.
After eleven years of marriage, I’d become used to his endless meetings, client dinners, and last-minute business trips. Three years earlier, I’d even left my office administration job after he received a promotion at a real estate development firm in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“I’ll handle the finances,” he’d said at the time. “You just focus on Emily.”
Back then, I’d thought he was taking care of our family.
That night, I began questioning everything.
I got Emily dressed and drove straight to the pediatric emergency department in Matthews.
As we waited, I kept telling myself the same thing:
An infection.
That had to be the explanation.
