The Perfect Child(64)

“I love you,” I whispered in her ear before leaving. “Try to be easy today.”

Shortly after my midmorning consultation, my phone vibrated with a text from Hannah: I’m downstairs.

What are you talking about? Did you send this to me by mistake?

No. I’m downstairs.

In the hospital?

Yes.

What are you doing here?

I’m in the ER.

Are the kids ok?

I texted as I sprinted down the hallway. I skipped the elevator and went straight to the stairs because they were quicker.

Kids are fine. I’m getting stitches.

WTF?

She didn’t respond. I tapped out a text to Dan, letting him know where I was in case he needed me. I found her in bed 7A. Bags of ice lay across her bare chest. I rushed over to her bedside. “What happened?” I asked.

“Janie bit me.”

Anxiety twisted my guts. “Janie bit you? Where? How?”

“How do you think?” she snapped. She shot me a murderous glare.

I threw my hands in the air. I still wasn’t getting it. It wasn’t registering.

“This morning before I nursed Cole, I asked if she still wanted to try it, and she said yes. She was so excited. I explained to her it was just like sucking on a bottle. I mean, what else was I supposed to say?” Her face was contorted in anger. I’d never seen her so mad. “At first, she latched on like it was nothing. It was pretty amazing. I got a letdown just like I get with Cole. I hadn’t expected that. She drank for a few minutes, but then you know what she did?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “She looked up at me. Right at me. And then she bit me. And not just a little nibble. She chomped down on it.” She pulled off the bag of ice on her left breast. “See what she did to me?”

Her entire breast was swollen, bruised all around the nipple. Stitches lined the underside.

She pointed. “Six stitches. It took six stitches. She almost ripped it off.”

“Oh my God.” I didn’t know what else to say. My head felt woozy. The room spun. “I have to sit down.”

I sank into the chair next to her bed. I put my head in my hands, trying to make sense of what she’d just told me, what I’d just seen. What was wrong with Janie? I’d read about kids with reactive attachment disorder. I hadn’t read anything like this. Nothing.

“Where are the kids?” I asked.

“Allison is at the house with them. I told her I was bleeding again and needed to go to the hospital.” She shook her finger at me. “Don’t you dare tell her what really happened.”

I cocked my head to the side, shocked. “What?”

“I mean it. I don’t want her to know she did this to me. I’d be mortified.”

She didn’t need to be embarrassed. She hadn’t done anything wrong. I wanted to tell her that, but she was easy to set off these days, and I wasn’t taking the chance of getting her more upset, since most of the time it was something I said or did. I couldn’t do anything right by her. Nobody had told me having a newborn would be like this.

My phone vibrated again. This time it was Dan. He needed me upstairs. “It’s Dan.”

She motioned toward the door. “You can go. I’m fine. There’s nothing else they can do. They already stitched me up. I’m just waiting on my discharge papers.”

“Are you sure? I feel bad leaving you here.”

“I’m sure. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get home, though. I don’t want to even see her face.” Anger radiated off her.

“I’ll talk to Janie when I get home.” I kissed the top of her head. “I’ll call Dr. Chandler on the way back upstairs.”

She turned away from me. “Go ahead. I don’t want to talk to either of them.”



My head spun as I drove home from the hospital. Hannah had texted me when she’d gotten home, but I hadn’t heard anything else from her the rest of the day. I’d become a surgeon because I liked to fix people and picked orthopedics because it was an easy fix. Bones were like pieces of glass. When they broke, you put them back together again. That was what I was good at—fixing things. But I didn’t know how to fix this. Things grew worse instead of better every day, and I’d never felt more powerless.

Janie bounced to the door and greeted me like she did whenever I got home—happy, smiling, full of energy and life. I just stared at her, wondering how someone who looked so sweet could do something so awful. It was one of the hallmarks of kids with reactive attachment disorder, but it didn’t make it any less creepy.

“Hi, Daddy. I missed you. Did you have a good day at the hospital?” she said like it was just another day.

“It’s been a hard day,” I said. I’d worry about her later. “Where’s your mom?”

She pointed to the family room. “She’s in there.”

I walked into the family room. Hannah sat in the recliner, holding Cole while he slept. Her face was contorted in pain.

“How are you feeling?” I asked out of habit.

“It’s pretty awful,” she said, fighting back tears. “I can only feed him out of one breast, and it feels like knives are coming out when I do.”

“I’m so sorry.” I wished I could do something to make her feel better. “Do you want anything? Can I—”