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He raised his arms up. “Free! Two! One! Ahhh!”
I shook my head in amusement as he jumped down to a pillow on the floor, hopping up and down in delight that he’d made it without falling in the lava. He waved to me, silently telling me he wanted me to get in on the fun, so I stood on the sofa. “Both of us this time. Where should we go to?”
When he pointed to the recliner, I joined him, shouting, “Three…two…one! The floor is lava!” We both took off, me stepping from one pillow to the next, taking the long way around the coffee table, so I wasn’t facing Finn to see what actually happened.
All I heard was a thud and a scream.
I fell to the floor. “Oh my god. Finn!”
His cries were earth-shattering, enough to raise the fine hairs all over my body, and I reached for him. “What happened? What hurts?”
His little face flushed bright red, his mouth open wide, as he continued to bawl and writhe around on the floor in pain. Though he did cover the side of his head with his palm, and that’s when I noticed.
The blood.
“Oh my god,” I breathed, feeling my own blood drain from my face even as it rushed in my ears. “Finn, I need…” I carefully slid my arm under his neck, half laying him in my lap. “Try to take a breath, Finn. I need you to try to take a big breath, okay?”
His eyes were still closed, tears overflowing from them in a constant and steady trek, but I breathed deeply, so he might hear it through his crying, feel it through his rocking. “Try to breathe, babes. Please, please, I need you to try to breathe.”
I cradled him close to me, wrapping my hand around his head, over his hand covering the injury, but I could already feel the oozing, see the red stains in his sandy brown hair, the same color as his father’s. A pool of blood soaked into the carpet at my feet, his ear and neck slick with it, and my eyes burned with pain and terror. I kissed his forehead, whispered nonsense to him, keeping him as close to me as I could, attempting to calm him. It took a few minutes, but he eventually stopped wailing, though he didn’t stop crying.
“Can I look?”
He hiccupped and offered me a barely perceptible nod, but when I tried to move his hand away, he flinched.
“I won’t touch it, I swear. I just want to look. I promise I won’t touch.”
He slowly turned to me, whimpering, and pulled his hand away from his head a few inches. I couldn’t see anything but hair matted with blood.
There was so much blood.
Bile rose in my throat, and I swallowed thickly, pushing it down. I couldn’t get sick. I couldn’t panic. But I had to do something.
Except I froze, my stomach in my throat and my heart on the floor.
I pressed my hand to my chest, my breaths coming too fast, my vision blurred with tears. I wasn’t sure if I felt like I was about to have a seizure or a panic attack.
Maybe both.
I shook my head, struggling to clear it of fog. The last time I’d seen so much blood in person was when I was fourteen and woke up on the kitchen floor, my arm sliced open from the glass I’d dropped when I fell because of my seizure.
I was bombarded with images, smells, emotion.
Terror. Pure terror.
But it wasn’t me this time. It was the little boy who had stolen my heart from the moment I’d met him. The little boy I’d do anything for. Give anything. Sacrifice anything.
“Babes,” I said, my voice breaking, “we have to get you up, okay?”
I blinked a few times and wiped my wrist over my eyes, before taking a few ragged breaths to get myself under control. I kept my arms around him as I pushed to my knees then up to standing, never letting go of Finn.
“We’re going to go to the kitchen and get a towel then put on our coats to go see the doctor.”
He didn’t like that idea and started sobbing again. He knew the doctor was where he got shots.
“I know, I know. But we have to. We have to help the boo-boo on your head.”
“Kiss it,” he said in a tiny, heartbreaking voice, and again, my eyes flooded with tears.
