My son’s wife dropped off my grandson, her hands shaking as she said, “He’s just fussy.” But his screams weren’t normal. I lifted his onesie and saw his tiny back covered in black bruises. The ER doctor’s voice was cold, “This was not an accident. We found a healing rib fracture.” Then he told me the police had just found their abandoned car at the airport…

The wheels of the state began to churn with a sterile, mechanical inevitability the moment the head nurse looked at me. It wasn’t a look of sympathy; it was a look of professional appraisal, the kind reserved for witnesses of a crime that hadn’t yet been codified. I stood in the fluorescent glare of the Mercy General Pediatrics Ward, my arms aching from the weight of a bundle that felt far too light for a three-month-old. Liam was finally asleep, his breathing a ragged, hitching staccato that caught in his throat every few seconds—a subconscious echo of the screams that had brought us here.