Where I’m Writing From eli.cranor@gmail.com August 28, 2022 Eli Cranor is an Arkansas novelist whose debut novel, Don’t Know Tough, is available wherever books are sold. He can be reached using the “Contact” page at elicranor.com and found on Twitter @elicranor

I’m writing from the hospital. Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, to be exact.

My daughter broke her arm on the second day of kindergarten. A supracondylar fracture. The X-ray was take-your-breath-away bad, the bones splintered at the end like twisted green wood.

The red monkey bars at her elementary school were to blame. The night nurse, a wonderfully kind British woman named Jacqui, whispered, “monkey bars” like she’d heard that one before.

I’m sure she had.

I’d love to see the statistics on monkey bars. Red ones, especially. I’d like to know how many kids have broken a bone on the second day of kindergarten. I’d like to know how many broke their right arm yesterday.

I’m sure my daughter wasn’t the only one, but she’s all I’ve thought about for the last 24 hours, my whole life condensed down to the rise and fall of her tiny, almost translucent chest. Blue veins crisscross her sternum as the heart monitor beeps, an audible reminder of what’s most important now.

In the rush and churn of our day-to-day existences, it’s easy to forget how fragile life is. The hospital makes it harder. So many hidden things are brought to the surface here, oxygen levels and blood pressures flashing across darkened screens.

I wasn’t thinking of my daughter’s vital signs when my wife called the first time. I was meeting with my new English 12 class, trying to get their names right on the attendance chart. The chart disappeared when my wife called the second time.

I knew something was wrong — bad wrong — and I was right.

Fifteen minutes later, the sight of my daughter’s mangled arm dangling over the side of her car seat made my stomach lurch.

Nobody said a word on the drive to Little Rock. My daughter was asleep by the time we hit the interstate. The tablet in her lap kept going, though, relaying the sounds of The Sandlot, her latest favorite movie.

As I drive, I can’t help but wonder why she’s so enamored by a film that came out when I was her age and features a bunch of baseball-loving boys. My daughter likes art and dance. She tried playing soccer for one season and we literally couldn’t get her off the bench. But she likes The Sandlot. She loves Smalls, Benny, and the rest of the gang.

It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense.

Conway flies past in a blur, and then we’re pulling under the emergency room’s awning, our short window of shocked silence over. My daughter is awake now and needs to get out of her car seat. She does not want to get out of her car seat. The Sandlot is still going on her tablet. That scene where Smalls gets hit in the eye with a baseball.

My wife reaches for my daughter. My wife works in the medical field. She knows what she’s doing. I don’t have a clue. My hands hang limp and useless by my sides. My daughter’s screams overpower the screams coming out of her tablet, a child actor doing his best to portray real pain.

Then, out of nowhere, my daughter stops crying and stands. Holding her broken arm with her good hand, she shuffles sideways toward the door, each small step punctuated by the same, shattering refrain:

“I tough. I tough. I tough . . .”

I’m still crying when they take her back for surgery seven hours later. Seven hours spent propped up in a hospital bed without food or water.

I hold my wife on our way to the waiting room. We fear the worst. Hospitals are terrifying. Children’s hospitals even more so. All those rainbow patterns and balloons trying desperately to mask the truth.

The truth is there are kids with cancer on the second floor. Kids whose conditions make my daughter’s splintered arm seem like, well, child’s play.

The surgeon appears. Everything is fine. That’s how fast it happens. Then we’re waiting again.

Waiting on her to come out of anesthesia. Watching her gnash and howl. Waiting for the next round of pain medicine. Waiting for the night nurse to check her vitals. Waiting to sleep. Waking to find the same scene repeated, over and over again. Four more hours until we can take her home. Then, somehow, it’s five hours until departure. Time isn’t linear inside a hospital. The walls are closing in on us, all three of us, after only one day of what some families endure for months. Years.

My daughter is asleep when the doctor finally comes and says we can go.

I stare down at the copy paper in my lap, still unsure about all that’s happened, how to make sense of such trauma, so big and yet so small upon comparison. I don’t feel great about what I’ve written. There’s no real message. No “take home point” at the end.

My daughter whispers, “Daddy,” and wiggles her cast, giving it a test run. My heart mends, then breaks all over again. I shove the papers into my overnight bag and start toward my baby girl, hoping I’ve saved the best words for her.