I’m writing from Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

My daughter broke her arm. Her other arm. The humerus bone in her left elbow. It wasn’t funny. No one laughed when I cracked that dad joke in the emergency room.

It really wasn’t funny; it was weird. Wickedly ironic. What kid breaks the same bone in both arms three years apart?

The first time, monkey bars were to blame. This time it was a “Bump 'n' Jump.” That’s what I told the triage nurse. I said, “She fell off the Bump 'n' Jump,” and the young redheaded woman with big glasses and tattoos on her fingers just stared at me.

“You know,” I tried, “like a bounce house?”

The X-ray tech had never heard the term “Bump 'n' Jump” either. He lives in Dover. I said, “Go Pirates,” as he wheeled my daughter away.

A few hours before, she was sitting in the Ron Robinson Theater, attending my Six Bridges panel. As soon as the event was over, we hightailed it out of there. We made it to Russ-Vegas a half hour before the start of the Arkansas Tech Wonder Boys football game. Just enough time for her to join her brother in the Bump 'n' Jump, the bounce house, whatever you call those huge inflatable deathtraps with the ten-foot-tall slides.

While she’s back in the X-ray room, I keep running over different scenarios, ways I could’ve shielded her from all this pain. If we’d just arrived at the game a few minutes later, none of it would’ve happened.

But it did, and now we’re here, headed to what feels like the same exam room as last time. There’s no way to know for sure. They all look alike. I mentioned it to my wife. She tells me to go get some air.

I leave. I walk a lap around the parking lot and have to call her to find the right room. When I open the door, my daughter smiles. She tells me to sit down.

I sit down beside her bed and try not to think about how I’ll write about what’s happening, what’s happened already. I have to force myself to refrain from mentally drafting this column.

It’s a blessing and a curse, a hatch creatives often employ to escape reality. Tragedy is story fuel. But what about my baby girl? What about the hand that’s reaching out for me from the hospital bed, the five fingers that are bigger now than they were three years ago but still small enough to fit inside my palm.

When I take her hand, my mind clears. There’s no more story, no more thoughts. It’s just us, for a little while longer.