As a mother, I feel it is my duty to protect my children from harm. I will never forget the feeling of helplessness the first time my child was seriously injured.
A few days earlier, I found out that I was unexpectedly pregnant with my daughter and that made things difficult between my boyfriend and me. At that time, he did not want to have another child and felt I had allowed myself to get pregnant on purpose. He decided to take a few days of vacation and left town to deal with the news. The first night he was gone turned out to be one of the worst nights of my life. Here I was with a two and a half yor old son, Travis, and another one on the way with no one to be there with me to help raise them.
I didn't know it at the time, but my son had gone to the kitchen to get himself a snack. He opened the refrigerator door and took out a jar of pickles. As I looked to see what he was doing, I turned around just in time to see the jar fall from his hands and watched as he fell to the floor almost in slow motion. I jumped to my feet and scooped him off the floor when I noticed there was blood streaming from his wrist area down his arm. My heart sank as I searched for the open wound. My first thought was that he cut a vein in his wrist and panic raced through my body with the fear that he would bleed to death before I could get him to the hospital. As quickly as I could, I grabbed him from the floor and ran to the bathroom to get a towel and wrapped it around his wrist. I flew out the door and down the street to a neighbor, bare feet and all. I pounded on the door like a maniac and screamed "help, my son is bleeding to death." She let me in and took Travis from me. Her boyfriend, Bill, who happened to be friends with my boyfriend, was at ther house. She handed Travis to Bill so she could calm me down. I was shaking like one single leaf left on a tree in the middle of fall. My legs trembled uncontrollably. I watched as they removed the blood soaked towel from Travis' wrist. They informed me that it was not his wrist, but it was the lower portion of his hand and it would need stitches. I cried and pleaded with Bill to contact my boyfriend, Tony, to let him know that his son was hurt and needed to go to the hospital. I did not need him physically, but emotionally. I wanted him to feel guilty for leaving us. I calmed down enough to call my mom, but she could still hear the fear in my voice when I asked her to carry us to the hospital. When she arrived, I placed Travis in the front seat of the car and I took my position behind him to hold his ...