Where You Lead

Part 7

I was sitting in the kitchen, watching my mom draw flowers on Sophie's cast with paint markers.

"Can you turn your arm a little, honey?" Mom asked.

"No" Sophie said. Her arm was pretty sore both from the injury itself and from the surgery so I think she was scared to move it around.

"Alright, I'll move to the other side then" she said. "Hey, does she need to go to sleep"

"We only woke up like an hour before we left to pick you up, I doubt she's sleeping any time soon" I said.

"Because the doctor cut my arm" Sophie said.

I couldn't help but laugh. "No, babe, he fixed your arm"

The next morning my mom and I were sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee.

"So what's the story with the arm?" She asked. "And not the version you tell me when she's around"

"She broke her arm and dislocated her wrist, and at the same time tore a tendon. So the little surgery was to fix that and also set the bones" I told her. "In a week they'll take the cast off to remove the stitches from the surgery and put the cast back for another 5 weeks. Then they're gonna take it off so they can get new X-rays. It'll probably be a new cast that doesn't go over her elbow for another 2 or 3 weeks. Then a brace and physical therapy"

"All that from a bike crash?"

I nodded.

"Are you sending her to school today" she asked. I looked at the clock, it was already 9 and Sophie was still asleep. "When she wakes up"

"I think I'm gonna let her rest for today and she'll go back on Monday" I said. "I mean, the poor girl just had surgery"

"What about her friend?"

"He banged his knee up pretty good, got some stitches" I told her. "He's ok, though"

"Good"

My mom stayed for a few days before going home and the next weekend, Sophie and I flew out to Connecticut.

The first night we were there, I took Sophie to Friday night dinner at my grandparents house.

"Where are we going?" Sophie asked as my mom drove to Hartford.

"I told you were going to grandma and grandpa's house" I said. "My grandma and grandpa"

"Did you tell them about her arm?" Mom asked quietly.

"I did not" I said and looked back at Sophie who'd gone back to watching a movie on my phone. "I didn't feel the need to worry them"

"That'll go over well when we get there and they see her"

"Don't be sarcastic"

"Oh, because you're never sarcastic?"

"Not in front of my kid"

"She's not even listening, she's watching her movie"

"I hate when she watches tv on my phone" I sighed.

"You know that you don't have to let her, right?"

"Well, she didn't watch on the plane, she read, and she colored, and she did some homework" I told her. Usually I would let Sophie pick one movie to watch during the flight but our screens weren't working this time. "I'll let it go for the 25 minute drive, it's fine"

"You don't care when she watches tv at home though so what's the difference?"

"I don't want her to think that she can watch tv wherever and whenever she wants. She knows that when we watch TV it's in the living room. Or if we have a movie night then it's in my room. The same way she knows that we don't watch tv before school or all day on weekends. I don't want her to be addicted to it. There's a time and a place"