It’s warm, unseasonably so, and I’m catching up with a friend. Ivy and Harvey are playing happily a stone’s throw away, climbing on the backyard playground and laughing together.

I’ll just stay five more minutes. 

The conversation continues. I’m mid-sentence when I hear the sickening crunch. It’s Harvey. He’s screaming, caught under the slide. I race around to pull him out and that’s when I see it. An ominous green mound – the size of an egg – already looming on his forehead. Time slows.

I need to call an ambulance. 

He’s writhing in pain – gutteral noises – laid out on the kitchen bench. I watch as the lump grows. Fingers shake as I stab at the buttons. It’s like a dream where I can’t press the right ones. Finally, I get through. Every second feels like wading through water. I’m incoherent, forgetting the suburb, tides of panic rising in my voice.

Ivy sits on the couch, abnormally quiet. The ambulance arrives, with it the calm presence of the paramedics. Harvey is still crying, making sounds instead of words. He screams if I’m not holding him. My mind is filled with tangents. How am I going to get my car? I should get the sandwiches that I packed for the way home. What if he never speaks again? Why didn’t I leave when I planned to?

My friend is a beacon of strength, pushing me out the door into the ambulance, stuffing cake into my handbag and reassuring me that Ivy will be fine with her. I’m apologising, scattered, rifling through the car trying to figure out what I should take.

We are on our way.

Harvey is fixated on the clock. He utters a few words. I exhale with hesitant relief. I confirm details, run my fingertips over his dimpled hands, recall the sensation of the last time I rode on that stretcher – another head injury – Hudson’s. The paramedics are kind, pointing out the flashing lights to distract Harvey, reassuring me of the good signs he is displaying.

When we get to the hospital Harvey falls asleep in my arms. I’m wedged on a chair, belongings scattered underneath my feet. I stare at his still face and wonder if he’ll be okay. The next three hours are a blur. Waiting, repeating, conversations with doctors. Blaring TVs and shuffling feet. Beeps and muffled announcements. I close my eyes and pray – for peace, for healing, for the hurting ones around me. When I open my eyes I feel different somehow, connected to a bigger story, a sense that everything is going to be okay.

Harvey wakes up groggily. I offer him food and he takes it. He keeps it down. Bit by bit he improves, taking shaky steps around the room. Pressing buttons on the vending machine. Asking questions about the show on the screen. Asking to watch Bluey.

Dave arrives with Ivy and Eli, taking the next three hour shift. I take them to pick up Hudson and then we head for the sanctuary of home. Everything hangs, suspended, a strange light of unreality pressing down. When the call comes and Harvey is discharged, we are reunited again. The day has been a whirlwind of conflicting emotions, fears and hopes.

That crunch still plays over and over in my mind. I stare at the darkening swell on his forehead and feel the weight of it. Life feels ever more precious and fragile, and the everyday rhythms and monotony so much sweeter.

Control is an illusion, but it’s hard not to tighten my fingers around it. What if I had just left when I said I would? Why wasn’t I watching them more closely? Why didn’t I realise that Ivy had placed Harvey on her lap to go down the slide? I should have been more, done more. 

But the self-judgement doesn’t help.

Today we are granted one more day and I’m choosing to cherish that. I’m breathing in that bit more deeply and marvelling at the questions and reactions of my precious youngest son.

My heart is filled to breaking.