My son and his wife asked me to watch their two-month-old baby while they went shopping. – tamy

I stared at the ultrasound picture.

At first I didn’t understand.

Then I saw it.

Several faint oval marks around the bruise.

Not just one handprint.

Multiple.

My hands began to shake again.

“Those look like…” I whispered.

“Finger pressure points,” Dr. Patel confirmed.

“But they’re too small to belong to an adult.”

The words didn’t make sense.

“What do you mean?”

He pointed again.

“These marks are from smaller hands.”

My mind struggled to process it.

“Smaller… like a child?”

Dr. Patel nodded slowly.

“Yes.”

My stomach dropped.

“A child did this?”

“That’s what it appears.”

When Daniel and Megan arrived at the hospital thirty minutes later, both looked terrified.

Megan rushed straight to the neonatal room window.

“Oh my God… Noah…”

Daniel turned to me.

“Mom, what happened?”

I showed them the scan.

Daniel frowned.

“That doesn’t make sense,” he said.

“The nanny was alone with him.”

“Are you sure she was alone?” I asked.

Megan hesitated.

Then she said quietly:

“…she brought her daughter once.”

My heart skipped.

“Her daughter?”

“Yes,” Megan said. “A little girl. Maybe four or five years old. She came with her one afternoon because she couldn’t find a babysitter.”

I felt the pieces begin to shift together in my mind.

“Was the girl around Noah?”

Megan nodded slowly.

“She loved babies. She kept asking to hold him.”

“Did she ever hold him?”

Megan shook her head.

“No. We always said no.”

A terrible thought formed in my head.

“Except maybe… when no one was watching.”

Daniel looked at me.

“You think a five-year-old hurt him?”

Dr. Patel spoke gently.

“It’s possible. Young children don’t understand how fragile infants are.”

Daniel ran a hand through his hair.

“But how would she get close enough?”