Somewhere in the house, Danny screamed. His voice was still high and reedy, even though he was a freshman in high school. Carla set down her tea.
“What happened?” She preferred not to get up, but Danny was there now, in the room, clutching at his cast. His eyes were wild, his face was red.
“Bugs!” he shouted, smacking at the cast on his left arm, over and over. “Get it off!”
“Cast stays on for another two weeks,” said Carla, grabbing her son by the shoulders. “I’m sorry it itches, but you have to calm down or…”
“It burns!” howled Danny, grinding his cast against the kitchen table. “We need to get the bugs out!”
“It’s healing!” shouted Carla right back. She was frustrated. She was always frustrated. Why was Danny like this? So reactive. So anxious and unreasonable. “Leave it alone and you’ll be stuck with that even longer.”
“Moooom!” wailed Danny, a winding, piercing sound that ended in an echoing slap, as Carla brought her hand across the boy’s face, as hard as she’d ever done.
“No,” she whispered. “No more. You don’t get to do this to me. Not anymore.”
Danny opened his mouth. The mania was still in his eyes. Carla slapped him again, harder somehow.
“Your father left,” hissed Carla. “My friends all left. Because of you. Because of how you are. How much of me are you going to take?”
Danny whimpered, but kept his mouth closed. His right hand still hovered over his cast, flexing and twitching.
“It’s healing,” said Carla, more motherly this time. More understanding. “Just leave it.”
Danny nodded. His eyes were wet. With pain or fear or remorse, Carla didn’t know.
Two weeks later, at Dr. Klein’s office, they used a tiny saw, whirring and kicking off white dust as it tore a vertical line down the center of Danny’s forearm.
“Brave boy,” said Dr. Klein, not thinking what a condescending thing that must be to say to a boy Danny’s age. “How did it break again?”
“”He fell,” said Carla, only telling half the story. Another boy had dragged Danny off his bike. Then taken the bike. The sort of thing happened to boys like Danny, thought Carla.
“May be some atrophy,” said Dr. Klein. “Some discoloration. Some…” The severed cast fell off with a final puff of dust and human odor. Another thing fell. A curious splat.
Danny’s left hand lay amongst the plaster debris.
Carla nearly screamed, but didn’t. Dr. Klein’s assistant did, loudly, and seemingly forever.
Danny made no sounds at all, just reached out a finger to the whittled and exposed bone of his left forearm. He fingered the deep bite marks. Ran his nails across the fresh indents.
In the dusty remains of the cast, a pile of black bugs scattered, fleeing to the darkness in the corners of the office.
“He’s always so dramatic,” said Carla, on the brink of fainting. “You know how boys like that can be.”