As Natalie knelt beside her she sat up, tears streaming down her face and sobs escaping from her lips.
Seeing her moving had Matthew wanting to sob, too.
He should go to her. It was what a parent would do. He should take her in his arms and comfort her.
It was what Natalie was doing.
“What hurts, sweetie?” she asked quickly, her gaze raking over Carrie, searching for injury, connecting with how Carrie held her left arm at an awkward angle.
Eyes wide, she gasped between tears, “My arm.”
Carrie was hurt and he was frozen in place like a blazing idiot.
“Try to hold still, sweetie,” Natalie encouraged. “I’m going to check you over.”
But Carrie was panicking, guarding against Natalie’s attempts to do so. Other than scraped knees Matthew didn’t recall any injury in the child’s short four years with her parents, so the fall had to have her frightened.
Why wasn’t he moving toward her? Why wasn’t he checking her? What was wrong with him? He should be the one checking Carrie. She was his responsibility.
“Am I going to die like Daddy and Momma?” she sobbed, her big brown eyes glassy from her tears.
Failure sucker-punched Matthew in the gut. He hadn’t even considered that she might associate her pain to her parents’ death.
Natalie kissed Carrie’s forehead. “No, sweetie, of course not. But you are hurt and I need to check you.”
She gently examined Carrie’s arm. It didn’t take a degree to see the odd angle of her forearm. Matthew’s stomach threatened to spill the birthday cake he’d eaten earlier. How could he have let this happen?
“Is Carrie okay, Uncle Matthew?” Liz asked, tugging on his shirt and drawing Natalie’s gaze to him momentarily.
Her expression was one of confusion—as in, why wasn’t he by her side helping check Carrie, helping reassure her that she was going to be okay?
Good question, with the only answer being that he was a total failure of a parent.
His other niece squatted down next to Carrie. Mandy patted her right shoulder, telling her it was going to be okay.
“She’s hurt, Uncle Matthew,” Liz said, sounding a little panicked. “Carrie is hurt.”
He glanced down at the little girl staring up at him with big eyes that begged him to do something.
Do something, he ordered himself. He was a renowned heart surgeon, had never frozen like this no matter what the circumstances. What was wrong with him?
“Matthew?” Natalie’s voice broke into his self-recriminations.
Snapping out of his frozen state, he scooped Liz into his arms and moved toward what was difficult for him to look at because Carrie’s broken limb was the culmination of all he was lacking as a parent.
“She will be okay.” He wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself or to his niece. “But we’re going to have to get her to the emergency room to get a special picture taken of her arm.”
He looked directly at Carrie, hating that the child was having to deal with anything negative so soon on the heels of losing her parents.
“You’ve broken your arm,” Natalie told her in a calm voice. Much calmer than Matthew felt. “You’re going to need the bone reset, okay? We’re going to have to take you to the hospital,” she continued.
Hopefully, that was all Carrie would need done. She looked so tiny, so helpless sitting there crying, tears staining her shirt, so much of his two best friends blended in her features.
How could he have allowed anything to happen to her?
“I don’t want to go to the hospital,” Carrie cried, looking at Matthew as if he were responsible and clinging to Natalie as if she was a lifeline.
He didn’t blame her. If he’d known what he was doing, he wouldn’t have allowed this to happen.