Chapter 9
JoAnne decided to stay at the school and volunteer to make sure Jenny was settled into her class and daily routine and Roy was actually grateful that she had earned the respect of the teachers and was allowed to do so.
Roy opted to leave her the car and walked home. He was picked up after a block and a half by Dr. Brackett.
"Thanks for the ride," Roy responded when he got in the car, "I really want to thank you for everything you've done through out all of this. I really had no idea what was bothering her but Cap and I guessed from the questions she asked him that it was possibly a child abuse case."
"I'm sorry about thinking that you and your wife already knew about what was going on. I should have known you would believe just about anything she said, at least enough to investigate." Dr. Brackett gave his apology; of course Roy understood that he had a lot of demands on him while he was on the job.
"I talked with Miss Marlow after the meeting; she's been at the school all morning going over records on this and another suspicious case. She said that they have records of Jenny bringing him into the school nurse several times and even move times when Jenny reported that he was hurt. The incident with the broken wrist is reported along with documentation that the nurse went to the class room to check on the boy and the teacher wouldn't let her enter saying he had checked it out and it wasn't even a sprain. She's also been able to find out that the boy's mother was in a hit and run accident in a cross walk that day and had to ask an emergency child drop off center to look after the kids while she stayed in some king of a free clinic observation center." Kell pulled over in front of Roy's home and turned to face him. "Unfortunately, although things look suspicious there isn't enough evidence to file a complaint on the teacher but there is solid evidence that who ever is hurting those kids it is not their mother."
"So what you're saying is that right now it's Jenny's word against the teacher and in front of a judge Jenny doesn't stand a chance of being believed because she's just a kid." Roy responded in anger.
"The way it sits now even if Jenny were an adult there wouldn't be much of a chance of even making it to a court of law." Dr. Brackett corrected and he was just as upset about it as Roy was.
"Miss Marlow is hoping to get more information to back things up but right now she doesn't have enough to take to the district attorney."
"So what happens now?" Roy asked worried about his children as much as the Baldwin children.
"Allen and Tracy are going to be placed in a center for abused children; they will be kept up to date on their schooling and get regular visits with their mother for as long as she's in the hospital and then when she's well enough to go home they'll come up with another plan." "As far as with your daughter in that meeting today we made it so that he had no responsibility over her, so make sure she understands that if he comes after her in any way she should go to the people that we agreed upon in the meeting and report it. I think she should be alright as long as she does what we agreed on today."
"I'll be sure to talk with her once she get's home, thanks for the ride Doc," Roy got out of the car and shut the door behind him.
Walking toward the house he was still filled with anger there was only one thing to do, beat up on some clay and work on the pottery wheel.
Roy had made several attempts to make a stemmed goblet and again failed when he noticed a shadow from the open garage door. Looking up he found Miss Marlow standing in the open garage.
"No one answered at the door but I thought I heard someone in the garage so I checked, I hope that's okay." Miss Marlow spoke as Roy turned off his potter's wheel and stood up to greet his guest.
"I'd offer to shake hands but mine are a bit muddy right now." Roy explained feeling a little intimidated in the woman's presence, her's was a profession that took children from their parents and even though he felt he hadn't done anything to warrant such action he had to admit he wasn't the perfect parent.
"Looks like you were having trouble there," Miss Marlow commented as she looked around Roy to try and see what he was doing. "What are you making?"
"I'm trying to make a stemmed Goblet, Jenny and I are working together to make a set of dishes for her hope chest." Roy explained finding a work bench and leaning against it as he wiped his hands with a rag. "Before I can teach her how I have to learn myself."
"Does Jenny enjoy working with the potter's wheel?"
"I think it's more the one on one time with Daddy," Roy ventured, "I like to work with the clay when I've had a hard shift at work. It's a good way to let out frustration Jenny seems to like to work with me so we decided to make her a special set of dishes to use when she get's married."
"Married hu, so you're planning it to be a long term project?" Miss Marlow offered a friendly smile in an attempt to put Roy at ease.
"A very long term project, I've told her she can't get married till she's 21." Roy offered a nervous snicker as he spoke.
"So you do try to teach your daughter something other than first aid?"
"Absolutely," Roy responded, "I didn't really teach her in the beginning, she watched me teach her brother and some of the other kids in Scouts. Because of all the time I was spending with them she got it in her head that I loved her brother more than her and she felt like she had to learn to earn my love."
"How did you come by that realization?" Miss Marlow questioned more in interest than a sense of injustice that needed to be righted.
"We were looking through her baby book one afternoon before her brother came home from school. She was comparing everything to the baby she ended up delivering just down the street, and then out of the blue she asked me if I'd ever love her as much as her brother. I didn't know how to respond at first I was kind of in shock and she took the silence to support her thoughts. She started listing off all the things she was trying to do to earn my love and that's when I knew I needed to find a way to show her how much she was loved."
"Is that when you started teaching her how to use the potter's wheel?"
"It was just a few days after that that we started working on it. She was watching me and I offered to let her help me. She ran in the house to get on clothes it was alright to get dirty in so fast." Roy remembered with a warm smile at the memory. We were still working on what ever it was we were trying to build when Chris came home from school. He was upset that I was teaching Jenny how to use the wheel before him and when I said that I didn't know he wanted to learn how he told me he didn't he just figured I should teach him before you younger sister."
Miss Marlow smiled at what Roy was telling her, it wasn't often that she had the opportunity to talk with parents who cared for their children the way he and his wife did.
"It's amazing what kids will think of," she said and leaned against the back of Roy's truck. "I must admit thought that I find it hard to believe that Jenny has learned all the first aid that she knows just by watching you teach a bunch of boy scouts."
"Your right about that," Roy had to admit. "She wound up using what little she knew and only partially understood in life and death situations. Once a neighbor who was watching her while her mother was at the dentist with her brother. She chocked on a strawberry and the only ones around were Jenny and her own daughter just a year or so older. Jenny remembered a few things that she had watched me teach her brother and the other scouts and managed to push the woman out of the chair and do a prone version of the Heimlich maneuver. She saved the lady's life, a friend of mine who works at the hospital put her in for an award and it was told to her over and over again that she would have died if Jenny hadn't done what she did, I think that kind of put a lot of weight on Jenny's shoulders and made her feel like she had to make sure she did everything right. Every time she gets anywhere near anyone she knows has any kind of medical training she asks questions."
"Like she did about Malnutrition in Dr. Brackett's office last night?" Miss Marlow had a smile.
"Pretty much, to start out with though the questions were simpler like how to take a pulse, then how to take a pulse if the person had both arms in casts," Roy explained starting to feel more comfortable. "It was easy to give her and her brother a demonstration and teach them what they were asking to learn."
"I don't quite understand why you taught her how to take blood pressures?" Miss Marlow asked. "I mean isn't she a little young for that?"
"Yes she is, but she wanted to learn, I mean really wanted to learn." Roy paused and let out a deep breath. "You have to understand something; I was at work when the child molester tried to get a hold of my daughter. It was my son that went to the play ground duty to turn him in. Any way I'm sure you can understand that I was scared, and upset, I wished I hadn't taught any one under 21 any kind of first aid, the very next run I got was for a child in his early teens. He had cut the artery in his arm and his friends that were with him didn't know what to do. My partner and I did every thing in our power to pull him out of shock; we even took him to the hospital in the back of a police car because the ambulance couldn't get to us fast enough. That kid died shortly after we got him to the hospital and I knew, and then the Dr. told me again. If my kids had been there even though they were six years younger that kid would have lived.
That's when the department started the first responder program, Jenny and Chris managed to get in the news enough times with their first aid exploits so they were approached to help them promote the program. Since they were helping to sell the program they argued that they should take the class them selves."
From what I know of the program and what I've seen and heard of your daughter I suspect she taught the class." Miss Marlow smiled she had truly grown in awe of young Jenny. "I have to apologize to you Mr. DeSoto, when I notice your daughter on the news I pictured a girl that had been drilled in the pronunciation of medical terms that she didn't even begin to understand just so she'd sound good and smarter than she was. Now that I've spent some time with her and watched her in action, I find she doesn't use medical terms but seems to have an understanding far beyond her years. The terms she uses take a trained ear to understand but she does make a lot of sense if you listen to her. That was very clear when she talked of the CPR bone in the woman's chest." She had to share a chuckle with the girl's father. "What I was most impressed with is that she has clearly been taught to ask for help, that little card in her bag with all the phone numbers on it and dimes pressed into holes in the back. I was very impressed. She was very quick to ask me to read the names of medications off to the doctor. Very impressive."
"I'll admit I was concerned for the well being of that child before I really met her but not any more. You and your wife are very responsible parents. Both of your children are wonderful role models to their peers because of the way you've raised them."
"Thank you," Roy responded near to tears as his wife drove the station wagon into the drive way.
Quickly getting out of the car, JoAnne approached her husband with a questioning and frightened look on her face.
"I've been talking to your husband about your daughter and how she learned so much first aid." Miss Marlow tried to put JoAnne at ease. "I loved that oral report she gave in class this morning, she really makes first aid sound easy when she breaks it down in to the A,B,C,D, and E.
"Airway, bleeding, circulation, funny I'd think circulation would be first." Miss Marlow questioned.
"If there's no circulation there won't be breathing or bleeding so in effect it is first you just use the first two as part of you're search for it." Roy began to explain with a confidence he hadn't felt before in the women's presence. "You can start checking for the first two while you're approaching the patient but you have to touch the patient to be able to check for circulation."
"I've never thought of it that way before but you're right," Miss Marlow showed he had just had an enlightening moment. "D stands for don't move them and E for emmobilize. What's going to happen when she learns that emmobilize really starts with an I?"
"She's already been told that but it simplifies things to think of it that way." Roy explained,
"Jenny came up with the last two letters herself," JoAnne spoke up as she reached for her husband. "The Fire Department choose to include them in their first responder training program."
"Well it is a good mantra to help a person remain calm and work one step at a time in the heat of a crisis." Miss Marlow showed honest praise in her facial features.
"The reason I came here was to ask you if it would be possible to arrange a few play dates between your children and the Baldwin Children, We believe it would be in their best interest if they were to keep in touch with friends."
"Of course, we would love to help those children any way we can. Have you determined for sure that their mother isn't hurting them?"
"Yes we have," Miss Marlow responded, "I can't divulge what information we have but we have ruled out any involvement of Mrs. Baldwin."
"Is there anything we can do to help her?" JoAnne asked.
"I'm sure there will be several things that you can do to help once she's out of the hospital but she will be there for at least a week according to the Doctor's." Miss Marlow gave a smile and then she and JoAnne exchanged phone numbers and phone numbers for the care center where the children were currently being cared for.
Roy still worried for his children but was grateful for the opportunity to help two children he knew were being abused. He hoped he could make a difference.
Roy had just finished cleaning up his muddy hands and clothes still not mastering the stemmed goblet. He was checking his watch to see that he children would be getting out of school in about half an hour.
When the phone rang Roy was sure it was a friend of Jo's wanting to talk about some recipe for dinner or something similar so he let her answer it as he thought more on how to talk with his children when they got home about all that was going on.
"We'll be right there," Jo was heard to say over the phone before she hung it up. JoAnne hurried to the living room and grabbed her purse and searched for the keys in the bottom of it. "That was the school, Chris is in the nurses office. He was in a fight with four other boys and got hurt."