I burned my fingers on a hot screw today and it made me cry. Not because it hurt particularly badly, but because Roby burned herself last week on some baking sheets in the warming drawer of the oven. The sound she made was utterly hideous, it was awful. I was nearby, and Abby was in the other room. The baking sheets had no business being as hot as they were that quickly, but the oven was unfamiliar. 

She cried and screamed, then she’d calm and she’d scream again. We got her some kid medicine and some honey patches and some bandaids and some balm and every other thing we could possible think of and in the end ice in a bag seemed to do the most and the best.
Eventually she got to sleep and she had blisters the size of peas on three of her fingers. It didn’t seem to btoher her all that much, though. 

My burns aren’t near as bad, but they were sharp and bitter and they stuck around for a while. Still I have dark marks on my fingers where I grabbed them and it’s tender. 

To lack words, to be unable to articulate what was going on or udnerstand what had happened or to be able to beg aid and all of that with no real experience of what pain even is, not at that level, is horrible. On top of that she’s my responsbility and my love to protect. 

That made the pain considerably more severe. A psychic pain, really. 

She’ll burn herself again and she’ll endure a great many other things that I can only begin to speculate after, and I’ll be powerless to stop the overwhelming majority of it. That’ll be hard.