But the accusation had gone at something almost as vital, his belief that the people who were supposed to love him saw him as good, and it was that wound, I think, that he was most desperate to have me tend, because it was the one he could not warm himself out of.

And so I made a decision, in that first hour, about what kind of care my son most needed from me, and it shaped everything that came after.

The medicine, the warming, the treatment of his body, all of that my excellent colleagues could handle, and did.

My job, the thing only his mother could do, was to tend the other wound, the one to his sense of himself, and I understood that it would take far longer than the physical healing and would require a different medicine entirely.

It would require being told, over and over, that he was believed.