He burst into my emergency room and hurried toward me: a tall, square-shouldered man with his young son squeezed tightly to his chest. “This way,” I said. “You’re OK, pal; you’re OK.” The child looked about 6 and appeared unhurt.
“We don’t know what happened,” the father began as he eased his boy onto a stretcher. “He and his friends were playing on the sidewalk. It was getting dark. They said he fell through a metal basement-delivery door in front of a store.”
“Did he hit his head?” I asked. “Any loss of consciousness?”
The father seemed unsure, so I turned to the boy. “Did you slip, buddy? Do you remember what happened?”
“I fell,” he whispered.
