Now, police are talking to a hospital worker about how those marks got there.
"He choked me first and then he put his hands around," said Nicholas, a 6-year-old patient.
It's been three days and the bruises on 6-year-old Nicholas's neck have only just started to fade.
After he says a grown man throttled him, with his bare hands.
A picture shows how the bruises looked on Saturday.
"I said a bad word and then he said it back. And then I got really mad and then I hit him," Nicholas said.
Nicholas suffers from hyperactivity and mood disorders, and was an inpatient on the pediatric psychiatry floor at Nassau University Medical Center.
On Friday night, he refused to go to bed.
But his mother Angela says that's when an orderly picked up the 6-year-old by the throat and forced him to lie down, leaving those marks on his neck.
"You put your child in a hospital to get the help he needs It's supposed to be a safe place and he winds up getting assaulted, by an employee," Angela said.
Nassau county police are investigating the incident, but say it is not cut and dry.
The orderly claims Nicholas was throwing a violent tantrum and needed to be restrained for his own safety.
Detectives are still interviewing eyewitnesses to get to the truth.
"Something like this should never have occurred," said Ken Mollins, the family's attorney.
But regardless of whether police file charges, family attorney Ken Mollins says he plans to file suit against NUMC.
He says there's simply no excuse for a child to enter the hospital and leave, looking like that picture.
"They're there to oversee the most vulnerable off people the sick the disabled and for them to allow something like this to happen has to be attended to," Mollins said.
"Holding anyone around the throat is not a way to restrain someone, let alone a 6-year-old child," Angela said.