Dead Car Battery or Something Else

I'm kind of beating myself senseless for this stupidity but it wasn't entirely my fault. Yesterday morning my car wouldn't start, so after work my friend took me to go get new jumper cables, we ended up having to switch parking spots due to the local of our batteries on our cars. I was pushing and she was steering in my car, I put the cables on my battery and as I was about to pick up the other end of the jumper cable, my kid trips over them causing the ends to touch and spark for a 5 seconds. I decided to try to charge it to see if I could get anything and there was no current at all. Nothing, nada, my car is completely dead, nothing will turn on. What happened? I don't have a lot of money so I'm trying to fix everything myself. Please help! Oh by the way, it's a 1984 Mercury Grand Marquis.

First thing I would do is pull the battery, and take it to a garage , auto parts store or Walmart for a test. If it is still OK then get a car battery charger and charge it back up . Open the fuse box and check a few of the fuses to see if anything blew. If you find blown fuses you need to check fusible links as well. Then install the charged battery , clean and tighten cables and start checking lights, radio etc. Then turn everything off and start the car. Next time you might consider carrying a jump starter or battery booster instead of jumper cables. You won't need another car to jump start your dead battery and your kids won't trip over the cables hanging between the 2 batteries. Good luck with battery!