Yours Truly ❁ n.k.h

• chapter nine •

"So on February 27th, you and your wife are driving with your..." Detective Haven paused to glance above her glasses. "daughter, in the back seat. Truck intercepts you, and a beam crashes through your rear window colliding with your daughter's skull."

I kept my gaze on the floor. "Yes."

"Who called the ambulance that night?"

"I did."

"And you all rode in the ambulance to Downstate, correct?"

"Yes."

She splayed the file out onto the steel table again.

"Tell me what happened after you all got to Downstate."

"We have a seven year old girl, vehicle collision, mother says she took a severe blow to the head from what looked like some sort of metal beam, BP's 70/54 and showing signs of clear distress."

The row of pediatric and trauma doctors surrounding Angel's gurney all fired what felt like a billion questions that flew over and under our heads. And despite it all, none of them were directed at us. It almost felt like we weren't even in the room.

"We're gonna have to get a CT scan to see just how bad the damage is. What side did the beam intercept?" A doctor asked, this time looking at me. I looked at Dinah whose eyes were moving all around the room in panic.

"The left. It was like this wide." She held her hands out to show an estimate. "Is she... is she gonna be okay?"

Her eyes were wide and traveling from her daughter to the doctors with both hands clasped on the gurney ready to take our daughter away from us. My wife's hair was disheveled from the commotion and her crying and pulling at it.

I felt like I wasn't even watching it all happen from inside my body.

It was all so fast and then not. I could hear every phone ring, every call bell, every voice, cry, scream. But then I'd look and the voices I heard wouldn't match up to all the multitudes of mouths that were moving.

I just stared.

What were we even arguing about? What could have possibly been so important that we missed this? That the chance of this happening heightened before our eyes?

I felt a hand latch onto my arm and squeeze. Dinah.

The hurt fell into every crevice on her face. Her brown eyes were looking to mine for any confirmation at all, like she wanted someone to pinch her to say this was real. There were really no words that could be said between the two of us.

In the middle of an emergency room, our silence spoke volumes.

"We sat there for hours while they ran test after test, uh, CT scans, MRIs, the uh... pressure thing? Finally they said she had a, um... brain bleed so she had to go into surgery which meant more waiting."

I grimaced at the memory of Dinah pacing through the waiting room, around our section and through rows of people. "By that point she called and told her mom and her sisters, and I think everyone collectively was on edge. I remember every minute just feeling like an hour. My wife was so hysterical, she started just pestering the receptionist. One of the security guards had to come and talk her down. We had gotten in around ten that night and I'm pretty sure it wasn't until about three that the doctors broke the news of just how much of a blow her head took. They wanted to keep her for a few days to assess any psychological damage. And to just, um, monitor her overall. By then Dinah called her mom back and they all agreed to meet us there in the morning when visiting hours began, so..."