To the Point of Shatter

11. Abby

        Just as I am about to doze off, my phone rings. I startle, look at the clock. It is after midnight. I expect it to be Aiden telling me he's on his way home but the number isn't familiar.

        I answer and this is how I learn what it feels like to find that something terrible has happened to someone I love. I think of all that Aiden endured each time my life was put in jeopardy and I don't know how he'd borne it. I hadn't given much thought to what it must have been like for him to hear me being attacked over the phone and know that he was too far away to stop it. I HAD considered endlessly what he has had to live with in the aftermath, but not what if felt like to be pacing in a hospital corridor unsure of my survival.

        It must have felt like this. As the nurse of our nearest trauma center, the exact same one I had been rushed to after my stabbing, explains that Aiden and Chloe have been in a rollover accident on I-95. My heart gallops in my chest and my surroundings gray. My focus is only her voice, the pinpoint of each word. And I desperately latch on to two of them:

        "They're alive."

        It takes virtually no time to hastily dress and haul Ava, grumpy from being woken, to my car. Once on the interstate I notice how badly I am shaking and concentrate on steering. My daughter is in the car and I must be so careful.

        I near flashing lights on the northbound side of the highway and I can't look away. A whimper escapes me. Chloe's car is on it's side, a twisted mess, shoved up against the far guardrail.

        In spite of myself, I press the accelerator. Hurry.

        Later, Ava has fallen asleep on a couch in the ER waiting room, covered in the blanket she dragged with her. I have filled out Aiden's paperwork but wasn't much help with Chloe's. I have no idea who her next of kin is now that her mother and brother are gone. I sit, wring my hands, watch the clock. Why is it taking so long for anyone to talk to me?

        My fear is a stark, black and white thing with bony fingers clamped around my throat.

        Nearly an hour passes before the doors open and a doctor appears. I leap to my feet when he calls my name.

        "They're alright," is what he begins with and tears of relief prick my lids. They had worn their seat belts. Chloe's car had dual air bags. They have cuts and bruises, she a minor concussion, he a dislocated shoulder that they have reduced. I am weak with gratitude and think again of how Aiden must have felt when he heard I had lived through the surgery following my assault.

        Leaving Ava under the watchful eye of the ER receptionist, I am led through a maze of curtained off exam areas. We reach Chloe first and I stop to tell her I am there, that she's going to be fine. But she's groggy from something they have given her for pain and merely nods, her lips a grim line.

        Aiden is alert, sitting against the raised head of the stretcher. He has a nasty bruise in a line starting from his shoulder and spreading across his chest from the seat belt. His right arm is in a sling. There's a small laceration above his right eyebrow that has been stitched, smaller cuts on his face from broken glass. I go to him, full of a deep solace at just seeing him. I embrace him carefully, kiss his lips.

        "You're okay," I say, convincing myself.

        "Yes. I'm okay," he allows. There is a strange look in his eyes, a studying of me. "They tell me Chloe is, too."

        "Yes, I just saw her. She's sleepy but you're both very lucky. I saw her car. What happened?"

        He hesitates. I notice the blood spattered on his dress shirt. I wonder if he doesn't remember the accident. He reaches out for my hand.