"Mrs. Jennings, I'm calling from the hospital. Your son has had an accident."
"What kind of accident? Is he okay?"
"He's being tended to ma'am. It's urgent you come as quickly as possible."
The drive was blur set to 1980s top twenty music. The last song, one by Alphaville had been a favorite of hers when she was a teenager, when dying young seemed romantic and living forever a possibility.
It had played that night at the drive-in theater, when Todd's father had pulled her close, looked at her with those eyes and said, "What do you say we make this interesting?"
Her insides had romped like circus performers as he had pressed his lips to hers.
Tanya didn't realize she'd been crying until she opened the car door and the warm breeze caressed her face making the tear streaks feel like soft kisses.
She wiped away the tears with trembling hands. The blaring EMERGENCY sign reflected in the chrome of her Cadillac's bumper. As she hurried toward the entrance, the heels of her flats scuffed a rhythm on the blacktop.
"Your son has had an accident."
The sentence bounced in her head like a ball over the net in a tennis court.
"Your son has had an accident."
Todd, her son, her world, her best disaster, had deep brown eyes that spoke a language only the soul could understand.
At four years old, he had tugged at her sleeve and implored with those eyes—eyes just like his father's, "Mama, I don't want to go to school. It's boring. Why can't I go to my daddy's house like Tristan does?"
"I'm sorry baby," she'd answered, her heart cracking. "I don't know where your daddy is."
The glass doors of the hospital swooshed open.
Through the opening, the familiar antiseptic wafted. Rolling with it came the hushed whispers of the waiting. Her knees locked, and her feet stuck to the concrete. The ache of old memories lingered among the smells and sounds. She hated this place of death, disease, distance, hated the way it ate happiness and hated the woman who had made it such a big part of her past. How would she hold together if she was here to watch?
Tanya shook her head to break loose from the paralysis and stepped across the threshold. A shiver snaked from her toes to the top of her head. The information desk seemed to float nearer, as the surrounding space and its occupants faded into a haze. She glanced down. Her legs rose and fell, each step landing on quivering knees, but her feet were farther down than she could feel.
When she was toe up to the desk, she said, "My son's been in an accident."
The clerk's violet eyes stared up at her from a beautiful painted, stony face. Her manicured nails drummed against the keyboard. She was obviously waiting for something, but Tanya's thoughts struggled against quicksand.
"Ms. J!"
The shriek of a female voice from the waiting room yanked her out of the fog. She turned and became prisoner to a blonde in a red dress who seized her and sobbed into her shoulder. "It was horrible" and "we tried to stop him" were the only words Tanya could make out amongst sobs and blubbering.
Frank, Todd's best friend since kindergarten, shuffled toward them. How he could wear that letterman's jacket this time of year baffled her. His normal, always-guilty-of-mischief expression was missing. The sobbing blonde would be Kelly, Frank's vivacious girlfriend.
