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Another one asked, “Is he dead?”
“The paramedics were eating in the park,” someone else answered.
“Did anyone else think to check on the driver?” Another question was uttered.
I was actively bawling now, standing beside a man who was working on my son.
“Move, ma’am.”
I did, stepping back fast and falling on my ass into the water.
I stood back up, and then tripped again.
I looked down to see what I’d tripped on, and a keen left my throat when I saw my son’s shoe, shoelaces tangled on a stick, at my feet.
I picked it up and clutched it to my chest.
Fear was clogging my throat, and causing me to forget how to breathe.
“Is he…is he going to be okay?” I asked through a choked sob.
“Ma’am?”
I looked up to find a woman holding her hand out to me.
“Yes?” I asked, confused.
“Come here. Step out of the water. Give them room to work,” she whispered.
I took a step up the embankment of the ditch and headed her way.
I had no idea why I was following her orders, but I was.
A little boy that looked a lot like her stood watching the paramedics work around my son, and I moaned.
The woman stayed clutching my hand as she pulled me toward where I now could see the ambulance was parked.
I couldn’t breathe. Could barely think. My feet were frozen to the ground, and the only thing holding me steady at this point was the woman’s arm that was practically holding me up.
“Wh-what’s your n-name?” I licked my lips.
“Greta,” the woman whispered.
“And your son’s?” My voice broke on the word ‘son.’
“That’s not my son,” she murmured. “That’s my best friend Tomi’s son. His name is Cailean.”
“He likes Transformers?” I murmured.
I was trying to keep myself distracted, but it wasn’t working too well.
I wanted to run over there and drop down beside my baby. I wanted to pick him up in my arms and tell him that everything would be okay. I wanted him to throw his arms around my neck and laugh off the fall like he usually did.
Except, he wasn’t going to do it.
He wasn’t going to be getting up.
He was hurt.
Badly.
Oh, God. George.
“I have to call my husband,” I whispered.
My heart hurt so bad.
Everything inside of me was frozen in fear.
And the one person that I needed most wasn’t there.
I hated that I had to make that call.
Hated it.
Hated it so much that I wasn’t sure that I could make it through the call before I broke down.
But I couldn’t do it.
George had to know.
There was no way I couldn’t make the phone call.
Otherwise, he’d hear on the news.
And I had to make the phone call quickly, or he would be.
“Ma’am,” the medic who wasn’t working on my son said. “You can come with us, but you have to sit up front. You cannot, under any circumstances, do anything that could possibly stop us from rendering aid to your son. That means no freak-outs. No screaming. Nothing. No matter what you hear. See. Or feel. Do you understand?”
I nodded mutely. “Yes.”
“All right, climb in the front seat.”
I nodded and did as I was told.
I also didn’t look back even though everything inside of me was telling me to turn around and watch the paramedic work on my son.
Instead, I dialed George’s number from memory, then placed it against my ear.
In the end, they drove him to the local high school and then air-lifted him to the hospital.
I was able to ride with them, even though it went against company policy to do so, according to the nurse that was arguing with the pilot.
The pilot, Cleo, had looked at me, seen my terrified, pleading eyes, and had allowed me to come.
I’d sat in a sliver of space normally reserved for a bag and hadn’t said a word as they’d worked to stabilize my baby.
The flight lasted thirty-one minutes.
We landed on the roof of Dallas Children’s Hospital and they took my son away.
They hadn’t waited.
And I didn’t want them to.
I stared at the door of the hospital, wondering what the hell to do next.
“I’ll take her,” Cleo, the pilot, said to the flight nurse.
I looked up then and saw the two men standing side by side.
They looked eerily similar, and if this situation had been different, I would’ve asked if they were brothers.
I just couldn’t find it in me to care, though.
I didn’t want to know if they were brothers.
I didn’t want to know because there was only one single thing on this planet that I cared about at that moment in time. My son.
Cleo put his hand on my shoulder and guided me to the gray metal door.
“They’re going to take him down to the ER first. That’s on level G,” he told me like I was a child.
I nodded, going where he guided me.
“I’ll go with you, though. Take you to a nurse that can tell you where you need to go,” Cleo continued.
