Chapter 2 - The Drive Through Red Lights
I pushed through the conference room door so quickly that it struck the stopper behind it. Every face turned toward me as I grabbed my purse and laptop bag with hands that no longer felt connected to the rest of my body. I managed to tell my manager there had been an emergency involving my daughter, though I do not remember hearing my own voice. Someone moved my chair out of the way, and another coworker asked whether I needed a ride.
I shook my head because driving was the only action my mind could still organize.
The trip to the hospital became a series of red lights, clenched fingers, and unanswered questions. I called Rachel twice from the car, but both calls went straight to voicemail. I called my mother, then my father, and received no answer from either of them.
At every stoplight, I looked at Ellie’s empty booster seat in the back and saw the faint crumbs from the granola bar she had eaten the day before. Her pink hair tie was still looped around one cup holder. The ordinary details made everything worse because they belonged to a morning when I had believed she was safe.
By the time I reached the emergency entrance, my hands were shaking so badly that I dropped my driver’s license at the registration desk. The woman behind the counter picked it up, asked me to confirm Ellie’s date of birth, and placed a clipboard in front of me. I could barely make the pen move across the signature line.
A nurse came through the secured doors before I had finished the last form. She led me down a bright hallway where rubber soles squeaked against the floor and voices stayed deliberately low behind pale curtains. When she pulled one curtain aside, I saw Ellie beneath a thin hospital blanket.
She had a paper wristband around her small wrist, and a monitor beside the bed displayed numbers I did not understand but could not stop watching. Her cheeks were flushed much darker than usual. Damp strands of hair clung to her forehead, and her lips looked dry even though the nurse had been caring for her. She seemed smaller than she had that morning, as if the heat had taken something from her that I could not put back with water, medicine, or a kiss.
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I sat beside the bed and touched two fingers to the back of her hand. Her skin was warm. The nurse told me Ellie was being treated and watched closely, and she repeated that Ellie was stable. I nodded because I knew the nurse was trying to help, but my mind kept circling the same question.
How had my daughter ended up alone inside my locked SUV while three adults who claimed to love her were supposed to be watching her?
