The St. Jude’s Hospital waiting room was a sterile purgatory of humming fluorescent lights and the sharp, chemical smell of antiseptic. I paced the scuffed linoleum floor, my heavy boots leaving faint, muddy prints with every step. I hadn’t washed my hands in the restroom. I wanted to keep the dirt there. I needed the physical reminder of where I had found her.
Three agonizing hours later, the heavy double doors of the surgical wing pushed open. Dr. Mitchell emerged, still wearing his blue scrubs. He looked profoundly exhausted, aging ten years in a single night. He was a good man, a doctor I had known since Chloe was a teenager, and the devastating look in his eyes told me absolutely everything I didn’t want to know.
“Sarah,” he said softly, walking over to me.
“Tell me,” I said. My voice was entirely flat, completely devoid of the frantic panic from the roadside.
“She’s in a deep coma,” Dr. Mitchell said, gently guiding me to a vinyl chair. “The trauma to the skull is severe. There is significant, life-threatening swelling in the brain. We’ve had to drill a burr hole to relieve the intracranial pressure, but…” He hesitated, swallowing hard. “There’s severe internal bleeding. Her spleen ruptured. She has three fractured ribs.”
“And the baby?” I asked, the words feeling like sandpaper in my throat.
Dr. Mitchell looked down at the floor, then back into my eyes. “The placenta partially abrupted due to the physical trauma. We are monitoring the fetal heartbeat, but it is incredibly faint. Sarah, I need to be brutally honest with you. Chloe’s Glasgow Coma Scale score is currently a three. That is the lowest possible score a human can have. The brain damage… it’s catastrophic. Even if her body miraculously heals, the Chloe you knew…” He took a deep, shaky breath. “And the pregnancy… her body cannot sustain it in this state. You need to prepare yourself for the worst possible outcome. You should go in and say your goodbyes.”
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