“I’m very sorry, sir. We tried everything—”
“Try again!” Neil shouted. “There has to be something.”
My stomach dropped. He would have to realize, and soon, that there was no bargaining. There was nothing he could control that would undo this. We couldn’t buy Emma back. We couldn’t undo her death. This was final.
“I wish there was something, but there just is not,” the doctor said, patient and sympathetic in the face of a shouting family member who didn’t know they were grieving, yet. “I’ll have a nurse notify you when you can see her.”
I turned to Neil. Why wasn’t he wailing, like Valerie? She clung to Laurence, the pain pouring from her with every anguished sob. But Neil just stood there, blank. As blank as I felt.
It wasn’t real, yet.
I saw it in him, the moment all the doctor’s words sank in, really sank in. A light went off in his eyes, as though he’d died, too. He staggered backwards. He looked to the clock, the door, the coffee machine. Anywhere but at the people in the room who shared this hellish new reality. Tears welled up; when they fell, his face crumpled, and he went down hard, first on one knee. He slumped sideways, leaning against the row of chairs we’d just been sitting in. I dropped to his side and pulled him into my arms. He held me, his fingers digging into my back. His head rested against my chest, and he sobbed. He’d cried when his mother had died; this was a thousand times worse. The sounds he made were pure, desperate pain, and they only grew louder and longer the more he cried.
I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t shush him. I couldn’t tell him everything would be all right. Because it wasn’t. It never would be again.
Emma was dead. Our Emma. Who’d been so wonderfully bitchy when we’d first met. Who’d trusted me enough to become my friend while her father had struggled with his cancer. Who’d wanted a baby more than anything, a baby who now slumbered at home, waiting for her mother and father to return.
“I can’t breathe,” Neil gasped against my chest. “My god, Sophie, I feel like I’m going to die.”
At any other time, I would be alarmed. But not now. Now, it seemed like a natural way for him to feel. “I know, baby. I know.”
I didn’t know. I had no clue how he must have been feeling.
“Look at me. Look at me,” I ordered him gently. Before you drop dead of shock, look at me. When he did, I laid my palm on the side of his face. “I’ve got you. Okay? I’ve got you.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Elwood?” a female voice asked, and I looked up to see a nurse in pale lilac scrubs, her dark hair in a French braid, standing just inside the waiting room door.
“Mr. Elwood and Ms. Stern,” Laurence correctly her gently, nodding toward Valerie. I was glad he’d done it. She didn’t need that thrown in her face, even if she did have a new person in her life.
“I’m so sorry,” the nurse apologized. “If you’d like to see your daughter now, you can come with me.”
Neil got to his feet, and Laur
ence offered him a tissue. Neil wiped his streaming eyes and nose and seemed to pull himself together. It was an act; without it, he wouldn’t be able to stand upright.
I held his arm as we followed the nurse to a room down the hall, but when we reached the door, I let him go. “I don’t know if I should. She was so…private.”
“You were there when she was having Olivia,” Valerie said through her tears. “And Neil needs you.”
I didn’t want to see Emma, but Valerie was right. There was no way I could leave Neil to do this alone.
“I need to warn you that she does have some injuries from the accident,” the nurse said gently. “Her arms and face were bruised. She also has an incision on her chest. You won’t be able to see it, but you might see the bandage under her gown.”
“Was she…” Neil closed his eyes briefly, struggling through the question. “Was she in pain?”
“She was in very good hands with the EMTs,” the nurse said, but it wasn’t the answer any of us were looking for. I wanted to know if Emma ever woke up. If she knew Michael had died. If she’d worried what would happen to her daughter. I wanted to know that she hadn’t had time for fear.
Oh, god, what would happen to Olivia?
My stomach roiled as we entered the room, which felt strangely empty despite the knowledge that Emma lay inside. The only light came from a wall-mounted lamp behind the head of the bed; I saw it through the thin fabric curtain that blocked the view from the door. The bed was made, and at the end of it, I saw the slight tent created by Emma’s feet. Even though I knew she was dead, even though I braced myself, when we stepped past that curtain, I expected her to be sitting up, glaring at us and telling us how ridiculous we were all being.
But she wasn’t.
“Oh, no,” Valerie wailed beside us, and she lurched for the chair at the bedside.
They’d laid Emma out flat on her back and dressed her in a hospital gown like the one she’d refused to wear after Olivia’s birth. A blanket was folded across her chest, and her arms lay at her side. Bruises mottled her face and arms, and one of her wrists seemed bent at an odd angle.
Neil made a hopeless noise and went to her, tentatively placing one hand on her head and stroking her hair back as though he were soothing her through a nightmare. He leaned down and kissed her forehead, his gaze fixed on the cut at her hairline. Her bottom lip was split and swollen. All I could think was that someone should get her some ice.