The floor seemed to tilt beneath me.
“That’s impossible,” I whispered, though something cold and certain was already forming in my gut. “He wouldn’t just leave her.”
Linda’s expression remained neutral, but her eyes told a different story.
“Dr. Patel is your daughter’s attending physician. He’ll be making rounds soon to discuss her condition. Would you like to see Olivia now?”
I nodded, suddenly terrified of what awaited me.
“I should prepare you,” Linda said gently as she led me down the corridor. “She has extensive injuries and is currently on ventilator support.”
Nothing, not her warning, not my decades of professional composure, not the countless crisis management situations I’d navigated in my career, could have prepared me for the sight that greeted me when we entered room 412.
My beautiful, vibrant Olivia lay suspended in a web of medical technology. Tubes snaked from her mouth, her arms disappearing beneath the thin hospital blanket. Her face—the face I’d memorized from her first newborn moments—was swollen beyond recognition, mottled with deep purple bruising. A surgical dressing covered the right side of her head where they’d clearly operated. Casts encased her left arm and right leg, elevated slightly on pillows. The steady beep of heart monitors and the rhythmic whoosh of the ventilator were the only sounds in the room.
“Olivia,” I choked out, carefully taking her unbandaged hand. Her skin felt cool beneath my fingers. Nothing like the warm, animated daughter who hugged me fiercely before my vacation.
“I’m here, baby. Mom’s here now.”
Linda checked various monitors with practiced efficiency.
“She’s been stable for the past forty-eight hours, which is a positive sign. The neurosurgery team successfully reduced the intracranial pressure from her head trauma.”
“What exactly happened?” I managed to ask, not taking my eyes from Olivia’s face, searching for any flicker of response to my voice.
“According to the police report, her husband was driving. The vehicle was traveling at approximately ninety miles per hour when it lost control and hit a concrete divider.”
Linda’s clinical description couldn’t mask the horror of what she was saying.
“Your daughter wasn’t wearing a seat belt. She was partially ejected through the windshield.”
My knees buckled. Linda guided me quickly to the chair beside the bed.
“And Blake?” I asked, a strange calm descending over me as something primal began to replace shock. “Was he injured?”
“Minor lacerations and bruising. He was treated in the ER and released that same night.”
Released.
The word hung in the air between us. Blake had walked away from the hospital with scratches while Olivia lay shattered, fighting for every breath.
“I’ll need copies of all her medical records,” I said, my voice dropping to the precise, measured tone that had made junior executives tremble during my thirty-year career in finance. “And the police report.”
Linda nodded, seeming almost relieved by my composure.
“I’ll have everything prepared. And Mrs. Harrison, it’s good you’re here. She needs an advocate right now.”
After she left, I leaned close to Olivia’s ear, careful not to disturb any of the equipment keeping her alive.
“Listen to me, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to find out exactly what happened, and I promise you, I will get answers.”
I squeezed her hand gently, hoping somewhere in the darkness of her unconsciousness, she could feel I was there.
Then I pulled out my phone, the executive in me taking control while the mother in me fought back tears. The questions hammered in my mind with every beep of Olivia’s heart monitor.
Where was Blake? Why hadn’t he called me? Why would he abandon his wife in this sterile room of machines and tubes? What could possibly be more important than being by her side?
My fingers hovered over his contact. I’d start with a simple text. No accusations, no emotions that might make him defensive. Just a mother looking for her daughter’s husband during a crisis.
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