Susan had left for school in the middle of a tense silence, the tail end of an argument that hadn’t even fully started before she grabbed her bag and walked out. The door closed hard behind her.
I found her lunch on the kitchen counter five minutes later. I grabbed it and went after her without thinking, the way mothers do. She was still half a block ahead, headphones on, not looking back.
I was crossing the driveway toward the sidewalk, calling her name over the noise of the morning, when a car came out of the side street too fast for either of us to see it in time.
A car came out of the side street too fast.
I don’t remember the impact. I remember the pavement, and nothing after that.
I woke up briefly in the ambulance and then not again for a while.
When I surfaced, I was in a hospital room, and the light had changed enough that significant time had passed.
A nurse told me I’d lost a dangerous amount of blood. My type, AB negative, was rare enough that the hospital’s supply was limited, and my situation was urgent. Luckily, they found a donor.
Chris was in the room. He looked like a man who had been very afraid and was still coming down from it.
A nurse told me I’d lost a dangerous amount of blood.
I closed my eyes. I tried to say something but couldn’t. Only one word slipped out like a prayer: Susan.
“She’s in the hallway right now,” Chris said softly. “She’s been sitting there for two hours. She saved your life. She was the donor.”
Susan was sitting in a plastic chair in the hallway outside my room, and I thought about everything she’d said to me over the past few days.
She sat with it the way you sit with something that hurts. Not moving away from it, just letting it be there.
Susan looked toward the door to my room for a long moment. Our eyes met briefly before exhaustion pulled me back into darkness.
