Free Faultlines by Barbara Taylor Sissel

subliminal regions of her brain that she registered it, what sounded like a squeal, the same squeal the service gate made every time it was opened or shut.
    Her last thought before sleep consumed her, though, was of those children, the ones who had been involved in that awful accident. She really was grateful to have been saved from that particular hell, at least. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like as a parent, getting that call in the middle of the night. But neither would she ever resolve the question of what was worse: losing a child or never having one.

5
    S andy’s parents returned to the ICU waiting area on the heels of the code-blue call, and they were there when the nurses burst through the ICU doors, three of them, racing alongside a gurney. One of the nurses rushed to where Sandy and her family were standing, rooted, terrified.
    “Oh dear God,” Sandy heard someone say. Her mother, she thought.
    Travis. It was Travis on the gurney. Something had happened to him, something worse . . . That was Sandy’s thought.
    But no, the nurse stopped in front of her—K AREN , her name tag said—and her eyes were soft with pity, backed by the resignation that must go with her job. The delivery of bad news was inevitable in this place. Somebody had to do it. Sandy felt sorry for her.
    “Jordan’s blood pressure,” Karen said. “It just suddenly nose-dived.”
    Nose-dived. Sandy would remember that word. She would remember thinking it was what planes did, or stocks. A stock could take a nosedive. You could lose everything. She would remember hurrying beside the gurney bearing her son into an elevator. She would remember looking at him, her eyes fastened in horror on the only part of him that was visible: his head, his face—his swollen, disfigured, unrecognizable, precious, and once-beautiful face. She would remember Showalter, the two minutes’ worth of explanation he gave them in the surgical waiting area. She’d watched his mouth make the words, retaining only a few: blood in the gut , organ rupture , laceration . They would open Jordy, Showalter said.
    Like a book, Sandy thought.
    Emmett had been angry. “You said there was no sign of internal bleeding.”
    Showalter had shrugged. Win some, lose some. He might have said it, for all Sandy knew.
    It was midmorning now. Saturday? Sandy wasn’t sure. Hours had passed, or what felt like hours. “What is taking so long?” She spoke from where she stood, looking through the windowed door down the deserted corridor where they’d taken Jordy. “Why doesn’t someone tell us something?”
    “Come and sit down.” Her mother patted the seat of the faux leather–upholstered chair beside her.
    But Sandy couldn’t abandon her vigil to sit next to her mom, whose anguish, despite her aura of calm, was as palpable as Sandy’s own.
    “Look, Emmett’s back. He’s brought coffee.”
    Sandy turned as Emmett crossed the waiting area, bearing a small cardboard tray that held three paper cups. Steam rose from the rims. She didn’t want it, but she took the cup when he handed it to her, feeling the heat through its thin paper walls soak the cold palms of her hands. She met his gaze, but only for a moment. It was all she could stand; he looked so haggard, the fear she felt herself was so raw in his eyes. There was something else there, too, that she recognized—it was helplessness, and she knew how it felt, that they might lose their son, their child, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.
    “I went by the ICU,” he said.
    “How is Travis?” Sandy’s mom asked. “Any change?”
    “No.” Emmett sat next to her. “They’re saying—Jenna says they keep telling her the same thing every hour: there’s no response, no brain activity.” He raised his cup, then lowered it without drinking.
    Sandy resumed her post by the surgical-room doors. The image of her face, reflected in the glass, was as faint as that of a ghost’s. Her ears rang. Panic held