Twenty Two

What's left to pray for if you lose your child? Andrea wrung her hands as she stood up and began to pace, trying to quiet the horror that whispered doom in her ear. She knew the worst could happen: it had before.

She had to know. Andrea quietly slipped past the nurse's station and down the hall. She glanced in the rooms the doctors had come from, searching each gurney for her child. A gallery of fear greeted her as strange faces looked up from every room while echoes from that terrible day two years earlier bounced off the gray walls. "We did everything we could ... I'm sorry ... brain-dead." She leaned against a door-frame, disoriented in her anguish.

"Don't let it be true, God," she prayed under her breath, "please, don't let it be true."

Andrea was startled by a voice behind her.

"Excuse me." It was the woman she'd spoken to earlier. "If you'll be patient, the doctor will be right with you in the waiting room."

"I'm sorry. I just need to see my daughter. No one has told me how badly she's hurt."

"Dr. Lindstrom won't be able to tell you if he can't find you, now will he?" The nurse sounded like she was speaking to a half-wit.

Humbled, Andrea retraced her steps to the waiting area and sat down again on the cold vinyl seat. She tried to collect herself; this was no time to fall apart.