My phone rang at 2:17 p.m., the kind of weekday hour when nothing dramatic is supposed to happen.

I was sitting at my desk, pretending to be interested in a spreadsheet that had already been revised three times, watching the numbers blur into each other while the office carried on around me. Keyboards clicked. Someone laughed too loudly at something on a screen. The air conditioning hummed with the steady confidence of a building that assumed all emergencies could be handled politely.

Unknown number.

I stared at it until the second ring, and then the third, my thumb hovering like I could feel the future through the glass. I almost ignored it. Almost. The kind of almost that turns into an anchor in your stomach months later, when you’re awake at three in the morning replaying a decision you didn’t realize mattered.

I answered.

“Anna Walker?” a man asked.

“Yes.”

“This is Officer Miller. Your daughter, Lucy Walker, has been brought to Mercy General. She’s stable, but you need to come immediately.”

The word stable landed wrong, like the chair you sit in at a restaurant and it shifts underneath you, the moment when your body understands something before your mind catches up.

“Stable?” I repeated, because my brain wanted to rewind and listen again. “What happened?”

“We’ll explain when you arrive,” he said, voice measured, professional. The kind of calm that only exists when something has already gone very wrong and everyone in the room is focusing hard on keeping it contained. “One more thing— the vehicle involved is registered to you.”

The call ended before I could ask what that meant.

For a full second I sat there with my phone pressed to my ear, listening to nothing. The office didn’t change. It kept going, oblivious. My body, though, felt like it had slipped out of alignment. My hands began shaking so sharply I had to lock my fingers together under the desk.

Lucy.

My chair scraped back with a sound that cut through my own head. I stood so fast it tipped over, and someone two desks away looked up as if I’d committed a social offense. I didn’t care. I grabbed my bag, my keys, my jacket I didn’t need, anything that made me feel like I was doing something.

“I have to go,” I told my manager, already walking.