I checked the time. Checked it again. My heart kept trying to climb into my throat. My palms were slick with sweat, but the sweat didn’t feel like heat— it felt like fear.
When the taxi finally pulled in, I yanked the door open so hard the driver flinched.
“Mercy General,” I said, voice tight. “My daughter’s there.”
He nodded, unbothered in the way only strangers can be when your world is on fire. “Traffic’s heavy today.”
Of course it was. Of course the city chose today to be itself.
We crawled through streets that seemed designed to punish urgency. Red lights stacked up ahead of us like a wall of denial. A bus pulled out in front of us, lumbering. A delivery truck double-parked. A cyclist darted between cars with the confidence of someone who didn’t have a child in a hospital.
I kept calling my mother. No answer.
My father. Nothing.
Amanda. Ringing. Ringing. Ringing.
I stared out the window at the brightness of the day, the cruel normalcy. People walked with iced drinks. Someone stood outside a café laughing. A dog trotted along a sidewalk, tongue out, happy.
My mind tried to build scenarios, and each one was worse than the last. Lucy fell. Lucy got hit. Lucy swallowed something. Lucy—
The hospital doors slid open with a soft, polite whisper, and that sound made me want to scream. Inside, everything was too bright, too clean, too controlled. The air smelled like disinfectant and faint coffee. People moved in straight lines, speaking quietly. A child with a bandaged arm sat near the entrance eating a popsicle as if hospitals were ordinary.
I went to the front desk.
“I’m Anna Walker,” I said, barely recognizing my own voice. “My daughter, Lucy— I was told she was brought in.”
The receptionist looked at her screen and then at me with a kind of practiced compassion. “Yes, Ms. Walker. She’s here. She’s stable.”
Stable again. Like the universe had decided that word would be my new enemy.
“She’s in Pediatrics,” the woman continued. “We’re running some checks. A nurse will come speak with you.”
“A nurse?” I echoed. “I need to see her.”
“I understand.” The receptionist’s expression didn’t change, but something in her eyes told me she had seen this kind of panic before. “We just need you to fill out these forms. And I’ll need your ID.”