Author's note: Thank you (as always) for your continued readership, interest, and reviews. I have received so many messages lately about how long it's been since we've heard from Elizabeth. The thing I'd like to impress is that this story is weaved through the collective and individual consciousnesses of the characters. Time is passing for all of them and the events of more than one chapter are unfolding at once. Each character has a different take on the same events. It seems a lot longer because of the individual peeks into each of the characters' consciousness but different parts of the story are happening at once. (Just as in real life!) Thank you, again.

"Stephanie, your father is going to be fine. He..." The Doctor continued to speak but Stevie couldn't hear him. She couldn't see or think or move.
The gasping sound that escaped her had to be coming from someone else, because she couldn't make a sound. Her empty stomach turned over and the hallway before her spun erratically. She felt herself start to sink toward the floor. Doctor Andrews caught her arm and guided her toward a chair. She felt his hand press firmly against her back. "Put your head down between your knees," he instructed her, "and breathe."

"Allie," he murmured, "Allie."
"Henry, can you hear me?"
He slowly opened his eyes, squinting up against the garishness of the fluorescent lights.
"Henry, I'm Doctor Andrews."
Doctor...?
Henry's heartbeat sped up.
"Where's my daughter?" he asked, panic filling his voice. "Allie? Allison? Is she all right?"

"Mr. McCord, your daughter is fine. I will make sure that she knows you are awake. Can you tell me what happened? Do you know how you got here?"
"I have to see my daughter. I have to see if she's all right."
"And I can see the tenacious streak runs in the family," he said with a small smile. He continued, "Do you know how you got here, Henry?"
Henry shook his head to clear it, but it only made the pounding worse.
"Allie," he said again, knowing his daughter's name didn't make any sense to the doctor who was trying to help him. Henry looked around the hospital room, the white blanket covering him became the snow. The glaring lights, Henry thought, headlights.
"The car," he said, slowly.
"Allie and I were- we were going..." Henry trailed off, rubbing his face with his palm. "Oh God, my daughter? Allie, is she-? My wife- Elizabeth? Stevie and Jason, do they- are they-?"
"Mr. McCord, please don't distress yourself. Your oldest daughter and son are with Allison, now. Your wife is on her way."

"You're all right," Doctor Andrews repeated, his hand never leaving her back. "You're all going to be all right. I'll let you speak with your brother and sister and then I'll step in to check on Allison. Get up slowly now, Stephanie. I don't want three McCords on my watch tonight," he smiled gently and offered her his arm.

Stevie stood shakily, touched the Doctor's hand and took her first tentative steps back toward her family. She brushed her hair away from her face and caught a flash of dark red against her skin. The half-moon shapes of her fingernails were embedded in the tender flesh of her palm. When she opened the door, two pairs of expectant eyes met her own. Polar opposites of each other, Jason's light gaze, from their mother and Allison's dark eyes, so like their father's, both boring into her. Jason's hand still held Allison's. Their brother opened his mouth to speak but Stevie cut him off.
"He's alive," she whispered, their image dissolving before her in a haze of tears. "Dad's gonna be okay."

Henry swallowed hard, fighting back the thousand questions and terrors that threatened to engulf him. He let himself take a deep breath, his chest aching as he did so.
"Doc?" he said, anxiety tinting his voice, "What happened to my daughter?"
"Allison is doing remarkably well. She sustained lacerations to her hands, neck, and her forehead. She also has a badly sprained ankle. We have her in a brace as a precaution."
"Oh my God," Henry said softly, bowing his head.
"Mr. McCord, can I ask you something?"
Henry nodded, looking up into the other man's face, "Of course."
"Do you, by chance, have military or police training?"
Henry nodded again, just slightly. "I'm a retired Marine Corps Captain."
The doctor smiled cryptically and Henry noticed a hint of emotion pass in his eyes, "I only ask because I've seen a lot of crash victims in my time here. Your protective reaction saved your daughter's life and then she was able to save yours."

Jason muffled his sob against Stevie's sweater. He allowed himself only a moment of crying before he pulled away from his sisters' embrace, turning from them and wiping his eyes.
"Jas, you should go," Allison nominated him, at once. He cleared his throat before turning to look at his sisters again. "You'll be okay here?" he asked them both, his voice low and full of emotion.
Allison wiped tears from her cheek and nodded. "Tell Dad-" her voice faded and Stevie pressed a kiss to her hair.
"You sure?" he asked again, more to his oldest sister than to Allison, who was safely tucked in.
Stevie leaned against Allison's bed. "We're in a hospital, Jas. How could we possibly get into trouble here?" she said, the first tentative smile Jason had seen all night, playing across her face.
She touched his arm, "Go ahead, go sit with Dad. We'll be here waiting for you."
Jason took one last look at them before he walked into the hall and found Michael waiting to take him upstairs. Jason nodded to him before walking with him toward the elevator.
He made it halfway down the hall before he stopped, panic gripping him and holding him to the spot. His heart was pounding out of his chest as he ran back toward Allison's room, almost colliding with a nurse, and went straight into Stevie's arms.
"Jas? Jas, hey," she rubbed his back, trying to calm him. "It's okay, it's okay." He felt Allison's arms wrap around his back, all three of them held in one embrace. "What if he can't talk to me? What if his memory is screwed up? What if he doesn't even know who I am?" the fears he'd held inside of him were flooding out onto his sister's shoulder.
"Jas, Doctor Andrews says he's asking for us," Stevie whispered, gently. "Besides, you think Dad could ever forget you?" Allison gave a tearful whisper against his back, "Thomas Aquinas, maybe. But not you."

"McCords!" the three of them broke apart at the sound of their last name. Michael appeared in the doorway. He was out of breath, as if he'd ran the distance from the elevator to the nurses station and back. "We have your mom on the line. Hospital protocol says I can only allow Stephanie to speak with her." Michael stopped to breathe and gave a slight grin. "Frankly, I think we've demolished nearly every hospital protocol guideline tonight, but I figure we should try to stay on the right side of the thin line."
Jason grabbed Stevie's arm and looked into his sister's wide blue eyes. "It's okay," she said, "You go see Dad. I'll take care of Mom."

Up two floors, he counted the thirty seven steps from the elevator doors. Michael stood down the hall, giving him the space he needed. Jason paused outside his father's room, for all of the thousands of moments of the last few hours that he desperately needed to know that his father was all right, now that it came time to see his dad, he wasn't sure that he was strong enough. He pressed his head back against the wall to steady himself for a minute before pushing himself into the room. "Dad?"

"Mom?" Stevie held the receiver to her ear. She could only hear static on the other end then- "Stevie? Baby?" She felt her emotions threaten to engulf her at the sound of her mother's gentle voice.

She was ten years old. The fifth-grade backpacking trip. "But Mom, I'm scared! Why can't you just come get me?" she wept into the phone.
"Stevie, listen to me, baby. I know you're scared but-"
"I wanna talk to Daddy. He'd let me come home!"
Whining and crying for what seemed like an hour. Hearing her mother bustling around in the kitchen, a sure sign that her patience was already on fumes. She could hear Allie and Jason spatting in the background. Her whining had gotten on her own nerves and obviously on her mother's, because the next thing she heard was:
"Honey, you are the descendant of some of the greatest heroes and scoundrels that the Commonwealth of Virginia has ever seen. If you've got one thing running through your veins, it's guts. Now don't call me back until you're at the top of that mountain, little girl." Her ten year old self had hung up on her mother out of spite. Her twenty-one year old self clung to the phone like the lifeline it was.
"Mom? I'm here!"

Henry sighed deeply, his restlessness getting the best of him. The doctor said he'd send one of his children up to see him, but that had to have been an hour ago. If he had to wait much longer he thought he'd climb out of bed and limp to the nurses station to find out what room she was in and go to see her himself. They wouldn't like that, but to hell with hospital protocol...
Allison.
He felt his stomach turn over at the thought of his daughter. Her scream, as the car had spun around on the slick roadway. Her hands bandaged, her ankle sprained.
The doctor's words rang in his ears. He didn't fully understand them, but he was sure he'd never forget them as long as he lived. "Your protective reaction saved your daughter's life and she was able to save yours." He couldn't remember what had happened after the car had been hit but the Doctor's message was clear: Allison had been conscious. She'd been alive, awake, alert, and alone.
Alone in the car, alone in the ambulance, alone in the hospital. Allison hated hospitals. She couldn't even watch those medical dramas Stevie was always catching up on.
He pressed his head back against the pillow and forced himself to breathe. A sound jarred him from his thoughts and- "Dad?"

Elizabeth leaned forward against the front seat of the car and her hand shook so hard that she almost dropped the heavy cell phone Frank handed back. She could hear muffled sounds on the other end of the line, movement, jumbled voices, but nothing that sounded remotely like any of her children, then-
"Mom?" Stevie's voice, soft in her ear.
"Stevie? Baby?"
"Mom, I'm here."
Even through the static, the emotion in her daughter's voice cut through her like a knife. She must have made a sound because she felt Jay's hand squeeze her knee.
"Mom, breathe,"
She didn't have time to marvel at how well her daughter knew her, as she forced herself to draw a shaky breath.
"Stevie, baby are you okay-?"
Static
"Mom? Mom, can you hear me?"
"I can, baby. I'm here."
"Mom, we're okay. We're here- we've been with Allie all night. She's fine, Mom. She's-"
Elizabeth pressed her hand against the seat. Jay's palm still held onto her knee, grounding her.
"Oh my God. Baby, I'm so- I'm so-" she couldn't find words. How impossibly grateful she felt in that moment but also how terrifyingly desperate. She stifled her sob behind her palm and rested her forehead against the seat in front of her.
"Mom, it's okay." her sweet daughter was trying to soothe her. Her child who had been through hell and back tonight was trying to soothe her from miles away.
"Dad's-"
Static
"Stevie?"
"Mom? Dad's-"
Static
She gave a whimper, "Sweetheart?"
"Mom, Jas is with him. Dad's all right."
She couldn't stop her sob this time and she heard her daughter's gentle watery laugh on the other end. "No fair, Mom. You're supposed to wait til you get here before making me cry."
"Stevie," she gasped out her name in a shuddering whisper. "I'm almost there, sweetheart. I've got-"
"Forty-five minutes, Ma'am. Barring more detours," Frank informed her from the driver's seat.

"Call it an hour, Ma'am."
"Is that Jay?" Stevie asked, hearing his voice.
Elizabeth nodded, forgetting Stevie couldn't see her. "Yes, baby. Jay's here."
Her daughter was quiet for a few moments. "I'll have to thank him," she said cryptically, more to herself than to Elizabeth.
"Stevie, I love you so much, sweetheart. I-"
"I can't wait til you get here," her daughter interjected, her voice timid.
Elizabeth massaged her temple with her fingertips, feeling her tears fall again, "I just wanna hold you, honey. I wanna hold all of you."
She heard Stevie take a deep breath, reminding her to inhale herself. "Allie'll be so happy-"
"Stevie, tell her. Tell her how much I love her-" Elizabeth felt her voice fading out.
"She knows Mom, but I will."
"And Jason, too and Dad-"
"I will. You'll be here soon, Ma." Stevie reassured her, gently. "I love you."
"I love you, baby. To the Moon. I'll see you soon."