Jill Andersen arrived at the hospital pale and shaking, a nurse walked up to her in the lobby
"You must be Jill" she said worriedly "follow me please?" she led her down the halls to a room in the basement with the blinds drawn. There were no usual hospital sounds… no beeping machines or the scraping of curtains along a rail.
"Jill I'm so sorry but as you may have heard your husband and daughter were involved in a terrible accident involving six vehicles… your husband is in intensive care, he's stable but it's unclear if he'll survive the night, doctors are doing everything they can."
"What about riley…? Where is she?!" Jill asked, her mind racing with all the memories of riley, her first word, her first steps… her first smile… Her chest began to freeze up with dread and there was a knot in her throat that wouldn't go away. With visible pain the nurse sighed
"Riley died on the scene…" when she didn't respond the nurse continued
"She was gone before the paramedics even got there, it was instant nothing could have been done, she didn't suffer, the injuries she sustained were fatal" Jill heard none of this, her head was swirling with information that she couldn't process, how could she be dead? she only saw her twenty minutes ago? she scored the winning goal it can't be true... her 5 emotions were all working overtime... all except joy who slowly moved to the back of the hq, even she couldn't think of what to say now, the control panel fell apart and a core memory came through the system except this one was different this one was… grey?
"She's in here if you'd like to see her?" asked the nurse
"Yes p-please" she stuttered back
The nurse drew back a curtain and there laid Riley's frail body… draped in a white sheet up to the shoulders, a black bruise the size of a fist partly covering her left eye and stretching around the side of her head.
"I'll give you some time to say goodbye…" and with that the nurse left. Jill slowly entered the room and walked up to the bed, It could have been minutes, hours, days but she had no way of telling anymore, after what seemed like forever Jill planted one last kiss on her daughters head and then turned away… she collapsed to the floor in a fit of racking sobs that shook her entire body as she realised that she would never see her smile again.
Riley woke in a strange bed with a funny smell, these bedsheets weren't hers? And this wasn't her room? She swung her legs over the end of the bed and realised she was wearing a weird blue gown like the one she wore when she was getting her tonsils taken out last summer, the room was really blurry and she could only see a little bit from the bed, as more of the room came into focus she noticed a woman on the floor crying, only she wasn't crying she was… sobbing, strangling painful sobs and it wasn't just some woman… it was her mom
"What is this place where am I? Mom what's going on?..."she asked, after getting no response from her mother who still cried out in raw despair she began to look around as more of the room came into focus, she saw looked back at her bed with a white sheet still covering a person laying there un-moving "wait… is that? But… it can't be?" she looked over at herself and for the first time since she woke she remembered the rain, the slippery tarmac and the blinding headlights and then… darkness, she woke up right here in the hospital.