“Neither are you,” Paige said, distracted by the text she was writing. She’d been rushed and stressed all day.
“I forgot,” Emma said and started to put it on, but it was caught in the door and she couldn’t. She struggled to free it but it was stuck, and she told her mother.
“We’ll be home in a minute,” Paige said, and Emma’s eyes grew wide as she saw a truck careening toward them from the left, which Paige didn’t notice as she wrote the text. The truck hit them with immense force as Emma screamed. There was the sound of crushing metal as Paige’s cellphone flew from her hand. Emma watched in horror as her mother’s whole body shot through the windshield like a torpedo, careened through the air, and disappeared under the cars in front of them. Their car struck another, stopped abruptly, and Emma hit her head hard on the TV screen on the back of the front passenger seat. They were crushed in a tangle of other cars. The truck had forced them three lanes over. The driver lay inert with his head on the steering wheel as people rushed from their cars toward him, and several others ran toward Paige’s car.
The door on Emma’s side had flown open, and Emma lay unconscious on the freeway, her head, face, and arms covered with blood. People were calling 911, and a group of them were staring at Paige under the SUV where she had landed, covered with blood and broken glass from her exit through the windshield. Traffic was backed up as far as you could see behind them, and within minutes people could hear sirens in the distance as they surveyed the scene in shock. The driver of the truck was dead, and there was no sign of life under the car where Paige lay. No one dared touch Emma for fear of damaging her further, and they weren’t sure if she was breathing. It didn’t look like it, but there was so much blood everywhere, no one could see clearly.
Only one ambulance left the scene quickly with Emma. After that, it took time to move the truck, Paige’s car, and the other disabled vehicles to the side of the road and to remove Paige’s body and the truck driver’s from the scene, and it was hours before traffic began moving again. In all, four people had been injured but none severely, except Emma. The paramedics had inserted a breathing tube as they left the scene with sirens shrieking and lights flashing and assessed her in critical condition. The police and paramedics had said Paige was dead on impact, when she hit the pavement.
The police found a pink backpack in the backseat of the car, with an ID badge from the studio with Emma’s name on it, and Paige’s purse with her driver’s license was on the floor of the front passenger seat, alongside her cellphone with a shattered screen. She and Emma both carried a card that stated that their hospital of choice in an emergency was Cedars-Sinai.
Paige and the truck driver were taken to the morgue by the police, and there was nothing in Paige’s purse listing next of kin or who to notify in an accident. They would have to get the information from the DMV, if it was listed. All they knew for now were their names.
The paramedics had assessed that Emma had a serious head injury, a broken arm, and probably internal injuries. The police had made due note that she hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt. Neither of them would have fallen out of the car if they had been, or flown out, in Paige’s case. All the police could deduce was that Paige hadn’t seen the oncoming truck, and possibly had been on her cellphone or texting. Both were common causes of accidents and fatalities. Beyond that, they knew nothing, not even whether Emma would survive the accident. It had looked unlikely when they’d left the scene and headed at full speed to Cedars-Sinai.
* * *
—
Whitney sent some emails when she got home, took a bath, and washed her hair. She’d had a manicure and pedicure at lunchtime between patients. She closed her bags and called Paige. It went straight to voice mail. She tried again before she went to bed, knowing it would be too early to call them the next day before she left. She had to leave her house at five, to check in for her flight at LAX at six A.M., so she sent them a text, sending her love and promising to call or text from the boat. It was the best she could do, and she assumed that Paige was busy, or her cellphone might have run out of juice, which happened a lot when Paige ran around all day and forgot to charge it.
Whitney was in bed by midnight. Paige never called her back. She got up at four, left the house promptly at five in an Uber. Her flight to Paris was on time, and took off on schedule at eight A.M., and she settled back in her seat for breakfast and a movie. She wasn’t worried about trying to reach Paige again. She had said goodbye to them the night before in her text. All she had to do was sit back and enjoy her vacation. Whitney was smiling as they flew over Los Angeles with the sun shining brightly. She was thinking of Chad and meeting him on the boat, and she fully intended to forget L.A., her work, and even her sister and niece for the next three weeks. This was her time, and she needed it badly. She would send Paige another text from Italy when they got there. They never stayed in constant contact anyway, even in L.A. They had their own busy lives in separate worlds. And once on vacation, Whitney didn’t feel obliged to call. They would catch up on news in three weeks when she got back home.
* * *
—
Emma was unconscious when she got to Cedars-Sinai and was taken to the trauma unit, where the neurosurgeon on call examined her. She had a severe head injury from the impact and was in a coma. The debate was whether to operate on her brain or wait to see how severe the swelling was, if she even survived the next few hours. They had no next of kin to call, and the Highway Patrol and paramedics who’d brought her in informed them that the female driving was dead at the scene of the accident. They only had the information on Paige’s driver’s license, and Emma’s name from her badge. They sent a squad car to the address on Paige’s license and found no one home. The police were checking the DMV for next of kin, but had none by morning. They had the name of the TV studio to call, but had to wait until working hours to reach them. For now, Emma was alone in the world, and Whitney was on her way to France.
* * *
—
When Whitney arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport for her layover before the flight to Nice, she didn’t turn her cellphone on, because she wasn’t expecting any calls. It was four A.M. in France and too early to call Chad. It was seven in the evening in L.A. by then, nine hours earlier than Paris. It was almost twenty-four hours since the accident, and Emma’s condition was unchanged. She remained in a coma, intubated, her life hanging by a thread.
The police had called Melvin Levy, the producer of the show, that morning. He was shocked to hear what had happened to Emma and of Paige’s death. They had no light to shed on whom to call to notify relatives. They knew she had a sister, but didn’t know her name or how to reach her. There was no record of a father to contact anywhere in Emma’s files, nor the name of anyone to call in an emergency, other than her mother. The police had asked them to release nothing to the press until the family could be located and notified of the accident and Paige’s death. Respecting the police request, no announcement was made to the cast, other than that Emma was out sick. They were shooting episodes for the fall, after the hiatus, and could shoot around her for several weeks and catch up later. She had just finished the school term with Belinda, so they had no work to do until September. Her absence was not a crisis for them yet, but it would be if she stayed out for too long.
The producer and director conferred quietly about the call from the police, hoping that Emma would survive, and wondering what would happen next. It was shocking to think that a child so young might die, and that her mother already had. Neither of them had any idea who to call. They knew that Paige was a single mother, and they vaguely recalled Paige saying that Emma’s biological father had died around the time she was born. They assumed that some friend or relative would be with her. They called throughout the day for reports on Emma’s condition and were told that no information could be released, but that her status was unchanged.
* * *
<
br /> —
Whitney caught the first flight to Nice, as she’d planned to, and had been traveling for seventeen hours by then. Chad’s strapping young, immaculately white-uniformed crew members met her at the Nice airport and whisked her and her luggage to their van. They drove her to Monaco, where Chad was waiting for her on deck in white jeans and a sky blue sweater, and a broad smile the moment he saw her. He already had a deep tan. She came up the passerelle, and he put his arms around her and held her as they basked in the warmth of each other’s company for a moment.
“I’ve missed you,” he said, beaming.
“I’ve missed you too,” she said, with her arms around his waist. It felt so good to be there. In a way, being with him always felt like home, and at the same time whenever she saw him it always felt exciting and new. They saw each other infrequently enough to keep their relationship interesting.
“How was the flight?” he asked her casually.
“Long, but worth every minute of it,” she said as they sat on a banquette, and a stewardess handed her a cup of coffee.
The boat was a hundred and eighty feet long, fifty-five meters, with a crew of fifteen. They had been waiting for her to arrive to set sail and were already casting off lines.
“We’ll leave in a few minutes,” Chad told her. It was a beautiful late July morning, the castle loomed over them, and the marina was full of yachts as large as Chad’s and even larger, some of them quite well known. It was easy to get spoiled while sharing time with him. Her luggage had already disappeared to his cabin where a stewardess would unpack for her, and there was a pink marble bathroom and dressing room for her use next to his accommodations. She had given the crew her purse to take with her bags. There was nothing she needed now, it was the middle of the night in California, and she was in no rush to charge and turn on her cellphone. She was on vacation, and part of the beauty of being on the boat with him was that she could leave all her duties and obligations behind. She had none from late July to late August. Her time off had already begun.
They pulled out of the port, motoring slowly, and twenty minutes later the chef produced a sumptuous breakfast for them at the dining table on deck. As soon as they cleared the boats coming into port to dock, they turned the engines on full, picked up speed, and headed to the open sea where Chad preferred to cruise for the trip to Italy. They expected to anchor in Portofino in the late afternoon and go ashore for dinner at a small restaurant they knew and liked there.
They lay on deck chairs and chatted easily in the sea breeze, as Whitney dozed in the sun, and went down to Chad’s cabin before lunch to change. Then they had a sumptuous meal on deck. It was a fairy-tale life being with him, and they held hands as they lay in deck chairs side by side after lunch and slept until they reached Portofino.
* * *
—
As Chad and Whitney watched the crew set anchor and tie up to a rock just outside the port of Portofino, Emma had been in a coma at Cedars-Sinai for thirty-six hours, since the accident. Her condition was still listed as critical. It was morning in L.A., and the police had obtained Whitney’s name and cellphone number from Paige’s DMV records in the computer system. She was listed as next of kin in an emergency. The police had been calling Whitney’s phone for the past twelve hours but had been unable to reach her, and the producers of The Clan had been able to keep the story out of the news, since no family member had been contacted yet. For now, no one on the set needed to know the truth. Eventually, the writers would have to write her accident into the scripts, but that was weeks away, or after the hiatus. The producers had told the cast that she had mono, which would buy them some time, and everyone was sorry to hear it.
Whitney had gotten her cellphone out of her purse before she and Chad boarded the tender to go into the little port town and walk around for a while. She’d asked a stewardess to charge her phone and left it with her.
They wandered in and out of the little shops and stopped for a glass of wine at a restaurant with a terrace overlooking the port, enjoying each other. Their time together was always relaxing and uncomplicated. They were both people who appreciated life without drama, and they treasured their downtime together. It was the nature of their relationship, stress-free adult time.
They went back to the boat after an hour, and the stewardess returned Whitney’s cellphone. She noticed that she had a slew of messages, which was unusual while she was on vacation. She glanced at them and saw that none of the numbers were familiar, and Paige hadn’t called her. She was sure she was busy with Emma, with their long list of daily appointments and lessons that extended from morning to night year round. Whitney wondered if the calls were from patients, if they’d had trouble reaching her replacement, and decided to check before she went to Chad’s cabin to dress for dinner on shore that night. Chad handed her a glass of champagne as she sat down to listen to her messages, and then he went downstairs to shower and change. Neither of them liked being interrupted by work unnecessarily when they were on vacation. Chad had strict rules about it at his office, and so did she.
“I won’t be long,” Whitney promised as she took a sip of the champagne and set it down on a table next to her, as he left her and she waited for the first message to play. She was surprised to hear that it was from a lieutenant of the LAPD. She couldn’t imagine why he was calling her. She had three more from him and began to wonder if it was about one of her patients. Whitney dreaded hearing that one of them had been injured or worse, committed suicide. That hadn’t happened in years. She pressed the number to return the call and asked for him by name when she reached the Los Angeles Police Department. The lieutenant came on the line quickly.
“We’ve been trying to reach you,” he said when Whitney gave her name and sounded puzzled to be hearing from him.
“I’m sorry, I’ve been traveling. I’m calling from Italy. What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” She had on her official doctor’s voice and waited for him to explain.
“I’m sorry to call you about this. We’ve gone to your home several times trying to locate you. There was an accident two days ago, involving your sister, Paige Watts, and her daughter, Emma.” Whitney froze as he said it. She hadn’t expected this, and now she wanted to know the rest of it quickly.
“What happened? Are they all right?” she asked, sounding hoarse. Suddenly she was shaking.
The lieutenant hesitated for a fraction of an instant. “No, I’m sorry,” he said for the second time. “Your sister was ejected through the windshield of the car she was driving and was killed on impact when an out of control truck hit her car. It was probably too late to avoid it when she saw it.”
“Oh my God.” Whitney was deathly pale. Other than Emma, Paige was her only living relative. They had had their differences, but they loved each other, and now she was dead, at thirty-seven. “Where is she?”
“She’s at the police morgue, where she’s been while we were unable to get in touch with you.”
“And my niece?” Whitney could hardly breathe now. What if Emma was dead too?
“She was unconscious at the scene. Neither of them were wearing seatbelts. The car came to a halt on impact with other vehicles, and your niece fell out of the car. She’s been in a coma since the accident, with a head injury, at Cedars-Sinai. She’s in critical condition, but she’s alive.” Whitney was trembling violently by then, thinking of Emma in a coma and Paige dead. “I can tell you who to speak to there,” the police lieutenant said helpfully as Whitney grabbed a pen and pad and wrote down the names he gave her, of the pediatric neurologists in charge of her case at Cedars. “I told them to expect to hear from you as soon as we contacted you. Is there anyone you want to send over to be with her?”
“There’s no one except me,” Whitney said weakly. “The only relatives she has are her mother and me. She has no father.” And now she had no mother either. Only Whitney.
“We spoke to the producer of the TV show she’s on, to try and find out which relatives to locate. They’ve been very cooperative about not talking to the press until you were notified. You might want to speak to them.” Whitney nodded, her mind racing about what to do next. She had to get back to Los Angeles immediately. She couldn’t leave Emma alone in a hospital in a coma. And what if she died before Whitney could get there? She couldn’t bear thinking about it, and Whitney was trying not to think of her sister dead in a morgue for the past two days while she was flying to France and getting on a boat to Italy. That was why she had never reached them. From the time of the accident the lieutenant had mentioned, Whitney could easily calculate that Paige had been dead before she’d left L.A.
She thanked the lieutenant and hung up and immediately called the doctors he’d mentioned at Cedars-Sinai. She was able to reach the second one within a few minutes, identified herself, and told him she was a physician. “How is she?” she inquired about Emma.
“There’s been no change since she came in,” he said simply. “There’s frontal lobe damage with considerable swelling. We’ve avoided doing surgery until now. I’m still hoping the swelling will come down on its own. She’s had several brain scans, a CT scan, and an MRI. We don’t see damage or lesions, other than the swelling, but the fact is that she’s in a coma, with no sign of her regaining consciousness since she’s been here. She’s had considerable trauma to her head, and she’s young. There’s no way to know yet what kind of damage that’s going to leave her with, if any. There could be severe consequences or fully restored brain function after the trauma heals. As long as she’s still comatose, there’s no way to know how the trauma has affected her brain. We’ve intubated her and sedated her, but where it goes from here, we just don’t know yet.” Whitney felt sick as she listened. What had Paige been thinking? If they were on the freeway, why weren’t they both wearing seatbelts? The image of her sister shooting through the windshield like a human torpedo was horrifying.
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