by Eve Hathaway
Chapter Two
I CAN REMEMBER every fraction of every second of that night with crystal clarity. I remember being curled up on the sofa staring blankly at the flickering TV screen while my ears strained against the rhythmic drumming of the storm outside.
Each time there came the familiar swoosh of a car pulling in from the street, my heart leaped and I'd peer fruitlessly out to the window, only to be disappointed.
As the hands of the clock dragged themselves agonizingly across its face, I became more and more uneasy. Midnight was approaching and my mother hadn't yet come home. Worse, her cell phone seemed to be off, and no matter how many times I dialed and redialed her number, I was greeted with only her voicemail.
I felt like an animal in a cage as I paced around our apartment in agitation, always returning to the window to gaze out in the bleak night with no new results. In my core, I knew something was wrong.
The jangling of the cordless phone startled me out of my own head and shattered the remainder of my nerves. I jumped in fright and only after the third ring did I violently snatch it up.
"Hello? Mom?" I demanded breathlessly.
"Mr. Stoker?" The voice on the other line was cracked and muffled, and I could barely make out the words. All I could tell was that it was female. "Mr. Judas Stoker?"
"Who is this?" I shouted, unsure if she could hear me or not.
"This is Lana Christopher from St. Stephen's Hospital. May I speak to Joshua Stoker?"
My heart contracted in my chest with such force that for a moment I found myself temporarily robbed of breath. "Y-yes, this is he," I managed to push out.
"Mr. Stoker, is there someone you can call who can bring you here to the hospital?" The voice sounded clearer now, more business-like. "I'm afraid there's been an accident."
"An accident?" I repeated stupidly. "What accident? Who?"
There was an excruciating pause.
"A Ms. Ella Stoker, car accident. She is currently under intensive care, so if you could come down here and fill out some paperwork for us..."
The rest of Lana Christopher's sentence went unheard. The cordless slipped from my paralyzed fingers and hit the floor with a crash, spinning out of sight beneath the bookcase. Horrible images played through my mind as I imagined my mother's car crushed beneath the wheels of some metal monstrosity. Miniscule droplets of cold sweat beaded on my neck and forehead as I remained frozen in my horrified trance.
No, no, no. This couldn't be happening. My mother could not be hurt. She was invincible, all-knowing, and all-seeing. She could not be brought down by anything. My mother was God.
And yet...
Forcing my mind to stay shut, I grabbed the emergency cash from the jar on the fridge and fled from the apartment to hail a cab. We had no relatives to help us, no friend willing to risk their own safety to drive the troubled boy in apartment 21B to the hospital to find his mother.
My mother and I were all we had, and I couldn't let anything change that.
The following events passed in a haze of webbed misery. I can't recall the drive to the hospital or even talking to the front desk, trying to make them understand that my mother was there somewhere. They looked at me with pitying eyes and told me to wait until a broad, male nurse came to escort me to the room where they were working on my mother.
The male nurse would not let me through the doors, but I could see through the square windows the huddle of masked faces, each one with hands painted red. The body on the table, obscured by the gargantuan bodies around her, was too small to be my mother.
My mother was tall, like a runway model. She could not possibly be that small, sad, crumpled thing on the metal table. Someone had made a mistake. My heart leaped with hope at the notion. Yes! It was all just a big mistake! My mother was fine, probably at home wondering where I was. I should go home and be with her.
I turned away from the windows, clumsily knocking into the nurse as I did so. I had no control over my body, and my limbs moved jerkily, like a poorly coordinated puppet's. I felt strong hands steady me. I tried to explain their mistake, but my words came out jumbled and nonsensical. They looked at me with pitying eyes that infuriated me.
"Mr. Stoker, please calm down!" The large male nurse and his female associate guided me gently but firmly to one of the seats against the wall. Someone thrust a plastic cup of freezing water into my hand but I knocked it to the floor. I was crossing into hysteria by now in my desperation to make them understand that there had been a case of mistaken identities.