• 12:15 am.

    Thirteen year old Helen Jaimeson paced back and forth in the hospital waiting room, her eyes heavy with tears and lost sleep. Those eyes had been awake ever since they were abruptly roused by a horrifying phone call. Helen’s older brother was on the other line.

    “Somethin’s up with Mom and Dad. Car crash, I think. They’re in surgery. I’m comin’ to get you.” Click.

    Panicking at the vague and unsettling news, she wasn’t able to wait for Xander. Nor was she able to think very clearly. She instead rushed out of her apartment, mind still hazed, body still in her thin summer pajamas, and frantically hailed a cab to the hospital.

    The journey there was nothing short of agonizing. Midnight traffic was at its thinnest, but it still served to slow the taxi’s route. Helen wanted to scream at the fools who stopped for red lights in front of her, yet she knew that would be unfair.

    To make matters worse, the cabbie had made feeble attempts in his fragmented, heavily accented English to start a conversation.

    “What a young girl like you do out so late? Should be with mama an papa now.”

    It was all she could do not to physically attack him in her frenzied position. What did he know? Who was he to say such things? Like an obedient child, however, she remained seated and noticeably agitated. This man couldn’t seem to drive quickly enough.

    She nearly cried out in grief when the cab found itself stuck behind a black vehicle. A horrified gasp escaped. In the darkness and in Helen’s troubled mind it appeared to be a hearse. It was a horrendous omen for what she truly believed to be her parents’ fate.

    Her nerves were only somewhat eased when the vehicle turned the corner and revealed itself to be someone’s limousine.

    Once there, at last in front of the hospital, she flung a $20 bill to the obnoxious driver. It was somewhat higher than the actual fare, but that was the first bill Helen could take, having left the comfort of her empty residence so quickly. She raced inside the hospital through the clear, humid night.

    That was twenty minutes ago.

    And now here she was, too anxious and too terrified to sit still. Pacing across the room for the past twenty minutes with little to distract her from her troubled thoughts, she shivered and waited for news about her parents.

    The hospital doors burst open. “Helen!?”

    A man in his twenties, with black hair and green eyes like Helen’s and a tall, powerful frame unlike hers, called out. He found her in the waiting room.

    “What’re you doing here? I said I’d come get you.” He looked just as panicked as the girl, and sounded even worse.

    Sigh. “I couldn’t wait for that. You hear anything?”

    Xander shook his head. “No. ********, I hope they’re alright. God damn these drunk drivers! We should string ‘em all up at the ******** courthouse!”

    His teeth were bared. His fists were tightened. One of those fists pounded on the waiting room’s doorframe, sending in a cold metallic echo to greet new mourners. Many of them stared back at him with hollow, unreadable shells for faces. They each found themselves caught between their own unhappiness and their newfound fear for the man in the door. Even to Helen, the one person this man would never harm even to save his own skin, he appeared menacing.

    12:32 am.

    Helen was still pacing the room. It wasn’t clear if she was shaking from fear, anger, or cold. Xander was in a chair, visibly stressed. Veins appeared to pop from his temples. His teeth were still bared. He wrung his hands, unable to sit still. His rage was much more evident. Both were wondering the same two things: if they would ever see their parents again, and where they can find the rotten b*****d drunk who hurt them.

    There were so many others in the waiting room. Restless infants wailed along with heartbroken adults given unthinkable news. Doctors and nurses arrived for others, but not for Helen’s peace of mind. Smith? Jones? Garcia? The messengers called, giving such sickening news that Helen would rather not hear. Loved ones left and right were suddenly handicapped, or worse. It wasn’t so apparent from the soaring sentiments which fate was worse.

    The siblings didn’t know if the messengers would ever call their name. They weren’t quite sure they’d want to hear what followed, in any case.

    12:35 am.

    Helen hardly noticed that she was shivering as she paced miles into that waiting room carpet. The frozen atmosphere occupied with distress and lacking any consolation, combined with the air conditioning on that hot night in July, chilled the poor girl deeper than her bones. That wasn’t her concern. Xander made it his, and brought coffee for the both of them, but she was too restless to drink. All she could manage to do was continue to pace across that floor, all the while reminding herself of that one comforting outcome rapidly slipping away in this apprehensive air. “Your parents will live, Helen,” she assured herself. “They will live, dear God, let them live!” She unknowingly spoke in whispers, hands pulling her chaotic black curls of hair.

    The other troubled souls shared that emotion, but they couldn’t bring themselves to speak.

    12:38 am.

    A doctor entered. His face showed no good news.

    “Mr. Jaimeson?”

    Xander jumped up and almost knocked over his sister as he rushed to face the doctor. Helen didn’t seem to notice as she followed.

    It was the brother who spoke. “What’s the news, doc? They alright?”

    The doctor, numb and unimpressed, only shook his head. “I’m sorry.” There was no pause, no hesitation to find some means of consolation, only those two words.

    Helen stared at the doctor’s face for a long time, examining every line and curve for those telltale movements preceding a prankster’s laugh. Perhaps the corners of his mouth could turn upward in a smile, and his eyes close before he chuckles and admits his horrid lie? Yet it was not to be. That face could have been carved into a mountain, for it did not move. It was at some moment later that reality’s wrecking ball struck the girl from behind, weakening her knees. Xander had to support his sister as she, overcome by shock and sorrow, nearly fell to the floor. He held her tightly to him as she sobbed, trying helplessly to calm her as he fought back his own tears.

    It was the news they knew all along but never wanted to hear. The moment those two words found their ears they wanted nothing more than to give them back. If they had never heard those words, if they had lived their lives never knowing, would they have lived with a blessing or a curse? The two would never know. Those two words, “I’m sorry,” would be forever painfully carved into their memories.

    The doctor, the messenger in a white coat, was unable to comfort the anguished siblings. He had witnessed that scene too many times before: hysterical souls, distressed and inconsolable from their newfound pain. During his years of service, far too many attempts to heal the sick and wounded predictably and undramatically failed, leaving nothing more to do than play messenger to those lonely puppies. They howled for their lost loved ones not unlike abandoned dogs whine for their absent masters. It all meant absolutely nothing to him by now. He left without much of a second thought, a thin mask of poorly rehearsed concern over his face.

    The two remained, holding on tightly to each other as if they would fall and die without each other’s support. Helen likely would, her knees still weakened in her distress. They stood there for an untold while, immobilized by their loss. What else is there to do in such a moment?