We met at the Melitta Café on South Street the following day. I arrived earlier that he did—later I would learn that George, in a typically Arab way, was always running late—and waited at a table at the end of the shop, tucked away in a corner. A waitress brought me a small cappuccino, and I told her I was expecting someone.

“I’ll come back when your friend gets here then,” she said cheerily.

Fifteen minutes later she returned, followed by George.

“Yes,” he said to the waitress, not taking his eyes off me, “she’s the one I’ve been looking for.”

After the accident, I started reading Frida Kahlo’s work. About when she was a young woman, riding the trolley when it was involved in a horrible accident. A rod from the trolley broke loose and impaled her abdomen.

This is not what happened to me. My accident was not nearly so dramatic. But I will never forget my mother’s face when the doctor told us quietly, “The uterus was ruptured. We managed to save most of it, but it is also damaged internally.”

A hysterosalpingogram, performed a few days later, confirmed the worst: the doctor pushed a dark ink up through my cervix and into my uterus, while Mama and I watched it on the X-Ray monitor. The ink crept up through my cervix, but then did not fill out the shape of my uterus, pooling instead into several disparate and jagged pockets. “Those are bands of scar tissue,” the doctor explained. “They formed in response to the trauma.”

“Can you remove them?” my mother asked, her voice surprisingly calm. I twisted my head around to peer up at her. She was watching the monitor with wide eyes, not blinking.

“We could, but it’s very likely that they will grow back.”

“What about children?” Mama asked. This time, her voice sounded terrified.

“I doubt she would be able to carry a fetus to full-term,” the doctor said directly. I almost appreciated his bluntness. “I don’t even think an embryo would be able to implant itself in the uterine wall, because of the scar tissue that is in the way and which has probably compromised the quality of the lining.”

When they had wheeled me back into my room, and the nurse was checking my IV, Mama excused herself and stepped into the small, adjoining bathroom. She did not come out for several minutes and, when she did, her eyes were raw and red.

I started to say something, to comfort her, to tell her it was OK and that I was not upset by what the doctor had said, but just then George walked in, carrying flowers.

“Hi, ameera,” he said, with a broad smile. He kissed my mother’s cheek and then came over, bent down and kissed mine. “Are they taking care of you the way they should be?” he asked, professionally glancing over the chart at the foot of my bed.

“I think the nurse wanted that,” Mama said, snatching the chart from his hands and heading toward the door. “I’ll bring it to her.”