We burst through the emergency room doors fifteen minutes later. As we walked inside, Jen’s head was down, tears in her eyes. I walked next to her, my entire body shaking so hard, it hurt. Vanessa led the way, talking to the attendants at the front desk, finding a spot for Jen to sit down and wait, and speaking to the young doctor who came out to greet us.

“You can come with me,” the doctor said to me.

Vanessa turned to look back at her daughter, who was sitting alone shivering in the waiting room.

“Do you want me to come too?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I’ll be okay,” I said, turning to follow the doctor. “Thank you, Ness.”

It was all too much. It all seemed to be happening in slow motion, painfully reminiscent of the day when I’d been called in after the accident. I’d been in this exact position before—not the same hospital or the same doctor, but I’d been here. I’d been here before, once, which was one time too many. I didn’t know if I could do it again.

Vanessa and Jen stayed back in the waiting room, and I followed the doctor down a long, sterile hall. She was walking quickly, with purpose, and I struggled to keep up, my legs feeling like jelly beneath me.

She stopped halfway down the hall and turned to look at me.

“Mrs. Wileson?” she said, staring at me. “Are you all right?”

She frowned when I didn’t respond and then guided me backward toward a chair and helping me down into it. “Hey, can you do me a favor and grab me a bottle of water?” she asked a nurse walking by, and the woman nodded. The doctor leaned forward and put a hand on my shoulder.

I blinked and looked up at her. I wanted to scream that of course I wasn’t all right. I was scared and tired and guilty, but I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, all right.

I didn’t say any of that, of course, and just shook my head.

“Last time…” was all I managed to get out.

She stepped in front of me and looked into my face, realization dawning on her own. She spoke slowly, with what felt like trained patience, and placed a hand on my arm.

“Mrs. Wileson, you do know that your husband is fine, right? That he’s absolutely okay?”

“What?” I said, my mind reeling back to the phone call in the back of Vanessa’s car, the conversation she’d had with the nurses in the ER. None of the words they’d said had really sunken in after hospital, and I blinked, watching the woman in front of me.