Do You Have a Daughter? Book Excerpt 2

 Ring….. Ring…. Ring…..

“Hello,” I say, picking up my work phone, with my usual optimistic tone.

“Do you have a daughter?” a woman responds, ominously.

            “Well yes, I have two,”  I reply.  My mind flies to my daughter, Annsley, in North Pole, Alaska and my nine-month-old granddaughter Isabelle.  Thinking of my youngest daughter, Kaitlyn, who moved to Colorado last year, I feel my heart beating faster.  It’s been a couple days since I’ve talked to either of them.  They live states away and are living their own lives.

            “Is this Alison?  Do you have a daughter, Kaitlyn?”  Says the voice.

“Yes!  What is this about?”  My nerves begin to flutter.  A tsunami of butterflies swirl in my belly.

“When is your daughter’s birthday?”  The voice asks.

    “July twenty-sixth, nineteen eighty-nine,” I reply anxiously.  My palms begin to sweat as a dreadful feeling swells in my gut.

            “I’m calling from Denver Health Hospital; let me connect you to the nurses’ station.”
            “Let me speak to my daughter!”  I say, pleadingly. “Wait!”  

There is a ‘click’ and then elevator music.  My head spins, the room becomes dark, like tunnel vision.  Why is the hospital calling and not Kaitlyn?  

            It’s nine in the morning and raining.  Portland is notorious for rain.  My eyes skim across the fluorescent gray sky searching for God.  I sit in limbo listening to the awful music on the phone, waiting warily.  I think about Kaitlyn’s excitement in moving up to Leadville to work for Outward Bound.  Remembering the ice ax she bought a couple weeks prior, I wonder if there had been some kind of mountaineering accident.  “Dear God,” I pray.  “Please tell me she is okay.”  Tears gather in the bottom of my lids and pour down my cheeks.  Why is she in Denver?  She lives in Boulder.  I am going crazy here.”  I want to scream, but take a deep breath and scramble for my cell phone to call my husband.

            Still on the work phone, I hear a click and “surgical ICU, this is Candice.  How can I help you?”  Another woman picks up the phone.

            “This is Alison Kirk, Kaitlyn Kirk’s mother; I received a phone call from you,”  I say sharply.  “Can I speak to Kaitlyn?”  I am in full mama bear mode and need to hear my daughter’s voice.  My body shakes.

            “Let me connect you to one of Kaitlyn’s Doctor’s.”  The woman says in a surprisingly calm demeanor.
            I panic and try to tell Wayne about half of what I know when a man’s voice comes on my work phone and says “hello, this is Doctor Radley, Kaitlyn’s neurosurgeon.”  

Now I can’t breathe.  Tears overflow down my face.  This cannot be happening.

“Your daughter was in an accident.”  Dr. Radley continues.  “She was hit by an SUV and has suffered a head injury.  She is in stable condition, with a good heart rate, but you should get here as quickly as you can.”

Reality comes to a screeching halt.

I don’t hear much more, I just have to get to Wayne and fly to Kaitlyn.  Scurrying for my purse and keys, I feel nerves jolting my body into action.  I feel so helpless, and everything blurs, but I zoom to Wayne’s office in hysteria.  He is already on the phone with Kaitlyn’s boyfriend, David.  With the help of a couple friends, we make plans to fly to Denver and be at Kaitlyn’s side tonight.