Vanessa blinked back tears. She couldn’t break her calm—not now. But every word from Lily carved into her heart.
She thought of her own daughter, Sofia, who had just turned eight. What if Sofia were the one on the other end of the line?
“Lily,” Vanessa whispered, “you’re not alone. I’m here until the helpers arrive. Can you hear the sirens yet?”
“Yes… I hear them!” Relief surged in Lily’s voice.
Moments later, Vanessa heard men’s voices and hurried footsteps through the receiver. A paramedic took the phone.
“This is EMT Jackson. We’ve got the patients. One adult male with head trauma, one adult male with fractured ribs. Both alive.”
Vanessa exhaled slowly, her hands trembling now that the crisis had passed.
When Vanessa ended the call, she sat back, staring at her blank monitor for a long time. The room hummed with the usual bustle of phones ringing and operators talking, but inside her chest, everything was still.
The image of little Lily, holding her father’s hand, whispering for him to wake up, wouldn’t leave her.
She had answered thousands of calls. But this one… this one had reached past the professional distance she had always kept.
She needed to know what happened next.
