My name is Jason Whitmore, I’m sixty-six years old, and the phone call that shattered my world came at two o’clock on a Tuesday morning. I’d been deeply asleep when the ringing cut through the silence like a blade, and before I even saw the screen, my heart was already racing with that primal fear every parent knows—the terror that something has happened to your child. “Mr.
Whitmore, this is Regional Medical Center.
Your daughter Aubrey has been admitted for emergency surgery.”
The words didn’t process at first. I sat up in the darkness, my mind struggling to make sense of what the nurse was saying.
Aubrey. Surgery.
Emergency.
My daughter had called me just yesterday afternoon—she’d sounded tired, maybe a little off, but nothing that suggested this kind of crisis. “What happened? Is she okay?” My voice came out hoarse, strangled.
“She’s in surgery right now.
The doctor will explain everything when you arrive. I’m sorry, but I can’t give more details over the phone.”
I was dressed and in my car within five minutes, my hands trembling as I gripped the steering wheel.
The ninety-minute drive to the hospital felt like an eternity, every mile stretching out endlessly while my mind raced through worst-case scenarios. I tried calling my son-in-law Michael three times, but each call went straight to voicemail.
That bothered me more than it should have—shouldn’t he be at the hospital?
Shouldn’t someone have called him first? The emergency entrance was blazing with fluorescent light when I pulled into the parking lot at three forty-five. I ran through the automatic doors, the sterile antiseptic smell hitting me immediately and making my stomach turn.
At the registration desk, I gave Aubrey’s name with urgent desperation, and the woman directed me to the third-floor surgical waiting area with maddeningly slow efficiency.
When the elevator doors opened, I saw him immediately. Michael sat in the corner of the waiting room, elbows on his knees, head down—the picture of a worried husband.
But something felt wrong in a way I couldn’t articulate. “Michael.” I walked over quickly, and he looked up with red-rimmed eyes that held no tears.
We shook hands, which felt oddly formal given that my daughter was fighting for her life somewhere behind those surgical doors.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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