Hospitals are strange places when you are a child.
Everything is too bright.
Too white.
Too quiet.
The smell was the first thing I noticed. It wasn't the smell of food or soap like at home. It was sharp and cold, like the air itself was made of medicine.
I sat on a hard plastic chair outside the emergency room and waited.
Above the door was a red light.
As long as the red light stayed on, the doctors were still inside with my mommy.
So I kept watching it.
Every second felt like an hour.
People walked past me constantly. Nurses in blue uniforms. Doctors with serious faces. Sometimes they glanced at me with pity. Sometimes they didn't look at me at all.
To them, I was just another child in a hallway.
But to me, that hallway was the whole world.
My mommy was behind that door.
And I couldn't reach her.
I pulled my knees close to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.
My mommy always told me I was a strong girl.
So I tried to be strong.
But strength is difficult when you are only five years old.
Eventually the door opened.
A nurse stepped out.
I jumped to my feet immediately.
"Where is my mommy?" I asked.
The nurse crouched down in front of me.
"She's not dead," she said gently.
The word dead sounded heavy, even though I didn't fully understand it.
"She's just sleeping."
Sleeping.
That word made sense to me.
Sleeping meant you woke up later.
So I asked the question that mattered most.
"When will she wake up?"
The nurse hesitated.
She looked back at the door for a moment.
Then she said three words that made my stomach twist.
"We don't know."
Behind her, the man who had been driving the car was still standing there.
He had been there the whole time.
He kept saying he was sorry.
Again and again.
"I didn't see her," he told the doctors. "It happened so fast."
He said he would pay the hospital bills.
But money didn't mean anything to me.
Money couldn't wake my mommy up.
After some time, a doctor came to talk to me.
He asked questions.
"Where is your father?"
I shook my head.
"I don't know."
"What is his name?"
I didn't know that either.
My mother had never allowed me to ask about him.
Whenever I tried, she would say the same thing.
"He is not a good person."
And then she would change the subject.
So the doctor stopped asking questions.
And I went back to waiting.
The red light above the door stayed on for a very long time.
When it finally turned off, they moved my mommy to another room.
But they still didn't let me see her.
"She needs to rest," the nurse said.
"How long?" I asked.
She didn't answer.
The hours passed slowly.
I fell asleep on the hospital chair at some point.
When I woke up again, the hallway looked different.
The lights were dimmer.
The nurse told me it was nighttime.
I stayed there the next day too.
And the day after that.
Three days.
Three long days of waiting.
I didn't eat much.
I didn't sleep much.
I just watched the doors and hoped my mommy would come out.
But she never did.
On the third night, one of the nurses came to speak with me again.
"You can't stay here anymore," she said.
"But my mommy is here," I replied.
"You've already been here three nights."
Three nights.
But my mommy had been there longer.
How could I leave her?
"I'll be quiet," I promised.
"I won't move."
The nurse shook her head.
"You need to go home."
Home.
The word felt strange now.
Home was wherever my mommy was.
But the nurse still led me outside.
The city was dark when I stepped onto the street.
Cars moved quickly past me.
People walked by without noticing the small girl standing alone.
I didn't know which direction our apartment was.
But somehow my feet started moving.
I walked.
And walked.
And walked.
The buildings looked different at night.
The streetlights made everything glow yellow.
My legs began to hurt.
My knees scraped against the pavement when I tripped.
But eventually I found our building.
I don't know how.
Maybe my feet remembered the way even when my mind didn't.
When I opened the apartment door, everything looked exactly the same.
The table.
The chairs.
The little kitchen.
But my mommy wasn't there.
The cupcakes were still on the table.
My birthday cupcakes.
They were dry now.
I stared at them for a long time before cleaning the apartment.
My mommy liked things tidy.
So I washed the plates.
I wiped the table.
I folded the blankets carefully.
Maybe when she came home, she would see I had been good.
Maybe she would smile.
But while I was cleaning, I realized something terrible.
I didn't know how to get back to the hospital.
I couldn't remember the street name.
I couldn't remember the building.
All I knew was that my mommy was there.
Sleeping.
And if I didn't see her again soon, I knew I would start crying.
I didn't want to cry anymore.
So the next morning, I decided to find her.
I stepped outside and followed the biggest road I could see.
Cars rushed past.
People hurried along the sidewalks.
No one noticed the small girl walking alone.
My thoughts felt heavy inside my head.
What if my mommy never woke up?
What if she was lonely?
Maybe if something happened to me too…
I could go where she was.
I wasn't looking where I was walking anymore.
My feet moved off the sidewalk.
A horn exploded in the air.
Someone shouted.
Then something slammed into me.
The world spun.
And everything went dark.