Page 25 of Broken Dream

Time loses all meaning as I continue CPR.

No response, no twitch of tiny fingers or fluttering of eyelids.

A strange calm settles over me as if time has slowed down. I can hear the sirens now—distant but getting closer—and I feel strangely detached from it all.

I don’t stop the makeshift CPR until the sirens are on top of me, until firm hands are prying me away from my daughter’s lifeless body.

“Sir, we’ve got it,” a voice says, and then a jumble of words I can’t comprehend.

My knees buckle as they pull me back, and I crumple onto the cold asphalt, rain still pelting. Everything is spinning and blurring. The flashing lights glow, illuminating the faces of the medics working to save my daughter.

It’s cold. So cold.

“Julia…” My voice is a broken whisper. I don’t even realize I’m sobbing until I taste the salt on my lips. “Lindsay,” I croak out, my voice raw from screaming and crying. “Where’s Lindsay?”

“Sir? Was there another passenger?”

“Lindsay…”

“Sir, there wasn’t anyone else in the car with you.”

Nothing matters. Nothing matters anymore.

Lindsay.

She’s not here.

Thank God, she’s at school.

But Julia…

Julia…

Julia…

The world around me tilts and blurs, as if reality is trying to escape. The steady rhythm of sirens becomes a distant echo, the flashing lights seem muted, and the busy scene of paramedics working on my daughter fades into a nightmarish scene. I’m floating, disconnected from everything and everyone.

“I need… I need to call Lindsay…” My voice is barely a whisper. I struggle to sit up, but my strength seems to have abandoned me. I gasp for air.

A paramedic kneels beside me. She’s saying something to me, her words melding together into an indecipherable string of nonsense. She tries to steady me, gives me an oxygen mask, but all I can think about is Lindsay.

All I can think of is how I need to tell her.

In a daze, I fumble for my phone in my pocket, pulling it out with trembling hands. The screen is cracked. I cackle out a laugh.

It’s cracked.

My soul is cracked.

Everything is cracked.

Can’t feel my right hand.

I manage to unlock the phone.

Lindsay’s contact.

Her smiling face.