I was so lost in my fear that I barely made the turn for the hospital. I somehow managed it, though, although I chalked it up to being on autopilot. I wasn’t doing too well and I was sure it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that.

I couldn’t get over the fact that Shane had been crying. She never cried unless something really big was happening, so that had me pretty much scared shitless. I was still at a loss as to what could possibly have happened between my leaving her to go home and now, but my mind was more than willing to fill in an entire spectrum of awful things. I probably sat in the car, with it turned off and my hand on the door handle, for about five minutes after I arrived. Scenarios were playing out in my mind like an awful movie with far too big a special effects budget, and I couldn’t seem to find the strength to leave the car.

“This is insane,” I muttered, trying to jolt myself back into some semblance of reality. I needed to face my fears and go inside to see what the hell was going on, rather than driving myself crazy with worry in the parking lot. It was far easier thought than done, though. I was a nervous wreck, and even when I’d managed to get out of the car and lock it behind me, it took a few seconds to steady myself enough to walk.

I may as well have been a death row inmate on my way to the chair for the way I was feeling walking into the hospital. That same walk I’d taken for weeks now and thought nothing of seemed like a million years that evening. Every step I took made a thousand more images of Alice pass through my mind. Us as friends out at a club for the night, right after we’d started dating, her being a nursemaid for me after I got sick, how beautiful she looked at our wedding, the way her whole face lit up when she laughed…I loved everything about her. My entire life was wrapped up in her, and we’d shared every big event I could imagine. I knew something was very wrong, but I couldn’t make myself stop hoping that it was a fluke; that maybe Shane had misunderstood something.