I pounded on the trunk again, until Harold’s license plate slid off, but I couldn’t get it open.

“Are you crying about the car?”

I could see the latch; I just couldn’t get it pried open, and whenever I tried to lift, the pain in my ribs made my vision cloud up, but I finally wrested the trunk open enough to reach my arm inside. I fumbled around until I found my dad’s phone. The screen was shattered.

I held the power button to turn it on, but beneath the branches of broken glass, the screen only glowed a cloudy gray. I pulled myself back to the driver’s-side door and slumped into Harold’s seat, my forehead on the steering wheel.

I knew the pictures were backed up, that nothing had really been lost. But it was his phone, you know? He’d held it, talked into it. Taken my picture with it.

I ran my thumb across the shattered glass and cried until I felt a hand on my shoulder. “My name’s Franklin. You’ve been in a car accident. I’m a firefighter. Try not to move. An ambulance is on its way. What’s your name?”

“Aza. I’m not hurt.”

“Just hang tight for me, Aza. Do you know what day it is?”

“It’s my dad’s phone,” I said. “This is his phone, and . . .”

“Is this his car? Are you worried he’ll be upset? Aza, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I can promise, your dad’s not mad at you. He’s relieved you’re okay.”

I felt like I was getting ripped apart from the inside, the supernova of my selves simultaneously exploding and collapsing. It hurt to cry, but I hadn’t cried in so long, and I didn’t really want to stop. “Where are you having pain?” he asked.

I pointed toward the right side of my rib cage. A woman approached, and they began a conversation about whether I’d need a backboard. I tried to say that I felt dizzy and then felt myself falling, even though there was really nowhere to fall.

—

I woke up staring at the ceiling of an ambulance, strapped to a backboard, a man holding an oxygen mask over my face, the sirens distant, my ears still ringing. Then falling again, down and down, and then on a hospital bed in a hallway, Mom over me, makeup dripping from her red eyes. “My baby, oh Lord. Baby, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I think I just cracked a rib or something. Dad’s phone is broken.”

“It’s okay. We have everything backed up. They called me and told me you were hurt but they didn’t tell me if you were . . .” she said, and then started crying. She sort of collapsed into Daisy, which is when I noticed Daisy was there, a red welt on her collarbone.

I turned away from them and looked up at the bright fluorescent light above my bed, feeling the hot tears on my face, and finally my mom said, “I can’t lose you, too.”

A woman came in and took me away to get a CT scan, and I was sort of relieved to be away from both my mom and Daisy for a while, not to feel the swirl of fear and guilt over being such a failure as a daughter and a friend.

“Car accident?” the woman asked as she pushed me past the word kindness painted in calligraphy on the wall.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Those seat belts will hurt ya while saving your life,” she said.

“Yeah. Am I gonna need antibiotics?”

“I’m not your doctor. She’ll be in after we get the test.”

They put something in my IV that made me feel like I was pissing my pants, then ran me through the cylinder of the CT machine, and eventually returned me to the shivering nerves of my mother. I couldn’t shake the crack in her voice when she said she couldn’t lose me, too. I felt her nerves as she paced around the room, texting with my aunt and uncle in Texas, pressing long breaths through pursed lips, dabbing at her eye makeup with a tissue.

Daisy didn’t say much, for once. “It’s okay if you want to go home,” I said to her at one point.

“Do you want me to go home?” she asked.

“Up to you,” I said. “Seriously.”

“I’ll stay,” she answered, and sat quietly, her eyes glancing from me to my mom and back again.

NINETEEN

“GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS,” announced a woman in navy-blue scrubs upon entering the room. “Bad news, you have a lacerated liver. Good news, it’s a mild laceration. We’ll watch you closely for a couple days, so we can make sure your bleeding doesn’t increase, and you’ll be sore for several weeks, but I’m ordering you pain medication now so you’ll be comfortable. Questions.”

“She’s going to be okay?” my mom asked.

“Yes. If the bleeding worsens, surgery will be necessary, but based on the radiologist’s report, I think that’s very unlikely. As liver lacerations go, this is about as good as they get. Your daughter is really quite lucky, in the scheme of things.”

“She’s going to be okay,” my mom said again.

“As I said, we’ll keep a close eye on her for a couple days, and then she’ll have about a week of bed rest. Within six or so weeks, she should be her old self.”

My mother dissolved into tears of gratitude as I turned over that phrase, her old self. “Do I need antibiotics?” I asked.

“You shouldn’t. If we had to do surgery, you would, but as of now, no.” A shiver of relief rolled through me. No antibiotics. No increased risk of C. diff. Just needed to get the hell out of here, then.

The doctor asked me about my medications, and I told her. She made some notes in the chart and then said, “Someone will be by shortly to take you upstairs, and we’ll get you something for the pain before that.”

“Wait,” I said. “What do you mean upstairs?”