The moment the doors sealed shut, I pulled out my phone and made the first call that mattered outside those walls: Ethan’s mother. My ex-wife answered on the first ring with sleep still thick in her voice. “Garrison? What’s wrong?”
I told her everything. The midnight pain. The ER. Vance’s dismissal. The delayed diagnosis. The CT. The emergency surgery. I did not soften it, because false comfort helps no one when the person on the other end of the line deserves the truth. By the time I finished, she was crying.
“He could have died,” she said. “If you hadn’t gone there. If he’d listened to that doctor and gone home, he could have died.”
“I know.” My voice sounded unfamiliar to me, scraped raw by adrenaline and fury. “But he didn’t go home. He’s in surgery now. They got him in. He’s going to be okay.”
“I’m getting on the next flight.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’m getting on the next flight,” she repeated. “I’ll be there in six hours.”