He hit us on the back left. Right where Mia was sitting.
I don’t remember the sound. People always ask about the sound and I can’t tell them, because my brain took it and hid it somewhere I can’t reach. I remember the world spinning. I remember the airbag. I remember tasting blood and thinking, strangely, calmly, about whether I’d left the oven on.
And then I remember the silence. That’s the part that comes back to me at night. After all that noise, the terrible quiet, and my own voice screaming her name into it.
“Mia? Mia! Baby, answer me. Mia, please—”
Nothing.
I walked away from that car with bruises. A cut on my forehead that needed four stitches. A sprained wrist. That’s all. I walked away.
Mia woke up two days later in a hospital bed, and she couldn’t feel her legs.
