My phone rang while I was heading home. It was my six-year-old daughter, sobbing, saying she was in pain everywhere and terrified. I asked where her dad was. She said he was there—suffering too, helpless. I drove faster than I ever had, my heart pounding with fear. What I walked into moments later shattered every expectation I had.

Sophie’s recovery looked faster on paper. The doctors said children bounced back well. But children remembered differently.

She stopped sleeping through the night. Any unfamiliar sound—the heater kicking on, a truck passing outside—made her cry out. She refused to close her bedroom door. If I stepped away for even a minute, she followed me, small fingers clutching the back of my shirt.

One afternoon, while I was folding laundry, she looked up at me and asked, very quietly,
“Mommy… if I didn’t call you, would Daddy be gone?”

The question shattered something inside me.

I knelt and held her, unable to lie. “Yes,” I said softly. “But you did call. You were very brave.”

Continue reading…