Helena
"Mom?" Ali asked, her voice slow and uncharacteristically timid.
"Yes, sweetie?"
"Today, it…uh…I mean, it all was…it…" Ali answered, tripping over her words as she tried to speak. I gently placed my palm on her shoulder, a spot I knew wasn't hurt, providing solid contact to reassure her. I gave her a smile and a nod, silently telling her it was okay to continue.
And she did.
"It was all my fault," she finally said, the words leaving her mouth suddenly and quickly.
I'd been wondering on the drive back if something like this would come up. It wasn't surprising. After all, even an adult might feel guilty after surviving a bad crash almost unscathed—and Ali was still young enough to feel like everything in the world was either for her, or because of her.
I'd been hoping to distract her from the horror of what happened, and we'd spent much of the night sitting on Ali's bed as I read to her. We'd gone through a whole young adult novel, a damn good story about mermaids and heartbreak. It had helped us settle back into normalcy a bit, but no book was going to make her completely forget the events of the day.
"I'm sure it wasn't your fault, Hon. Accidents happen all the time, and we don't know they're going to happen before they do. That's why they're accidents. We can't control them," I said, wishing that I knew more about the accident in question. Ali had been understandably reluctant to share details before now, and I wasn't going to traumatize her by pushing.
"You're wrong," Ali said as she wrung her hands nervously. "The accident was all my fault."
I wanted to chalk her fears up to preteen exaggeration, to reassure her again and make everything right. But something about her voice, the haggard look in her eyes, the way she was slumping a little in bed. It all added up, and I wondered if maybe the situation wasn't as simple as I'd been hoping.
"What do you mean?" I asked finally, not sure of what else to say.
"It was me. All me. My fault," Ali said as she burst into tears. While she'd mostly been speaking slowly and quietly before, now her voice was an explosion of high-pitched and rapid words that I could barely follow. "I didn't listen to him. He told me to put on the boots but I didn't want to put on the boots! I wanted the pretty heels and so I argued and pouted and stuck my tongue out and said horrible things and—"
"It's okay," I said, pulling Ali closer to me and giving her a hug before she hyperventilated. "It's going to be okay. No matter what you said, you're still his daughter and I'm sure he still loves you."
I could feel Ali trembling under my arms, still crying as she breathed in ragged gasps. I ran my fingers through her hair as gently as I could, wishing I could magically make everything okay again.
"And you had no way of knowing what was going to happen when you said those things. That's part of life. We don't always think about what might happen in the future, and then it turns out we're wrong. All we can do is live with the consequences and keep going."
"But what if the consequences are that Dominick dies?" Ali asked, and her words ripped a new hole in my heart. I couldn't bear the idea that it wasn't impossible, that maybe he really could die.
"He won't, honey," I said, projecting a calmness I wished I felt. "He's a fighter. He's strong."
"But maybe he's not strong enough to come out of the coma," Ali said, the pain in her voice obvious.
"It's just an induced coma, sweetie. The doctors did it on purpose," I answered, trying to push away the images of Dominick's swollen brain. "And besides, the accident wasn't your fault. You couldn't have stopped it just by wearing boots."
"Not the boots," Ali said again before bursting into renewed tears, louder and harder than ever. "Oh, Mom, I was so stupid!" she wailed.
I whispered more reassurances and hugged her tighter, letting her continue the story at her own pace.
"Jason—he was behind us, and I wanted to wave at him but I couldn't. The safety belt wouldn't let me move. So I unstrapped it and turned around, and then I fell, and…and now Dominick is hurt real bad because of me," she said finally, her small body racked with sobs. "I told him he wasn't really my dad, and he saved me, and now he's in the hospital. Because of me."
"Oh, Honey…." I said at last, struggling to find the words. "But he did save you. Don't you see? No matter what happened between the two of you, he was still willing to risk his life to save you. He knows you didn't really mean it."
I held her for a long time after that, the two of us at a loss for words. I'd already desperately wanted Dominick to be okay, but now I had another reason for wanting it. Nothing could help Ali as much as seeing him in one piece, or hearing directly from him that he forgave her. I hoped tomorrow would be a brighter day, that we could get through this and begin both Dominick and Ali healing together.
Healing in more ways than one.
I held Ali in my arms until her sobs slowly faded. It took a long time, but eventually she nodded off with her head on my shoulders, finding at last the peace of sleep.