It was a sailboat coming back into the bay.

My wife had asked me to stop on a way home, and so we pulled into the small scenic area on

the cliffside road to watch the boats.

She would often sketch them, and she did so then on a notepad.

I remember eventually looking away from the sailboat to instead admire her,

and she, deep in a drawings, didn't see the truck.

I saw it only in a flash over a shoulder.

I know it hits her and I must have been thrown under the cliffside. That was the last

thing I remember. The sailboat and then I was here.

The doctor nodded finally looking up from his notes.

He clicked his pen absentmindedly for a while.

I shifted my weight in the stiff hallway chair and moved the ice back from the bruise

on my head to those on my lower back.

I had only suffered a mild concussion and miraculously no broken bones.

In the time I'd been unconscious and examined, my wife had been taken into emergency surgery.

It was for this reason my gaze again shifted from the doctor to the surgery ward doors

behind him. He gave his notes one last look and finally

seeming satisfied returned his pen to his coat pocket and followed my gaze.

He answered before I asked and told me my wife was still in critical condition, but they

would let me know as soon as there was a change.

The same answer the nurses had given me. It was already dark outside and I sat there

worrying for hours questioning the nurses and doctors until they began to avoid me.

...