The wait. The longest wait of my life. An anxious, terrifying moment, dragged on as the minutes, seconds, ticked by, desperate for an answer, for a response, for someone to walk through those doors and update me, to tell me something, anything. Please, just tell me anything to end my silent suffering. Please just give me a nod, a reassurance, a sign…

I found myself staring at the little screen of my old phone my daughter had teased me about. I watched as the little numbers blinked by, my leg bouncing anxiously, keeping in time as the seconds went by. Tick, tick, tick…

The hallways were empty by now, the lights dim as night set in. I’d began pacing them when patients and visitors had been actively bustling in and out of rooms, doctors passing with clipboards in hand, giving the kindest reassuring smiles they could manage.

There was a mural on the wall outside the children’s ward. Filled with bright colors, a beautiful rainbow with clouds and birds and butterflies. My daughter would’ve rolled her eyes at the cheerful mess. She was in this stage where anything bright and happy was just terrible, anything that seemed to be ‘too young’ or ‘too childish’ she claimed she hated. I never understood how a rainbow could be considered childish, but when she made up her mind it was hard to change.

I sat in those chairs as the hours, as the minutes ticked by, unable to find a distraction, my eyes travelling to that little screen. And I pleaded. I pleaded with whoever was listening, whatever might hear. I pleaded, begged, tempted to get down on my knees. Just please don’t take my little girl away. Please don’t take that little girl away from me. She’s all I have left.

And I pictured her smile. That soft little smile of a bright little girl, who didn’t get embarrassed when I talked to her friends and always asked for my advice. Who’d been my sidekick her whole life, just the two of us against the world…

A door creaked.

I looked up, spotting a doctor in a white lab coat as his eyes landed on me, and the wait was over.

And I knew…