When the Blood Ran Cold

My mother-in-law treated me like her own daughter. We were out shopping together when a truck barreled into us.

In that split second, she threw herself over me and took the brunt of the impact.

The trauma team had already started emergency transfusions, but they urgently needed blood matched to her rare antibodies. I called my husband ninety-nine times, begging him to stop interfering with the shipment. For more than two hours, doctors kept coming out to tell me they were running out of time. He never came.

When the red light above the operating room finally switched off, my heart froze.