Watching Kathleen lying in a hospital bed was probably the worst thing I had ever experienced in my entire life. There was something so helpless, so excruciatingly painful about it. Just knowing she was there, barely conscious, unable to do anything on her own except breathe, left me with a deep ache in my chest. Every time I looked at her pale skin, the bandages wrapped around her abdomen, the subtle rise and fall of her chest, I felt the sharp edge of guilt sink a little deeper into my ribs.
“Could you please tell us who you are again?” Abigail, Kathleen’s mother, asked, her voice polite but clipped.
I turned away from the door, my hand still resting on the cold metal handle, and faced her parents again. Abigail and Thomas Denver looked like the picture of control and propriety, but th
