Chapter 1

The following story is fiction. 

Her dog Hardy looked at her like, "Are you kidding me? Another one?" It was March 17th and instead of drinking green beer and eating bangers & mash along with the rest of her friends she stayed home watching movies. Being pregnant and normally a borderline binge drinking alcoholic she didn't think that St. Patrick's Day was the best holiday for her to be out. Instead she hit Red Box and opened a bottle of Pellegrino.

She was about two movies in when her cel phone vibrated, then rang, then vibrated. It was in the other room so she missed the call. "Who the hell's calling me at 11:30?" she wondered. She grabbed her phone and unlocked it. The caller ID read "Unknown Number." The only people she knew with that caller ID were cops. Sometimes they ask her for ticket hookups so it's not unusual for them to call, but not this late at night. She waited a couple of seconds and her BlackBerry vibrated again. Unknown had left a message.

She hit "1" and the phone speed dialed her voicemail. "My name is Beth. I'm a nurse at UMC in the emergency room. I'm looking for Jill. Please give me a call at 303.2211.Thanks." 

Jill got a sick feeling in her stomach. This can't be good. Part of her was relieved she was the one getting this call and not her parents or one of her friends. It meant she was still safe. Selfish, yes. But safe.

She grabbed her BlackBerry and slowly dialed the numbers. "UMC Emergency." 

"I'm calling for Beth."

"Hold please." 

A warm voice spoke almost inaudibly, "Hello."

"This is Jill Hardison. You left a voicemail on my phone."

"Yes. Uhm, do you know a man named Jonathan Hennessy?" Oh god. Not Jon.

"What's happened. Is he ok?" The nurse explained to Jill that Jon was in an accident. The initial report she got from the paramedic was that the driver he was riding with was drunk and they hit another car speeding thru an intersection. The driver of the other car was killed instantly. Jon was in ICU floating in and out of consciousness. Right now he was in a medically induced coma until the swelling in his brain went down.

"How did you get my number?" Jill asked.

"In the ambulance he kept calling out your name. He made the paramedic write down your number. We were hoping that you could give us some of his personal information. Are you his girlfriend?"

"No. I'm... I'm his friend." Going into their complicated relationship with the nurse who just said he's on the verge of being a vegetable didn't seem particularly appropriate.

"Well right now you're the only person we know of who knows him."

Flashes of every car accident she'd ever seen on TV or in the movies went thru her head. "Wait, who was driving the car? Was it Jeff? Where is he? Is he ok?"

"She. It was a she," said the nurse. "She died on the scene too. Her name was Katherine. Do you know her?"

"I don't really know her but I think I know who she is. Kate. He was dating her. She was a cocktail waitress at the sportsbook at Red Rock. I don't know her last name."

Over the next couple of minutes the nurse went thru some other details of Jon's condition. Jill didn't remember much of what she said. Just a cloud of words. She tried to concentrate on them but all she could think of was Jon laying in a hospital bed alone with tubes going into of his body. She had watched a rerun of A Walk To Remember on WGN the other night and wondered if in his propofolic state he was hoping she would come and stay by his bedside. Goddamn Nicholas Sparks. There is no love like in your books & movies. Pure fiction. You should be arrested for giving thousands of girls and women false hope.

The nurse eventually asked Jill to come down to the ER the next morning and said it might be a good idea if she could get a hold of his family. He was in stable condition but was not out of the woods yet. Jill was the only point of contact they had so until she could get a hold of them, she was all he had. It's funny. For so many years that's all she wanted. Now the responsibility seemed overwhelming.

Jill hung up with the nurse and stood there staring at her dog. In fifteen short minutes her life had changed. In one split second three people's lives were destroyed. It was a lot to take in. Why did Jon call out her name? It's been months since she'd talked to him and that conversation was less than cordial. She stopped herself from rehashing their past and got to work.

She didn't know Jon's family's numbers. She knew his parents lived in Florida and thought his brother lived in Southern California. She grabbed her Mac Air and logged onto Facebook. She knew his dad and brother were both friends on his page. It's amazing the info you can get off of Facebook. She was hoping for a phone number or email address on their pages but no such luck. She was going to send them a private message but didn't think hearing that your son or brother was in a life threatening car accident was the kind of message you wanted to get on Facebook. So she called the only person she could think of who might have their phone numbers. His ex-wife.