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over in a few minutes.
    And please, Ashley… could you tell the others?”
    She agreed, and the call ended.
    But still Ashley remained on the ground, her chin on her chest as she stared at her knees and tried to accept what Peter had said. Hayley had drowned? She’d fallen into a pool without either Brooke or Peter seeing her? It seemed impossible. She glanced up, beyond the tree branches toward heaven.
    Please, God… please, let her live. She’s just a little girl…full of life and hope and laughter.
    As she prayed she included Brooke and Peter, because things between them were already strained. Brooke spent much of her time at their parents’ house, even when Peter was home. If something happened to Hayley, all of them would feel it.
    But for
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    Brooke and Peter, things would never be the same again. Every day of their lives together would forever be changed.
    If their marriage survived long enough to find out.
    Dr. John Baxter couldn’t concentrate on anything but Hayley’s vital signs.
    By seven o’clock that night they were all at the hospital except Erin and Sam, who had already returned to Texas. But other than Peter and Brooke, only John understood the gravity of the situation. He sat in the waiting room glancing every now and then at the others. Elizabeth beside him, Ashley next to her, and Luke at the far end of the sofa. Luke was set to leave Monday for New York, and already he’d called Reagan and explained the situation, that he might wait and travel after they knew more about Hayley’s condition.
    Across the room sat Kari and Ryan, the glow from their honeymoon dimmed in light of this tragedy. Brooke and Peter were in with Hayley. The children, Cole and Maddie and Jessie, were across town with Pastor Mark and his wife.
    None of them talked about what had happened or how long Hayley had been under or who was at fault. In fact they’d said very little, each of them too deep in prayer and fear to think of anything to say.
    John had called the pastor a few minutes earlier and given his friend an update.
    “It doesn’t look good.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. “She could’ve been under fifteen minutes or more.”
    “Oh, John.. 2’ The man didn’t say anything else. What could he say? He didn’t need a medical degree to understand how serious her condition must be if she had been underwater that long.
    “She still isn’t breathing on her own.” John’s throat was thick, and he waited until he had more control. His mind kept screaming the obvious. Hayley might survive. But depending on the
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    damage in her brain, she would almost certainly not live any kind of normal life. “Pray for her, Mark… for God’s will.” “I’m praying for a miracle.”
    “Right.” A knifepoint of guilt nicked John in the gut. “That’s what I mean. Pray for a miracle.”
    But now, ten minutes later, John wasn’t sure.
    If she lived.., if her brain didn’t swell in the coming days, and if somehow her mind figured out how to breathe again, exactly how much of Hayley would remain?
    He shuddered and remem bered a boy who had come into the hospital a few years earlier. The child—a two-year-old—had fallen into a muddy part of the river, where he was under twelve minutes before his desperate parents bumped into him and ran him to their car.
    Friends and relatives gathered around the hospital in the days afterwards, praying for the boy to survive, and sure enough he did. But he left the hospital two months later an entirely differ ent child. Unable to see or speak or move his limbs, the child was doomed to spend the rest of his life being tube fed, strapped to a bed or a wheelchair.
    And John had wondered.
    Wouldn’t the child have been better off in heaven? Why would God allow him to live, only to confine him to a paralyzed mind and body? to deny him the chance to run and play and live a normal life? The incident was so troubling, John had