I crossed the room in two steps and gathered her into me. She clung with all her strength, shaking hard, pressing her face into my shoulder like she was trying to disappear inside me. She smelled like sweat and hospital soap. I held her so tightly my arms hurt.
“I’m here,” I whispered. “I’m here, baby.”
She cried in frightened, broken sobs, not from pain but from terror. The kind of crying that tells you a child has already spent too long waiting for rescue. I just held her until the worst of it passed.
When she finally pulled back enough for me to see her face, I ran my hands over her arms, her shoulders, her hair.
“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head quickly. “I was thirsty,” she whispered. “And it was hot.”
I swallowed the sound rising in my throat. “I know.”
Her fingers tightened on my sleeve. “I waited,” she said. “I thought they were coming back.”
The nurse stepped forward then and gave me the rest in careful, precise pieces. A stranger in a public lot had seen Ellie crying and hitting the window. Security was called. Then 911. EMS got her out and brought her in overheated, frightened, dehydrated, but conscious.
“How long was she in there?” I asked.