Annie sighed and looked at Nick, then at Brian, then down at her feet and back up at Brian. “He was on flight 5191.”

Both men gasped and Brian brought a hand up over his mouth. “Oh my God. Wow. Annie.....I’m so sorry.” Overcome with emotion, he began pacing, then sat down in a nearby chair. “I took that flight from Lexington to Atlanta so many times, Annie.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“I sang at the memorial service.”

“I know,” Annie sighed. “I was there. We met. Briefly. I didn’t care. Actually, I was pretty angry that you there. I never imagined that the day I met one of my teen idols would have been one of the worst days or my life.” Brian and Nick were silent, neither of them able to look her in the eye. “We met in the William T. Young library. I was an eighteen year old freshman in college and he was in his second year of medical school. We literally ran into each other in the Biology books. He asked me to marry him two years later. ”

Nick looked up at her and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Well, go on.”

She smiled a little. “He started his OB/GYN residency two years later, and the next summer, we got married, just before I started medical school myself. We had three amazing years together. Three years. That’s it. I started my fourth year of medical school and he became chief resident of his department in July of 2006. On August 27th, he was supposed to fly from Lexington to Atlanta for a week-long conference. I was scheduled for my clinical rotation in the surgical ICU and I was working night shift. He called to tell me he was getting ready to board the plane, and twenty minutes later, at about 6:10 AM, they called a code green. A code green at the University of Kentucky Medical Center means there has been a mass casualty event. Since UK is a level one trauma center, all survivors were to be brought there. They mobilized almost everyone to the emergency department. Even though my shift was supposed to end in less than an hour, my precepting physician took me with him, saying it would be a good learning experience for me. It wasn’t until twenty minutes later that I learned that....” She clamped a hand over her mouth and let out a loud sob as tears started trickling down her cheeks. “That it was a plane crash at Bluegrass Airport. The first thing I did was pull my cell phone out of my pocket and try to call Andrew. Of course, he didn’t answer.”

Brian got up from where he was seated and knelt down in front of her. He brushed a tear away from her cheek with the pad of his thumb and placed both hands on her knees. “I remember screaming out to whoever would listen, ‘What was the flight number? Where was it headed? When are they bringing the survivors?!!.’ There was this nurse-- a motherly figure. Jane. Her name was Jane. She took me into a waiting room and managed to calm me down enough to get out of me that my husband was supposed to be flying to Atlanta that morning. She left me for a few minutes to go find out the information I needed and came back with tears in her eyes. ‘Flight 5191,’ she sighed. ‘To Atlanta. I’m so sorry, sweetie’.” Annie took in a shaky breath and continued. “I didn’t break down. Not yet. I just nodded and went back out into the ER to wait for survivors. I waited for my Andrew. I wanted to be the first face he saw when they wheeled him in. It didn’t even occur to me that....” She buried her face in her hands and cried. Across the room, Nick wiped away a tear of his own.

“Annie...” Brian brushed a strand of hair away from her face and she looked down at him, her lip quivering. “You don’t have to keep going. We can just go upstairs. Take a nap...whatever.”

“No,” she said firmly. “This is the first time I’ve ever...... I’ve played it over and over and over again in my head, but this is the first time I’ve ever said it out loud. I want....I NEED to keep going.”

“Then, by all means, please go on. I want to hear it.”

“We all waited. I ended up just standing there and watching the flurry of activity while they prepared for an influx of patients. They cleared out all the trauma rooms and got crash carts ready. It was all hands on deck, everyone working together. Then, they brought in the first survivor. A pilot. It was bad. They got to work on him immediately and ended up rushing to surgery. Then, we waited some more. As the minutes ticked by, an eerie silence fell over the entire place. You could have heard a pin drop. Never before, and never again, will you ever hear that ER so quiet. Then, the call came in from an emergency worker at the airport. The director of the emergency department told everyone to go back from where they came from, or in my case, to go home if their shifts were over. There were no more survivors. I remember falling to my knees on the cold linoleum and screaming out his name, then everything went black.” Brian looked up at her with tears streaming down his face. She stared straight past him, trance-like. “I think it was my brother who ended up picking me up and taking me back to his place. I remember begging him not to take me home. I didn’t want any reminders of Andrew. Then, I remember him pouring me a shot of tequila. Like I said before, I was drunk for a month. I forced myself to sober up for his funeral and a couple memorial services, but they’re still all a blur. I remember screaming at God that first night-- asking him why he would do that to me. How selfish is that? The loved ones of 49 other people were grieving, and all I could think of was myself.”

“I don’t think that’s selfish,” Nick muttered quietly.

“Then, I pretended He didn’t exist for the next two and a half years. One day, I realized that I was just going through the motions. I didn’t really see that life was worth living anymore, so in desperation, I picked up my Bible. The pages fell open to Psalm 46:10. ‘Be still, and know that I am God’.”

“That’s a powerful verse,” Brian breathed.

“Yeah. So, I went to church the next Sunday, and Tim’s wife heard me singing during the benediction and asked if I’d like to join the choir. The rest is history, I guess.”

Brian smiled at her weakly. “Sounds like an amazing song to me.” Annie blushed and Nick nodded vigorously. “I’m not asking you to write it. I know it’s personal. Deeply personal. I just figured I should let you know that you’ve definitely got inspiration for songwriting. That’s where this all started, after all.” He paused and gulped. “Is it okay if I ask you just one thing? If it’s too much, you don’t have to tell me, but...”

“What, Brian?”

“You named your son after a man who wasn’t his father?”