This is how I remember it now. Parts have gotten clearer with time, and Heather helped fill in some details. I keep replaying sections of it in my head.

Jason and I were sitting on the grass in our side yard, working on his Tesla presentation for “The Festival of the Famous” at his school, and the two girls from across the street, Bella, five, and Ava, almost four, kept calling to us through a partly open second floor window above the three-car garage that makes up the entire lower level of their three-story home.

“Hi, Jason! Hi, Jason! Hi, Jason!” We answered back a few times and then ignored them. They eventually stopped calling.

Then a sound made me turn. I saw a flash of color and heard another, heavier sound—like a bundle of books wrapped in a wet piece of cloth, smacking against the pavement. The bottom of the screen over one of the third-floor windows stood slightly ajar.

There were two cars parked in their driveway. The minivan blocked my view of the area below the window.

I howled, “Bella!” up at the house. “What fell!?”

“It’s Ava!”

I got up and ran, barefoot, across the street and around the side of the van. There she was, lying face down with her arms in front of her in a little red outfit. She was moving a little. There was blood all over her face and on driveway. I put my hand on her back and told her to keep still. She began to cry. I went to the front door and beat on it and rang the doorbell with my fists. Jorge, her dad, came out.

He went to Ava and held her, talking to her.

“Don’t move her,” I said.

Bella had come down with him. She told me Ava had been standing in the window, that she had accidentally pushed her.

Jorge told Bella to go get some towels.

A long flight of wooden stairs leads up to the living area of the house. Veronica, the mom, stood on the stairs. She asked what happened, and I told her Ava had fallen from the window.

“Is my baby alive?” she asked. “Is my baby alive?”

“Yes,” I said.

Bella handed me some paper towels on the stairs, and I took them to Jorge. Ava had rolled over onto her back. She was crying loudly. Jorge asked for more towels. I headed back up and grabbed the hand towel from the wall of the bathroom at the top of the stairs and found another beneath the sink. I took them down. Bella brought more paper towels. Ava was sobbing. Jorge tried to hold her still.

I headed back upstairs. Veronica was on the phone.

“Do you want me to talk to them?” I asked. I told her I didn’t know the address. She said she would do it.

“My baby has fallen,” she said into the phone. “My little girl has fallen out of the window.” She gave them all of the information, and we went downstairs.

Heather was there. (Zach was up taking his nap.) She had brought a bath towel from our laundry room.

When we got out front, Jorge asked Veronica to hold Ava’s legs still. The garden hose hung on the wall next to Jorge. He and Heather washed Ava’s face and gave her water. She quieted. Jorge kept talking to her, trying to keep her awake.

She grew sleepy and still. She mumbled her words.

“Hold me, daddy,” she said.

“I’m holding you, Ava,” he said. “I’ll never stop holding you.”

People had begun to gather. There was talk of there being some kind of lock on the window, that Bella must have undone it. Heather took Bella over to our house and came back.

Time went by. We heard a siren. Then it faded.

Veronica asked about Bella. Heather told her that Jason was watching her up in our playroom. She gave Veronica a hug and told her Ava would be all right.

We heard another siren. It seemed to be getting closer. I ran up the sidewalk to the intersection. I didn’t know which direction the ambulance would come from. I waited. The siren seemed to stop getting closer. Then it fell silent.

Our neighbors, Eric and Lei, stopped on their way in and rolled down the window. Their son had called them and told them what happened. Eric told me they had seen a paramedic down by the park below our development. He said he would circle back to them.

Another neighbor stopped and asked what was wrong. I told her.

“Is she all right?” she asked.

I shook my head. She headed down.

Other neighbors drove by, waving. I waved back weakly.

Eric and Lei came back around. They said they had called 911, and the dispatcher had told them that the ambulance they had seen was on another call, but ours was on its way, and they knew exactly where to go.

When I finally heard another siren, it came from far away, from the direction of Lynnwood proper. We live outside of city limits. It took a long, long time for it to make it all the way out to us and up our hill.

The ambulance turned the corner, and I waved to them to follow me down. They parked in front of the driveway, and the paramedics climbed out. They grabbed their equipment and went to work.

A sheriff’s deputy arrived and observed the scene. I spoke with him briefly, told him what had happened.

The paramedics strapped Ava to a man-sized board and took her away on a stretcher. Veronica went with them in the ambulance. She rode up front. Jorge followed them in the minivan. We said we would watch Bella.

I asked the deputy if we could clean up the driveway, and he said it was all right. I hosed away the blood, and Eric helped me dispose of the towels, latex gloves, and other debris in the can in his garage.

They were taking Ava to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. The deputy said that, if it were “really bad,” they would have transported her by helicopter. “Harborview has the best trauma center in the state,” he said.

More police arrived. They asked about the window. We told them it was to Bella’s room. They asked if the bed was up against the window, and we said we didn’t think so. They found a way into the house and opened the front door.

Jorge pulled up in the minivan. The front tire scraped against the curb.

He got out and said, “Aren’t you supposed to ask before going into someone’s house?”

“We tried to ask,” said one officer, “but there was no one here.”

Jorge accompanied the police inside.

The deputy asked about Bella, and I told him that we had her. He asked Jorge if he could go in and talk with her. Heather led the way. “Bear in mind,” I told him, “she thinks that she pushed her sister out of the window.”

Shortly after, two other officers followed us inside.

They went upstairs to the playroom, where Bella and Jason were watching a movie. Bella told the police what had happened.

Before they left, the deputy told me that they saw “no evidence of foul play.”

Eric convinced Jorge to let him drive him in his van to the hospital. Jorge insisted on bringing Bella. Heather offered to follow Eric down to Harborview and drive him back.

When Heather got back from the hospital, she had Eric and Bella with her. Bella went to stay with our other neighbors, Jeni and Sam, who were having a party that evening with a bunch of kids over. Heather took Bella’s pink booster seat out of our Santa Fe and gave it to Jeni.

That evening, we loaded up the boys and went to buy governors for our upstairs windows. Then we went out to dinner. As we got home, Jeni called Heather. She’d received a text from Veronica. Heather relayed it to me. It said something to the effect of, “Ava is doing okay, thank God. No broken bones. Neuro scan looks good.”

I could hardly believe it.

When Jorge returned for Bella, he told me that Ava had a couple of facial fractures, and her hip had been dislocated. She could move all of her extremities, and she was responding to questions. He said that her spleen was bleeding a little, but that the doctors had told them it would probably heal on its own. He said they expected her to be in the hospital for four or five days.

The next morning (today) Heather received a text from Veronica. It read, “Ava is doing very well. No broken bones, some fractures, neuro response is really good. Just letting her rest and heal. Thxs.”

This afternoon we spoke with Veronica’s parents as they were getting ready to take Bella to the hospital. I watched them put her pink booster seat in their car. She belted herself in. They told us that Ava was doing well, that the doctors didn’t think they would have to open her up. She was off the ventilator, and she was breathing fine on her own.

~Michael

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