After twenty-five years caring for children as a nurse and a pediatrician, Carolyn Roy-Bornstein finds herself on the other side of the stretcher when her teenage son and his girlfriend are hit by a drunk driver. Gratitude for her son's survival soon gives way to grief. While initially told Neil's only injury was a broken leg, she soon learns his brain is bleeding. Roy-Bornstein is now not the patient's doctor or nurse, but his mom. The world she so easily navigated in a white coat must now be traversed, understood, and dealt with from the perspective of a parent. There are many dividing lines in this story: the line that divides the family's life into events that occurred before the crash and those that faltered in its wake; and the line that separates gratitude that her son is alive from grief for his loss of memory and changed personality. Roy-Bornstein's years as a "medical insider" give her story authenticity while her newcomer status as the parent of a trauma victim adds poignancy and warmth to this first memoir.