Bridgton Hospital is the emergency-care setting where David and Lucy Stone bring their infant daughter Abra when her prolonged crying will not subside. The hospital offers no immediate medical explanation for her distress; instead, the episode becomes a convergence point between parental fear, ordinary clinical uncertainty, and the national catastrophe unfolding on September 11. Abra’s sudden change at the moment of the second World Trade Center impact gives the hospital scene its decisive significance.

Setting and Arrival

Bridgton Hospital is in Maine, across the border from the Stones’ home area and closer than the alternative Lucy initially has in mind. Concetta directs them there after Abra fails to quiet and feed, setting a short period for improvement before recommending hospital care. By the time they arrive, at about a quarter to four in the morning, Abra is still crying at full volume. The familiar car ride has not soothed her as it usually would, and the emergency-drop-off sign marks the family’s move from anxious observation at home to urgent medical attention.

The episode unfolds in the emergency department on a Tuesday morning. The Stones are the only patients there at first, and they wait in exam room 4 while Abra continues to cry. David fears that something serious may be wrong, even as he tells himself that his thoughts may be running ahead of the evidence. Lucy voices a similar worry as they arrive, asking whether infants can suffer strokes or heart attacks. Their questions register the strain of having a frightening symptom without a clear explanation: the hospital is where they hope for an answer, but the first hours bring no reassurance.

Examination Without an Explanation

The doctor on duty does not give Abra a sedative because the infant has not received a diagnosis and hospital protocol does not permit it in those circumstances. The examination and tests rule out several possible causes: she has no fever or rash, an ultrasound excludes pyloric stenosis, and an X-ray finds neither a swallowed object nor a bowel obstruction. The results leave the central problem unchanged. Abra appears to have nothing medically identifiable wrong with her, yet she will not stop crying or accept breast or bottle.

The hospital’s staff try to calm her rather than simply observe from a distance. Each of the three nurses on duty takes a turn, and Lucy and David ask about feeding. Nothing works. Concetta also tries rocking Abra and singing softly, while the family repeats the walking cure in the exam room and along the hallway. These attempts make the hours in the department feel unusually long: the tests narrow the range of ordinary explanations, but none explains the crying or settles the family’s fear. The hospital can investigate what is visible and measurable; for the moment, it cannot account for Abra’s distress.

John Dalton and the News

At five minutes to nine, the Stones’ pediatrician, John Dalton, arrives. He has been on his way after receiving the message, with rounds at the hospital and another stop in Castle Rock. His arrival connects the emergency visit to a familiar doctor rather than an unknown clinician: Dan Torrance would recognize Dalton from the Thursday-night Big Book meeting in North Conway, where Dalton makes the coffee. That connection belongs to the wider story, even though Dan is not present in the emergency room.

Dalton takes Abra, but before the family can return to the question of what is wrong with her, the news outside the exam room changes the scene. He tells David and Lucy that a passenger jet has hit the World Trade Center and that it does not appear to have been an accident. The uproar in the department, the crying people, and the distressed nurse they notice in the corridor give the news a human presence inside the hospital; it is no longer information at a distance. The family’s private emergency now occupies the same space as a public disaster.

The Minute Abra Falls Silent

The timing is exact. American Airlines Flight 11 hits the World Trade Center first; seventeen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175 strikes the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. At 9:03, Abra abruptly stops crying. By 9:04, she is asleep. The immediate contrast is striking: after hours of continuous distress and unsuccessful attempts to calm her, she becomes quiet at the moment of the second impact, without a medical explanation for the change.

On the drive back to Anniston, Abra sleeps peacefully in her car seat while David and Lucy listen to radio reports. They keep listening through the unfolding account, but David eventually turns the radio off after a newscaster gives the airlines and flight numbers involved in the attacks. The hospital therefore frames more than an inconclusive examination. It is the site of Abra’s first recorded response to the September 11 attacks, and the point at which her parents’ bafflement becomes entangled with an event whose scale extends far beyond their family.