A/N I do not own TBBT or any part of it (even though I really wish I did!) This is my first fanfiction so please review and remember, I'm new to this so pretty please go easy on me! :) I will try to get the next chapter up soon...

Anne stood in line at the bank tapping her foot and she looked at her watch. 6:24 pm. She barely heard her cell phone ring quietly and she wondered how long it had been ringing. She dug it out of the bottom of her purse and answered it.

"Hello?" she said. "This is she... No sir, I live in Texas, why? Yes, my cousin is Dr. Sheldon Lee Cooper, why on earth do you need to know?" when she got the answer to her question she felt her knees weaken. "No, no, no, not Shelly. Not Moonpie!" After what happened to her parents she couldn't let the same happen to Sheldon. "He can't drive, how could he be in a car accident? Is he alright?" her vision began to blur and she reached out for the wall to support herself. "Tell me, is he okay?" She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. How could this be happening?

"D-did you call his friends? I know his roommate is Leonard… Oh you called family first, okay. That makes sense, family first and all." Now she was rambling in a state of panic like she always did. "Yes, you should call Leonard Hofstadter, h-o-f-s-t-a-d-t-e-r. But wait, if Shelly was in a car accident and Leonard wasn't driving, then who was?" At this point, Anne was out of the bank line and headed towards the door.

"Rajesh Koothrappali?" the name meant nothing to her, but she was still concerned for Rajesh's well-being. "Well, is he okay?" She unlocked her car and climbed inside of it. "He's fine? Okay, okay, everything's okay…" she hung up the phone and started her car. She drove down the road towards Sheldon's mother's house. Anne was having a panic attack, the only things going through her head were the words of the paramedic who called her: "Dr. Sheldon Lee Cooper, car accident, badly injured." Her eyes welled up with tears and she felt them drip down her red cheeks. She wiped them away and tried desperately not to sob while she was driving. She wondered who knew, who had been called before her? Shelly's mother, Aunt Mary, no doubt had been informed. Missy would have been called before Anne, no wait, she was on vacation in Hawaii. They probably couldn't reach her. Had they called Meemaw?

She drove into Mary's driveway and jumped out of the car. She ran up to the front door and wiped away her tears with the collar of her shirt. She pounded on the door and Mary called from inside cheerfully: "It's open!"

Anne pushed the door open and found her aunt opening a cola. "A-a-aunt Mary? Aren't you upset?" she blurted out.

"Anne? What would I be upset about?" she asked and set down her cola.

"Didn't you get the phone call?" Anne asked.

"The phone line's down, sweetie. What call are you talking about?"

"Shelly…" It was the only thing Anne managed to get out of her mouth before the tears began to drip out of her eyes again. Mary ran over to her and set her hand on Anne's shoulder.

"What about Sheldon?" she asked, her tone now serious.

"He's been in an accident…a car accident!" Mary's eyes got bigger and she took a deep breath. She grabbed her purse and pulled Anne out of the house. She silently locked the house door behind her and pulled Anne into her car. Mary started the engine and the two women looked at each other, and without a word they drove towards the airport.

Earlier that day, at lunch...

"So I'm the one who get's to drive the whackadoodle home?" Raj confirmed with Leonard and Howard as they sat down at their normal table in the cafeteria.

"Yeah, I'm sorry Raj, but Howard and I have to go to the comic book store to get the 'whackadoodle' another copy of the new Flash. Sheldon says one of us stole it but I know he just lost it. We have to go buy him another one or else he'll be even more of a pain in the ass," Leonard explained.

"Sorry buddy," Howard said to Raj as Sheldon sat down next to Leonard.

"Sorry about what?" Sheldon questioned.

"It's nothing," Leonard told him. Sheldon shrugged and began a pointless (well, it wasn't pointless to Sheldon but it was to the other three men sitting at the table) lecture about the history of forks.

Raj glanced at the clock on his computer screen. 5:02. Oh goodie, he thought sarcastically. Time to drive Sheldon home.

He got his things together and shut off his computer. He got up and switched off the lights in his office. He walked into the hall and as he was locking the door behind him when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned around on his heels.

"Why hello there, Sheldon. What a pleasure to see you!" He said completely insincerely, but Sheldon didn't seem to notice.

"It's a pleasure to see you as well, Raj. It's also a pleasure that you have taken the time to drive me home," he paused for a second, "Thank you."

"You're welcome…?" Raj replied as they walked down the hallway. They took the stairs down to the parking lot and climbed into Raj's car. The drive began silently until they got farther down the road.

"Damn it…" Raj muttered.

"What is it?" Sheldon asked. Raj pointed at the road ahead of them.

"The construction. This road is usually faster to get to your apartment but now we have to take the stupid detour."

Much to Raj's surprise, Sheldon kept quiet instead of making a remark or starting a conversation about construction. The drove along silently for a while until Raj finally broke the eerie silence.

"Are you okay, man?"

"I'm fine, Raj. I have no idea why you would ask such a thing, but you should really watch where you're going instead of engaging in conversation," he replied flatly.

"Okay, okay," Raj held up his hands defensively. "It's just… you're not talking as much as you usually do. I thought maybe something was wrong, but I guess not."

After an awkward moment passed Sheldon decided to break the silence.

"My cousin emailed me two days ago," he finally admitted, but in such a flat tone you'd think it meant nothing to him. But Raj had known Sheldon long enough to tell it did mean something.

"Well that's good isn't it? Keeping up with your family can be important and… wait… you never said you had a cousin."

"I never saw a point to bring her up in conversation, we hadn't spoken for 18 years until two days ago."

"And that's what's been bothering you? Sheldon, it's just your cousin trying to reconnect with you. Where you two even that close?"

"We were very close. I'm only two years older than her, and her parents, my aunt and uncle died in a car crash when she was only one. She never got to know them, and I didn't either, but I can still remember them. Anne can't even remember what they look like without a picture…" he paused for a moment and continued his gaze up at the clouds, then he continued. "After her parents died Meemaw decided to take care of her. And at the age of three I decided she would be my sister and I would take care of her when Meemaw couldn't. I was especially excited by the idea that I could teach her to be smart like me, and not mean like Missy." The way Sheldon spoke when he described his cousin made Raj feel like Sheldon wasn't the person in the passengers seat. Since when did Sheldon care about anyone other than his Meemaw?

Suddenly Dr. Cooper broke from his concentration on his cousin to the road. He glared and said, "I don't see why they made us turn on to this detour if they are just going to have construction equipment on the road they chose for the detour. It completely defeats the purpose of a detour!"

"Well, Sheldon, maybe they did that just to piss you off," Raj replied and looked over at the theoretical physicist. Raj tried to picture Sheldon and his cousin Anne when they were little (which was actually very hard because he had no idea what Anne looked like and trying to picture a young Sheldon was harder than it seemed).

Raj gave up on the picture he was trying to put together in his head and noticed that Sheldon looked less than satisfied with his response. Raj was about to say something else when a look of sheer terror came across Sheldon's face. He pointed at the road and Raj turned his head just fast enough to see something tip off of a large semi. Whatever it was that tipped off the semi (Raj couldn't tell because it all happened so fast) fell right into the middle of the road. Raj swerved the car, but not enough, and the edge of the car hit it. The car twisted and spun off the road and into a ditch where it landed upside down and mangled.