Chapter 11

Callie's POV

"The numbers are not going in the right direction."

Dr. Anderson set the folder down and did not open it. He had stopped opening folders in front of me. I think he had decided that watching me read the numbers was harder than just saying them out loud.

"How bad," I said.

"The window we discussed at the beginning." He paused. "It is closing faster than I projected. Significantly faster."

The office was very quiet.

"She has had a great deal of stress in the past few weeks," he said carefully. "I want to be honest with you because I think you already know this. Stress accelerates everything in a case like hers. Her body is using energy to process things it should not have to process at her age."

I thought about Lily going silent at the park. About her sitting on her bed in the dark holding Mr. Rabbit so tight. About the way she had looked at Derek in the hallway and asked if he was there to say sorry.

"What do we do," I said.

"We need a decision about the trial," he said. "Soon. Not next week. Now."

---

Derek agreed to meet at his lawyer's office.

I did not know why I thought it would go differently this time. Maybe because I was going to ask him in front of a professional. Maybe because I was going to use the word please and mean it completely.

His lawyer sat at the head of the table. Derek sat to his right in a jacket that cost more than my monthly rent. He looked at me when I walked in the way he always looked at me. Like he was already bored by whatever I was about to say.

I sat down.

"I need you to remove the flag on Michael's name," I said. "Officially. In writing. Medical involvement only. Nothing personal. He will not be in our lives in any capacity except as Lily's physician on the trial."

Derek looked at his lawyer briefly. Then back at me.

"No."

"She is running out of time Derek—"

"I said no."

"The trial could give her months that she does not currently have. Months. Not days. Months of her life that she would not otherwise—"

"I will not have that man's name on any paperwork connected to my daughter." His voice was completely flat. Final. Like a door being bolted from the inside. "Find another doctor. Find another trial. I don't care. But not him."

His lawyer shifted slightly in his chair and said nothing.

"There is no other trial," I said. "Not for her specific case. Not with her progression rate. Michael's program is the only one with data that matches what Lily is experiencing right now."

"Then that is unfortunate."

I looked at him across that table.

This man who had held Lily once in a hospital corridor and felt something move across his face that he had not been prepared for. This man whose daughter had called him three times and got no answer and then called again at night just to say she was trying to be brave.

"She is dying," I said quietly. "And you are sitting here protecting your ego."

Derek stood up.

"This meeting is finished," he said.

---

The daycare called at two.

Not about Lily's health. About something a worker had overheard at pickup the previous day that she had written up formally and wanted to discuss.

I sat in the small side office while the daycare director read from a written report in front of her.

Noah had told Lily at the gate while several children were present that sick kids do not get birthday parties. They get funerals instead.

The director looked up from the page.

"One of our staff members overheard the full exchange," she said. "She documented it immediately. We take language like this between children very seriously." A pause. "This is not the first incident we have logged involving the same child."

I looked at the report on the desk.

Written. Dated. Signed by a staff member.

The first documented evidence of what had been happening for weeks.

"What happens now," I said.

"We will be contacting the other child's guardian," she said. "And we will be keeping a formal record going forward."

I nodded.

I thanked her.

I picked up Lily from her classroom and she was quiet again on the way home but a different kind of quiet. The kind that meant she was tired rather than broken. She fell asleep in the car before we reached our street with her cheek pressed against the window and Mr. Rabbit on her lap.

I carried her inside and put her straight to bed.

---

She woke up at midnight.

I heard her before she called for me. A small restless sound through the monitor that had me on my feet before I was fully awake.

She was burning.

I pressed my hand to her forehead and then her neck and then reached for the thermometer and the number it showed made my stomach drop completely.

No infection. No obvious source. Just a fever that had come from nowhere and climbed fast.

I called Dr. Anderson's emergency line while I was already pulling her jacket on over her pajamas. His service told me he was unavailable and gave me the ER protocol.

I was halfway to the door with Lily in my arms when my phone lit up.

Twelve missed calls.

All Michael.

And a text sent forty minutes ago.

*Do not go to Anderson's ER. Come to mine. Now. I think I know what is happening to her. Come now Callie.*

I stood in my hallway with my sick daughter against my chest and my phone in my hand and two directions in front of me.

Lily's forehead was fire against my neck.

She whispered something too quiet to hear properly.

I looked at Michael's message one more time.

And I ran.