Tonight it made me feel sick.
Across from me, a wall clock ticked toward 3:14 a.m., each second heavy enough to bruise. Through the narrow glass window at the end of the pediatric intensive care hallway, I could see a blur of movement—nurses stepping around each other, the rise and fall of monitors, the kind of carefully controlled urgency I knew by heart.
Only this time, the child inside that room was mine.
My daughter, Sophie.
Eight years old. Missing front tooth. Obsessed with strawberry ice cream, outer space documentaries, and singing too loudly in the back seat whenever she thought I was stressed. Sophie, who talked with her whole body, who skipped instead of walking, who left crayons in every room she entered as if she were marking the world to prove she had been there.
Now she lay still because my mother had decided silence mattered more than her life.
I pressed my fists into my eyes so hard I saw sparks. When I lowered my hands, Detective Miller was walking toward me with two paper cups of coffee and the same careful expression every cop wears when they know the next few questions might split a family in half.
