I did something to set it off. I let out my meanest thoughts, the monsters in the darkest caverns of me. I let them all loose and it broke everything. If Ruth never wakes up again, then the last thing she’ll have heard is me yelling at her. Me acting like pirate ships and treasure boxes are more important than her.

This isn’t what I meant. This isn’t what I wanted. The words I said didn’t mean what she thought they meant. Pirate ships aren’t more important. Digging up treasure was just supposed to help things. To fix things.

After what feels like days and days, we’re all brought into a gray room where Ruth is lying on a bed. We’re told she’s not unconscious now, just sleeping. We’re told to be quiet.

Why couldn’t I have been quiet?

She’s okay, the nurse tells us.

Severe dehydration, the nurse tells us. Lack of nutrients. Ruth wasn’t eating or drinking or probably sleeping enough. We tried. I thought we were trying, trying hard, trying everything, but it wasn’t enough, and it still caught up to her. It caught up to all of us.

Ruth will be okay, the nurse says. Ruth has tubes coming out of her arm that are pumping her full of fluids and good things. She will be okay.

But I know the truth.

I know this is my fault.

Not eating or drinking are obvious bad signs—signs of The Pit—and what I tried didn’t help, couldn’t help. I should have seen how serious it was. I should have done more.

Mom and Dad are driving to the airport right now. The next flight to Las Cruces leaves at 2:01 in the morning and they’ll be on it.

Ruth will have to stay in the hospital for a couple days. When my parents get here, they will coordinate a doctor to come and talk to Ruth and maybe change the medicine she takes so it might be better at helping.

I need to be better at helping.

We all sit in the gray room for a long time. People walk past our door and nurses poke their heads in every once in a while and check on us and check the monitors that Ruth is hooked up to. I’ve seen her eyes flutter a couple of times. She hasn’t woken up, but her breathing is normal.

Then a curly-haired nurse in pink scrubs walks in. “Ruth had these in her pockets,” she says. “You’re her sister, right?”

She’s looking at me and everybody else looks at me too. I nod, and the curly-haired nurse hands me a Ziploc bag. Inside is a tube of ChapStick, earbuds, and an iPod.