“Where’s the doctor?” Izabel said.

“They’re waiting for the bloodwork,” Kaito said.

“Couldn’t they check on her before that?”

“Let’s watch something on TV,” Kaito said.

Izabel turned on the television and the local news was on, covering the opening of the first contemporary art gallery. The arts were booming, the news anchor said. The arts were having a rebirth. They, the people, were in a renaissance.

The emergency warnings were and weren’t a surprise. When the trees had turned, two weeks before, to the south of them, it was clear people were going to die. A lot of people. When the spring had burst, crawling across the Earth, shift by shift, across hemispheres and regions, the world had been thrust into crisis, calamity, again and again. The only reason the emergency warnings were a surprise at all was because of human nature. The idiocy of human nature.

The doctor finally came. Dr. Inaway, with a young man shadowing him. Izabel remembered hearing Dr. Inaway’s name going out across the intercom system while sitting with her dying mother. Paging Dr. Inaway. Paging Dr. Inaway. Her mother would say, “Well, are you a doctor?!” Then she’d shrug and say, “In a way.” And they would laugh. And her mother would cough. But Izabel and her mother had never actually met him.

As soon as he came into the room, Kaito’s face softened. They must have worked together before. They shook hands and held each other’s shoulders, how men do. It looked nice. And then Dr. Inaway shook Izabel’s hand plainly.

“This is Gregory,” he said, introducing his shadow.

Izabel and Kaito and Gregory all nodded their heads at each other while Dr. Inaway picked up the otoscope and examined Cami. Then he stood up and asked Gregory to repeat the exam. Dr. Inaway paid attention to him but also took the tablet off the wall, scrolled through something, and said, “Her bloodwork is clean.”

Gregory finished and the doctor nodded at him.

“There’s nothing wrong with her,” Dr. Inaway said.

“There’s something wrong with her,” Izabel said.

“That’s not to say something’s not happening, only that, physically, she’s in perfect health.”

“What do we do?” Kaito asked.

“Best thing to do is wait. We’ll roll in chairs that recline into beds for both of you.”

“That’s it?” Izabel said.

“We’ll see what happens in the morning. And obviously we’re monitoring her closely. If anything changes, I’ll be right back in here. I’m on shift until nine a.m.”

Before Izabel could say anything else, he left the room, with Gregory behind him. Izabel realized Gregory had never said a word. She’d let him touch her daughter and look in her ears and nose and she had no idea what his voice sounded like.

Kaito turned the television back on—a rerun of America’s Got Talent.