“Mommy.”

I swiveled, expecting to see Beau, but it was Rorie who hovered a few steps away, still in her pink shortie pajamas. At five-seven, she now eclipsed my height by a couple of inches, although I outweighed her by a good twenty pounds. Still, I found it disconcerting to look up to my child, especially when we argued. Nothing in the preceding days had thawed the stalemate between us: Rorie still bristled with hostility every time she came in contact with me, while meanwhile I alternated between fury at Rorie’s actions and a peculiar ache I came to accept as guilt. I’d been absent for months while my little girl had been fending for herself.

I started to say something about how unusual it was that Rorie had risen before she had to—a first throughout the pandemic, since, like most teenagers, Rorie would sleep until noon if given the opportunity—but the words died in my mouth as Rorie spoke.

“I don’t feel good.”

Someone in the meeting began speaking, his voice chiming out from the computer speakers as he ran through an introduction of all the people on the call. Even though it breached virtual meeting etiquette, I disabled my video, replacing my own live image with the static professional photograph the CDC insisted on using in all my public media interfaces even though the photographer had snapped the picture with my mouth open and my eyes half-shut. I’d tried pointing out that the public wasn’t likely to be reassured by an image of a stoned-looking public health official, to no avail. Once the photo made it into the system, it’d been impossible to get rid of it.

I felt myself blanch as I swung back around. Rorie’s dark hair floated across her face, covering one eye; the other, unfocused and glassy, stared past me at nothing. Her breath, fetid even from this distance, came too quickly.

For a beat: absolute nothingness. I felt nothing, acknowledged nothing, thought nothing. If I could have extended this silent, pulsing hole in time, I would have done so, but my respite ended with a crash. Fear struck with all the subtlety of a nuclear explosion, sending my pulse skyrocketing.

Springing from the chair, I placed a hand to Rorie’s forehead. Blazing. I led her to the couch and darted to my bedroom, where I kept the medical travel bag. This bag had seen better days; battered and dirty, one of its seams had unraveled and its faux-leather surfacing had flaked off in places, giving it the mottled appearance of a small diseased animal. No matter; it did its job. I yanked out a stethoscope and pulse ox, affixing the oximeter to Rorie’s finger while I listened to her lungs.

The examination did not prove to be terrible, but neither was it good. Rorie’s oxygen saturation was ninety-four percent—worse than it should have been but okay; survivable. Her lungs sounded junky, but she moved air well. Her temperature—elevated at 102.0—was concerning but not appalling. She wasn’t cyanotic, and while she appeared a bit dehydrated, she drank the water I gave her and kept it down.