“I have to go,” I said hoarsely, hanging up over Wally’s squawking protests.

I tore down the hall to Beau’s room, my feet scrabbling on the loose runner, my hands grasping the doorframe to arrest my slide. The instant I entered, I breathed in the acidic, unmistakable tang of vomit. Placing a hand over my mouth to prevent my own rising bile from surfacing, I launched myself over to the window and yanked up the shade.

The dim room flooded with a blaze of sunlight, illuminating Beau’s things: his orange bookcase, where he’d arranged his favorite books by the color of their spines; his curated shelf of Legos; the small red table and chair where he wrote and did art.

Beau didn’t stir.

I flung down his comforter and outer sheet, both printed with Star Wars characters. Underneath, Beau lay on his side, curled like a shrimp. At some point in the night he’d both vomited and urinated, caking the fitted sheet with a damp crust of foul-smelling fluid. His forehead shone, drenched in sweat. The skinny concavity of his chest wall rose and fell in sickening, unnatural hitches, every intake of breath punctuated by an audible rasp.

I moaned as I lifted him out of the mess. As if from some great remove, I heard myself sobbing as I carried him down the hall to the bathroom, where I tore off his pajama bottoms and his tiny little boxers. His skin burned to the touch as I sponged him off. Gently, I laid him on his side on the bath mat and flew down the hall to the living room, retrieving the pulse oximeter and the medical bag and my phone. As promised, Rorie’s pediatrician had messengered over a green army-type bag containing a professional version of the ART Care Kit for doctors, which I snatched from the front porch before running back to the bathroom.

His oxygen level: eighty-eight percent. Hurriedly, my hands shaking, I snapped together an oxygen mask and a length of clear tubing, connected it to the tank, and slipped the green straps over Beau’s head. Thinking better of this, I removed the mask and checked Beau’s mouth and throat for any retained chunks of vomit he could choke on. Finding none, I replaced the mask.

Next I checked his blood pressure and temperature. While the cuff inflated, I voice-dialed Wally but didn’t wait for him to say hello once the connection went through. “I can’t talk right now,” I shouted, “but find out what the pediatric bed situation is at the hospitals, and call an ambulance for me if there’s anywhere they can take the kids. Tell them it’s emergent and text me back.”