I don’t even know how much time passes before the men in black come streaming through our front door, this time adorned in stethoscopes and other, more-complicated-appearing medical instruments.

Autumn whispers in my ear. “Who are these people? They’re not paramedics.”

“No,” I say. “I don’t think they are.”

They remove Q’s shirt, attaching a series of circular sticky pieces to his chest and stomach—leads, Ms. B calls them. These leads are connected to a battery-pack-looking thing, and that’s plugged into a large tablet, operated by one of the nonparamedic women, who taps feverishly on the display screen, shakes her head, and then taps more.

Meanwhile, the others administer oxygen, check Q’s blood sugar, heart rate, blood pressure, respirations per minute. They check his blood gases, whatever those are. And a bunch of other labs, whose results instantly feed back to the large tablet.

“He’s stabilizing,” the woman says matter-of-factly to her coworkers. And they continue their work until finally she announces stabilization achieved, and they quickly detach and remove their equipment, reshirt Q, then slide-board him onto a gurney.

“Excuse me,” Ms. B says. “Where are you taking my son?”

The nonparamedics cast each other looks like who’s talking to this upset lady, one-two-three not it.

The woman asks Ms. B to follow her into the hall, and I hear their voices but not words. A few minutes later, Dr. Iverson shows up with Mr. Oklahoma, joining Ms. B and the woman in the hall.

That’s when voices spike.

Especially Ms. B’s.

But then, after a while, she returns to the kitchen, stoops over her son, kisses his forehead. Strokes his temples, his wrist and fingers.

Then it’s one-two-three-lift and we watch as they carry Q out and down our front walk. We follow them, watch Q slide into the back of a black van. The van plain and new.

“Where are they taking him?” I ask Ms. B.

But Dr. Iverson says, “We need to run a few tests we’re unable to perform here in the field. Don’t worry. Q’s fine.”

Mr. Oklahoma nods his agreement. “Nothing to be concerned over. Quincy is a fighter.” The second person this week to say that.

And then as swiftly as they came, the three men and one women re-van and pull away. Meanwhile, Mr. Oklahoma opens Dr. Iverson’s car door, then walks to the driver’s side, looks back at the four of us over the top of the car.

He waves like he’s not sure he should.

Then they’re gone too.

We stand there, silent, unsure what to do.

And then Autumn turns to us. “So, what the hell’s going on?”

We take turns lying to her.

It looked worse than it was, our company line, which is only slightly better than hahaha, that was a joke! They’re gonna bring him back any minute now, hahaha.