We have to be quiet, she thought, drawing him farther underneath the desk, as deep as they could go. She wanted to say this out loud to him, but whatever command of language she might’ve had earlier was gone. The thought wasn’t truly a sentence but an abstraction, no more sophisticated than what must go through any animal’s brain as it cowered from the hunter’s scent.

Who is it?

Snow? In summertime?

Curled against her body, Eli gaped back at her. He was still crying, tears streaming down his cheeks, over her fingers, but whatever atavistic impulse he saw in her eyes had stopped him from sobbing.

Must be quiet. Mustn’t make a sound.

With another thump, she heard the door open. Hydraulics hissed. For a moment there was silence. Then, gradually, came the muted jangle of loose metallic objects, moving closer.

B-flat. D-sharp. Then a note that wasn’t a note at all, a ringing, muffled clink.

She already knew what they were.

Keys.

Above Sarah’s clamped fingers, Eli’s eyes widened, pupils twitching back and forth. His small body trembled against hers, strung tight with tension, both of them huddled deep beneath the information desk.

The jingling music of the keys approached, a random progression of sharps and flats. With every clink and rattle she could see them more clearly in her mind, a big metal ring with different shapes and sizes dangling off, twenty or thirty at least.

Who carried so many keys? Calhoun. But somehow she knew the hand that held them was not Calhoun’s.

When they seemed like they couldn’t get any closer, they stopped, as if the hand had suddenly clamped tight in a fist.

Please, God, don’t let him find us here.

As if to imbed the thought permanently into this moment, she gazed into her son’s face, imploring him again to remain quiet and still. She could smell something bad, something both sour and burned, clotting the air around her. There was a correlative for it, but her jammed-up mind either couldn’t or wouldn’t provide it.

After an eternity, the jingling started again, the keys singing their cheerful little song off to her right, back toward the ER. Sarah listened as the sound dwindled, fading.

She lifted her hand from Eli’s mouth. Her fingers had imprinted red bands across the lower half of his face. It was a face she’d gotten so used to seeing with a smile or a slight squint of curiosity, but now was only confused, pale, and scared, shining with tears. The purple knot above his eye was large and sad.

“Mommy,” he whispered, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Me either, baby.”

“I want Daddy.”

Sarah pushed herself out from under the information desk and moved into a squatting position. Eli was clinging to her furiously, chin digging into her shoulder. Peering up over the top of the desk, she saw that the lobby around them was empty and absolutely silent. If the jingling of the keys had been any indication, the person with them had gone the opposite way, into the ER, looking for a way out.