By the time Julia stopped yelling and the EMTs carted me off on a stretcher, my head felt as if it were being bludgeoned with a mallet and my internal organs felt as if they had the chicken pox. I begged them to give me something for the pain, but they said they had to get me to the hospital first. Elena was allowed to come with me—purely because she’d lied and told them I was only seventeen years old.

She held my hand and made a worthy effort not to cry as we barreled toward Good Samaritan, but the tears started dripping down her cheeks before we even pulled into the ER. I wondered if this was the same ambulance that picked up Parisa after her car accident. Maybe that would be good luck. If she survived, maybe I would, too. Then again, it would be ironic if the girl with the debilitating fear that she was going to die lived to be a hundred while her less neurotic best friend succumbed to Adema as a teenager.

The ruse that I was not of age was cut short once I was officially admitted as a patient. Elena had to provide the nurses with my photo ID, and since I was technically an adult, they wouldn’t allow her to stay with me. I knew then that if I did survive, I would never forget the look of agony on her face as she said goodbye. Normally, Elena’s a Jennifer Lawrence–level actress. She can pretend the foundation is still intact while the walls and ceiling are crumbling all around her. But not when she has to leave her daughter alone in a hospital with no guarantee of seeing her again. This time, I was the one who had to have a poker face.

“I’m gonna be okay, Mom,” I told her. “I promise. I bet they’ll send me home tomorrow. Please. Don’t worry.”

In that moment, it didn’t matter that Elena and I didn’t share blood or DNA, because I’d inherited something better from her: superhuman strength. And that’s what I’ve tried to cling to during the loneliest and scariest points of my hospital stay. Weakness, I keep reminding myself, is not what’s going to get me out of here.