I tried defending myself. I said Shira was pretty much a happy girl, but the psychologist opened the clinic door and said, “See for yourself.” I approached Shira and put my hand on her back. I asked her how the session was going, but I could already see she wasn’t the same girl. Sitting cross-legged, her head drooped like a rag doll’s, her brown hair veiling her face. She wouldn’t look me in the eye, replied curtly, three words at a time.

I waited with her for two hours in the ER until they took her for a diagnosis. A young intern asked her a series of questions, but she wasn’t cooperating. He checked her pupils with a flashlight, then her reflexes. He didn’t detect any abnormalities. He called over a doctor who also didn’t find anything unusual, and whispered to the intern that something didn’t add up. They decided to admit her for further tests.

Nelly freaked out when I told her. She left the office at once, took a car from one of the employees, and raced over at 130 kph. She arrived after Shira had already fallen asleep, sat down on the chair next to me, and rested her head on my shoulder as I gave her a detailed report.

“What have we gotten ourselves into, Ofer?” she whispered, and I recalled another night, a few years back, when she had leaned her head on my shoulder like that. It was after she had gotten drunk on half a bottle of cava and admitted for the first time that she had changed her name from Nili to Nelly because Nili was an old woman’s name and Nelly sounded like a Canadian supermodel. I remembered laughing my head off while she dug her face into my shoulder with childish embarrassment.

In the morning Shira underwent a neurological examination that came out normal. Additional tests over the next few days also failed to provide any answers as to what had happened to our daughter. Nelly went back to the farm that first night and I slept on a chair, but once we realized Shira was going to stay in the hospital a little longer, we decided to pull shifts. Nelly took the evening ones, straight from work, and I took the rest. It was clear to us both that I was suspending all work on my app until things cleared up. The doctors told us the symptoms weren’t caused by trauma, but the facts didn’t interest us. We were consumed by our fears, dedicating our few moments together at the hospital between shifts to our ever-expanding list of suspects without knowing what the indictment was. That “big brother” of hers from school. The bus driver who picked her up every morning. Her teacher. Even Nicolai, my former coworker, had become questionable. Names were added, others temporarily removed, but one always remained, hovering at the top of the list.