Dallas frowned. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to drive if you think you need to go to the hospital to get checked out—”

Frustration flared. “No—my mom works there. I want to see my mom; she’s a nurse,” she told him. The lights of the ambulance disappeared around the bend.

“Oh.” He blinked again. “All right.” He hesitated and looked back to his sergeant, who was at the fire engine, talking on the radio. “Hey, Marshall,” Dallas called. “Tell the officers to meet EMS at the hospital.”

Officers. Great. She’d have to talk to the police. The hairs on her arms stood on end and she could feel sweat seeping through her shirt.

Dallas looked back at Wendy, expression pinched. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”

Wendy looked him straight in the eye. “I have all of my mental faculties and am refusing care and transport,” she recited.

His eyebrows drew together, but after a moment, he sighed and pulled out his metal clipboard. “Sign here acknowledging that you—” Wendy whipped it out of his hand and quickly scrawled her name on the line before shoving it back at him. He fumbled to grab hold of it again.

Dallas squinted at her license before holding it out to her. “Happy birthday, by the way.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Wendy jogged back to her truck. She revved up the engine, backed out of the tangle of branches, and headed for town. The woods disappeared behind her, fading into the night.

Wendy punched in the code to slip into the emergency room through the side door in the waiting room. The ER was small and outdated in shades of blue and green. The plastic covers on the terrible fluorescent lights were painted blue with clouds, as if that somehow softened the harsh glow. The nurses’ station was placed in the middle, and the six emergency rooms surrounded it in a U-shaped ring. Drapes and sliding glass doors pulled closed around them. She walked straight up to one of the hand sanitizer dispensers attached to a wall, put exactly three pumps into her hands, and rubbed them together vigorously. It made the cracks in her fingers sting.

No one paid her much attention. The ER was cramped and chronically understaffed. There wasn’t enough storage space, so the walls were lined with shelves on wheels, stacked full of medical supplies that could be carted from room to room.

At least here, everyone was too busy to notice Wendy. She only caught a glimpse of the boy lying on a gurney in the far alcove before a nurse tugged the curtain shut.