Dr. Gurewich was a broad-shouldered woman with a noticeable accent, I thought Eastern European. She talked to the three of us first, questions about Sarah’s schoolwork, her vision, her diet. She then called for a nurse to take Sarah and get her weight.

She turned to Meg and me and asked about the alleged seizure we might have witnessed. We told her what we knew, what we thought we saw. She asked if we’d noticed any new behaviors, tics, sounds, sleeping problems.

“Nothing,” Meg said.

“She didn’t see my bishop,” I said.

“What?” from Meg.

“We were playing chess. She’s a very good, very careful player. She didn’t see an obvious danger.”

“What’s that have to do with anything?” Meg asked me.

“No,” Dr. Gurewich said. “It’s a bit of information. It might mean nothing, but it might be useful.”

“It was something she never would have missed before,” I said. I shook my head. “But people miss moves all the time.”

“But it concerned you?”

“I guess it did.”

The nurse returned with Sarah, handed the doctor the chart.

“Okay, young lady, you sit up here and let’s have a look at you.”

“Have a look at you,” she said. I was reminded of my father saying that it was all well and good for one to see a doctor, but the doctor had to see you as well. Here was my daughter, my Sarah, being seen by the doctor, and I stood by wishing that the doctor could not, would not see her at all. In the examination room, the very fear that had begun to push or jolt Meg and me close again now seemed to do just the opposite. It wasn’t so much a coolness or estrangement as it was that we were dividing, cleaving our child; she wanted her daughter and I wanted mine. Even then, out of nervousness, I considered that word, cleave, and wondered how it could contradict itself so cleanly, wondered if the two meanings canceled each other out, leaving nothing in its wake. Cleave.

Dr. Gurewich had Sarah put her fingertips together, touch her nose, close one eye and then the other and take a pen, walk, hop, repeat series of syllables, repeat series of numbers, say the date, recall breakfast, recall yesterday, sing a song. The doctor looked at her eyes, felt her joints, tapped her reflex points with a hammer, checked her peripheral vision, talking all the while, a soothing voice, accent and all.

“Do you like television?” the doctor asked.

“I don’t watch much.”

“Spend much time on the computer?”

“I do my schoolwork on the computer.”

“Do you watch videos and things like that?”

“Not so much.”

“Do you like video games?”

“Not really. I used to play one when I was little. It was called Turn Me Loose.”

“Was it a fun game?”

“I guess. I was six.”

“I remember that game,” Meg said.