Three walls. A sink. A wood-grain-veneer cabinet. Same colors and bathroom aesthetic. Except the tan molded plastic bed in this room was empty. Someone had been there, and recently. The white sheets were thrown back, the pillow dented. But there was no one in the room now.

Archie checked the number above the bed.

It was the right room. Archie recognized what looked to be heating blankets cast aside on the floor.

“Maybe he checked out,” Susan said.

Had his parents come and gotten him after all?

The nurse in pink scrubs silently jogged up in her white sneakers. Another woman, older and sturdier, followed behind her.

The pink nurse squinted at Archie and gave him a disapproving frown. “You can’t…” she started to say, but trailed off when she saw the empty bed. Her eyes widened. She was wearing blue mascara.

“Where is he?” Archie asked.

She looked over at the other nurse, who was wearing green scrubs—old-school, no cargo pants for her—and glasses around her neck on a practical-looking gold chain. A tiny silver angel was pinned above her heart. Pink’s supervisor, Archie guessed.

The pink nurse hesitated and fluttered a hand in the air. “He should be here,” she said.

Susan was still holding the snacks, though no one seemed that concerned about it anymore.

They all stood staring at the empty bed like it might get up and walk off, too.

“Marcie,” the supervisor called calmly to someone back at the desk, “did eleven get taken somewhere for tests?”

“No,” Marcie called back.

“Then where is he?” Archie said again between gritted teeth.

“Check the bathroom,” the supervisor said, and the pink nurse scrambled to a nearby door and opened it.

“Empty,” she reported.

They all looked helplessly at one another.

How could a kid just disappear from an ICU? A kid nobody reports missing, and nobody notices walk away from his hospital bed in the dead of night.

“Call security,” Archie said. “Maybe he’s still in the hospital.”

“We never got his name,” the supervisor said, almost to herself. “He never said a word.”

Susan moved forward, and Archie almost told her to stop, to stay out of the boy’s room, but there was something about her sudden purpose that made him wait. He watched as she walked up to the bed and opened her arms and let the juice containers and saltine packets tumble onto the mattress.

“She can’t just take all those snacks,” the pink nurse said again.

“No one cares about the snacks, Heather,” her supervisor snapped.

Susan dropped to her hands and knees and reached under the bed. No one moved. Susan withdrew her hand from under the bed. There was something in it. She rocked back on her heels and held her hand out toward Archie, palm up, like a street kid looking for a buck.