The buildings grew wider, browner, and more purposeful as they left the touristy part of town. Maren pushed the button for the next stop, and when the bus juddered to a halt in front of the hulking brick hospital, she leapt out.

Amos got out right behind her. Maren stuffed her book into her bag and jogged toward the entrance. The glass doors hushed open, letting out a gust of disinfectant and floor wax. Trying to ignore the instant wave of sadness it gave her, Maren slowed her jog to a speed-walk. The hospital, like the police station and the registry of motor vehicles, was a magic-free building. Here they believed in the power of science, of things that could be measured and tested and proven. Not flighty, unpredictable things like magic.

Amos stopped at the reception desk, which gave Maren a head start to dive into the elevator and stab at the number five button until the doors closed. The elevator shot upward, leaving her stomach somewhere down near the first floor. In these last moments of silence, she always worried that something terrible had happened to Hallie and nobody had remembered to get in touch with her. Even after three weeks of nothing more terrible than her sister still being unconscious, the fear was always the worst in the elevator, the vivid visions of Hallie about to die or dead, of finding just an empty bed.

Mom would’ve called if anything happened, Maren told herself. Hallie is fine. YOU are fine.

Fine fine fine fine squeaked her sneakers as she walked down the spotless hallway of the children’s ward. The walls were covered in murals of balloons and animals and fairy castles, but their brightness seemed like a joke nobody was laughing at.

Flower arrangements in various stages of dying filled Hallie’s room. People had been bringing them in every day since the accident, and Maren wished they would stop. Hallie couldn’t see the flowers, and they made her room smell like a funeral.

In her bed, Hallie lay like a doll with the covers folded in a straight line across her torso. She used to sleep like a hurricane, blankets tumbled, legs askew, pillows on the floor. Now she looked too neat, too orderly, too…organized. Her cheeks were hollow, her blond hair dull and limp. Wires connected her to various machines, one bag feeding nutrients into her arm and another collecting what came back out. Maren fought the urge to imagine she’d wandered into the wrong room. There was no use pretending this was someone else: she had a trio of freckles over her left eyebrow and a scar on her arm from falling out of a go-cart when she was nine and Maren was five.

“Happy birthday, big sis,” said Maren, piling all of her not-right presents at the foot of the bed. “How are you?”