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Altered awareness. Dissociative episode. Possible neurological event. Stress response. Follow-up. Observation.

Nothing obvious on the tests they ran. Nothing immediately dangerous.

Nobody said ‘body snatchers.’

Sadie looked disappointed by that.

She stayed until Marion finally took her home.

The Bishops rotated through the waiting room in shifts because apparently hospitals had occupancy limits specifically designed to inconvenience our family.

Declan never left. Nobody asked him to.

He hovered. I needed him to.

At some point somebody had brought him a clean shirt. He wore it without my remembering him changing.

There was a red mark across his palm.

I knew exactly where it had come from.

The grate.

My face had a matching pattern faintly along one cheek. I didn’t look at it in the bathroom mirror for long. By the time they let me leave, it was well past midnight.

Dad was speaking quietly to Riot near the end of the hall.

I was supposed to be putting on my shoes.

I listened instead.

“Our guy?” Riot asked.

“Yeah,” Dad answered.

“And?”

Dad looked at his phone. “Everything is as it should be.”

I stopped with one shoe in my hand.

Nineteen minutes. A voice underneath concrete.

Dirt beneath feet that had never left the stadium.

My body crawling toward a drain while I screamed behind my own eyes.

Declan begging me to come back when I had never gone anywhere.

Everything is as it should be.

Nothing about that sentence felt true.

By Sunday morning, nobody was calling it babysitting.

But that was what it was.

Someone stayed with me. Always.