Me: It’s bad. Please.
Nobody responded.
Mr. Henson turned around from the board. “Ethan, you with us?”
The entire room seemed to look at me.
I forced myself upright. “Yeah,” I said, though my voice came out thin.
“You need the nurse?”
Every instinct in me screamed no.
“No, I’m okay.”
Mr. Henson frowned, but he turned back to the board.
I put my head down again.
Forty-five minutes is not a long time if you are scrolling your phone, waiting for a pizza, sitting through a lecture, or driving across town in ordinary traffic. Forty-five minutes is an eternity when something inside you has begun to fail and the people responsible for you are debating whether your suffering is inconvenient enough to ignore.
I watched the minute hand move.
10:18.
10:27.
10:36.
Every few minutes, I checked my phone.
Nothing.
I imagined my mother in whatever store Sam had dragged her to, seeing my messages and sighing. I imagined Greg making a face. I imagined Sam rolling her eyes because my pain had interrupted whatever version of family bonding excluded me until I needed something.
By the time the bell rang, I could barely stand.
I gathered my books with hands that felt detached from my arms. Kevin appeared beside me in the hallway.
“Dude,” he said. “You look terrible.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are not fine.”
“My mom’s coming.”
He did not look reassured. Kevin had known me since freshman year. He had seen enough small Parker family moments—missed pickups, weird comments, my mother “forgetting” to sign forms—to understand that the sentence my mom’s coming did not mean what it meant in other households.
“Want me to walk with you?”
I wanted to say yes.
Instead I shook my head. “I’m good.”
He hesitated. “Text me, okay?”
“Yeah.”
I made it to the front office by leaning on walls between waves of pain. The receptionist, Mrs. Carver, looked up from her computer and immediately sat straighter.
“Ethan? Honey, are you sick?”
“My mom’s picking me up.”
“Do you need the nurse?”
“No,” I said automatically.
She looked uncertain, but the office phone rang, and I used that moment to lower myself into one of the plastic chairs near the window.
The chair was cold.
My skin was hot.
I folded forward with one arm wrapped around my stomach and waited.
At 11:03, my phone buzzed.
Mom: Fine. Coming.
Fine.
As if I had negotiated too aggressively and won a favor.
They arrived at 11:31.
I saw the black SUV pull up to the curb through the front office window. Greg was driving. My mother sat in the passenger seat wearing sunglasses even though the sky was flat and gray. Sam was in the back, earbuds in, phone held close to her face.
I stood too quickly and nearly fell.
Mrs. Carver half rose. “Are you sure you don’t want—”
“They’re here,” I said, and pushed through the office door before she could finish.
Outside, the winter air hit my damp face and made me shiver. Snow flurries drifted down like ash. The walk to the curb felt longer than any hallway I had crossed that day.
The passenger window rolled down halfway.
Greg leaned toward it, one hand still on the wheel. “Were you trying to skip school?”
Not are you okay.
Not what happened.
Not you look awful.
I tried to answer, but my stomach clenched and all that came out was a breath.
My mother turned in her seat enough to look at me over her sunglasses. “Get in, Ethan. You’re letting cold air in.”
I opened the rear door and climbed in beside Sam.
The movement sent a bolt of pain through my abdomen so intense my vision flashed white. I gripped the seat in front of me and tried not to vomit.
Sam pulled one earbud out. “You smell like sweat.”
I leaned back, breathing hard.
The SUV smelled like vanilla air freshener, fast-food fries, and Sam’s coconut body spray. The combination made nausea rise in my throat.
My mother twisted around. “Well?”
“It hurts,” I said. “Really bad. Right here.”
I pressed my fingers against the lower right side of my stomach.
Greg glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Appendicitis now? That what we’re doing?”
“I don’t know. I just need—”
“You know,” he said, turning out of the school driveway, “your dad used to do this.”
My throat tightened.
Greg loved bringing up David when I was cornered. He treated my biological father like a genetic disease I had inherited and failed to manage.
“He’d get some little ache and act like the world was ending,” Greg continued. “Kelly, remember that story?”
My mother gave a small laugh. “He was dramatic.”
I stared at the back of her head.
“I need to go to the hospital,” I said.
Sam groaned. “Seriously?”
My mother looked over her shoulder again, and this time her expression was sharper. “You better not be doing this for attention.”
The words landed with such familiarity that for a second they almost worked.
Maybe I was overreacting.
Maybe I was weak.
Maybe I had pulled something.
Maybe the pain was not as bad as I thought.
Then the SUV hit a pothole, and the world exploded.
I folded forward with a strangled gasp. Hot bile rose in my throat. Greg cursed and grabbed an empty grocery bag from the center console, shoving it backward without looking.
“Here. If you’re going to puke, don’t do it on my seats.”
I vomited into the bag.
Sam made a disgusted sound and pressed herself against the door. “Oh my gosh.”
My mother sighed, not frightened, just irritated. “Ethan.”
I could not speak. My whole body shook.
Greg rolled down his window two inches. “Great. Now the car’s going to stink.”
I wanted to disappear. That was the reflexive shame of it. Even in pain, even with my body revolting, part of me felt embarrassed for inconveniencing them. That is how deep neglect goes. It does not just teach you that other people will not care. It teaches you to apologize for needing care at all.
We drove past the first urgent care.
I watched it through the window.
“Mom,” I whispered. “Please.”
“What?”
“There. Urgent care.”
Greg snorted. “Emergency rooms cost money. You got emergency room money?”
“I have insurance,” my mother said, annoyed at him now but not on my behalf. “But we don’t even know if this is serious.”
“It is,” I said.
“You don’t know that.”
“I can’t— I can’t sit up.”
Sam’s phone dinged.
She looked down and suddenly made a sound of pure panic.
“My phone is dying.”
Nobody answered.
“No, like, actually dying. It’s at ten percent.”
I closed my eyes.
“Owen is going to FaceTime me in twenty minutes,” Sam said, voice rising. “He said he wanted to talk before practice, and if I don’t answer he’ll think I’m ignoring him. And Madison said he’s been talking to Brooke from Chemistry, so if he thinks I’m ignoring him, he’ll probably ask her to homecoming instead.”
Greg muttered, “Teenage emergencies.”
But he said it fondly.
I opened my eyes as a new wave of pain rolled through me, lower and heavier now. “Hospital,” I croaked. “Please.”
My mother and Greg exchanged a look.
I knew that look.
It was the look they used when deciding whether I was worth the inconvenience.
“There’s a Best Buy right there,” my mother said suddenly, pointing through the windshield at the big blue sign across the intersection. “We can grab a portable charger.”
For a moment, I thought pain had scrambled my hearing.
“What?”
“It’ll take two seconds.”
“No.”
My voice came out louder than I expected. It startled even me.
My mother turned around fully. “Excuse me?”
“No. Please. I need a hospital.”
Sam leaned forward between the seats. “Ethan, it’ll literally take five minutes.”
Greg looked at me in the mirror. His eyes were flat. “Stop being dramatic. Five minutes won’t kill you.”
That sentence would later become the one people repeated in court, in reports, in whispers among relatives who had once called me ungrateful.
Five minutes won’t kill you.
The thing is, Greg believed it when he said it. That was the horror of it. He was not making a threat. He was dismissing a reality he did not want to see.
He turned into the Best Buy parking lot.
The store was bright against the gray day, its windows glowing with displays of televisions, laptops, headphones, things that beeped and flashed and promised convenience. The parking lot was half full. Snow flurries spun in the air. My breath came fast and shallow.
Mom unbuckled.
“Don’t,” I said.
She paused with her hand on the door handle. “Ethan.”
“I’m serious. Please don’t leave me.”
Something moved across her face. Not concern. Anger at being forced to feel concern.
Greg opened his door. “Kelly, come on.”
Sam was already out, clutching her phone like a wounded animal.
My mother looked at me once more. “We’ll be right back.”
Greg clicked the lock button.
The sound was sharp and final.
The doors sealed.
The windows stayed up.
Then they walked away.
I remember the first minute clearly because disbelief kept me alert. I watched them cross the parking lot together, Greg slightly ahead, Sam hurrying, my mother pulling her coat tighter around herself. They looked like any family running an errand. Maybe a little rushed. Maybe annoyed. Nothing about them said they had left an eighteen-year-old boy curled in the back seat with a medical emergency.
I tried the door.
Locked.
