Why isn’t Emily answering?
I turned the phone facedown in the cup holder and drove toward the children’s hospital.
Emily watched me from the passenger seat.
“Dad’s going to be mad.”
There was no accusation in her voice.
That frightened me more than if there had been.
My fifteen-year-old daughter had just been told she had a mass inside her abdomen, yet part of her was still worried about whether her father would approve of us discovering it.
“He can be mad,” I said.
Emily looked at me.
I kept both hands on the steering wheel.
“He can be as mad as he wants.”
At the hospital, everything moved faster.
A nurse took Emily’s vitals.
Another drew additional blood.
A specialist named Dr.
Shah reviewed the images Dr.
Avery had sent ahead.
She asked Emily about the pain, when it had started, whether it came and went, whether she had felt dizzy, whether the pressure changed with movement.
Emily answered quietly at first.
Then something shifted.
Nobody interrupted her.
Nobody rolled their eyes.
Nobody told her she was exaggerating.
With every question that was taken seriously, her voice grew steadier.
Dr.
Shah explained that the size and appearance of the mass created another concern: torsion, a twisting that could compromise blood flow and become an emergency.
Emily’s symptoms were not classic for a sudden acute torsion at that moment, but the mass could not simply be ignored.
Surgery was the likely next step.
The word hit both of us.
Emily looked at me immediately.
I forced myself not to react before she did.
“Will I lose my ovary?” she asked.
“We will do everything appropriate to preserve healthy tissue,” Dr.
Shah said.
“Our goal is to treat what is causing the problem while protecting your future health.
We won’t know every detail until we can see exactly what we’re dealing with.”
That was when Victor called for the sixth time.
I stepped into the hallway.
He answered before the first ring finished.
“What is going on?” he demanded.
“I called the school.
You took Emily out yesterday too?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause.
“You took her to a doctor behind my back.”
“I took our daughter to a doctor.”
“Same thing.”
“No, Victor.
It isn’t.”
I heard airport noise behind him.
His Dallas trip must have ended early, or he was already on his way back.
“You let her manipulate you,” he said.
“I told you exactly what this was.”
My hand closed around the folder.
“The scan found a large mass in her abdomen.”
Silence.
