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I shut the door so no one will hear my panting.

I cannot catch my breath.

It’s pitch-black inside the shed and redolent of gasoline and old gra.s.s clippings. My chest heaves against the back of the door.

Sweat drips off my chin.

I claw a cobweb off my face.

In darkness, my hands palm the plywood walls, fingers grazing various tools—pruning shears, a saw, a rake, the blade of an ax.

I take the ax from the wall and grip the wooden handle, sc.r.a.ping my finger across the head. Can’t see a thing, but it feels like it hasn’t been sharpened in years—deep c.h.i.n.ks in the blade, which no longer holds an edge.

Blinking through the stinging sweat, I carefully open the door.

Not a sound creeps in.

I nudge it open a few more inches, until I can see into the backyard again.

It’s empty.

In this sliver of quiet and calm, the principle of Occam’s razor whispers to me—all things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one. Does the idea that I was drugged and kidnapped by a secret, experimental group for the purposes of mind control or G.o.d-knows-what fit that bill? Hardly. They would’ve needed to either brainwash me to convince me that my house was not my house, or in the s.p.a.ce of several hours, get rid of my family and gut the interior so I didn’t recognize anything.

Or—is it more plausible that a tumor in my brain has turned my world upside down?

That it’s been growing silently inside my skull for months or years and is finally wreaking havoc on my cognitive processes, skewing my perception of everything.

The idea hits me with the force of conviction.

What else could have crashed through me with such debilitating speed?

What else could make me lose touch with my ident.i.ty and reality in a matter of hours, calling into question everything I thought I knew?

I wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Finally, I step outside into the gra.s.s.

No more voices.

No more footsteps.

No shadows.

No car engines.

The night feels st.u.r.dy and real again.

I already know where I’m headed next.

—

Chicago Mercy is a ten-block trek from my house, and I limp into the harsh light of the ER at 4:05 a.m.

I hate hospitals.

I watched my mother die in one.

Charlie spent the first weeks of his life in a NICU.

The waiting room is practically empty. Aside from me, there’s a night construction worker clutching his arm in a b.l.o.o.d.y bandage, and a distressed-looking family of three, the father holding a red-faced, wailing baby.

The woman at the front desk looks up from her paperwork, surprisingly bright-eyed considering the hour.

Asks through the Plexiglas, “How can I help you?”

I haven’t thought of what to say, how to even begin to explain my needs.

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