Then it became clear.
He was getting sick.
I hurried down the hallway and pushed open his door without even thinking.
Mason was sitting on the edge of his bed, his small body trembling slightly, his skin damp with sweat that clung to his forehead and neck.
When I reached out and touched his arm, I felt it immediately.
It was cold.
Far colder than it should have been.
In that moment, something inside me shifted, and the calm reassurance the first doctor had given us no longer felt strong enough to hold back the growing sense of urgency in my chest.
The next morning, we went back to the hospital.
Our home in a quiet neighborhood outside Madison, Wisconsin, had always echoed with his voice, which seemed to move from one room to another faster than I could follow, and although I sometimes joked that he possessed more energy than the entire school soccer team combined, the truth was that I secretly loved the noise because it made the house feel alive in a way that silence never could.
Then something changed so gradually that, at first, I did not notice it clearly enough to feel alarmed.
The first sign arrived one afternoon when Mason came home from school and mentioned that his stomach hurt a little, the way a child might complain after eating too quickly during lunch break.
I remember kneeling beside him in the kitchen while he dropped his backpack near the door, placing my hand lightly against his forehead and asking, “Did you eat too fast again, buddy?”
He shrugged in that careless way children do when they assume a small discomfort will disappear on its own.
“Maybe,” he said. “It just feels weird.”
I made him a cup of chamomile tea, wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, and told him to rest on the couch for a while, convinced that the problem would fade by the next morning the way small childhood aches usually did.
And, for a brief moment, it seemed as though I had been right.
The following day Mason woke up with more energy, asked if he could take his soccer ball outside, and ran through the backyard as if nothing had happened.
