“Exactly like Batman,” I lied. “Batman never sleeps when he’s on a mission. And your mission is to wait for the sirens. Can you tell me the name of your favorite stuffed animal?”
I closed my eyes for a second, picturing the scene. A small, dilapidated room. A child trapped in her bed, paralyzed by anaphylactic swelling, surrounded by a swarm.
“James,” I said into the radio channel, breaking protocol to use his first name. “Step it up. She’s going into shock. Anaphylaxis. She’s fading.”
“I’m putting the pedal through the floor, Helen,” James’s voice crackled back, tight with tension. “ETA three minutes.”
Three minutes. In the world of an allergic reaction, three minutes is a lifetime. It is the difference between a breath and silence.
“Mia? Are you still there?”
Silence.
“Mia!” I shouted, not caring who in the office heard me.
“I’m… here,” she gasped. The sound was wet, like she was breathing through a straw. Her throat was closing.
“It’s… green,” she managed to say. “The paint is… falling off. Like scabs. And there’s a… broken flower pot… by the stairs.”
“Good girl. Green house. Broken flower pot. You are doing so well.”
Officer James Keller drifted his cruiser around the corner of Main and Elm, the tires screeching in protest. The siren wailed, bouncing off the empty, boarded-up storefronts of the old district.
He saw the house immediately. It was exactly as Helen had relayed—a sad, lime-green bungalow that looked like it was slowly sinking into the earth. The front yard was a jungle of waist-high weeds and rusted bicycle parts.
“Dispatch, I’m at the scene,” James barked into his lapel mic as he slammed the car into park. “Ambulance is thirty seconds behind me.”
He didn’t wait. He vaulted out of the car, his boots crunching on the cracked pavement. As he ran toward the porch, he saw it.
It wasn’t just a few insects. Continue reading…
