As you picked Danny up one afternoon, the teacher came over. “I’m a little concerned about Danny’s language, Mrs. Cullen-Scott. He seems to use a lot of nouns. Very few verbs.”

You looked at her, surprised. You hadn’t known the ratio of nouns to verbs was even a thing. “Do you want us to work on it?”

“Oh no,” she said breezily. “I’m sure it’ll sort itself out.”

Needless to say, you spent the rest of the day randomly tossing verbs at him—“Look, Danny, dancing! Look, Danny, jumping! Danny, waving!” He seemed puzzled, but bore it with his customary good humor.

A few days later the same teacher said, “I’m a little concerned about Danny’s hearing. He doesn’t always seem very…present.”

“Well, it’s not glue ear,” you said. “He had that, but the audiologist says it’s cleared up.”

“Have you had him tested for a language processing disorder?”

“For a what?” you said, instantly concerned. You never knew parenthood was going to be such a minefield of disorders. It felt like every day there was a new one you should be worrying about.

“Sometimes it’s like he’s…tuned out for a few moments. I mean, it’s probably nothing, but…”

“No,” you said. “No, I’ve seen the exact same thing.” Because there had been four or five instances of this at home now, this switching-off as you’d come to think of it. You hadn’t wanted to mention it to Tim. You knew he’d ask what the consequences were, and raise his eyebrows when you told him the only consequence was that you got completely terrified.

You made an appointment with a pediatric neurologist. His assistant told you that, for elective scans, there was a waiting time of about seven weeks. Her tone made it clear that elective meant unnecessary.

   You went ahead and booked a full set anyway.

* * *

—

Having made the appointment, you felt better—you’d done something, after all. It was probably nothing, but it was going to be checked out.

The next day was a Saturday. Tim went to the office, as usual—he liked it when there were fewer people around, he claimed, though from what you knew of Tim’s employees, they mostly spent weekends at the office, too.

In the night you’d been woken by laughter coming from Danny’s bedroom; a strange, eerie cackling. Not wanting to wake Tim, you’d crept to take a look. Danny’s eyes were open, and he was staring at the ceiling. His eyelids were fluttering.

According to a site you found on the internet, twitching eyelids could be a sign of abnormal brain activity.

Or, admittedly, it could just be a sign he was dreaming with his eyes open.

Tim, of course, was scathing about people who used the Web to make diagnoses. But this looked like a proper site, run by doctors.

You had to get groceries, so you and Danny went to Whole Foods. In the car he was unusually quiet. You kept twisting around to look at him, until you nearly caused an accident.

“They’re bad animals,” he said in a quiet, slurred voice. You pulled over then.

“They’re bad animals,” he repeated. He was looking at the other cars. “Bad animals! Bad animals! Kill them!” He was agitated now, wriggling in his booster seat, trying to bend his tiny body out of it. “Take it off,” he screamed at you. “Take it off! It hurts!”

He was pointing at his own head.

   “What is it, Danny? What’s wrong?”

Then, as fast as it had come, the agitation stopped. He slumped back in his seat.

“Danny, what happened?”

“I saw a red one,” he said faintly. “Red ones are the baddest.”

* * *

—

At the store he trotted around next to you as usual, one hand on the shopping cart. When you got to the checkout, there was a line. An old lady was paying with coins, very slowly, counting them out and chatting to the cashier.

You always tried not to mind things like that—if the lady needed to take more time, she should. It was just unfortunate she was there today, when you really wanted to get Danny home.

That’s when you heard a low growling sound coming from his throat. He was staring at the people in front of you.

“It always takes longer at weekends,” you said, to distract him.

And then he started screaming.

It was so high-pitched, so strained, it was hard to make out any words. But it sounded something like “They’re doing it wrong!” His face was—there was no other word for it—crazy. Like he was hallucinating.

Then, abruptly, he turned and ran away. As he ran he stuck his arms out, flailing as if at invisible bees, cannoning into the displays of fruit, the proud pyramids of organic grapefruit and oranges that collapsed in bouncing cascades of tumbling colors. Then he ran down the canned-foods aisle, headbanging the tins. Next it was the turn of the breakfast cereals. Then the soda bottles. And all the while, he screamed.

People stared. And then, even worse, they looked away and pretended nothing was happening. Honey, there was a really badly behaved kid in the store today.

When you caught up with him he was lying on the floor, his body arcing in pain, bouncing off the ground like a landed fish. Was it a fit? It looked like a fit. But then he stuck his fingers in his mouth and bit them, hard enough to draw blood.

   You managed to get his hands away from his mouth, then get your own hands between his fragile skull and the floor.

When Danny finally stopped crying, he babbled gibberish. You carried him back to the car and drove straight to the ER.

* * *

—

“It sounds like you have a child with a behavioral problem,” the doctor said.

They’d done some basic tests, checked his pulse. Meanwhile, Danny slowly came back to normal. No: not normal. He still wasn’t himself. But convincing the doctors of that seemed impossible.

“Will you at least order an EEG?” you asked desperately.

The doctor shook his head. “That really isn’t indicated.”

“Please.” The thought of having to go home and tell Tim that Danny had been diagnosed with—essentially—extreme naughtiness terrified you. Because you knew that, however much he loved Danny and you, he would side with the doctors. In Tim’s world, doctors were scientists, and therefore on the side of Truth. Mothers were emotional, irrational, and therefore on the side of False Intuition. He would smile that smile at you, the one that said, Your lack of logic is so cute. But now it’s time for the grown-ups to make a decision.