At 2:47 in the morning, while my seven-year-old daughter was in critical condition in the ICU, my husband saw my calls and rejected them because he was in the Bahamas with the woman he had told me not to worry about.

Chapter 1: Fifty-one calls

Lily went to bed complaining of a headache.

Nothing about that evening suggested my life was about to become a nightmare.

She’d eaten half a grilled-cheese sandwich, refused her tomato soup because it smelled strange, and curled beside me under the yellow blanket she’d had since kindergarten.

At nine-thirty, I checked her temperature.

101.8.

I gave her the fever medicine our pediatrician recommended, brought water, and stayed beside her as she complained that the hallway light hurt her eyes.

By midnight, her fever exceeded 104.