“Bring her home.

We are not spending hundreds of dollars on copays because a teenager wants attention.”

He hung up before I could ask the name of the clinic doctor, or why he had never mentioned a clean bill of health until today.

I walked back toward the carpeted waiting room, keeping my phone locked in my purse.

My hand brushed against the folded yellow paper in my side pocket.

It was the early dismissal slip I had filled out in the high school’s main office at one fifteen that afternoon.