My Daughter Was 15 When She Finally Looked Me in the Eye and Whispered, “I Don’t Tell Dad When I’m Hurting Anymore. He Says I Only Do It for Attention.” The Next Afternoon, I Checked Her Out of School and Drove Her to the Hospital Without a Word to My Husband. Halfway Through the Scan, the Technician Went Completely Quiet.

That night I started a notebook.

It wasn’t a list of Gregory’s wrongs, though one of those would eventually come, but a record of Paige’s questions, her symptoms, her medications, and the names of the people in charge of her care.

We wrote down the first question together: Would she be able to play volleyball again?

The second one was harder to write: Had the five weeks of waiting changed what the surgeons would be able to save?

Both were questions for the doctors, not for the anxious guesses piling up in my head.