The three fingers were her account of the days.

The exact medical timeline would need to be reconstructed from other information.

No one treated a frightened child’s counting as a precise measure of hours.

But there was no reason to doubt the urgency.

For what Chloe described as two days, she had stayed nearby, expecting her mother to wake.

On the third, one of the twins became so quiet that waiting no longer felt possible.

That was why she left.