It did not come.

Irene got into the car and buckled her seatbelt and stared out the window, and when Martha explained where they were going she only nodded, a small, tired, defeated nod, the nod of someone who has stopped believing that their own preferences will change anything.

That was the thing that frightened Martha most on the whole drive — not the pain her daughter might be in, but the absence of any fight about being taken to have it looked at.

A fifteen-year-old is supposed to resist.