I pressed my palm flat against the cool painted panel of her door, but I didn’t try the knob.

“Sadie?” I whispered into the wood grain.

She didn’t answer.

From the other side of the hollow door came the small, choked sound of a seventeen-year-old girl burying her face in her pillow so her mother wouldn’t hear her crying.

I stood perfectly still in the dark hall, listening to the soft, muffled sound coming from Sadie’s room.

At noon on Wednesday, the microwave in the clinic breakroom counted down its last ten seconds, humming over the chatter from the waiting room.

Ben sat at the little laminate table unwrapping a turkey sandwich from aluminum foil while I stood by the counter holding my phone in both hands.