I banged on it and I told her I was freezing.

I told her to please let me in.”

“And what did she do?” My heart was hammering so hard against my ribs that I could hear it.

“She didn’t open it,” Lucas said, and his voice broke on the words.

“I knocked for a really long time, Mom.

A really long time.” I could not draw a full breath.

I sat there on the floor of the trauma bay and I let the picture assemble itself in my mind, the picture I did not want and could not stop: my nine-year-old son, soaked and shaking, standing outside a heated, multi-million-dollar house in a freezing storm, knocking and knocking on a locked door, begging the people inside, his own family, to let him come in out of the cold.

And the people inside, warm and dry, choosing not to.