I wake up, which is weird because I don’t even remember falling asleep. My curtain is closed around my bed, so I can’t look out the window to see if it’s day or night. It reminds me of all the times I’ve fallen asleep doing my homework, how I wake up in my bed, but my pillow is a heavy textbook, and I’m still in my clothes from the previous day.

But at home when this happens, I usually bolt out of bed in a panic, run to my desk, and see how much homework is left—how much I can fit in before I have to get ready to go to school. Now the thought of getting out of bed seems impossible, and my legs feel like lead. So do my eyelids.

I open my eyes again, and I think I’ve just blinked, but I’m not sure.

I blink again. My mom is here now, and I can’t figure out why she looks so worried. I look at her, try to swallow. My throat feels like there’s lava in it. I finally manage to ask, “Is Randy okay?”

My mom laughs, but then looks like she’s going to cry. “That’s my Flora, always thinking about someone else, even when she’s sick.”

Sick. That word again.

“What … what day is it?” Each word feels harder to get out than the one before it.

My mom looks at me like she doesn’t understand what I’ve said, but I’m too tired to repeat myself.

Joey appears next to my bed, smiling his usual smile. “It’s Friday.”

I realize that’s not the question I meant to ask, and as if he’s read my mind, he says, “It’s morning. A little after nine. You slept through your mom’s visit last night.”

I nod. My throat hurts too much to say anything else.

I see a gleam in Joey’s eye that I haven’t seen before. He takes my temperature and writes on his clipboard. “Similar symptoms as the man on your flight, same timeline. This is all great.”

“Great?” my mom says sharply. “My daughter is sick and you think this is great?”

He grins. “Relatively speaking, yes. Medically speaking, definitely.”

My mom narrows her eyes at him and says through her teeth, “When is she going to get better?”

Joey flips through his clipboard and taps his pen against it. “Who can say for sure? We don’t know much about this disease, after all. But based on what we’ve seen so far, it’s a fast and furious illness, so she should expect to be feeling better in a week, maybe two. But we’ll see. That’s what makes this all so exciting!”

“Exciting?” my mom yells. “My daughter is not your guinea pig!”

“No, of course not,” Joey says, but he’s already writing something down on his clipboard again. He looks up at me again, taps my foot, but I can tell he’s distracted.

I take another long blink, and when I open my eyes, my mom is gone and once again I have no idea what day it is.