Another short, silent car ride later, Circa, Mom, and Miles arrived at the hospital. The packed-full parking lot made Circa think that the people who weren’t at the police station might very well be at the emergency room instead. Inside, the big waiting room was a mint-green, flickery-lit place with cable news playing on TVs high up in every corner. Mom lingered for a minute in the doorway. When she went to pull a paper number from a dispenser, she walked as though every step was an effort. Circa wondered if that was what pushing through a panic looked like.

Mom returned with a number eighty-seven just as Circa and Miles found three empty chairs in a row. After they settled into the hard plastic seats, Circa took in the whole strange scene around her in stolen glances. In every direction, people of all ages were coughing violently, pressing their arms across their tummies, holding bandages over bleeding wounds, or keeping ice on wrapped-up hands or feet. A woman with a screaming baby was demanding to be seen and threatening to go over the check-in person’s head. She quieted down only when a security guard approached.

Circa didn’t know about Miles, but she had never actually been inside a hospital before. Turns out, it was just as bad as she’d seen on TV. All these bright lights. All these weary faces. Enough visible blood to keep Circa on the edge of woozy. If ever a place needed to be Shopt, it was this room, she thought. An instant garden of giant sunflowers over there, or maybe even a few floating puppies mixed in with these groaning people and their paper numbers.

Every one of the small overhead screens was showing scenes of still-fresh devastation all across the Southeast, flashing up lists of donations needed and where to take them. Circa and Mom had been careful not to watch the news since the ordeal had happened, and hearing about it over and over from four different directions instantly turned Circa into one of the people with her arms pressed across her aching belly. Circa kept looking at Miles to see if any of this bombardment of information sparked a memory in him. But he just sat there, slumped and staring in the direction of a poster that listed all the appropriate times to wear a germ mask. When Miles sank low enough for Circa to see over him, she noticed that Mom was kind of zoned out herself.

“Maple Grove is nothing like this,” Circa said to him as she shifted in her seat. “I mean it’s kind of medical, but they hide that part to make it homey,” she added, but no one was listening.

“I didn’t think we’d be gone this long,” said Mom, looking at Circa worriedly. She kept opening her eyes big like she was trying to focus them. “I just knew we’d be home by now with it all fixed.”

Circa thought about how Mom had always been at home after taking a pink pill, not having to be in charge of much more than a nap. “Maybe a snack from the machine will help,” she whispered to her. “You haven’t really eaten today, Mom.”

“Okay,” Mom said distantly as she rummaged through her purse for some cash. “Circ,” she said. “If I’m a little weird, please help me do some of the talking, okay?”

“Sure,” said Circa, embarrassed for Miles to hear that. No wonder Mom had told her she couldn’t be Dad, she stewed. It was because Circa was going to have to be the mom from now on.

After Mom left for the vending area, Circa dug out some Jolly Ranchers left in her pocket from who knows when. “She’s usually at home when she’s taken her medicine,” she said.

Miles just bounced his leg nervously and closed his eyes, like he was desperately searching for a shred of a something inside his head.

“You awake?” she asked as she handed over a green apple Rancher.

“Yeah. Thanks,” he said, straightening himself up in his seat. He popped the candy into his mouth. “So what’s Maple Grove?” he said as he slurped. “Why do you want to go there so bad?”

Circa blew a fuzz off her cinnamon Rancher. “It’s this place here in town. Kind of like an old-folks’ home. And I want to go there because it’s real special to me,” she said. “My great-aunt Ruby lived there before, and we go—I mean went—all the time. And besides, I just feel like my dad would want me to check on our friends.”

A voice called the next three numbers over a loudspeaker. Miles scratched wildly at a mosquito bite on his thumb.

“You might like to know that these friends I’m talking about have also forgotten a lot of things,” said Circa. “But sometimes they do remember, and that’s when it’s fun.”

“Yeah, okay,” Miles said skeptically, trying to free the candy from his back teeth.

“So at that reunion spot where you came from,” Circa said. “Did you maybe see a man there with a plastic poncho? In an old blue Jeep?”

Miles stopped bouncing. “I really don’t know if I did or not. Why? Is that your dad?”

“Never mind,” said Circa. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Why do you keep asking me if I saw him?” he said.

Circa pressed her arms into her tummy again. “Because that’s where they said he died,” she said. “At the reunion place. He was there to deliver that picture.”

“No way,” said Miles, squinting his eyes like he was calculating the weirdness of it all.

“Number eighty-seven!” a nurse called out loud enough for a room three times that size. Circa stood and waved Mom over from the snack machine, where she was trying to smooth the creases from an uncooperative dollar bill. A couple minutes later, Mom and her Cheez-Its and Mountain Dew joined Circa and Miles in a small triage area, where a nurse checked Miles’s blood pressure and temperature before showing them to their own curtained room.

Then a different nurse came in. “This wraps around and ties in the front,” she said, handing Miles a pale blue gown that was frayed at the edges. “Your mom and your sister can help you tie it up.”

“Oh, we’re not…We just…” stammered Mom.

“He’s not family,” said Circa. “He was hurt in the storm, and we’re helping him is all.”

“Oh, wow, I’m so sorry,” said the nurse. “I just saw the resemblance and assumed.”

Circa looked curiously at her. What kind of resemblance? she wondered.

“I’ll make a note for our billing folks to see if we can write this up as a charity case,” the nurse said.

“Thank you so much,” said Mom.

Miles turned ten shades of embarrassed as he held up the gown. Circa and Mom turned away. There were all manner of life-support gadgets on the wall before them. Pedals, switches, plastic pans, glove boxes, giant swabs, and five sizes of cloth tape. Circa couldn’t begin to imagine what all of them were for.

“It’s okay now,” Miles said after he’d changed and climbed onto the bed.

Circa and Mom settled onto a couple of folding chairs just as the doctor yanked the curtain open and peeked his head in.

“Everyone decent?” he asked.

“Good thing we are,” said Miles. He was still red as could be.

Once inside the room, the doctor seemed to move in fast motion, asking Miles a bunch of questions that overlapped each other while he shined a light into Miles’s ears and made him follow the same light with his eyeballs, squeeze his hands hard as he could, touch his fingers to the tip of his own nose, and then balance while standing on one leg at a time. All the while, Circa tried to distract herself, but found it harder and harder to keep from staring at the newly exposed collection of scars on Miles’s arms and legs. On just the areas she could see, there were at least a dozen red and purple marks of all shapes and sizes on him. Some scrape-ish ones like you get falling off your bike. Other ones, more like cuts. Some looked older than others, but none were fresh. It wasn’t until they took Miles away for a scan of his head that Circa found out Mom had noticed the scars as well.

“Circ, what could have happened to him?” Mom whispered as soon as he was gone. “All those marks—”

“I don’t know,” said Circa, feeling more than a little relieved that Mom was back from space. She’d begun to wonder how they were going to get home with Mom all hazy eyed like she was.

A few minutes later, the doc wheeled Miles back in. “Well, we can rule out a bleed in the brain or a tumor,” he said. “And there are no signs of acute head trauma whatsoever. Which leads me to believe the memory loss may be PTSD-related. Some kind of temporary effect of post-traumatic stress disorder. Has Child Services been called?”

“Yes, the police did that,” Mom said.

The doc scribbled across his clipboard. “You may get dressed, son,” he said. “On the discharge paperwork, I’ll recommend that the state follow up with some sort of psychological workup.”

“Discharge paperwork?” said Mom. “You mean you’re not going to keep him here?”

“No reason to,” said the doctor. “By exam, he checks out fine. I think this kid needs a place to rest his head so that everything in there will settle.”

“You mean he can’t rest his head here?”

“Not this week,” said the doc. “We’ve got three to a room with tornado injuries as it is.”

Keeping her head turned as he dressed, Circa asked Miles what the CT scan was like. If it hurt any.

“Nah,” he said. “Kind of like being in a big toilet paper tube is all.”

“Isn’t there a medicine he can take that would help him remember?” Mom asked.

“I’m afraid not,” the doctor said. “I can only prescribe time for that.”

“Decent again,” announced Miles, scrunching up his jeans one leg at a time to yank on his socks, drawing Circa’s attention once more to the collection of scars there. Circa instantly got goose bumps just thinking about the pain that must have once meant for him. When her eyes met Mom’s, it was clear that both of them had been struck with the same thought. Whatever Miles had been through in his past, it must have been a doozy of an ordeal.

“Miles,” said Mom with a sigh, “why don’t you come on home with us and stay until we get word about your family? I’m sure it’ll only be a day or so until we hear something, and Circa won’t mind if you take the room next to hers, will you, Circ?”

Mom looked to Circa for consent as Miles stooped wearily to tie his beat-up tennies. Circa instantly found herself beyond conflicted in that room full of buzzing lightbulbs and sterile smells. Here she was another whole miserable day farther from Dad and the things they had once shared. And yet, strangely enough, that was the very reason she couldn’t bear to pile another hurt on this mystery boy who shared her own father’s crinkle.

“No, I don’t mind,” Circa said, adding a quiet “Code Thirty-two” under her breath.

Bud and Marla instantly regretted bringing Sleepy along on their drive through Yellowstone. After hours of being stalled by the curious bear family, they ended up trading their friend for a few pieces of licked-on garbage. By winter, the black bears deeply regretted their trade, when Sleepy hogged up all the hibernating space.