Parker CampbellChapter 2 — The Boy in the Basement
"LIAM!"
My voice exploded through the darkness.
A tiny whimper answered.
I flew down the narrow wooden stairs two at a time.
The basement wasn't finished.
Concrete walls.
A single dim pull-chain bulb.
Stacks of moldy boxes.
An old freezer humming in the corner.
The temperature felt twenty degrees colder than the rest of the house.
Then I saw him.
Curled into a ball on the bare concrete floor.
Still wearing the little blue T-shirt he'd insisted on wearing because Ethan said they were "birthday twins."
Only now it was stained with vomit.
His lips had turned pale.
His body shook so violently his teeth chattered.
"Dad..."
The word barely escaped him.
I dropped to my knees.
His skin was burning.
Yet his hands felt like ice.
Claire reached us seconds later.
The scream she let out wasn't loud.
It was the kind of sound that comes from somewhere too deep for tears.
She wrapped him inside her coat while I searched desperately for his backpack.
His emergency phone lay smashed beneath an old paint can.
The screen was cracked.
The battery had been removed.
I slowly looked up the stairs.
Rachel stood there.
Still trying to justify herself.
"He kept calling you."
"I had to take it away."
"He was upsetting the other children."
I stared at her.
"You broke his phone?"
"He wouldn't stop crying."
"He wouldn't stop begging for you."
My fists clenched.
"He threw up twice," she continued. "I thought he was pretending."
Claire looked at her with absolute disbelief.
"Pretending?"
Rachel crossed her arms.
"Kids fake things all the time."
I picked Liam up.
He cried out in pain.
The sound made every hair on my body stand up.
Something was very wrong.
Very, very wrong.
"We're leaving."
Rachel stepped in front of the basement door.
"Michael, don't be ridiculous."
"It's just a stomach bug."
I walked straight past her.
She reached for my arm.
I shook her off so hard she stumbled backward.
By the time we reached the driveway, Liam had stopped shivering.
He'd gone frighteningly still.
"Dad..."
"I can't feel my legs."
Everything inside me froze.
The ambulance arrived six minutes later.
Those six minutes felt longer than the rest of my life combined.
Inside the emergency room, doctors surrounded my son.
Blood tests.
CT scans.
IV fluids.
Questions.
More questions.
Finally, an emergency physician walked toward us.
His expression said everything before his mouth ever moved.
"When did his symptoms begin?"
I looked at the clock.
Nearly six hours earlier.
The doctor's face tightened.
"He wasn't pretending."
"He has acute appendicitis."
"It ruptured."
The room went silent.
"If he'd arrived much later..."
May you like
The doctor paused.
"...he almost certainly wouldn't have survived."
