She clicked on the penlight, the beam narrow and bright. She leaned over Leo, her own breathing loud in her ears. With one hand, she gently tilted his chin up. His jaw was slack. She applied light pressure to open his mouth. Her heart felt like it was going to burst out of her chest. She aimed the light into the back of his throat.
At first, she saw only pink tissue and his tonsils. Then… she saw it. Deep in the pharynx, behind the uvula, something shifted. Something dark and smooth, not part of his anatomy. It seemed to shrink away from the light, pressing against the wall of his throat. Lily almost cried out. She swallowed hard. It was exactly what she thought.
She clicked off the light. Her hands were shaking so violently that the tongue depressor slipped and hit the floor with a dull thud. In the silence of the VIP suite, it sounded like a gunshot. The nurse’s head snapped up. She blinked, bleary-eyed, and saw a little girl standing over her patient with a flashlight.
— “What the—?” the nurse stammered, jumping up so fast her chair tipped over. “What are you doing in here?!”
— “Oh no!” Lily backed away. She was caught. All her courage vanished under the nurse’s sharp, startled gaze. She tried to explain, but only a small, choked sound came out.
At that exact moment, as if triggered by the noise, Leo convulsed. His body arched in a violent spasm. A horrific, wet, gurgling sound erupted from his throat. And right there, in front of Lily and the nurse, something black and wet flickered at the corner of his mouth. A tip of something. It writhed for a second and then slid back inside, as if retreating from the light.
The nurse froze. Her face, flushed with anger a moment ago, went deathly pale. She wasn’t looking at Lily anymore; she was staring at Leo. At the spot where that… thing… had just appeared. An oppressive silence filled the room, broken only by the boy’s ragged, heavy gasping.
The nurse slowly turned her gaze back to Lily. She saw the pale, terrified face of the child, the penlight in her hand, the dropped depressor. The anger was gone, replaced by a cold, professional horror. She realized that she, the expert, had missed something. Something impossible.
— “What… what was that?” the nurse whispered, her voice cracking.
Lily swallowed the lump in her throat. It was now or never.
— “It’s… it’s inside him,” she managed to say. “It’s alive. It was in my dad, too. It’s what killed him.”
The nurse covered her mouth with her hand. She looked back at Leo. The boy was still again, but his stillness felt deceptive now, like the eye of a storm.
— “I need… I have to call the doctor,” the nurse said, but she didn’t move. She seemed afraid to look away, as if the creature would strike again if she blinked.
— “They won’t believe you!” Lily said desperately. Tears were streaming down her face now. “They didn’t believe me before. They’ll say you’re seeing things. Or that I made it up.”
The nurse looked at Lily—at her worn-out sneakers, her simple dress, and the look of absolute, adult-like pain in her eyes. She realized the girl wasn’t speaking from imagination. She was speaking from the most terrible experience a child could have.
Heavy footsteps echoed in the hall. The night security guard was making his rounds. The nurse snapped out of her trance. Protocol, rules, procedures—they were all screaming at her to sound the alarm.
But Lily suddenly grabbed her hand. Her small fingers gripped the nurse’s sleeve with surprising strength.
— “Please…”
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