On the twenty-second of December, I was awakened by an eerie atmosphere. It was a lonely, apprehensive feeling, as if I'd just woken up the only animal remaining on the entire planet. Climbing out of bed to get prepared for work into the solitude of the early hour among the deep shadows that crept through the corners of the rooms even after I'd flicked on the lights didn't exactly assure me that everything was normal.

I tried to shrug off the thought as I dressed myself in my regular work uniform, but once it had gotten into my head, the sense that something was wrong or an unfortunate event was doomed to occur only continued to swell. Once dressed, I packed up the sheets of paper I'd been jotting down onto last night—A few notes for the upcoming constructive meeting—Into a neat assortment in my briefcase and buckled it up to bring to the table with me.

I emerged into the dining room with briefcase in paw, sneaking a drowsy glance up at the clock above the door. The time had just struck seven-ten—I had quite a bit of time to lounge around before I would need to head off to work. I eased the briefcase down onto the table, carefully so as to not provoke a noise loud enough to wake the entire house, and turned my eyes to the breakfast basket of fruit on the table. I plucked an orange off the top of the stack for a brief meal and sank down into my chair, sinking my claws into the peel to rip it away.

Being out and about in the lights for more than ten minutes now, my mind had awakened, but my eyes were slow to follow. My eyelids hung droopy and sore as I fumbled to peel the orange, tossing the segments away onto the table in front of me. I finished tearing the peel from the orange and broke off a slice to begin the meal, but I could only stare down at the chunk in my paw and struggled to lift it to my mouth. I didn't feel much like eating this morning. For some reason, I was anxious, stomach tightening into knots with the dark suspicion looming over me that I was missing something was wrong. I ignored this, reluctantly popping the orange slice into my mouth.

I nearly jumped out of my skin with a sudden noise to strike the atmosphere, jolting me back to reality. The phone was ringing from the living room down the hall. My gaze flicked down to the orange slices that I still gripped in my paws, tighter now that I'd been startled, to find it halfway consumed. I had lost myself in my thoughts for a while. I listened to the phone resonate from the other room, gulping down my bite of orange and examining what was left of it in my paws before the situation registered seconds later.

That sound's going to wake up Mom and Dad for sure. I chucked my broken orange down onto the table, scrambling up from my seat to kill the noise and make sure my parents got their rest. I crossed the dining room in no more than three or four steps, cutting through the hallway into the living room and reaching the phone. I yanked the phone from the receiver, silencing the sound at last and sneaking a glance over my shoulder at the shadowed hallway for any sign that anyone would leave their bedroom.

"Hello?" I prompted before it occurred to me just how unusual the situation was. Who could have possibly been calling before eight in the morning? What was this about? It was likely some kind of spam call, in which case I shouldn't have picked up at all. At least my parents could sleep it off.

The answer didn't come for a few moments, but when a voice responded, I recognized it instantly. What I didn't recognize was the tone.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Digby," Lyle told me on the other line, rushing to apologize in a shaky, stammering voice. "I'm not going to make it to work on time today. I just wanted to call and let you know. I'm just... I'm not... I'll be there around, um... Maybe nine or ten or something like that. I'm not sure."

"Wait, what?" I said. My voice had gone hollow and a sinking dismay plunged to the depths of my stomach. This isn't normal. This isn't okay. "What do you mean? What's going on?"

Lyle gave a weak clearing of his throat, seeming to be trying to calm down as he spoke to me. "It's a long story," he admitted. "It's a bit complicated to explain on such short notice. Just go and get set up like usual. It's fine. I'm just going to be a little bit late today."

My mind was reeling, frantically swirling through the vast possibilities of what audibly frightened someone who didn't appear to feel much at all and how to find the situation out for myself, and then the answer surfaced. Lottie.

"What about Lottie?" I urged to know. "When will she be coming in? Will she be late as well?"

"Lottie..." Lyle began, but his voice trailed off. I caught the sound of what could have been a shout in the background that he seemed to be listening to. After an extensive pause, he spoke again. "No, I don't think Lottie's coming into work today. This morning has just been a living nightmare for her. She started getting really sick a couple hours ago and is only getting worse. I don't think..."

Another silence filled the line. My stomach had begun to churn and my heart hammered against my chest as I listened intently for Lyle to finish speaking. After a few seconds, he drew in a long, unsteady breath.

"Oh, no, not again," he mumbled as if to himself. A shuffling sound slipped through the line as he brought the phone away from his ear and gave a shout as he was no longer talking to me. "It's going to be okay. Just keep the trash bin near you, okay? I'll be with you in a minute."

"What's happening?" I asked him, though his lack of response told me he hadn't heard me, but with a nauseous jab tugging at my stomach, I knew what was happening.

At the end of another pause, another shuffling sound implied Lyle had put the phone back to his ear. "I don't think Lottie can work for a while," he finished. "She's really not doing too well. I'll have to go in without her. Don't worry about it for now."

But I was worried about it. My mind was bouncing hastily between all of the possibilities that could have brought such illness on Lottie so suddenly. "What is it? What caused it?" I restlessly spilled out questions. "Was it food poisoning? Can you get food poisoning from noodles?"

"Don't worry about it, Digby," Lyle repeated. "Just focus on your work for now. We'll get this worked out. I need to go see Lottie now, but just go and carry on with your day as usual. I'll handle this."

A click marked the end of the call and there I stood, phone in paw held under my ear in the dim atmosphere of seven in the morning with the situation still working its way through my mind.

Lottie was sick. Incredibly sick, it sounded like. What could have happened since yesterday evening when she was completely fine? How could it have come on so suddenly? And to think that Lyle asked me to ignore the fact that my best friend was incredibly sick and go to work without her as if nothing was wrong.

Forget that! Was he serious? Lottie was going to have someone helping her if I had any say in it. The moment that the phone was back on the receiver, my feet were in motion, bursting into action to clear out from the room. I wouldn't even consider arriving at Lottie and Lyle's house with empty paws; I'd gather up materials and tools that had helped me before when I felt how she felt now, anything that could possibly help her feel better. I couldn't leave soon enough.

Thinking back to times when I was held under the weight of sickness wasn't exactly pleasant, but I had to find some answers. I dashed between rooms, scouring the house for anything that had the slightest chance of helping that I could pack in an old school backpack I'd found trampled in the bottom of my closet. It was red and clearly beaten down, but it would work for the trip over. Passing between rooms, I racked my memory for any treatments my parents had given me while I was unwell—Certain fizzy drinks to drink only when I was sick, for starters, but that was something I didn't have. Occasionally, they would have provided me with a leafy herb to sniff or chew on that had medical benefits to ease nausea.

Herbs. We were sure to have some herbs in the kitchen. But which one was it? A flick of recollection in the back of my mind told me that lemon was something that could help, but that was also something I wasn't completely sure was available to me. I glanced briefly through the cupboards in the kitchen, pulling door after door to the sight of spices, canned soups and other foods, even some oils to rub onto a piece of cloth which appeared prominently in memories in hours of my sickness and so I dropped them one by one into the backpack. Failing to locate the herbs, I hardly spent a thought longer on the task and moved on to the next rooms.

Into the backpack, I tossed pouches of various teas—I'd only prepared tea with my parents watching over my shoulder before now, but there were instructions laid out on the back of every bag—And several pieces of tissue when I struggled to find a cloth small enough for the job. I picked up a washcloth to create a cool surface in case of any fever but abandoned it before I could pack it. Of course they would have washcloths at their own house. I was ducking through the doorway and setting off into the wintry morning as early as seven twenty-five with only one jabbing thought in my mind: If this was the fault of the restaurant we went to for our dinner, they would certainly be hearing from me.

Lottie's house was off towards the other end of the island. On foot, it took almost forty minutes to get there, as Mom had once let me know during one of the few trips we had taken there directly in my puppyhood. The wind shrieked in my ears as I ventured through the thick snow on the path that etched into my mind, sending tiny snowflakes down from the grim, cloudy sky that swirled around me and nipped at my cheeks. Lyle was surely expecting me at work by now and the minutes that crept by with every step that brought me to the house were minutes further into my unexcused absence. But still, no regret tugged at my conscience for the decision I had hurled myself into without a second thought. Lottie needed help and I couldn't ignore that.

I launched myself through the door into the house to find it empty. It had been a couple of years since I had visited this place in person, and yet it still remained distinctly imprinted on my memory. Polished wood floors that I swept over to enter the house bordered by pale walls with a brown rim, a combined kitchen and dining room on the right side with dark wood cupboards and a light wood table in the same segment, and a gathering segment on the left side with three elegant gray chairs around a darker gray round carpet. But no familiar residents.

At least, not for the first three steps into the room. I slipped my backpack from my shoulders and chucked it down onto the nearest seat at the table just as Lyle emerged from an open room close by on the left side of the hallway, appearing to have heard me come in uninvited. A worried, exhausted expression hung over his face and he anxiously gripped an envelope between his paws.

"I'm here," I urged as he approached. "Where is she?"

The lack of surprise in Lyle's concerned look told me that he had expected I would be arriving. "She started resting on the couch as soon as she got sick, but she hasn't been able to leave," he explained, stopping in his tracks to turn back and lead me into the room where he had come from. We entered through a propped-open set of tall, extravagant dark wood doors into the living room where Lottie curled up on the couch. She had wrapped herself snugly in a black knit blanket and a clear distressing pain was engraved so deeply into her face that she could barely seem to open her eyes. A small trash bin sat by the head of the couch and, judging by the undisturbed scent that drifted through the air, had been washed out before I had arrived. "She's thrown up eight times already. She feels absolutely awful."

Food poisoning couldn't last to such an extent. A sour feeling curdled in the pit of my stomach. Something was terribly wrong here and we didn't even know what the source of the illness was.

"We need to get help," I insisted. "What are we going to do?"

"I don't know," Lyle admitted. His gaze dropped down to the envelope in his paws, flipping it over as he examined it before he glanced at me. "I don't think we can close the HHDA on such late notice, Digby. There's only three of us and someone needs to be in there. If you're going to stay here and look after her for the day, then I need to get myself over there so that the doors can open at their usual time. But it can't continue that way."

A sliver of tension lifted from my shoulders at the verbal permission to stay with Lottie. "What can I do to help?" I pressed further.

"Well..." Lyle began. He was studying the envelope again, scrutinizing every corner, and then he outstretched it for me to take. It was crumpled slightly at the edges from being held for so long. "If you could bring this to the mailbox, that would be great. We need it sent as quickly as possible."

The sun had just started to peek over the horizon as I ducked back through the doorway again. Bursts of peach and lavender and wisps of clouds painted the base of the sky and an icy breeze swept over the fresh snow from earlier this morning as I shuffled across the shoveled path to reach the snow-topped black mailbox at the end. I reached the mailbox to find that it had two settings, an input and an output, but I couldn't help sneaking a glance at the back of the envelope to check who it was going to. I wasn't entirely certain what I was expecting, but it wasn't what I found—It was my own twin sister's address, written not in Lottie's handwriting but in Lyle's. I allowed myself a few more seconds to stare at the information in front of me before into the output receiver the envelope went.

Lyle had drawn up a chair near Lottie at the couch and had seated himself to watch over her at my return. He cast a glance over his shoulder as I stepped into the room after hearing my arrival.

"Good," he mumbled, noting that the envelope was gone from my paws. "I appreciate you bringing that out. I'm going to head out soon, I just need to finish a few things first."

Lyle dropped his focus from me again and the faint sound of scribbled, hasty writing struck the silence. He must have retrieved a notepad in the time that I was away. I drifted forward to stand beside him, sending a nervous glimpse of Lottie as she lay on the couch wrapped tightly in her blanket, and though her pain had not yet eased, she had managed to open her eyes as they darted to glance up at me as if she had just now noticed that I was here. I caught a glimmer of fright in the darkness of her eyes.

"I'm really worried." I didn't raise my voice higher than a soft whisper as I spoke to Lyle seated beside me, and he paused in his writing to look up at me. "Is she going to be okay?"

"I'm hoping so," Lyle muttered, quietly reviewing the note he had made on the notepad. The untidy words read "supervisor absent"—That was for Lottie and me being out of work today. "If bad comes to worse, we have options. We're not completely at a loss of what can be done. If she starts getting sick again, call me immediately and I'll come back again. If that happens, that'll be when we bring her in to get some help."

The atmosphere was thin as the emptiness in conversation grew and the truth settled. Lyle tore out the first sheet of the notepad, speedily copying the same message onto the next sheet, but came to an abrupt stop as something seemed to occur to him. He raised his head to look at Lottie on the couch, observing her for a stretch of several seconds before his gaze flicked up to meet mine.

"Digby, how long ago was your date?" he asked me.

"Two days," I told him. "We went on the evening of my birthday."

Lyle seemed to relax slightly at this with a little "hmm" in acknowledgment, finishing his note and tearing out the second sheet. He pushed himself to his feet, carelessly tossing the notepad onto a side table at the head of the bed where what seemed to be a different letter lay, this one also slightly crumpled at the edges, and tucked the written sheets away into his pocket.

"Well, I'm going to leave now. I can't risk leaving any later," Lyle said, turning his focus back down to me, then added hesitantly, "I didn't really plan for both of you to be out today. It's better for the business if you came to work today, but I figured you'd want to be here. I'll work something out. Let me know if you need anything or have any questions."

After the front door had shut again in Lyle's departure, Lottie was more conscious now. She had managed to push herself up on the couch to a seated position as the door latched, but was notably shaky and weak in doing so. She truly just wasn't doing well at all. I took the seat where Lyle had seated himself earlier to keep her company, but she wouldn't meet my gaze and stared silently at the empty trash bin on the floor with almost an ashamed glance.

"How do you feel? Any better?" I inquired, reaching out my paw to brush back her bangs and gently set it down on her forehead to check for a fever.

"Mm-mm," Lottie mumbled softly, almost seeming to be passing out as she leaned into my paw on her head like she needed me to hold her steady. Warmth pulsed from her forehead to my paw.

"There's definitely a fever there. It's not terribly hot, but it's there," I admitted, withdrawing my paw again and she lifted her head to meet my gaze again. "What do you need for me to help you?"

"I don't know," Lottie murmured, uncomfortably shifting in her seat.

And so, I just sat with her. Lottie didn't raise her focus from the trash bin, though she didn't have any clear pressing need to use it. At first, I only watched over her, listening in the silence in case she would find something she needed and tell me, but eventually, my own focus began to stray. My eyes found the letter on the table next to the notepad that Lyle had tossed away, but it was then that something clicked in my mind. It was Isabelle's handwriting. It hadn't changed significantly since she had moved away. Lottie and Isabelle must have been in touch. My curiosity soon got the best of me and my gaze traveled along the written words, searching for any updates of how her life was turning out without me.

Lottie,

Thank you so much for your kind words! I'm so glad that you reached out and I hope the technological issues end soon and things go back to normal. I'd be glad to offer my support where I can. I miss you just as much!

I wish this could be where I explain to you some magical and incredible adventure that I'm venturing through so it would be like you were coming along with me, but I have to admit that nothing much has happened recently. I did have a surprise birthday party thrown for me today by my neighbors, which was so thoughtful and so much fun! Other than that, there aren't really many known upcoming events except for Toy Day in five days, for which I have already decorated the inside of my house from top to bottom. I wish you could see it! Both of the huge events have made me feel so happy recently and I hope the feeling never ends.

Regrettably, I haven't been in touch with Digby lately as I probably should be, but I've actually made a new friend

I dropped my focus from the letter before I could read any more. I wasn't exactly enthusiastic to find out that she was mentioning me behind my back, and I wasn't keen on hearing about my replacement. Another shift of movement sent my focus back to Lottie as she wrapped herself tighter in her blanket, and it struck me that I wasn't doing all that I could have been.

"You should get some rest," I advised, rising from my chair. Lottie raised her uneasy eyes to follow my movement, still fidgeting with the blanket. "Do you need help getting back to your room?"

"Mm-hmm," Lottie mumbled, easing the blanket from her shoulders to set it down on the couch where she had earlier rested her head. She hadn't even been able to dress herself for the morning as she still wrote her white lace nightgown and her hair hung down her back like a curtain, straight as it was naturally rather than wavy as it had been on our date.

Lottie pressed her paws into the cushions of the couch, unsteadily pushing herself to her feet as I stood ready to jump in if she needed me to, but couldn't keep her balance for long enough as she quickly began to drop again. In an instant, my arms locked tightly around her before she could fall very far, carefully helping her back upright.

"It's okay. I've got you," I assured her as we slowly straightened up again. Lottie was shaking just slightly at my side, holding a weak grip with her arm around me as she reached down to take up the trash bin with her other paw, and then she offered a subtle nod to let me know that she was ready to get moving.

Step by step, with progress steady but sure, we went off to reach her bedroom. My grasp on her was firm and never loosened in the slightest as we walked, paws alert to catch her if she stumbled again. Inching through the living room doorway into the hallway was the first milestone to overcome, and from there I led her through the hallway to the first door on the right and through the doorway.

Soft sunlight crept across the carpeted floor, sinking into the room from the drawn curtains at the window. The walls were the color of a fresh blue sky and the various shelves across them or standing on its own the clouds. With all of the tools and trinkets on wall shelves and books laid out neatly in the bookshelf, every little piece of the room spoke true to how my memory reminded me, or maybe all except a pot of tulips that now thrived in the light from the windowsill.

After we had found our way to the side of the bed, a bed draped in a thin blanket of a dark midnight blue, Lottie slipped from my grasp to climb into the bed.

"Are you sure there isn't anything I can do for you?" I asked her as she quietly settled down to rest. "I brought a bag of things that might help you. I have some oils, or I could make you some tea..."

"Mm-mm," Lottie broke in in a murmur, grabbing hold of the blankets in her fists and dragging them closer to her face to clutch them there. "Mm-mm."

With the way she was almost trying to hide her face in the blankets and the pained tremble in her paws as she gripped it, it was clear that she didn't exactly feel much like talking, and understandably. "Okay, that's fine," I replied. "I'll be nearby if you think of anything you need."

I returned to the living room to retrieve the chair that Lyle had set out, carrying it back through the hallway to relocate it into Lottie's bedroom. Lottie had released her grip on the blankets by the time I found my seat again, resting motionlessly on her back with her expression still distorted in silent pain. I took a seat close by to her bed and then, finding sense in not leaving her side, I began to watch over her.

I wasn't entirely sure how long I sat there. I sat until a tingling numbness snuck down my legs and my back grew stiff. I couldn't pinpoint the exact moment when Lottie ended up falling asleep again, though it was only minutes after I had begun my watch that she had started her drift into her subconscious. I sat until I fidgeted restlessly with my paws just to entertain myself and my feet tapped absentmindedly against the carpet, but I still didn't get up from the chair.

The entire morning had been such a reeling change in the regular sequence of events that I continued to tumble over myself to process everything, even now. I couldn't reach far back enough in my memory for the last day Lottie had been as long as a minute late for work, never mind miss it completely. Thousands of questions unanswered in the disturbing mystery of the occasion pounded into my head as I sat alone with my thoughts. On a significantly less important observation yet still easily noticed, it was also the first time in several years that I'd seen Lottie without her usual makeup look, though she didn't look any different except for having much thinner eyelashes. Maybe that was the final push into the acknowledgment that this was not a usual day with usual problems.

A sudden sharp intake of breath had jerked me back to reality at one point. Lottie had emerged out of sleep just enough to break down in tears, writhing in quiet, whimpered cries as I watched attentively. She had forgotten I was there entirely—She only allowed herself to cry in front of me if something was terribly wrong. Either the minutes of sleep she was still trying to squeeze out was haunted by upsetting nightmares, every moment of consciousness was spent in dreadful pain, or both. I ached to ask her what was happening, but she was awake only long enough for the sound to escape and sank right back into sleep, and so I held my tongue to let her rest, but I didn't forget.

I couldn't just sit there forever. I had been surveying a sewn picture on the wall that read "Savor the Day" in the numbness of my seat when I decided I wasn't going to keep sitting. I kept myself silent as I abandoned my chair and left Lottie's bedside to get moving. I made a reappearance in the dining room to check the time and found it was nearly eleven-thirty, just a bit too early still to start preparing lunch, so I sought other ways to entertain myself.

I set out a washcloth over the side of the bathroom sink for easy access in case I would need to retrieve it and filled up a glass with tap water to pour into the plant on Lottie's windowsill—She broke out of sleep while I was pouring to whisper in question of what I was doing—And once I finished, I set out on the task of lunch. I boiled enough soup for the both of us, sending clouds of steam across the kitchen through the fragile sunlight dancing from the windows, but Lottie refused the meal. She had started feeling very sick again and wanted to keep resting. I ate alone at the kitchen table.

And so, the day went on as such. Across the hours, Lottie drifted in and out of sleep, breaking down in tears when awake and laying in a silent distress when asleep. I sat myself back down at her bedside late into the afternoon at around four, lingering by her side amongst the gentle golden hour light, but I didn't need to sit for long.

I was examining my paws in my lap as I sat in the chair beside Lottie's bed when a distant door unlatched and swung open, pricking up my attention. Lottie, who had been quietly resting but not sleeping, raised her head to see what was happening with a wince flicking across her face. I leaned back in my chair, trying to get a glimpse out into the hallway as the door shut again but wasn't quite close enough, and footsteps approached the bedroom.

Seconds later, Lyle appeared in the open doorway, seeming just as worn out as he had early this morning, surveying the room before he spoke. "I'm glad to see that everything's somewhat better than it was before I left," he said, shifting in his stance to lean on the doorframe and looking at me. "I didn't get a call from you, so I'm guessing that it didn't get any worse, at least."

"It's mostly under control now," I promised.

"Good," Lyle mumbled, and his dark eyes flicked to look at Lottie instead as she settled back down onto the bed. "How do you feel, Lottie? Are you feeling any better?"

"No," Lottie whispered. I could even hear the pain clawing through her voice in the one little word.

"Hmm," Lyle muttered, a shadow of disappointment sinking down onto him. He stood at the door for a few more seconds before he withdrew from the doorframe, stepping closer to the chair where I sat and outstretched his paw to rest it on my back. "Well, I think you should head home for now. I'll take it from here. I assume that you'll be back here tomorrow if things haven't improved and that's fine, I can manage another day. I'm just hoping that this is something we can work past soon."

The twenty-third of December was a day of piercing temperatures. The air bit and nipped at my cheeks as I made the journey to Lottie's house for the second day, though at the very least I had my coat this time—I knew ahead of time that I wasn't going to work today and so I dressed myself in a plain set of khaki pants and a maroon sweater that Mom had knit for me two winters ago. My arrival at the house was exactly the same as yesterday's, the warm sweep of air greeting me by the first step inside, the beaten-down backpack where I had left it on the nearest chair at the table, and the lonely sensation of a quiet house.

The further that I emerged into the house, still nobody came to greet me. I unzipped my coat and slipped it from my shoulders, folding it over the edge of the chair which held my backpack, and crept further into the hallway, searching for any kind of presence. The living room was deserted, but the black knit blanket still sat crumpled at the end of the couch. There wasn't a sound that hit the atmosphere as I went forward along the sunlit path and found myself at Lottie's shut door on the right side of the hallway. If anyone was anywhere in this house, it would have been in there.

I gave the door a soft knock, leaning in close to listen for movement or an answer. A shuffle from inside of the room implied that someone was standing up and I withdrew my head from the door as the animal inside approached. The door eased open to reveal Lyle standing there, appearing to have relaxed a bit since yesterday when I had seen him, yet worry still clung to his face.

"There you are. You can come in," Lyle told me, speaking no louder than a murmur as he retreated from the door to allow me to enter. "You're a little earlier than I was expecting you."

I snuck a glance around the room as I stepped inside. Everything was precisely how I had left it the day before and Lottie was resting in her bed as usual, but the undisturbed expression on her face lifted some of the worry from my chest. She must have been doing better, or at least was in less pain. She looked noticeably calmer now, peacefully sleeping under the dark blankets with her arms draped over her middle and her hair falling down her arms.

"Is she doing better?" I whispered so as to not wake her, casting a questioning glance at Lyle beside me.

"It's hard to tell," Lyle admitted. He spoke to me, but he watched over Lottie from where he stood, a glimmer of concern flicking through his eyes as they peered behind his thick glasses. "She seems to be. She hasn't gotten sick since before you stopped by yesterday. Well, as far as I know. She hasn't yet gotten her strength back from being bedridden for so long. She barely even woke up today."

I looked at Lottie. She didn't have any idea of the words that were being exchanged around her. I wondered if she could hear us somehow, maybe through a dream.

"What time is it?" Lyle mumbled to himself, pushing up the sleeve of his suit jacket to glance at the watch wrapped around his wrist. He continued to examine the watch for a few seconds before he lowered his arm again. "I don't need to get going for another ten minutes. I'm going to finish up some work downstairs in my office before I leave. I assume you'll be okay if I leave you here for a bit."

With the bedroom door hanging open and the basement door just down the hall, I could hear Lyle descending downstairs from where I stood. I took a seat in the chair beside the bed that he had left, settling in to watch over Lottie as I had before.

Across the next several minutes, Lottie hardly moved. The truth of the morning settled as movement stilled. Lottie's undisturbed sleep left me alone with my thoughts, which steadily rolled through the situation in contemplation as the minutes crept by. Vibrant colors from the rising sun lit up the sky from the window, which I earned a glimpse of from my seat near the bed. In the stretch of solitude, my eyes danced along the frost decorating the edges of the window from the chill outside, and a shift in movement brought my focus back to the bed.

Lottie had broken out of her sleep, but drowsiness fumbled her motions as she rolled over onto her side facing me, eyes fluttering open at last and jumping to examine the room before they fell upon me. "Hi, Digby," she whispered softly, settling back down onto the bed on her side, but couldn't seem to keep her eyes open for any longer as they were already falling shut.

Lottie had become motionless on her side once again when I caught the sound of footsteps ascending the basement stairs down the hall. Lyle must have finished up his last bit of work and was heading to leave. I pushed myself up from the chair and silently emerged from the bedroom just as Lyle stepped up into sight from the stairs.

"I'm heading out," Lyle announced, fidgeting with his sleeves and adjusting them to the right length to make himself presentable as he approached where I stood at the beginning of the hallway. "Has anything changed since I went downstairs?"

"Not really," I said. "She woke up for a second but didn't seem to be in any pain."

"Good." Lyle moved past me, making his way to the door past the kitchen and gathering area. "Once again, I'll be home around four-thirty. I'm really hoping that this will all be past us by then."

That day, whether I was with Lottie or without her it would have felt no different. Once she had sunk back into her sleep after exchanging just a few words with me in greeting, it was as though nothing could wake her. I delighted in a warm cup of coffee at the kitchen table of a silent house as the morning proceeded to open up to ease the building headache from my recent lack of caffeine. I thought to make some coffee to help Lottie wake up as well, but I shot down this idea again when I couldn't find sense in disturbing her rest and it occurred to me that she had never been fond of coffee. She could never quite get used to the taste.

My eyes infrequently flicked back to Lottie's bedroom door hanging ajar the longer I spent in the front segment of the house, waiting to see if she would ever step out. I gulped down the final sip of my coffee shortly after eight, dismissing myself to the counter to wash the mug and put it away. I even tried seating myself in one of the tall gray chairs to provide an opportunity for Lottie to sit down with me if she did end up ducking out of her bedroom at some point in the morning, but the clock hand inched around the face and turned into eight-thirty without an appearance.

Soon after the strike of noon, I prepared lunch for both of us. It was nothing but toast with a thick swipe of butter, as I wasn't entirely certain how much food Lottie's stomach could handle at the moment. I brought her the meal to eat right from her bedroom, seeing as to not force her to walk all the way to the table to eat, and it would have been rather pleasant to just sit and eat together if I had been able to manage to wake her up.

I left the plate of toast on the desk beside Lottie's bed in hopes that she would wake up at some point and discover it, though after hours of undisturbed sleep, it was starting to seem unlikely. I worked through my meal from my seat beside the bed as Lottie's own meal gradually grew cold again, washing my plate once finished and tucking it away where I had found it. I prepared tea for the two of us not an hour later, attentively repeating the instructions plastered on the back of the bag, and carried out the mugs only to find that nothing had changed. Lottie's mug joined the place on the desk of her abandoned dish.

The afternoon inched along. The further that the day rolled on, the larger the sensation swelled in my mind of an unbroken solitude. The only sounds that hit the air were by my own causation while Lottie lay still across the hours, arms folded across her blanket and a blank expression resting on her unconscious face while she didn't even stir. It was like we were on entirely seperate planes of existence, two very different worlds that never once collided. While she was lost in the depths of her mind, I was stuck here waiting for her to come back to me.

One o'clock in the afternoon found me at her bedside once again. With seeing her lay without a shift in her movements and without the slightest twitch in her face, it was easy for dim uncertainties to start to creep in. I had to stand as a wall in my mind to shield away grim worries of the future. Was my mind the only one plagued by these worries? Did no one else cling to the seriousness of the situation like I did?

I just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that anyone else could look at Lottie, motionless on her bed, and not fear for the next day ahead. Lyle barely had a tremble in his voice this morning when I was talking with him before he went off to work. Why was nobody else worried about this? Was it not a concern to find out what was causing all of this?

If it was something troubling, it was something I would set myself to discover by a thorough study, if I could figure out how to get that information. By deep research, surely. I could conduct my research if I had access to my computer at work, but there was absolutely no way I could abandon Lottie now. A computer in the house. Lyle had a computer in his office downstairs.

If I could just find out how to enter the account. The hallway, as usual, was empty and deserted of life as I emerged from the bedroom, quietly shutting the door in my departure. Any extra protection from sound was better than nothing. Lyle's bedroom—A place where I could surely find any hints as to how to access his computer—Was the door to the left of Lottie's, the farthest door on the right side of the hallway across from the shut basement door. In a moment, my feet were moving quicker than I could comprehend what I was doing as I knew that a split second of consideration was enough to send me reeling by the choice I had hurled myself into.

The bedroom door let out a high-pitched whine as I eased it open as if expecting to run into someone waiting to catch me. This, of course, was something I didn't find as my eyes flittered to examine the new room, moving in through the doorway with cautious steps. My feet crept over pale gray carpet into a room bordered by an almost marble-like wall. The floor was mostly empty carpet-space, leaving a tidy and mindfully-executed room ahead of me. A large double bed draped with white sheets sat with its wooden headboard against the middle of the right wall. Matching wooden nightstands sat on either side of the bed, each with various tools and small items, and an extravagant dresser was positioned across the way. Every inch of this room screamed of somewhere I wasn't meant to be.

Sunlight sank over the surface of the carpet as I moved inside without a sound. I first found myself at the nearest side of the bed, focus flicking rapidly between the nightstands for a note or anything else that would give me the password. I had only been in the room for a few seconds and I was already skirting the rim of paranoia, ears attentive and alert for any sound to hit the air. I found writing utensils, a miniature planner, a bit of velvety black cloth, and more tiny objects across the nightstands, but there was nothing in sight that could have helped me.

There was a drawer beneath the surface of each nightstand. My paws fumbled for the handle of the drawer at my hip, yanking open the drawer to find yet another clutter, an overwhelm of stacked and crumpled papers. I'd have been there for half an hour if I searched thoroughly through everything. Carelessly, I pawed through the sheets of paper, dashing through paper with chunks of typed text—There was no sense in finding it typed and printed, so I scanned right past anything that was—And discovered the bottom of the drawer. Nothing. I pushed the drawer back into place and went on to the next one.

The second drawer was notably more organized. I tore open the drawer with a touch more strain as it held more weighty contents and stumbled upon an array of thick stacked notebooks with leather cases and stapled sheets of paper, though it wasn't an exception to discarded wadded-up papers like the first one. I didn't bother removing the notebooks with the hassle of putting them back where I found them, so I paged through the stapled sheets with eyes prying for information.

They were printed articles from several years back, by the looks of the simple layout and the dates at the top, but nothing that came close to what I was looking for. The Technique to Helping and Healing From Struggles in Anger Management. What You Need to Know if You Plan to Retire Early. None of it was of any use to me. I paused at an article with the heading of 15 Beneficial Tricks to Appreciate Your Job More, but I had no time to linger and so I put it aside to resume my pursuit. Amongst the crumpled sheets of paper was a photo in a similar state that seemed to be taken years ago, given how Lyle looked significantly younger as he stood beside a well-dressed brown otter who had a spurt of untamed hair on the top of his head. Okay, great. Didn't need it.

I pushed the drawer closed, head snapping back up to sweep my gaze across the room. With my lack of progress, my options had become very slim of where to turn. What I had left to look through was the dresser at the other end of the room and nothing more. I stole my way across the carpet, withdrawing drawer after drawer only to be faced with disappointment once again. Clothes. More clothes. Nothing but clothes.

My paws rested on the rim of the dresser, thoughts reeling for my next step. I was too far in to quit now. If I were Lyle, where would I put my password? With any luck, it was actually out somewhere I could find it. My thoughts flashed back to various movies I'd seen throughout my life where a character stood in a similar position, in desperate search of the key to unlock the answers. A garage was a common hiding place of useful information, at least so it was told in story, or maybe scribbled on a note tucked away in a basement. Lyle had been downstairs in the basement just this morning, shutting himself away in his office to finish work on his computer. That was it! If there was anywhere I would find what I needed, it would have been with the computer, for convenience sake.

Dull lights flooded the space as I flicked the lightswitch on my descent down the stairs. I couldn't recall the last time I had been down here, so my presence now was like walking into it for the very first time. Silver walls closed in on the area and the floor was a dark, almost dirt-like surface while wooden columns rose from the ground as if to hold up the ceiling. Shelves and piled boxes overcame the space, forging a state like a labyrinth. A demanding task lay before me to find my way through.

Anonymity was mine as I slipped my way past the obstacles cornering me with every step. Only the faded lights eyed my presence the closer I became to the truth, or at least, what I hoped would be. My eyes searched the silver walls around me, peering for a door or any sign of another room or a different area, but I could catch nothing out of the ordinary. It was only after nearly a minute of exploration that my memory paid me a visit and my focus shot down to my feet, placing each step carefully and mindfully as I crept on. There were some pipes down here running near the walls that I needed to look out for. Isabelle had caught her foot on one of them when we were ten as she wasn't paying attention and broke her wrist in the fall. She hadn't cried, but Lottie had, out of worry.

A venture past the barrier of the wall allowed me to catch sight of a metal door at my left. That had to have been it—What other separate rooms could have been down here? I launched into motion, stealing my way across the room and sneaking a glimpse across the floor for any pipes, and then I was at the door.

I thrust open the door to a heavily shadowed room, lights from the front area slicing through the darkness and falling over a cleared floor. It wasn't enough to distinguish furniture that sat at the far end of the room. My paws fumbled along the surface of the wall around the doorframe, prying for a lightswitch, and hurried to flip it on upon finding it on the right side. With a rapid flicker from the strips of light above, the room was then lit.

Steel bookshelves and file cabinets lined the walls of the room. Open boxes and stacked books lay scattered across the floor around a desk at the opposite end of the door. The desk, messy with items like his office at the work building, provided the surface for a bulky computer where a worn-down office chair sat facing it. The computer screen was darkened in Lyle's absence, a sure sign that I would need some way to enter the account.

The lights that swarmed the room were bright yet almost fragile as I crossed the room, tugging the chair aside to scour the surface of the desk. Amongst a collection of ballpoint pens and mechanical pencils sat a thin set of pink notepaper, but it was blank. I flipped through the notepad, quickly discovering that every page behind it was blank like the front, and chucked it back onto the desk to plop down into a seat in the office chair. I'd have to find another way in. I reached for the computer mouse at the right of the desk, but caught a glance of my reflection in the darkness of the screen, a pair of distraught dark eyes drilling through the screen back at me. First it was breaking into a house without verbal permission, now it was cracking into information that wasn't mine—Who was the animal I was becoming here?

The computer screen brightened with as much as a click from the mouse. I'd been waiting for my reflection in the darkness to be engulfed by some kind of sign-in page, prompting for information I hadn't yet managed to receive, but the screen lit up to an undisturbed background image of a dim and cloudy sky. I reeled at the abrupt success, tumbling over how something like this could have been granted to me so easily, and then it sunk in: Lyle had just used his computer this morning. It must not have been long enough since then to completely shut down, not to mention he would need to be wary of having his information exposed while living with someone like Lottie. It was someone like me he needed to be concerned about.

I broke into my research without a second thought. I tore out a fresh sheet of the notepad—It wasn't like Lyle could have known that one sheet was missing—and claimed one of the pencils to scribble down notes whenever I found something to store for future reference. My paws flew across the keyboard, offering search after search of every element that had brought us here, jots of notes filling the notepad sheet. No matter how far I etched into my search, I was no closer to the solution; I found tips to relieve nausea, potential causes that couldn't quite fit the picture, and what to do if the situation dragged on for longer than a week, two weeks, a month, but no definite answer.

The hopelessness seemed to weigh down on the room as the motivation to pursue my search ran short like a dying motor. I lifted my sheet of notes to scan through everything I had written, piecing together the observations to try and build a connection, but nothing connected. That was all that I could do for now, at least from this approach. I rid my searches from the computer's history, left the screen exactly I had found it, and cleared out from the room like I hadn't allowed my presence there at all.

I was enough of a strategist to extract information in other ways.

The warm water splashed down my paws as the sound of clinking dishes filled the room of the golden light of the afternoon. Lottie had never woken up to eat her soup or drink her tea, so I carried the discarded dishes into the kitchen at the turn into the fourth hour. Soapy suds bubbled up in the water as I rinsed out the bowl and the mug, scrubbing both with a kitchen towel until they were as clean as they had once been before I used them.

I was running the washed mug under the stream of water, having abandoned the bowl on the counter next to me to air-dry, when I registered the sound of the front door unlatching. I tossed a glance over my shoulder in time to see the door swing open and Lyle emerge into the room, his gaze sweeping across the area before it fell on me.

"Hi," Lyle greeted me. Exhaustion audibly tore down his voice—Running the entirety of the business for the first time in years must have been taking a notable effect on him. He stepped further inside the room to quietly shut the door after him before he turned to face me again, inching closer to perch his paws on the back of the chair nearest to the door. "Thank you for doing that. You've been a big help. How's Lottie? Any better?"

"I can't tell," I admitted, reaching out to turn off the water and shake the mug to disperse the dampness. "She didn't wake up at all since this morning."

"So, it's the same as when I left," Lyle mumbled, almost to himself. He slipped his glasses from his face, using his other paw to tiredly rub his eyes for a few seconds before he put his glasses back into place and rested on the chair again. "Listen, Digby."

By the tone of his voice, he was about to say something that I wouldn't want to hear. It was likely something about me looking after Lottie. I prepared to listen to something that I would take with a grain of salt as I opened up the cupboards.

"I appreciate what you're doing for my family, but I don't know how much longer this can continue," Lyle explained behind me as I carefully piled up the dishes with their like. "I might have to start sending you back to work soon. You owe a responsibility to the HHDA that you haven't been fulfilling. Both Lottie and I are grateful for your help, but she'll recover with time. I don't want to risk your absence starting to affect your performance."

I shut the cupboard doors and turned back to look at him, leaning on the counter behind me as I listened.

"Well, you know what I mean," Lyle added after a moment. "What I'm trying to say is that Lottie might be getting better by the day, but it's time to start moving on to other aspects of your life again. Your work can't be pushed away forever. Life always has its ups and downs, but it never stops moving forward."

I emerged into the house on the delicate, biting morning of December twenty-fourth to a different situation than usual.

The chill of the frosty air had just begun to thaw as I first entered the living and dining room segment of the space, numbly pulling my coat from my shoulders while I approached the table. I rolled my coat over my arm, stopping at the nearest chair to set it aside.

"I just don't want to think about it anymore. I feel like if I don't think about it, then I might be okay."

I fumbled with my coat at the sound of Lottie's voice, and a calm voice at that, as fragile as it was. It was coming from her bedroom at the start of the hallway with the door hanging ajar. She must have been talking with Lyle. I set down my coat on the seat of the chair and advanced forward to reach the hallway, arriving in the open doorway as Lyle spoke in response.

"Well, sure. I can understand that. I just think it's maybe time that..." Lyle began, his voice trailing off as he noticed me in the doorway. He was standing with his paw resting over the top of the chair next to Lottie's bed, where Lottie was awake and sitting up to talk. Fatigue sunk into her face more than it had before in the complete image of weakness by illness, but what was important was that she was actually awake this time.

"Digby?" Lottie said delicately.

"I'm here," I told her. "I'm sorry if I'm interrupting something."

"No, no," Lyle broke into the conversation in a mumble, withdrawing from the chair to look at me in the doorway. "Don't worry. I was about to get going anyway. We were just talking about... You know, the situation."

"Is there anything I should know?" I asked him. Lottie shifted in her seat to run her paws over her face, drawing in a weak breath as she did so. "Has anything changed since I was here yesterday?"

"Well, she's awake now, but I'm assuming that you noticed." Lyle snuck a glance back at Lottie before he returned his focus to me. "Other than that, she's feeling better, but I'm not so sure about the idea of jumping back into routine so soon. She said she wants to start heading back to work now, but..."

My focus fell on Lottie once again. She had dropped her paws away from her face and was looking up at her uncle as if silently waiting for him to finish his sentence. A determination to continue to prove herself as she had been at work burned in the darkness of her eyes, but the utter exhaustion hanging from her face told a different story. I knew the end of the sentence without Lyle needing to say it. But she probably couldn't take it.

"Well, I should be going now," Lyle went on after a few seconds, turning to face me again. "Call me if you need anything. I'll be home around four as usual. You can go ahead and sit down here. You don't have to keep standing around if you don't want to."

I caught the sound of the door shutting softly in Lyle's departure as I settled into the seat beside the bed. I raised my head again once seated only for my gaze to meet Lottie's, lingering on me as she sat in the bed. I searched her exhausted face for any visible sign of pain, but all traces except pure tiredness were gone.

"You're feeling better?" I said, outstretching my paw and brushing back her bangs to check for a fever on her forehead. When I had tried this on the first day, she had leaned on my paw, hoping for something to hold her up, but she was steady this time as she observed my movements. Any unnatural heat had vanished with the pain. "You're not feeling as sick as you did before?"

"I'm not feeling sick at all," Lottie told me. I withdrew my paw again, settling back into my seat. "I'm really tired, though. It's like I can't quite wake up and everything feels drowsy and strange. But I'm not sick."

"If you're tired, that's all the more reason to get some rest," I reminded her. A soft sigh escaped her at the statement and she delicately ran her paws over her face again. "I'll be here if you need anything."

"I suppose that there's no other option I can take," Lottie murmured.

Despite her hesitation to rest, Lottie settled quickly. She was restless as she lay in the bed for the first several minutes, rolling over every once in a while as she tried to get comfortable. After a while, she had finally gone still, laying with a steady breath so calm that I had no other choice but to assume that she had fallen asleep. With the weary image plastered over her face when she had been sitting up and talking to me before, it wasn't any surprise that she was out within fifteen minutes.

It was the third day away from work that I was spending at Lottie's house looking over her and it had begun to sink more deeply into the repetitive sense of a usual schedule than I would have liked. I could have seen myself doing this for several days afterward without a tugging urge for change, which wasn't exactly the best image to be painted in my mind, given that would have implied Lottie never would recover. By this point in the routine, I'd eased out of the gripping instinct to stay by her side with every chance I got, so I excused myself from her bedside as soon as I was certain that she was no longer awake. It wasn't like she would have known that I wasn't there.

But there was one problem with keeping to myself during the times that Lottie didn't need me near her: Finding something to entertain myself. It wasn't my house, so I surrendered to hesitation at the thought of lounging about or digging around to find something to do. I leaned on the reliance of my regular tasks that had somehow fallen into place in my routine. With footsteps like a single sound would have been blasted out for the world to hear, I crept through the bedroom to water the potted tulips that sat in Lottie's windowsill, prepared two cups of herbal tea and left one on her nightstand in case she would want it, washed out the mug that I had drank from, and just like that had run short of ways to keep myself busy.

At the turn of the tenth to the eleventh hour, I found myself seated at the table facing the entryway. At some point, I'd pried a tiny splinter of wood off of the edge of the table and was thoughtlessly rubbing it in my paw as recollections rolled on in my mind. Words echoing, motions recurring. Every day that I had spent here had started with a different situation but ended with the same closure—With no closure whatsoever. How much longer was this supposed to last? Every time Lottie had seemed like she might have been getting better, I'd come back the next day to hear of a setback. Life always went on, telling different stories and leaving old plotlines to a wispy memory in time—That was the way life worked, after all—But I couldn't see the end of this particular story. I could only sit and trust that an end was near at all.

Yesterday's storyline, if I were to continue that metaphor, was surfacing in a deeply reimmersed flashback. I had stolen into Lyle's own personal computer in a blind attempt to figure out what was happening and left the office unsuccessful plotting different ways to collect information. I hadn't picked that thought up again until right now. A sharp pain shot into my paw as the splinter pierced the surface and I flicked it down onto the floor to forget about it. If research wasn't something that could help me, what was?

I barely had the time to ask myself this question when the sound of a gently shut door tugged me back to reality. Lottie. I raised my eyes from the table at the followed sound of shuffling footsteps, softly massaging the spot on my paw that had been poked at, just in time to see Lottie emerge drowsily from the hallway. She had clearly just woken up a few minutes ago, wrapped snugly in her knit black blanket with whispers of a tired expression lingering on her face and her long hair falling unsettled down her shoulders.

"I woke up and you weren't there, so I figured you'd be in here," Lottie offered a sleepy explanation, moving towards the table from the entrance to the hallway to join me.

"Why did you get up?" I asked as she slipped an arm out of her blanket to withdraw the chair across the table from me, cautiously lowering herself into a seat. "You should be resting."

"I've spent enough time locked up in my bedroom already," Lottie urged. She inched her chair forward and closer to the table, tightening the blanket around herself to ensure that she was comfortable before her gaze met mine. "I wanted to be up and doing something for once."

I didn't have an argument for that. Spending three days stuck in the same room knocked down by the looming sense of illness was definitely enough to stir someone to restlessness after a while. Lottie had broken her gaze from mine to examine the hem of the blanket that she had wound around herself but I searched her face as if it would remind me of something to talk about as the silence grew. She must have truly believed that she had recovered, but I knew better. Her desire to return to the HHDA settled deeper than what she had expressed, that much I could tell simply by knowing her and her devotion, but she wouldn't be returning for a while. She wouldn't even be returning to work on Toy Day tomorrow, a day of celebration and gift-giving that provoked a significantly heavier and particularly happy crowd from the beloved holiday, and it would have been the very first time she wouldn't get to see that.

I needed to fix this, and quickly. There was no better way to get to the bottom of a problem than directly from the source. My mind spun with conversational approaches, piecing apart each strategy for the most efficient way to ease into the answer. I'd have to be very careful if I wanted to get anywhere; Lottie was exceptionally attentive and could pick up on my technique with a little slip-up at most. I could always prompt the answer straight from the start, but I instantly countered this with the acceptance that jumping back into the topic so abruptly ran the risk of making her sick all over again at the thought of it. I'd find a more subtle strategy in pulling information out of her. Sure, all of this could have been manipulation to some degree, but the cause justified it in my mind.

"Have you been doing anything fun in your free time when you're off work?" I asked her. It was posed as an innocent question to make conversation, but in case Lottie would confess of eating something that could have made her sick or trying out a new restaurant, I could at least grab hold of that.

"I'm assuming that you mean before now," Lottie replied, shifting with her blanket again. "But no, I haven't done anything very interesting. I wrote to Isabelle a while ago for her and your birthday, but that's the only notable event I can mention outside of work."

Well, that I already knew. I'd have to dig deeper. Silence absorbed the next minutes where conversation faded and my mind was busy again, scouring the situation for anything I could bring to attention.

"December is the coldest month of the year, isn't it?" I went on, dropping my gaze to the floor to run my eyes along the clean surface. I could still see the splinter I had dropped next to the leg of the chair. I wasn't looking for anything to see—Just an excuse to act casual. "Maybe that's a part of what's making you sick. That chill really sinks deep into you."

"I think that's January, actually," Lottie said. Her voice broke slightly from the tiredness on "actually" and she weakly cleared her throat. "Most of the lowest temperatures recorded throughout the year happen somewhere in January. I don't usually get sick by the change of seasons except for the occasional allergies and I don't remember the last time I was that sick."

The rhythmic ticking of the clock on the wall filled the room. It was ten past eleven. I probably should have begun thinking about preparing lunch soon. Likely, it was going to be soup again for the time left that I would spend here looking after Lottie. Oh, well. I had more crucial things to think about for the current moment.

"I actually wasn't feeling too well for a while before all of this happened," I told her. It was a lie—The last time I'd actually felt truly nauseated was as long as a month ago and was likely only from hunger—But a sturdy foundation for my next question. "I doubt that it's the same thing. It wasn't nearly as intense. I'm guessing it was probably some kind of bug. How long do stomach bugs last?"

"I don't know for sure," Lottie confessed. "How long did you feel sick? If I'm correct, it isn't supposed to last longer than twenty-four hours. If it was anything past that, you might want to check in with a medical professional."

I almost knew less than when I started. It wasn't like she was purposefully hiding something from me, as all of her answered sounded genuine and honest, but she had no more of an idea of what was going on than I did. In a split second, I had already leaped from the task of interrogating Lottie to the objective of checking in with Lyle, but my thoughts fell short before I could even think of how I would begin. Maybe I was going too far with this. Maybe my anxiety had elevated the seriousness of the situation to push me to take risky steps while Lottie was simply and temporarily sick. Maybe it was time to let this illness run its course without trying to bend every influence my way.

"I feel like I just got hit with this wave of exhaustion," Lottie murmured just minutes later, withdrawing a paw from holding the blanket snug to rub her eyes. "If I didn't want to stay up so badly, I'd sleep a century longer if I could."

There was nothing more I could do. "I think you should get back to bed for now," I suggested.

"I think you might be right," Lottie whispered in agreement, easing herself to her feet to take her leave and tiredly pushing her chair back in towards the table. "If you get lonely out here, you can come and wake me up again."

"I need you to start coming back into work, Digby."

I silently searched Lyle's face for any visual sign that he was willing to bend his statement. Together, we sat facing each other at the kitchen table after he had reentered the house following his return from work as he had requested we discuss the situation. Lottie had never left her bedroom again after shutting herself inside once we had eaten lunch together, so the house was quiet and still outside of our conversation at the table. Lyle's paws were folded on the surface of the table as he leaned forward to address me and the dark eyes that peered behind his glasses were as firm as stone. There was no room for negotiation.

"What about Lottie?" I tried anyway. "Someone should be here with her."

"She'll be fine," Lyle told me. "I know how much you want to stay here, but that has to end now. I didn't plan for you to disappear so suddenly and for you to be gone for so long. I need you to come back and start filling in with your part again."

Well, I couldn't work my way around it this time. "Is Lottie coming back in with me?" I asked him.

"I don't think so, no," Lyle mumbled, straightening up in his seat again with a faint sigh. The thick frame of his glasses caught a glint of the light above us. "Not tomorrow, at least. I probably won't hear the end of it from her, but that's my final decision. I want to be absolutely certain that she's recovered before she tries to work again."

I knew that he was right, but I didn't admit it aloud. Lyle rose from his seat at the table, moving past my seat to make his way into the kitchen, and just moments later I caught the sound of him opening cupboards and removing pans to prepare dinner. A sort of uncertainty hung in the air, one that clouded one's lungs with the uneasy anticipation when not even the near future was known to them.

"What happens now?" I asked, sneaking a glance over my shoulder at Lyle in the kitchen. A flat pan sat on the counter waiting for use while he set a deeper pan into the sink and he tossed a glance back as well when I started speaking to him.

"Now, we move on," Lyle told me, turning his attention back to the pan in the sink. He turned on the hot water, causing it to splash down and fill the space in the pan. "You're going to go home for the night and I'm going to look after Lottie. In the morning, you'll go to work, as will I, and Lottie will stay here to rest. After that, we'll just have to figure it out as we go along."

I couldn't tear the thought of Lottie being stuck at home alone for the entire day as I tugged on my coat to prepare to go home for the last time. It was likely going to be difficult for her to be alone for so long, since she was barely by herself during a regular day. Words of concern stirred in my chest, winding up to spring out, but I couldn't figure out how to let them free. I exchanged my brief goodbyes with Lyle, asked him to do the same for Lottie, and went off on my way through the bitter chills and heavy snow back home under the dense clouds of the afternoon sky.

Life's momentary story had ended, at least the part of it that required my active presence. If I could gather anything from the last conversation I'd shared with Lyle before leaving the house, it was that Lottie was going to get well soon and that it wasn't something I needed to worry about. But as I stumbled my way through the snow on the forty-minute journey back home, it didn't settle right to let the situation go completely. Maybe the story wasn't quite over yet.

For all I knew, the worst was yet to come.

. . .

And then, the long-awaited holiday of Toy Day was here. It was the day that young animals longed for all year in eager anticipation of receiving a special gift, but it didn't feel entirely special this year. Mom and Dad knew how much weight still sat on my shoulders and woke up early with me to offer one of the presents for me to open before work, but I declined. I wasn't exactly in the holiday spirit right now. I'd open my gifts and witness my parents opening their gifts when I got home again.

Returning to work felt more natural than I'd anticipated. It was like I had never left at all and was following a schedule that had carried me through every day before now. I'd expected to greet Lyle in his office to ask for any updates about the situation once I arrived, but I came upon the building to discover it locked. I was the first one there. I unlocked the doors with my personal set of keys and let myself in to get settled in my office. Lyle had arrived shortly before I would have had to leave for Open Advisory and poked his head into my office to let me know that Lottie was feeling better and would be working as soon as tomorrow.

Some of the tension in the knots in my stomach lifted, but not fully. I still didn't have all of the answers. I couldn't grasp any kind of cause that would have knocked Lottie down for so long and with such force. I couldn't let the worry go that whatever nausea spell had fallen upon her was beyond Lyle's idea of the problem. With the worst case scenario, this wasn't over after all and was waiting to come back and haunt us when we least expected it.

The absence of Lottie's presence was defiantly clear throughout the day. I didn't pass her in the hallway transitioning from one segment of the day to another. She wasn't there in the break room whenever I stopped by to prepare a cup of coffee to have a chat with or even to say hello. Even the Happy Homeroom participant asked about her, noting that there was usually another otter sitting to the left of me. Once towards the end of the day with yet another reminder of Lottie being gone, I considered the possibility of coming by for a visit so that I could spend the holiday with her, but then I thought of my parents and changed my mind. They were doing so much to support me in these tense times. So I spent the evening at my own home, gathered with my family in what we could make of the day with new gifts and a disorderly display of wrapping paper strewn across the floor.

And then, all too quickly, everything had returned to normal. Lottie was back at the HHDA on the twenty-sixth of December like her illness had been nothing but a gut-wrenching dream tearing through my subconscious in the depths of the night. She was just as cheerful and bright as she always was and the turmoil of the past few days had ceased to disturb our lives. I almost questioned if it had even been real, given how abruptly everything had gone back to the way it was before. Once Lottie was back at Happy Home with Lyle and me, I trusted that this was where things would reset themselves on the steady path to improvement.

But little did I know how much worse it could possibly get.