My family thought everything was a joke—until the doctor revealed Natalie’s final message.
My cheek still burned where my father’s hand had landed. My scalp still pulsed from my mother’s fingers. On the other side of the glass, Natalie stood near the nurses’ station with her mouth open and her face emptied of color.
Then Dr. Morrison turned the phone toward me.
The last message on the screen began with my daughter’s name.
“Lily only needs one scare.”
For a moment, I did not understand the sentence because my brain refused to live in a world where anyone could write those words about a six-month-old baby.
Dr. Morrison did not let me touch the phone. She kept it angled in her hand while the nurse stood beside her with the sealed plastic bag and the incident report. Security had already moved my parents and Natalie out of Lily’s room, but they had not moved them far enough. Through the glass, I could still see my mother whispering too fast, my father pretending not to look afraid, and Natalie staring at the floor like it had betrayed her.
The message was in a thread between my mother and Natalie.
That was the first new wound.
