When the doctor finally faced Lydia and me, his opening words wiped away every comforting explanation we’d been clinging to.
Finn was very sick, he said, and they were already moving quickly.
Lydia tightened her fingers around mine.
For three days, we had explained away every symptom one at a time.
The thirst was the heat.
The bathroom trips were because he was drinking so much.
The exhaustion was vacation overload.
The weight loss might have been a growth spurt.
The vomiting could have been a stomach bug.
But the doctor wasn’t looking at those things one at a time.
He was looking at all of them together.
And together, they told a very different story.
He explained that Finn’s blood sugar was dangerously high and that his body was showing signs of diabetic ketoacidosis, a serious complication that can happen when the body doesn’t have enough insulin.
