I noticed how she winced when she thought no one was looking.
How she pressed her hand to the same spot on her stomach, over and over again.
How she would pause mid-step, just for a second, as if the world had tilted beneath her feet.
And then there was the fatigue.
Not the kind that comes from staying up late or studying too hard—but a deep, bone-heavy exhaustion that seemed to drain the life out of her.
One afternoon, I found her asleep on the couch, her breathing shallow, her face unusually pale.
I touched her forehead.
Cold.
Not feverish. Not warm. Just… cold.
That was the moment something inside me shifted from concern to alarm.
The Argument
That night, I didn’t ask.
“We’re taking her to the hospital tomorrow,” I said firmly.
Her father looked up, annoyed. “This again?”
“Yes. This again.”
“You’re overreacting,” he snapped. “It’s a stomach bug or stress. You don’t rush to the hospital for that.”
“And you don’t ignore your child when something is clearly wrong,” I shot back.
Leila sat quietly between us, her eyes moving from one to the other, as if she were somehow responsible for the tension.
“I’m okay,” she whispered.
But she wasn’t.
I could feel it.
And for once, I refused to be talked out of it.
