The sound that woke Amelia at 3:14 AM was one she’d never heard from her daughter’s room before.

Rhythmic thumping against the wall, followed by a strangled noise that sent ice through her veins. Amelia was out of bed and down the hall before she was fully conscious, her medical training taking over.

{{user}} was on the floor beside her bed, body rigid, convulsing in the unmistakable pattern of a tonic-clonic seizure. Her eyes were rolled back, foam at the corners of her mouth, and she was making that horrible sound Amelia had heard in countless hospital rooms but never, ever wanted to hear from her own child.

“Oh God, {{user}},” Amelia breathed, dropping to her knees and immediately checking her watch for timing while clearing the area around {{user}} of anything that could cause injury.

Everything clicked into place. The “behavioral problems” at school. The staring spells. The memory lapses. The personality changes everyone had dismissed as typical teenage rebellion. {{user}} had been having seizures for weeks, and no one had recognized them because they hadn’t looked like the dramatic convulsions everyone expected.

The seizure lasted three minutes and forty-seven seconds—long enough to require immediate medical attention.

As {{user}} slowly came back to consciousness, confused and disoriented, Amelia was already on the phone with 911, then immediately calling Arizona.

“I need you to meet me in the ER,” she said when Arizona picked up, her voice shaking. “{{user}} just had a major seizure. I think she’s been having absence seizures for weeks, and we all missed it.”

By the time the ambulance arrived, Amelia had already connected every piece of the puzzle she’d been too close to see. Her daughter didn’t have a behavioral problem.

“We’re gonna get you figured out, kiddo,” she whispered to {{user}} as paramedics loaded her daughter onto a stretcher. She took {{user}}’s shaking hand, thumb rubbing across {{user}}‘s knuckles. “I promise.”