We get to the medical offices with twenty minutes to spare before twelve-thirty, which I am sure will be the most agonizing twenty minutes of my life.

“Sit down and eat,” Felix insists, proffering a slice of pizza at me for a third time.

“I'm not hungry,” I reply—which isn't strictly true, but I'm definitely too nauseous to eat anything right now. I don't think I've felt so sick to my stomach since... well, since I was arrested on suspicion of the disappearance of one of my foster-fathers. And when it first became clear that my magic was uncontrollable during my first year at St. Bosco's and everyone was afraid to come near me. And then the first couple months of senior year, culminating in my blowing up the school.

So I guess in comparison, what I'm going through now isn't really so bad.

With that... not exactly comforting thought, I yield a little and sit on the bench between Felix and Eleanor, taking the piece of pizza.

We're outside the building enjoying the weather—only seventy five degrees, about twenty degrees cooler than it would be back home—and taking the chance to eat while we can. Felix wouldn't let us touch the pizza on the drive over. He has an unyielding “no eating in the car” rule, which may or may not be directly because of me.

“Do you really think she'll be able to help?” I ask for about the hundredth time. “It's been so long. She might not remember anything.”

“I don't think she would have asked us to come all the way down here if she didn't remember anything,” El points out. “She'd have just said 'Sorry, can't help', and left it at that, wouldn't she?”

“But we can't go getting excited,” Felix cautions. “She might remember your mother being brought in, but that doesn't mean she'll have any information for us that we can use to find out who she was.”

“Yeah, but...” I say, staring down at the drooping slice of greasy pizza in my hand. “At least I'll know more.”

There's a long silence, and I hate myself a little for the way I've just been dragging everyone else down with me lately. I feel like I'm an infection in the air, depressing everyone I come near.

I stuff the entire pizza slice into my mouth just to give me something to do, and I rise back to my feet and start pacing again.

Twenty minutes later, we're sitting on a row of ottomans in the middle of the lobby, trying to look like we're waiting for someone, and not just loitering because we're up to no good. Felix, implacably dressed as always and handsome enough to be mistaken for a movie star, certainly doesn't look like a suspicious character; and El, all five feet nothing of her dressed in a Hello Kitty sweatshirt looks like an inverse representation of her abrasive personality. But I know I'm pale and haggard, too thin in all the wrong places with grey bags under equally grey eyes. I must look like a deathly ill patient sitting here between them, here for the check up where they finally tell me it's terminal.

I almost feel that way, a little.

A nurse, short and plump and somewhere in her early fifties walks into the lobby, looking around at all the people milling about until she spots the three of us.

“Felix Roth?” she asks as she comes over.

Felix stands up with a smile and shakes her hand. “Yes, you must be Jan. This is Eleanor,” he points at El who rises and shakes the proffered hand as well, “—And Adam.”

It takes an effort of will, but I push myself up as well and offer the woman a weak smile in greeting.

“And you're the one who's looking for information about his mother?” she asks me, her head dipping to one side as she looks me up and down.

“Uh... yeah. I'm trying to figure out who she was. If I have any other family or anything.”

“And you're her direct descendant? Are you an only child?”

I blink. “Um, I think so. I mean, as far as I know. I don't... I don't actually know.” I'd never even thought about that before. What if I wasn't the only one? What if I'd had an older sibling, one old enough to be left home—where ever home was—while my mother took me to the grocery store with her? A sibling who waited and waited for their mother who never came home?

But no. A child old enough to be left alone would know where their mom went, would know their mom's name. If there had been anybody else out there living with my mother who knew her identity, she wouldn't be lying in an unnamed grave in a potter's field right now.

“Okay,” the nurse says with a nod. “It can just get a little complicated on what I can and can't say, what with HIPAA and all. So, what is it you want to know?”

“Everything,” I say in a rush.

“First of all,” Felix clarifies with a sideways glance at me, “do you remember her? The woman who was brought in with a toddler, who died of meningitis.”

“I do, actually. I wasn't sure at first, but it's not too often that kids get brought in with their parents, and rarer still when social services needs to get involved because the parent dies and there's no one else around. Yeah, I remember.” She crosses her arms over her chest and purses her lips while she casts her mind back almost two decades. “Let's see... I think it was sometime in the early evening? It wasn't too busy. I remember a young woman was rushed in to the ER. She was having seizures, slipping in and out of consciousness. We got her into the ICU, but... she must have been sick, really sick, for a while but didn't get treatment. Maybe she thought it was just a bad flu. That happens sometimes. And when you leave meningitis untreated to that point; well, there's just not a lot anyone can do. Anyway, someone came to take the kid—you, I guess—away while they tried to figure out who exactly the woman was, and who to contact. She didn't have much on her. Just a wallet, I think, and all it had in it was cash, no cards, no I.D. She was only wearing flip flops too, and a light coat. I remember when we were talking about it afterward, we thought it seemed like she'd just ran out of the house to grab something from the store real quick, maybe for dinner. That's where she collapsed, you know. Some supermarket near the hospital. I do that all the time, run out to grab some ingredient I realize I'm out of, only grabbing a little cash instead of my purse. Anyway. So she didn't have any identification on her, and I remember that the little boy didn't know her first name. We got a last name, but I can't remember what it was now.”

“Wolfe,” I manage to choke out.

The nurse shrugs. “Maybe. I mean, I guess you'd know, wouldn't you? I don't remember at any rate.”

She falls silent, and after a moment it's clear she's finished.

“Isn't there anything else?” Felix presses her. “Anything she might have said or done?”

“Like I said, she wasn't very lucid. She fell into a coma later that night and didn't wake up again.” Then the nurse squints a little, as if a thought suddenly came to her. “Actually, there was some stuff she was saying, but it didn't make much sense. Christ, what was it? It's just been too long. Hold on, let me think.”

She closes her eyes, her face screwed up as she tries to dredge up the old memory. “It was... 'where is he, where is he'... She said that a lot when she first came in, when she was lucid between the seizures. We figured she was probably talking about her boy, you, and we assured her he was being taken care of. Then she started fading a little more, and the only things we got out of her were disjointed. We kept asking her for her name, her address, for her family's names, but she wasn't able to focus. We asked her about her parents, and she said something about... what was it? Mom and dad... they need to teach him? They need to teach him how to... do it? Control it? Something like that anyway. 'He can't do it alone', I remember her saying that. Dunno who 'he' was, or what 'it' was. 'Get my mom and dad', she said. 'I'm sorry, tell them I'm sorry'. We get that a lot too. We guessed later that she was probably a single mom, maybe a runaway, since no husband or parents ever came to claim her body."

Jan gives a weary sigh. “Then she didn't say much after that. She only regained consciousness once or twice after that. Both times, all she said was...” The woman hesitates, looking suddenly doubtful.

“What?” I press. “What did she say?”

Still a pause, then: “Coyote. She just kept saying 'coyote', over and over again. At least, I assume that's what she was saying. What else could it have been? I only remember it because it was so odd. I mean, people say some strange things when they're in a state like that, but coyote?” She shakes her head. “I don't know. But whatever it was, she must have thought it was important, because that was her last word. 'Coyote'.”

Coyote. My mother's last words were just coyote. Something important enough for her to use her dying breath to say it.

What the fuck does it mean?

“Is that all? There's nothing else you can remember that might help us identify her?” asks El.

“If there had been anything, the police would have figured it out a long time ago. I've got nothing else, I'm sorry.”

“It's fine, you've been very helpful,” Felix assures her. “Before we let you go, could you do us one more favor? I have a few photos here of missing women who could have been Adam's mother. Could you take a look and tell us if any of them are the same woman who was brought into the hospital that day?”

“I mean, I can look,” Jan replies, looking doubtful, “but I don't know if I'll be much help. I only saw her for a couple of hours twenty years ago, I seriously doubt I'd recognize her even if she was standing right in front of me.”

“Even so, it would be an enormous help,” Felix insists.

Jan agrees, and she sits on the ottomans with the binder in her lap and flips through the newspaper articles about the missing women, carefully inspecting each face while the three of us crowd around her, watching her face for any flicker of recognition.

“Not this one,” she says immediately, pointing at the first picture. “She wasn't blonde. Her hair was dark.”

She discounts about half of the pictures based on that factor alone, leaving only those with darker hair as potential options.

“And she didn't wear glasses, or at least she wasn't wearing any when she was brought in, so I don't think it was these two girls either. And she didn't have a cleft chin, so it's not her either. Well... I think that's the best I can do. I don't know if she was one of these eight, but she definitely wasn't any of the others.”

“Thank you so much for your time, you've done more than you know for us,” Felix tells her, taking the binder back almost reverentially.

“Yeah, thank you,” I add, painfully aware of how weak my own response to her help sounds. I just don't know what else to say. I'm still stuck on the word coyote, and the mental image I have of my mother dying in an ER, wracked by seizures and apologizing to parents who would never know what happened to her.

Parents. My grandparents, then. Had they driven her out of their home? Had she run away from them? If it was because she had gotten pregnant with me too young, would they even want to meet me, if they're even still alive?

“I got to get back, Sorry I couldn't be of more help,” Jan adds, and she starts to turn to leave. Then she stops, and looks back at us with a suddenly thoughtful expression. “Actually, I just remembered something else.”

“What?” asks El quickly.

“God, I can't believe I almost forgot. It was so sad, I actually still think about it all the time. It was one of those things that stick with you, you know? There was a note in the wallet, along with the cash. Just the money, and a handwritten note scrawled on this piece of torn paper. I remember it so clearly. It said 'have a good day; love you heaps and bunches.' It was signed just with the letter S. It was a bit crumpled and creased, like she'd been holding onto it it for a while. I assumed it must have been a note from a boyfriend. A parent would have signed it 'mom' or 'dad', wouldn't they've? So I figured it was from a boyfriend or husband. And it stuck with me because I always felt so bad for that woman, still so hung up on this guy who didn't even come looking for her when she just disappeared. She must have been hung up on him, or else why keep the note? Poor girl. Just a kid, really. Right around the age you kids are now.”

And with that, Jan the nurse leaves, returning to whatever duties she still has waiting for her.

I numbly watch her return to the elevators across the lobby.

About the same age I am now. I'd never really considered that before either. My mom was only twenty two or twenty-three, mother to a three year old, all alone in the world, when she just... died. Just twenty-something, and then gone. I couldn't even imagine any of that for myself. Being a parent at my age. Getting sick, so sick that it kills me. There was a time or two during my misadventure with the MRF in France that I'd seriously thought I might die, but somehow going out in the heat of battle seemed so different than wasting away from a bacterial infection. It just seemed so pointless. If she had just gone to a doctor earlier, she might have been cured. If she hadn't left the magical community, someone might have been able to heal her, even towards the end.

If, if, if.