all morning cooking.”

I looked from one of them to the other, waiting for the moment where shame would break through and they would become parents again.

It never happened.

My father took my mother’s elbow and guided her toward the driveway.

He told me to sit on the porch and see how I felt in a few minutes.

He said if I was still bad after lunch, they would figure something out.

My mother told Emily to stop crying because she was upsetting everyone.

Then they got into their car.

Then they backed out.

Then they drove away.

I can still see the dust lifting under their tires.

I remember trying to crawl to the porch because my leg had gone from fire to something heavier and more frightening, like concrete filling with electricity.

My vision was tunneling at the edges.

My heart felt too fast and too weak at the same time.

Emily knelt beside me on the boards, sobbing.

She was five years old.

Her hands were tiny and shaking.

Clover lay crumpled beside her.

She kept saying, “Daddy, what do I do? Daddy, what do I do?”

And because Claire had died, because the world had already taught me that catastrophe does not announce itself kindly, I had practiced emergencies with Emily more than most parents probably do.

Not because I wanted her to be afraid, but because I wanted her to know that if something terrible happened, there were steps.

“My phone,” I whispered.

“Pocket.

Use Siri.

Say call 911.”

She wiped her face with the back of her hand, fumbled my phone out of my jeans, pressed the side button the way I had shown her months before, and said in a trembling voice, “Call 911.”

The operator answered.

Emily put the phone on speaker because her hands were too small to hold it steady and touch my face at the same time.

What she did next still breaks me.

She became brave on purpose.

She told the dispatcher, in her little child voice, that a snake had bitten her daddy and he was getting sleepy.

She gave our address by reading the house numbers from the plaque beside the back door because I had once turned it into a game while checking the mail.

When the dispatcher told her to keep me still, she put one hand on my shoulder and said, “You have to listen, Daddy.

The lady says don’t move.”

I remember trying to stay awake by looking at her face.

A neighbor, Mrs.

Alvarez, heard the sirens and came running through the side gate before the ambulance even stopped.

She saw me on the porch, saw Emily with the phone, and immediately took over the parts a five-year-old should never have to do.

But by then Emily had already done the most important thing.

She had gotten help.

She had saved the minutes my parents had thrown away.

The paramedics moved fast.

One asked who had called.

Emily raised her hand.

“That was very smart,” he told her.

I remember the oxygen mask, the bright blur of the ambulance ceiling, the pressure cuff squeezing my arm.

I remember a paramedic saying my blood pressure was dropping.

I remember someone asking how long it had been since the bite and hearing