Lydia Bardot did not realize the world was ending when she took her daughter to the hospital that afternoon.

         If she had, she might have noticed more things. The nurse whose smile looked a little too tight when she called Evie’s name. The quiet tension in the waiting room that no one seemed able to explain. Even the television mounted above the reception desk, where a news anchor was speaking about a cluster of unexplained fevers in another state.

         But Lydia noticed none of it.

         To her, it was simply another weekday appointment – one more routine errand folded into the small, ordinary rhythm of life with a six-year-old.

         Evie, for her part, was far more interested in the aquarium near the window than in anything happening on the television.

         She had been watching the fish since they arrived, her chin propped carefully against the back of the chair in front of her while her legs swung several inches above the floor.

         “There’s a mean one,” she announced suddenly.

         Lydia glanced up from the magazine in her lap. “A mean fish?”

         “The orange one,” Evie said, pointing. “He keeps chasing the little ones away from the bubbles.”

         Lydia leaned forward slightly, following her daughter’s finger toward the tank.

         Sure enough, one particularly bright orange fish seemed determined to patrol the bubbling column of water rising from the gravel bed, darting aggressively at any other fish that tried to pass through it.

         “Well,” Lydia said thoughtfully, “maybe he just thinks those bubbles belong to him.”

         Evie considered this very seriously. “That’s rude.”

         The nurse behind the desk laughed quietly at something someone said down the hallway. Phones rang. Papers shuffled. The soft mechanical hum of fluorescent lights filled the room.

         All the familiar sounds of a hospital going about its day.

         Behind them, the television continued playing the afternoon news.

         “…health officials are currently investigating reports of severe reactions following routine injections earlier this week…”

         No one in the waiting room seemed particularly concerned. The channel changed a moment later, replaced by a cartoon.