After lunch the next day, Janet took her daughter to the park, meeting a friend and her daughter on the way. She sat under a tree, letting the children play, while she chatted with her friend. At one point, Janet looked up to see her friend’s daughter playing by herself. A quick scan of the playground left her a little worried. Haley was nowhere in sight. Janet excused herself and searched the playground, finding her daughter in the little playhouse. She sat down next to her, but Haley was preoccupied, looking out the window at the abandoned car.

“Is that the magic car?” Janet asked. The little girl nodded grimly. “Is the little boy driving?”

Another nod from Haley, who looked like she was about to break out in tears. “He’s a good boy. He likes you, mommy.”

Janet glanced out but couldn’t see anyone through the glare on the glass. “Does the boy live in the neighborhood? Do we know him?”

Haley shook her head and Janet saw that a tear was making its way down her daughter’s cheek. “He says that you can’t see him yet. But he watches you all the time.”

Janet tried to control her growing fear. Her husband had been right to be alarmed, but it now seemed he wasn’t alarmed enough. She stared at the car but the opaque windows were impenetrable.

“Is the scary man with him?”

The little girl shook her head. “No. Today the nice man sat next to the boy. He is white with pretty wings. I like the white man. He smiled at me and said he will be my new friend.”

The mother glanced nervously at the car, not liking the idea of strange men hanging out at the playground. The car was covered in dirt and surrounded by tall weeds that looked like they hadn’t been touched in years. “What did he say to you?”

“He said that he would come again very soon.”

The mother sat in shocked silence for a few moments before taking her daughter’s hand and leading her out of the park. Haley followed her mother complacently, playing alone in her room for the rest of the afternoon. That night, after her daughter was asleep, Janet sat in the living room with her husband and told him about the white man.

“What should we do?” she asked.

Her husband was confused. “About what?”

Her voice took on an annoyed edge. “A strange man approaches our child in the park and you think that’s alright?”

He hesitated before shaking his head. “She said he was white and had wings. It really does sound like a new imaginary friend. It’s not something we can report to the police.”

“I’m calling the city tomorrow. I want that old car towed away. It’s a hazard to the children at the playground. It’s probably full of sharp rusty edges.”

Janet never got to make the phone call. In the middle of the night, she woke up to Haley screaming. Flushed and sweaty, the tiny girl’s unfocused eyes flitted around the room, unable to see her parents hovering over her, desperately trying to soothe her fear. They took her temperature and were shocked at how high her fever had climbed. Just a few hours before, their sweet daughter had climbed into bed, healthy and happy.

Richard wrapped her up in blankets and they rushed to the hospital. The doctors tried to reassure them, saying that little children get fevers that spike suddenly and disappear just as quickly. Richard and Janet sat by her bedside, watching as the medical staff tried first one medicine and then another. Rather than go down, the fever had inched up. A harried intern stopped to comfort the parents.

“We’re trying a course of antibiotics. It should knock out whatever is causing the fever. If the fever doesn’t go down by morning, we are going to run a series of tests.”

Janet grasped his hand as he turned away. “What is causing it? What is making Haley so sick?”

The young intern hesitated. “We don’t know precisely, but it seems to be a systemic bacterial infection. We’ll know more after the tests.”

Janet let his hand go, realizing he had never been taught to say ‘I don’t know’, even when he was literally clueless. She returned to her vigil, watching as her tiny daughter lay sweating in bed. The ordeal continued for another day and another night, but the doctor’s answers didn’t change.

Janet continued to watch over Haley as she lay in a bed that was much too large, tubes sticking into her, snaking up to a bag of chemicals suspended over her head.  After the second day, her exhausted parents began to hear the words ‘irreversible damage’ mixed in with the snatches of murmured consultations. Richard comforted himself by holding his daughter’s hand, careful not to disturb the tubes that filled her with the chemicals he believed kept her alive. Janet sat in a corner, coming no closer, but never closing her eyes.