“Mom, my ear feels strange,” my daughter said, complaining about pain. I took her to the ent clinic right away. The doctor looked inside her ear, then suddenly stopped. “Ma’am, you need to see this,” he said, turning the monitor toward me. Deep in her ear canal, something completely unexpected appeared.

There is a specific kind of silence that falls over Michigan in February. It isn’t peaceful; it is heavy, oppressive, and sharp enough to cut. It’s the kind of cold that feels like inhaling shattered glass.

The alarm on my phone buzzed at 7:00 AM, a jarring intrusion into the pitch-black morning. I silenced it instantly, my hand shooting out from under the warmth of the duvet. The darkness outside the window was absolute, a void that whispered promises of comfort if I just stayed in bed. I slid out carefully, holding my breath to avoid waking Brian, my husband. He was sprawled on his stomach, dead to the world after pulling another all-nighter debugging code for his senior engineering project.

“Another long day,” I whispered to the empty air, the words vaporizing in the chill of the room.