SOTD – This was the horse that devoured his du! See more

The morning had begun with the kind of frantic energy that usually precedes a milestone. I was halfway through my shift at the precinct when my phone buzzed on the desk, vibrating with an insistence that made my chest tighten before I even saw the caller ID. It was Lily, my five-year-old daughter. When I answered, I expected her usual cheerful babble about a drawing or a cartoon, but instead, I met a silence so heavy it felt cold.

“Daddy,” she whispered, her voice sounding thin and frayed, like a thread about to snap. “My tummy hurts. It hurts really bad.”

Parental instinct is a sharp, jagged thing. I didn’t wait to check out or notify my sergeant; I simply grabbed my keys and ran. The ten-minute drive home was a blur of near-misses and adrenaline. When I burst through the front door, I found Lily curled into a ball on the sofa, her small face pale and slick with sweat. But it was her stomach that stopped my heart. Under her thin pajama top, her midsection was distended—hard and swollen as if she had swallowed a small basketball.