Chapter 21: Warm Coats Required

The clinic at Meadowland smelled of rosemary and woodsmoke, and the heat was on in every room.

My father had put up a hand-painted sign over the door that spring.

It said, in green letters, Cold Agglutinin Ward. Under it, in smaller ones, Warm Coats Required.

"Who is that for?" I asked him.

"For you," he said. "It's a very serious clinic."

I had been home eleven days, and I had not stopped smiling at the sign.

On the twelfth morning a car pulled up outside with its heater roaring.

A woman got out of the passenger side, in three scarves, and a man lifted a girl of about nine out of the back seat in his arms.

The girl's lips were blue-black.

I was already at the door.

"She was fine until the pool," the father said. His voice was a rasp. "Her school took the class swimming."

"What is it?" the mother whispered. "No doctor in Eastbrook knew what it was."

"I know what it is," I said.

I knelt on the porch and took the girl's hands.

They were stiff and cold, and the fingers were curled.

"Are you scared?" I asked.

"A little," the girl said, through chattering teeth.

"I'm Willa. I've got the same thing you've got."

Her eyes widened.

"You do?"

"My fingers do exactly this. Look."

I held mine up. They were pink and warm, and I wiggled them.

"I've had a lot of practice," I said. "Do you want to learn the trick?"

She nodded.

I carried her to the warming room myself, and put her under a heated blanket, and stuffed two packs into the pockets of her sweater.

"First you get the warm in," I said. "Then you get the cold out. Never the other way round."

My father came in with his stethoscope around his neck. He had on one grey sock and one with stripes.

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