Chapter 9: Say Please

Two weeks later, Daisy woke up hot.

I held my wrist against her forehead and felt it right away.

The thermometer said a hundred and one.

She was sixteen days old, and I stood in the nursery in my nightshirt with the bottle warmer clicking behind me.

Santo was at the door before I'd opened my mouth.

"I'll drive," he said.

"The clinic on Hope Street. It's the one the hospital sent us to. It's close."

"I know it."

He knew everything about the city, and I'd stopped being surprised.

He drove with both hands on the wheel, and I sat in the back beside the car seat with two fingers on Daisy's chest.

The clinic waiting room was full of mothers and coughing toddlers.

I gave my name at the desk.

The receptionist typed it in and looked at the screen.

Her smile went slowly flat.

"Mrs. Ferraro, one moment."

She went through a door, and a man in a white coat came out.

He was the pediatrician who had seen Daisy for her first checkup and told me she was perfect.

He didn't come closer than six feet.

"Mrs. Ferraro. I'm so sorry. I can't see her today."

"She has a fever."

"I understand."

"She's two weeks old," I said. "She can't wait."

"This wing was built with Ferraro money. The board called this morning."

"And?"

"And we're advised not to take new patients from your household."

He said it to the floor.

I stood there with my daughter burning against my chest, and every mother in the waiting room looked at the magazine in her lap.

"She isn't a new patient," I said. "You told me she was perfect."

"I'm sorry."

"She is a baby," I said, loudly enough for the whole room, "and you are a doctor."

His ears went red.

He didn't answer.

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