Page 42 of Coast

“She hasn’t been drinking much. I should have noticed earlier that something was wrong, but I just—”

“Hey, it’s alright. We all miss things sometimes,” Ama assured Zoe. “Sometimes, especially this young, it’s hard to tell anything is wrong.”

“She’s very listless,” Zoe went on, trying to pull it together.

“Normal with a fever. Come on. Let’s get her into a room,” she said, walking back through the metal detector.

“Can you come?” Zoe asked, looking at me as my arm fell from her waist.

“Yeah.”

She barely even seemed to clock my eye, nose, or the blood all over my shirt.

Ama led us back to an exam room that featured a padded exam table with sides and a scale.

“Let’s put…”

“Lainey,” Zoe supplied.

“Let’s put Lainey on the table and get her down to her diaper.”

Zoe put down the baby, her limbs as lifeless as a doll’s. But when she tried to undo the snaps on Lainey’s onesie, her hands were shaking too hard.

“I got it,” I offered, ignoring Ama’s curious look as Zoe stepped away and let me pull off the onesie.

“She’s never been sick before,” Zoe said as Ama moved in to start her exam and I moved back to stand next to her.

“It had to happen sometime,” I told her, my hand sliding up and down her spine.

“She has no rash,” Ama observed. “She’s a little clammy, but that’s not abnormal with a fever.”

Ama pulled out a digital thermometer, placing it under Lainey’s arm and holding it in place for three long minutes.

“Okay. One hundred. That’s not so bad, Mama,” Ama told Zoe. “If it was any higher, I might recommend taking her to the hospital. But I think we should be able to get this down and manage it with some acetaminophen. Coast?” she asked, gesturing toward Lainey.

I moved forward, putting a hand on the baby as Ama went to grab the medicine from the cabinet.

“Has she had any other symptoms lately? Pulling her ear? Skin color changes? Labored breathing? Coughing? Vomiting? Diarrhea? More fussy?”

“She’s been fussy today. But nothing else unusual. Aside from drinking less and… this,” she said, moving over to the head of the table to run a hand over her baby’s forehead.

“And no vaccinations in the past few days, right?”

“No.”

“It’s probably just a virus. Happens to all babies eventually. Scarier for us than them, I swear,” Ama said, coming over with a syringe of medicine. “Let’s hope she enjoys a new flavor,” she said. “Can you sit her up for me?”

With that, Zoe lifted Lainey, and Ama pried open her lips, inserted the syringe, and dispensed the medicine.

“Okay. That should start doing its thing in about half an hour. We will take her temperature again then. I’m just going to grab a few things for you,” Ama said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Zoe scooped Lainey up in her arms, rocking her.

“One sec, baby,” I said, ducking out into the hallway. “Hey,” I called to Ama.

“Yeah?”

“Where are you going?”

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