by Jane Toombs
“What’s up, cat?” she asked.
Hot Shot rose, trotted into Tim’s bedroom and leaped onto the boy’s bed. Following him, Jade saw Tim was still sleeping. If she was to get him to school on time, he had to rouse him, so she reached to touch his shoulder and was taken aback by how warm he felt.
Her hand was on his forehead when he opened his eyes. “How do you feel?” she asked him.
He opened his mouth-and sneezed. She grabbed a tissue and handed it to him. As he wiped his nose, he sat up. Apparently satisfied that Tim was all right, Hot Shot jumped off the bed and streaked from the room. A moment later Jade heard his bell tinkle.
“Hot Shot wants to eat,” Tim said hoarsely.
“How about you?” Jade asked.
“Yeah.” Tim slid from the bed.
Telling herself all kids had minor illnesses and there was nothing to worry about, she shepherded him into the kitchen.
But when Tim started to drink his orange juice, he took a sip, then put his hand on his neck. “It feels funny in there when I swallow,” he said.
“Your throat hurts?”
He nodded.
Substituting the handle of a spoon for the wooden blade doctors used, Jade held his tongue down and tried to peer at his throat with a flashlight. Red, from what she could tell. Her heart sank. Strep throat?
Last year Danny had it and was really sick until the antibiotic the pediatrician had given him began to work. She must get Tim to a doctor right away. The clinic wouldn’t be open yet, but she had Nathan’s private number. Grabbing the phone, she punched it in.
When he answered, lowering her voice so Tim wouldn’t hear, she said, “Tim’s got strep throat. You need to see him.”
“I’ll see him, of course,” Nathan said, “but how do you know he has strep throat? Is it going around in his school.”
“Not that I know of, but his throat’s red and he’s got a fever.”
“How high?”
“I didn’t actually take it, but he feels hot.”
“Any rash on his face or chest?”
“No. Can I bring him in right now?”
“You do that.”
After she put the phone down, she hurried to get Tim dressed, telling him they were going to see Nathan, instead of his going to school.
“Why can’t I go to school and then see Doc?” he asked.
“Because you’re sick and the other kids in school might get the same bug you have.”
“I don’t have no bug,” he said crossly.
“By bug I mean germ, bacteria, virus, whatever,” she said. “The thing that’s making you sick.”
“I ain’t sick,” he insisted. “I wanna go to school.”
“There’s no use arguing. You need to be examined by Dr. Walker and that’s where we’re going.”
“You’re mean,” he muttered.
Jade looked at him in amazement Tim had never acted like this. It must be because he didn’t feel good.
Hugging Freddie to him, he didn’t speak to her all the way to Nathan’s.
Clinic hours hadn’t started yet, so Tim was the first patient to be seen. Nathan took his temperature with one of the quickie thermometers, looked into his ears and eyes with various instruments, then down his throat, before listening to his heart and lungs.
“Here’s what I’m going to do,” he told the boy. “First I want to see what kind of germs you might have in your throat, so I’m going to take a swab and rub it around inside there.” He showed Tim the cotton-ended stick before inserting it.
“Okay, now we dab the swab across a blood-agar plate, like this. The blood agar is food for certain kinds of germs but not for others. We put the lid back on, keep it warm and see what happens. If nothing does, then we’ll know you don’t have that kind of germ.”
Jade was as interested as Tim in the procedure.
“Now I need a few drops of your blood,” Nathan told him. “I have to look at them under the microscope so I can learn how the white cells in your blood are fighting the germ.” .
“Fighting lit?”
“Yeah, your body has the power to zap germs. Sometimes it needs help, sometimes it doesn’t. Now, this is going to feel about like that shot I gave you—you remember that—only it’s going to be in your finger.”
“Ow!” Tim said, then sneezed.
“All done. Watch me draw the drops of blood up into these tiny little tubes.”
Both Jade and Tim stared in fascination.
“You can get dressed,” Nathan said as he left the room.
He returned after what seemed ages, but Jade knew couldn’t have been more than ten minutes. In his hand he held what looked like a pen.
“Since you didn’t check his temperature, I assume you don’t have a thermometer,” he said, handing the pen-shaped container to her. “Inside is the old-fashioned kind that goes under the tongue and has to stay there for at least three minutes.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I keep meaning to get one of those new ones.”
“He has a low-grade fever—one hundred degrees. At this point he doesn’t need any medication for it. A fever is one of the body’s defenses against germs. Heat kills many of them. Don’t give him anything to reduce his temperature unless it rises over 101.”
Jade nodded. “Okay. I have some children’s stuff Karen gave me in case Danny got sick when he was staying with me. What about the prescription?”
“What prescription?”.
“Surely you’re going to give him antibiotics.”
“He doesn’t need any antibiotic. His white-cell count is—”
“But what about strep throat? He can’t overcome that all by himself. He’ll need—”
“Will you listen?”
Jade plowed on. “I know very well that strep throat require—”
“Shut up!”
Startled, Jade did.
“Let’s reach an agreement here. I won’t tell you how to drill wells, and you won’t tell me how to practice medicine.”
“But—”
“You want your mouth stuffed full of gauze? Listen to me, dammit. Tim’s white-cell count is low to normal, not high. A bacterial infection produces a high count. The streptococcus organism is a bacteria. Therefore, Tim doesn’t have a strep infection.
“As a precaution, I took a throat culture, which will let me know within twelve hours or less if I’m wrong. According to the white-cell count, I’m not wrong. The count indicates Tim has a virus infection, and most likely he’ll develop typical upper respiratory symptoms in the next few hours. The sore throat will gradually disappear and the cold will run its course.
“Since antibiotics are useless in treating virus infections, he doesn’t need any. I don’t prescribe unnecessary medication for anyone.”
“Are you mad at Jade?” Tim asked him.
“Yes.” Nathan’s tone was curt.
“Are you mad at me, too?”
Nathan took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No, cowboy, I’m not mad at you. You’ve had a cold before, haven’t you?”
Tim nodded.
“That’s what you’ve got now, so you’re not going to be really sick. Colds are more of a nuisance than anything else.”
“If I’m not sick I wanna go to school. Can I?”
“You go three mornings a week, right? If you go before Friday or possibly next Monday, you’ll bring your cold germs with you and some of the other kids will catch it from you. That’s not fair, is it?”
Tim thought it over. “Maybe not,” he said finally.
“You’ll let me know about what grows on the blood-agar plate?” Jade asked, not ready to let Nathan have the last word.
“Only if I’m wrong.” Nathan’s tone had been a lot warmer for Tim than it was for her.
Upset as she was, she almost missed Tim’s low-voiced murmur to Freddie. Nathan, she saw, had heard him and was listening intently to the other language Tim was using. When the boy noticed them watching him, he broke off abr
uptly.
“How come you talk to Freddie that way?” Nathan asked.
Jade fully expected a shutdown, but instead Tim said, “’Cause he’s a frog and he understands me.”
“Good reason. You got any idea why frogs understand those particular words?”
“’Cause frogs are from back there.” Now Tim’s face took on his shutdown expression.
Apparently Nathan recognized it because he changed the subject. “Ever seen a camel race?” he asked.
Tim shook his head.
“We’ll go to Virginia City on Sunday and watch one, okay?”
“Can Danny and Yasmin come? Yasmin’s already got a cold so she can’t catch my germs.”
Great, Jade thought. Why couldn’t he have mentioned Yasmin’s cold earlier, before she’d gotten all worked up about a possible strep throat?
“Have to ask their parents,” Nathan said.
“Jade can do that.”
Nathan glanced at her and she gave him a grudging nod. From the way he worded his invitation to the camel races, she didn’t think he’d meant to include her. Maybe he still didn’t. Fine, let him cope with three kids all by himself.
When she called Karen, it turned out that Yasmin had a friend’s all-girl birthday party to go to on Sunday. Danny, though, would love to join them.
“I don’t think Nathan wants me along,” Jade told her.
“What did you have the fight about?” Karen asked.
“We don’t fight.”
“Oh, that’s right, doormats don’t fight. They just let you walk all over them.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you.”
Karen snickered.
“The truth is,” Jade admitted, “I may have stepped out of line a tad and he called me on it.”
“You do have a tendency to be outspoken.”
“You’re a diplomat. Zed would claim I learned to talk before I was two and haven’t shut up since. He insists the first words I said to him were, ‘Bad boy.”’
“I wouldn’t doubt it—he can be. My advice is to make up with Nathan and enjoy Sunday in Virginia City.”
After Jade put the phone down, she thought making up was easier said than done. At least for her. If she’d been going to say she was sorry, she should have done it right then. Apologizing had never come easy to her.
She had to call Nathan about Danny going. If she could get the words out without choking on them, she’d tell him she was sorry. Not because she wanted to see the camel races, but because she’d been wrong. Why was that so hard to admit?
On Friday, after clinic hours, Nathan went up to his apartment. In the bedroom, the red light on the answering machine was blinking. The first message was from a doctor at Washoe Med, notifying him that Alice, now awake and alert, either had total amnesia or was faking well. The police hadn’t found her fingerprints on file anywhere, so they still didn’t know her full name.
The second was from Jade, telling him Danny was going with him and Tim on Sunday. There was a pause, then she added in a rush, “I spoke out of turn on Monday. I’m sorry.” End of message.
He stared at the machine. Jade apologizing?
Gloria had often said she was sorry in the sort of tone that belied the words. He was fairly sure Jade almost never said it, but if she did, she meant it.
He lifted the phone.
Having had dinner at the ranch, Jade and Tim didn’t get home until after nine. Tim’s cold, thank heaven, was markedly better. Once she had him settled in bed and read to, she checked her answering machine.
“On Sunday I’ll pick Danny up on the way to Incline Village to get you and Tim,” Nathan’s voice said. “I should get there by eleven. We’ll stop for pizza on the way to Virginia City. By the way, Alice apparently has amnesia and they didn’t get a match on fingerprints, so they still don’t know who she is.”
She decided not to wonder whether her phone call had something to do with his “you and Tim” or not. Nor was she going to worry about Alice’s amnesia. Instead, she inserted a Chinese-language tape from the library into her portable stereo, put on the headset and began listening to the words, trying to decide if they sounded like anything Tim had said.
On Sunday the two boys kept the meeting between Jade and Nathan from being awkward. Once in Virginia City, they parked off the highway and found a good viewing spot at curbside since the race was down the main street of town. The prerace fake gunfight, complete with a fake arrest, kept the boys amused but worked against private conversation. Then the camels were paraded by on their way to the starting line. Neither boy had ever been this close to a camel before.
“Yasmin said they got lots of camels in Kholi,” Danny reported. “I didn’t believe her till Daddy T told me she was right.”
“Camels are funny-looking with that big thing on their back,” Tim put in.
“A hump,” Jade said. “Some camels have two humps. We don’t have lots of camels in the U.S., but a lot of years ago the army brought some into Nevada because of the desert here. It didn’t work out—the camels scared the horses and wouldn’t obey orders.”
“So are these descendants?” Nathan asked.
“No. A few camels escaped into the desert and bred, but they finally all died. But then people got interested in breeding camels in Nevada and, since there used to be camel races in old Virginia City, the custom was revived.”
The race itself fascinated the boys. “They run a lot different than horses,” Danny observed.
Jade had never been able to understand how the riders could stand that lurching gait. As usual, not all the camels were interested in running despite the urging of their riders. One stopped beside them and turned its big dark eyes on the boys. Tim reached for her hand and Danny edged closer to Nathan.
Curiosity satisfied, the camel ambled on.
“Maybe the camel was looking for Yasmin,” Danny said.
Puzzled, Jade asked, “Why?”
“He might’ve come from Kholi like she did.”
Jade decided to let it rest there.
Tim didn’t. “You think the camel might’ve known her?”
“Not ’xactly. It’s like the frogs in our pond. They never let me catch ’em. You said you can ’cause frogs come from back there where you used to live. That place with a funny name.”
Jade held her breath, hoping Danny would go on. Obviously Tim had told him more than he had anyone else.
“Frogs don’t stink like camels.” Tim held his nose. Danny followed suit, staggering around, pretending the smell was threatening to make him collapse.
Tim giggled and imitated him, neither watching the finish of the race.
“Time for ice cream,” Nathan announced when they got too geared up.
As they were eating their cones, Danny said to Jade, “We could go swimming at your house, Tee. I brought my suit in case.”
“Yeah, let’s!” Tim urged.
“I don’t suppose you brought yours just in case?” she asked Nathan.
“It’s still somewhere in the Jeep from the last time,” he said.
Like the snowplow, she thought but didn’t say. Today she was determined to watch what came out of her mouth. “I guess that means the motion’s carried. Swimming it is.”
In Jade’s pool the necessity to interact with the boys kept Nathan from saying anything personal to her. Unfortunately it didn’t mute the effect her appearance in the two-piece suit had on him.
Finally, unable to resist touching her, he dived beneath her and pulled her under, holding her next to him for a beat before she thrashed free.
“Gotcha,” he said when they rose to the surface.
“That’s what you think, Boondoc,” Jade countered. “You just wait.”
Danny climbed out of the pool and turned on Jade’s portable stereo unit. Nathan, listening to the incomprehensible words pouring from it, glanced at Jade and found her staring intently at Tim.
Tim, swimming to grab the ball Danny had abandoned, paid no attention to
her or to the stereo. Danny switched it off, saying, “Yuck,” Spotting Tim with the ball, he plunged back into the pool.
“Looks like I can cross Chinese off the list,” she said in a low tone to Nathan. “Both Cantonese and Mandarin.”
He remembered her telling him she was going to research various Asian languages in the hope of pinning down which one Tim knew. Sounded as though the kid had told Danny what country it was, though he wouldn’t tell them. He’d bet Jade would be on the phone to Karen as soon as she had the chance, asking Danny’s mother to try to get him to recall it.
Pushing off from the side, he began a lazy crawl toward the boys, planning to enter the ball toss. He’d taken a few strokes when something—had to be Jade—grabbed his feet and pulled him under. He jackknifed his body, reaching for her. When he caught hold, he wrapped his arms around her and, still entwined, they rose to the surface where they stared at each other. He saw the pulse at the base of her throat throbbing as fast as his own heart pounded.
“You’re supposed to say ‘gotcha,’” he murmured.
Extricating herself, she said, “That’s only when you’re sure who’s got whom.”
Later, after a stir-fry dinner with rice, a favorite of Tim’s, the boys opted for watching a Disney movie on the family-room TV. Jade and Nathan carried their coffee into the living room. This time he waited until she chose a seat on the couch. Considering that as good as an invitation, he eased down beside her and put his coffee mug on a side table.
“So what did grow on the blood-agar plate?” she asked.
“Nothing pathogenic.”
“I overreacted. Mouth off first, think later, that’s me.”
Another apology? The best he could come up with in return was, “I realize you worry about Tim.”
She nodded. “I got to thinking I was all he had. Which was wrong. He has you to care about him, too.”
Like a family. Strange how quickly this child from nowhere had become important to them both. “We’ll make sure to keep him safe.”
Jade set down her mug and turned toward him. “If only he’d open up more so we could find out who he is and where he came from.”