Free Monday's Child by Patricia Wallace

pile, thinking it might be Jill’s.
    It wasn’t. Even if it had been, she wouldn’t have been able to interpret it. She didn’t know what an erythrocyte was.
    She sat down again, feeling guilty for having looked. They were confidential records, after all. She’d invaded someone’s privacy.
    Why did nurses leave people alone in doctors’ offices anyway?
    Doctors’ offices intimidated her, and had ever since she’d gone to her first fertility specialist ten years ago when she’d been unable to conceive.
    Even the thought of those days was enough to make her palms sweat.
    The door swung open just then and the doctor came in carrying a clipboard. “Hello.”
    She read the name off his hospital I.D. card. “Dr. Costa.”
    Costa was big, well over six feet tall, but he moved with a smaller man’s grace. He sat on a corner of the desk, picked up the closest of the coffee cups, frowned into it and threw it in the trash. He seemed not to see the rest of the cups.
    “Well, what can I tell you?”
    “The nurse said I can take Jill home?”
    He inclined his head in agreement. “As soon as she finishes her lunch.”
    “Lunch?”
    “I wanted her to eat before I discharge her. Her blood sugar was on the low side.”
    “Is that why you’ve kept her so long?” When she’d first gotten to the ER, one of the nurses had told her that Jill was to be released within the hour. The hour had come and gone three times over.
    “Yes and no,” Dr. Costa said. “Tell me, how has she been feeling lately?”
    The question, although she should have expected it, caught her off-guard. A cold knot of dread formed in her stomach. “She hasn’t been sick.”
    It wasn’t much of an answer, but Dr. Costa seemed to accept it. “How about her appetite?”
    “It’s . . . she has a healthy appetite usually—”
    “Usually?”
    “Last night she hardly touched her dinner, but she didn’t say anything about feeling ill.”
    “Hmm.” He pursed his lips and tapped a pencil against them. “What about breakfast this morning? What did she eat?”
    “Oh!” Georgia said, remembering the scrambled egg. “Yesterday she didn’t eat breakfast either. I had to throw it out. And this morning she only had a bowl of cold cereal.”
    “Huh. But other than yesterday, you feel that she’s been eating well?”
    “Yes, overall. I mean, she’s picky, but not any more than other kids her age.”
    “Picky. Well, maybe that’s it.”
    “What?”
    “Your daughter’s blood tests show that she’s borderline anemic. And since anemia is symptomatic of an underlying disorder, it’s important to determine what physiologic mechanism is at work.”
    Georgia nodded to indicate she was following what he was saying.
    “There are a number of etiologies, but I think hers is simple iron-deficiency anemia, which isn’t uncommon in children. They’re growing rapidly and many children won’t eat the foods that’d give them what they need. Odd as it seems, some children would rather eat dirt than red meat.”
    “The anemia made her faint?”
    “Possibly, although I think it’s more likely that she fainted from the low blood sugar and quite possibly shock. She did see her teacher get hit by a bus—”
    “Her teacher? Miss Appleton?”
    “That’s right.”
    Georgia hadn’t been told, and she felt bad for not having asked. “Was she hurt seriously?”
    “She’s stable.”
    Georgia knew equivocation when she heard it, and she realized she was prying. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s none of my business.”
    “You don’t have to apologize.”
    “Yes I do. I looked at one of those—” she pointed to the basket of lab slips “—while I was waiting for you to come in.”
    Dr. Costa’s smile warmed the room. “That’s all right. Everybody does it. I do the same thing when I go to see my own doctor.”
    “Still—”
    “Anyway, she’s going to be fine.”
    Georgia wasn’t sure who he was talking about, but she nodded and tried to