“Where have you been?” she asked, pleased that she was able to sound so cool when she was seething inside.
“On the porch,” he admitted, taking his feverish daughter from her arms. As soon as he touched her, alarm flared in his eyes. “Good heavens, she’s burning up. Have you taken her temperature?”
“I was just about to.” She tried to remain calm in the face of his obvious panic and her own. She’d experienced rapidly spiking temperatures before and learned that it was a matter of course for children. Still, she’d never felt Sharon Lynn’s skin quite so hot.
The thermometer registered one hundred and three degrees. Cody’s face blanched when she told him.
“We’re going to the hospital,” he said at once, starting out of the kitchen.
Melissa blocked his way. “Not yet,” she said far more calmly than she was feeling. There was no point in both of them panicking. “Let me give her a Tylenol and try bathing her with cool water to see if we can’t bring that temperature down. If there’s no change, then we’ll call the doctor.”
Sharon Lynn patted Cody’s stubbled cheek weakly and murmured, “Da.” She sounded pitiful.
Cody looked thoroughly shaken. “Melissa, I don’t think we should wait. Something’s really wrong with her.”
“It’s probably nothing more than the start of a cold or a touch of flu,” she said. “Stuff like that reaches epidemic proportions this time of the year.”
“Her temperature’s over a hundred,” he reminded her. “That can’t be good for her.”
“Babies get high temperatures. It’s nothing to get crazy about,” she insisted, amending to herself, yet.
She gave Sharon Lynn Tylenol, then ran cool water into the kitchen sink. “Bring her over here and let’s get her out of that nightgown. It’s soaking wet anyway. Why don’t you go back to her room and bring me a clean one, along with a fresh diaper. We’ll need those after I’ve sponged her off a bit with cool water.”
Cody looked as if he might refuse to budge, but eventually he did as she’d asked. By the time he’d returned, Sharon Lynn was no longer whimpering. In fact she seemed to be relaxing and enjoying the cool water Melissa was gently splashing over her.
“Are you sure that’s good for her?” Cody asked, worry etched on his face.
“It’s exactly what the doctor and all the child-care books recommend. If you don’t believe me, there’s a book in the living room. Go read it.” Anything to get him out of the kitchen again before he wore a hole in the linoleum with his pacing. Worse, she was feeling crowded with all of his hovering.
“No, no, I’ll take your word for it,” he said, standing over her shoulder and watching every move she made. “Maybe we should take her temperature again.”
Melissa sighed and stepped aside to allow him to put the fancy new thermometer in Sharon Lynn’s ear for a few seconds.
“It’s a hundred and two,” he proclaimed. “That’s it. We’re going to the hospital.”
“It’s down a whole degree,” Melissa observed, blocking him when he would have snatched Sharon Lynn out of the bathwater. “The Tylenol’s working.”
“Not fast enough.”
“Let’s give it another half hour,” she compromised.
Cody hesitated, then finally conceded grudgingly, “A half hour. Not a minute more.”
He sat down at the kitchen table and fixed his gaze on the clock over the sink. Apparently he intended to watch each of those thirty minutes tick by.
“Da!” Sharon Lynn called out.
Cody was on his feet in an instant. “What’s up, sweet pea? You feeling better?” he asked, caressing her cheek with fingers that shook visibly.
A smile spread across his daughter’s face. “Da,” she repeated enthusiastically.
A little color came back into Cody’s ashen complexion. “She feels a little cooler.”
Melissa agreed. “I’m betting when we check her temperature again, it’ll be just about back to normal.”
Twenty minutes later Sharon Lynn was no longer feverish. She was once again tucked into her crib. Cody, still looking shaken, stood over her.
“How do you stand this?” he murmured to Melissa. “I’ve never been so terrified in my life.”
Melissa patted his hand. “It gets easier after you’ve been through it once or twice and know what to expect,” she promised him, but he shook his head.
“I can’t imagine it getting easier,” he said. “What if her temperature hadn’t gone down? What if you’d guessed wrong?”
“Then we would have called the doctor or gotten her to the hospital.”
“It might have been too late.”
“Cody, stop that,” she ordered, not daring to admit that she’d been scared silly, too, that she always was, no matter what the books said. “It’s over. She’s going to be fine. It was just a little fever.”
He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. “Okay, you’re right. Just a little fever.” He still sounded unconvinced. He definitely showed no inclination to budge from beside the crib.
Melissa grinned at him. “Cody, everything really is fine. You don’t have to stand there and watch her all night.”
“I am not leaving this house,” he said, his jaw jutting out belligerently.
“Fine. You can sleep on the sofa.” She yawned. “Good night, Cody.”
“Where are you going?”
“Back to bed.”
“How can you possibly sleep?”
“Because I’m exhausted. You must be, too.” In fact, he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.
“I won’t sleep a wink,” he swore.
“Whatever,” she murmured, and headed for her room. At the doorway she recalled that they’d never really talked about why he’d been on her front porch
