The room smelled like disinfectant and stale coffee and that faint sugary scent all pediatric clinics seem to have, as if somebody somewhere is always opening a lollipop. Outside the exam room door, a toddler wailed, then coughed, then wailed again. A printer clicked at the nurses’ station. Everything ordinary. Everything moving forward exactly the way a Tuesday afternoon in East Memphis ought to move.
Except for Dr. Allen.
He lowered himself onto the rolling stool across from me as carefully as a man crossing thin ice.
“Mr. Roger,” he said at last, and his voice had that measured tone doctors use when they already know nothing they say next is going to leave your life the way it found it. “How long has your granddaughter been drinking this juice?”
I looked from his face to the lab report in his hand and then down to Ruby. Her blond-brown hair smelled faintly like strawberries and baby shampoo. Her mouth was slightly open. She’d fallen asleep on me less than five minutes after the urine test and a few crackers, like somebody had hit a switch behind her ribs.
“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s why I brought her.”
He nodded once, eyes steady on mine, then turned the paper so I could see it.