I hung up before Wally could yelp out more than a word. Beau’s temperature, nearly 105, was too high, and his blood pressure, 68/48, was too low. I ran a beach towel under cold water and placed it over him, pulling one of his spindly arms clear. From the medical bag I removed an IV kit and a bag of saline. It had been a long time since I’d started an IV on anyone, let alone a critically ill child, but I’d punctured enough veins in Africa to be able to do it in my sleep. I scanned his limbs, settling on the bluish smudge of cephalic vein in the crook of his arm.

I missed on the first stick. Biting my lip to keep from releasing whatever god-awful sound was building up inside me, I tried again, and this time got a flash of blood, but the vein collapsed before I could thread the cannula. I forced myself to breathe slowly and deeply for a count of five, sitting on my hands to arrest their rattling, trying to calm the frantic hammering of my heart enough to do what I needed to do. On the third try I got it. I attached the IV tubing and hung the bag from one of the pulls to the bathroom cabinets.

Okay, now what? I’d tackled the ABCs of resuscitation—airway, breathing, and circulation—so I proceeded to examine the rest of him as best I could, trying to think like a doctor instead of a mother. From a neurological perspective, results were mixed: Beau was unconscious but responsive to pain, given that he’d tried to draw back his arm when I’d started his IV. His pupils constricted when exposed to light, and he didn’t display any of the positioning associated with severe brain damage. I couldn’t remember the precise criteria of the Glasgow Coma Scale, but I guessed he was somewhere around an eight or nine—not reassuring but not indicative of the worst possibility either.

As I listened to his lungs, I heard a dull, crunchy rattle, but he didn’t bring up any sputum as he breathed. A recheck of his oxygen saturation showed improvement after the face mask; now he registered at ninety-three percent. His skin still felt fiery to the touch, but I didn’t see any evidence of bleeding—no petechiae or bruising, no blood in the mucous membranes of his mouth or nose or eyes—and no rash.