But the truth was Frankie had a long history of ambivalence toward the entire privileged New York landscape. She had moved to the Upper East Side from Queens when she was twelve. Frankie’s father, Abraham, was a manufacturer of women’s hosiery who sent her to the Spence School simply because it was up the block. Abraham had few social pretensions, and he passed that trait on to his daughter. Frankie could not have found an office address more reflective of her personality than 102nd Street and Fifth Avenue. She knew that if she had a world, the Fifth Avenue one was it, but she was most comfortable on its fringes.

“Mrs. Santorini, I’ll be with you and Brooke in a minute.” Frankie smiled at them and walked back into her office.

As soon as she sat down the phone rang. “Dr. Weissman, Mrs. Schultz is on the phone. She says it’s an emergency.”

She picked up the phone. “Hello, Frankie Weissman here.”

Mrs. Schultz’s voice was quavering. “Dr. Weissman, Taylor has swollen glands and she’s sweating. I think there’s a rash on her hand, and Zitomer pharmacy has run out of Cipro!”

“She doesn’t necessarily need Cipro,” Frankie said calmly. “It sounds like it could be all sorts of things.”

“Should I rush her to an emergency room?”

“I would bring her here first. Tell Rosita to make an appointment for today.”

Ever since the first anthrax case was reported in New York Frankie got at least two hundred calls a day for Cipro. Mothers like Mrs. Schultz were constantly on the brink of biological warfare.

“Brooke, this way please. You’re in room three.” Irina, the Russian nurse, escorted Brooke and her mother into the examining room. When Frankie walked in to join them Brooke had picked up the book Go Away, Big Green Monster! which was lying on the windowsill.

“We have this book at my school. Dr. Weissman, I can make all the green monsters go away and never come back again.”

“Good girl! I’m glad to hear that!” Frankie imagined a roomful of kindergarten girls defending themselves against big green monsters. She also wondered if any of their parents were still missing among the Trade Center rubble.

Frankie asked Brooke to breathe deeply and put her stethoscope on the child’s toe. “Is this your heart, Brooke?”

The girl giggled. “No!”

Frankie put her stethoscope on Brooke’s elbow. “Is this your heart?”

The child began shaking her head no and laughing. “You’re silly, Dr. Weissman!” Finally, Frankie put the stethoscope on her chest.

“Stop, Dr. Weissman! Stop! This is my heart!”

“Thank you, Brooke. Thank you. I would have never guessed.”

Brooke grinned triumphantly as Frankie continued the examination.

Frankie was only running an hour late when Brooke left and by seven o’-clock she had caught up with herself.

“Have you seen this, Dr. Weissman?” Rosita came into her office waving the latest issue of Manhattan magazine, the established doyenne of urban magazines.

“Is someone we know in it?” Frankie took a wry pleasure in the social escapades of her patients’ mothers.