By the time we got back to the hospital the staff on the third floor had changed. A skinny blonde woman my mother’s age was now in charge. She seemed more benevolent and kind. Maybe Dr. Williams had told her to be nice to me. Maybe he had told her I was crazy. Malcolm left to go relieve Klane and I played with Jimmy for a while on the single bed, then he fell asleep again and I lay down with my clothes on to read. I was reading A Farewell to Arms. I had already read it twice or three times, but I liked Hemingway so much I could read his books over and over, turning to any page to begin. “We had a lovely time that summer,” I began reading. “When I could go out we rode in a carriage to the park. I remember the carriage, the horse going slowly, and up ahead the back of the driver with his varnished high hat, and Catherine Barkley sitting beside me.”

“Rhoda.” It was Klane, still wearing the dirty slacks and striped cotton blouse she had appeared in from the jail so many hours ago that morning. “I come by to see if I could do anything to help.” She stepped gingerly into the room. Then walked straight over to the baby’s bed and looked down at him. “What did they find out?”

“Nothing yet.” I put a bookmark in the book and laid it down upon the bed and got up to go stand beside her. “They don’t know anything . . . if he’s got it, it might injure his brain. It’s an inflammation of the brain. That’s what it means. If he’s got it, there isn’t anything they can do. Just hope for the best.” I took Klane’s arm. I began to cry again.

“Don’t wake him up,” she said. “Don’t cry, Rhoda. It’s done now. His brain’s okay. He couldn’t be hurt. He’s too sweet. He’s the sweetest little boy I ever saw in my life.” Now tears were in her eyes too. She led me over to the bed and turned it down and fluffed up the pillows. “You get on your nightclothes and get in bed. You’re going to need your strength in the morning. You go on and get into the bed. I’ll sit by him. That’s what I come down here for.”

“Don’t you have to go home?”

“No. Delmonica’s there. She’ll take care of things.”

“I thought you didn’t like her anymore. I thought you said she was flirting with your husband.” Delmonica was Klane’s younger cousin from the Delta who had come to live with her. Last I had heard Klane had kicked Delmonica out for making out with her husband when he got the weekend off from jail and came home to patch the roof.