“Sure,” I said. “Sure, as fast as I can.” I reached toward the baby but the resident was listening to his heart so I retreated and found my clothes and went into the small bathroom to put them on. The room was large for a hospital room but the bathroom was closet size. Once inside, with the door shut, I could barely get on my underwear. I pulled things on as well as I could and went back into the room. Jimmy was standing now, cooing and being charming to the nurses. The resident was letting him play with his stethoscope. They turned my way. They were all waiting for me.

“It won’t take too long,” the resident said, “but you probably won’t want to watch. They have to hold him very still, but it won’t hurt him. Just scare him.”

“What are they going to do?”

“Prep him for the spinal tap.”

“Just get him ready.”

“Yes.”

“Then what? Put a needle in his spine?”

“They have to take some fluid out of the spinal column to see if its infected with the virus. That’s all.”

“How much?”

“A very small amount.”

“Okay,” I said. “Whatever you have to do.”

The resident and the nurses left. It was almost an hour and a half later when the next set of nurses came in to the room. By then Jimmy was screaming with hunger and the anxiety he had picked up from me.

The new nurses came in and lay him down on the crib and began to try to get an intravenous drip into his arm. A small blonde nurse stuck needle after needle into the fat flesh of his small perfect arm but she could not find a vein. On the fourth try, I was starting out of the room to complain at the nurses’ station when Klane’s huge frame reappeared in the door. She was dressed up now, in her Sunday school clothes, a long dark green gabardine dress with a white lace collar and white stockings and polished shoes. She had on long crystal earrings and several bangle bracelets. I had never seen her so dressed up, not even the time she had to go to court.

“Klane,” I said, and threw myself into her arms. “Thank God you’re here. They keep putting needles in him and they can’t find a vein. They haven’t even started on the spine yet.” She glanced at me, then went to the crib. She reached down into the bed, through the sea of arms, and picked up Jimmy and held him. “You can do it now,” she said. “I’ll hold him. Do it fast if you have to do it. I can hold him still. I know what to do. I worked here all the time when I was young.”

“Klane Marengo,” one of the nurses said. “Sure. I remember you. You used to be in E.R. on the weekends.”