“You tell her,” I said to Sarah.

“I’m not seeing very well.”

The doctor tipped back Sarah’s head and looked at her eyes while she talked. “Things blurry?”

“The optometrist couldn’t find her problem,” I said. “Rather, she couldn’t solve the problem.”

“Okay.” She rolled back on her stool. She looked at the chart and noted the vitals, listened to and observed everything much in the way that I might stare at a car’s engine.

“Any pain in your eyes? Headaches?”

Sarah shook her head.

Dr. Terence held her hands wide on either side of Sarah’s head, well past her ears. “Keep your eyes pointed at my face. Can you see my hands?”

“No.”

She brought her hands forward. “How about now?”

“No.”

Forward some more, her hands now well in front of Sarah’s ears.

“There, I can see them.”

“Okay.”

“What do you think it is?” Meg asked.

“I don’t know. I’m going to refer you to Dr. Peterson over at Children’s Hospital. He’s a pediatric ophthalmologist.”

I could see that Meg was unhappy.

“How are you sleeping these nights?” Dr. Terence asked Sarah.

“Same as always.”

“Hard to wake up?”

“No.”

“What does that tell you?” Meg asked.

“I’m just asking questions,” the doctor said.

“I see. So, the ophthalmologist will be able to help?” Meg was leaning forward in her chair, making a show of leaving.

On the way out of the office, Meg said, “That was a waste of time.”

I rubbed Sarah’s head. “We got the referral. That’s what we came for. We’ll get this figured out. Right, bug?”

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That night Sarah went to bed easily and quickly. Perhaps the doctor’s appointment on top of a full day of school had worn her out, or maybe it was simply anxiety. If she wasn’t anxious before, her mother and I had probably stirred some.

Meg was not tying herself into her usual yoga poses, and I suppose I read this as a gesture.

“The ophthalmologist is squeezing us in three weeks from tomorrow.”

“That’s the soonest?”

“Apparently.”

Meg opened and closed her book.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You,” she said, as if she had been waiting for me to ask.

“Me what?”

“Flirting with Dr. Baby.”

“What? What are you talking about? I said hardly anything in there.”

“Right.”

“Are you seventeen all of a sudden?”

“Good night.” She turned off her bedside lamp.

“No. What the hell? I think I would know if I was flirting.”

“Because you’re so familiar with the behavior?” She said this more or less into her pillow.

“Meg.”

It was unlike Meg to worry over such things, and so I worried that I had actually been flirtatious. I searched my memory of the brief encounter for something I was missing. I couldn’t even remember Dr. Terence looking directly at me during the examination. I tried to be angry with Meg, but I couldn’t hold on to it.