“She should have known white baseball players don’t date young colored girls to further the cause of American democracy. By the time he was back in the minor leagues she was missing her first period.” She snubbed out the cigarette. “She would have been happy to give the child up, but my father is the strangest man. He took the baby and wouldn’t sue the baseball player for support and he gave Midge his own last name. He looked all his white neighbors in the eye and he dared them to tell him his family was the kind of trash he had been working away from all these years. To my knowledge nobody ever said a word to him. But my father, a good part of him . . .”

He took her into his arms.

“She’s always been his favorite,” she said into his shoulder. “He’d deny that but I know it to be true.”

“Honey, you can’t make it all up to your father by living like a nun,” he said softly.

“Spur, this no doubt is going to chase you away from here lickety-split, but I’m going to say it. He goes around all day holding his breath because he thinks there’s a chance that something serious is developing between us, that you might ask me to marry you. A black son-in-law who’s a doctor, my God.”

He moved his palm against her back. “I don’t think it will chase me away.” This time when he kissed her she kissed him back.

“Maybe it should,” she said breathlessly. “I want you to promise me something.”

“What?”

“If I should ever . . . lose control . . . I want you to swear . . .”

He was exasperated for only a moment, and then he had to fight hard to keep the grin from his face. “When you get married your husband will get the whole package, including the seal,” he told her soberly. Then he threw back his head and roared, making her terribly angry and waking her parents. Mr. Williams came out in his robe and slippers and Spurgeon saw that he slept in his long underwear. Her mother emerged blinking and muttering and without her upper plate. Mrs. Williams was beginning to accept him on her own terms, he noted. She made him hot cocoa before returning to bed but his laughter had awakened Midge and when the little girl started to cry she tongue-lashed him unabashedly for being too loud and extremely inconsiderate.

When he got back to the hospital it was after two a.m. On the way up to his room he checked a few patients, among them Macmillan. He found the big police officer groaning and febrile. The chart showed that his temperature and pulse rate were each one hundred.

“Did Dr. Potter see this man tonight?” he asked the nurse.