Practice Makes Perfect by Kathryn Shay

eating good.”
    Paige glanced down. “You’re breast-feeding, right?”
    “Yes.” Anne’s eyes darted to Ian, who nodded. “My, um, husband just got laid off from the electronics plant, and I thought it was stress. You know how you get stressed and stop producing milk. My mother-in-law said I should give him solids.”
    Not a good idea. “Did you?”
    “No, I want to keep breast-feeding him. He’s so little. And I read it’s good for a baby.”
    “It is. You’re right to steer clear of solids when Sean’s this young. What else?”
    “He’s been constipated for two weeks.”
    “Did you do anything about that?”
    “The intern at the clinic in Elmwood said to use baby suppositories.”
    Paige made a notation in the chart. “They didn’t work?”
    “A little bit.”
    “Other symptoms?”
    “He doesn’t want to eat. I can’t get him to suck.”
    Ian stared down at the baby. His big fingers came up to adjust the collar of the infant’s one piece terry-cloth suit. “Oral mucous. Sunken anterior fontanelle. Hypertonia.” He glanced up. “He can’t hold his head up at all now, Paige.” There was a note of gravity in Ian’s voice.
    Paige clicked off her pen and closed the chart. “He needs to be hospitalized right away.”
    Tears formed again in Anne’s eyes, and she looked at Ian beseechingly. “I...we...um, we don’t have any medical insurance.”
    “That’s all right,” Ian told her. “The center has an arrangement with the hospital.”
    Paige checked the clock. “I don’t have another patient until two. Let’s get the little guy over there now. I’ll order the tests in person.”
    With Paige expediting the process, it took only fifteen minutes to get the child to an emergency room. After consulting with the head pediatrician on staff, Paige ordered blood tests, urine and stool cultures, and within minutes the baby was receiving IV fluids. That would stabilize him immediately. She also ordered an MRI and an electromography, as well as a thyroid profile. It was near two when she approached Anne, who’d been joined by her husband in the baby’s room. “Mrs. Corriddi, I’ve ordered all the necessary tests. Sean will have them this afternoon.” She smiled soothingly. “I’ve left instructions to be called immediately when the results are in. Until then, we can’t do anything but stabilize him.”
    “St-sta...bilize? Could something happen to him?”
    “Now that he’s on IVs, he’s doing okay.” She squeezed Anne’s hand. “I promise we’ll find out what this is.”
    Paige hurried back to the Center—thank God it was attached to the hospital—and saw her afternoon patients. But her mind kept straying to little Sean Corriddi. Something was familiar about this....
    It was five o’clock before she finished with the last child. She’d only seen Ian when he’d poked his head into an examining room to get an update on Anne’s baby. He swiveled around from his computer when she entered their office.
    “Any news on the tests?” she asked without greeting him.
    “A fax for you just came in. But I’ll tell you what it says. All Sean’s tests have been done. No conclusions could be drawn from them.”
    “Do you know how the baby is?” she asked.
    “I walked over on a break. He’s stabilized.”
    “I’ll head there now. I just want to check something.” She sat down at the computer. It was only when she hit the space bar calling up the screen saver that she remembered what Ian had done with the machine. Once again, staring into Scalpel’s face, she chuckled. “This was cute, Ian.”
    “I am sorry, Paige.”
    She didn’t look at him. “I know.” She thought about Jade’s observation about her perfectionism. She thought about Ian’s question about being unforgiving. “I overreacted. Let’s table it for now, though. I want to do some research on Sean’s symptoms. They seem so familiar....”
    Ian worked at his desk while Paige visited some medical sites. Food