The Dark Side - Danielle Steel Page 0,55
it just in time for Christmas. She got ten solid days of school in, when she woke up one morning with a raspy voice and said she had a sore throat. When Zoe checked, she had a blazing fever, all of which had come on quickly with no warning.
Zoe went to work late so she could take her to see Cathy, who did a quick test, and said she had strep throat. They did a culture too, which would take longer, and she prescribed a broad spectrum antibiotic in the meantime. Her throat was so sore Jaime could hardly swallow. Zoe sent Fiona out to buy popsicles for her, and Zoe took the rest of the day off from work so she could care for her herself. Cathy warned her to be careful she and Austin didn’t catch it, since it was highly contagious. Austin had had a recurring cold since October. Every time Jaime got sick, he did too. Preschool was proving to be tough on both of them. Zoe was hardier, and seemed to have better immunity, since she saw kids at work every day, and she had only caught one cold since the epidemic of illnesses that had felled Austin and Jaime. She warned Austin when he came home that night not to kiss Jaime or he’d be sick again, and he groaned at the prospect.
“Why didn’t someone warn us that children are dangerous? They’re germ farms. How could she get sick again? She just went back to school.”
“Cathy says everybody has it,” she reassured him. He blew Jaime a kiss from the doorway but didn’t go into her room, and Cathy had told Zoe to warn him to wash his hands frequently and take his vitamins. She was beginning to feel like Florence Nightingale, Zoe teased him.
“More like Nurse Ratched,” he said, teasing her back, and kissed her as he went to wash his hands.
The broad spectrum antibiotic Cathy had prescribed was very effective, and in two days, Jaime was bouncing all over the house, wanted to bake cupcakes, was fever-free, and said her throat felt all better. She’d eaten all the popsicles. Zoe kept her home for two more days, and then sent her back to school, fully recovered. And miraculously, Austin had managed not to catch it.
That night, Jaime reported in detail about her first day back at school. They were going on a field trip to the Museum of Natural History the following week, and she was going to be Person of the Week, with a poster where everyone in the class had to say nice things about her and the teacher would write them down. And the big news of the day was that Mr. Bob, the teaching assistant, had strep throat too. Austin felt sorry for him.
“Poor guy,” he commented. “You couldn’t pay me enough to be a preschool teacher, I’d need a resident doctor to get me through it. How long do you suppose this will go on?”
“Cathy says two years,” Zoe said, laughing at him.
“Oh God, don’t tell me that. Can’t we fast-track her into high school? I may not survive till first grade.”
Jaime was in particularly good spirits the following week when she was Person of the Week, and came home with a poster, with a self-portrait she had done in crayon in a pink dress, and the comments the teacher had diligently written on it, of all the nice things Jaime’s classmates said about her. “They weren’t allowed to say bad stuff,” Jaime explained, “like when I had an accident at school and wet my pants.” Austin and Zoe loved listening to her. She was a whole person with her own ideas and opinions now, and expressed them well. And she had lots of friends at school.
She had been healthy for an entire week after the brief bout of strep throat. Austin asked Zoe if she was still on the antibiotic, and Zoe said she had stopped it after four days. She said Jaime didn’t need it anymore since the sore throat was gone and she felt fine, and Zoe didn’t like abusing antibiotics, in case she got immune to them and they wouldn’t be effective in the future when she needed them. It sounded reasonable to Austin, and Jaime seemed fine.
Jaime ate a big bowl of pasta and meatballs that night, which Zoe had picked up at a nearby restaurant on her way home from work. She was dealing with assorted crises at