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down.”
    “I’m fine.”
    “The hospital’s a ten-minute drive. You can get a shot or whatever.”
    “Earth to Harry: I feel fine.”
    Harry sighed and pitched his pencil to the desk. “Come on. We’re going to the hospital. It’s closer and insurance pays, right? We can get you a shot and…” he paused as if having a sudden thought, “see how the kid’s doing, health-wise.”
    Harry had segued from the first rationale to the second so smoothly I realized the whole conversation had been an excuse to visit the boat baby. I’d pretty much pushed the incident to the back of my mind, wanting nothing more to do with the kid. The case belonged to the DI police.
    “Do you really want to know how it’s doing?” I challenged. “The kid could be terminally ill. Or brain-dead.”
    Harry closed his eyes, conflict tightening his face. He sighed.
    “I have to know, Carson. I held the kid. I breathed into her.”
    Minutes later we were at the hospital. An emergency room resident I knew shot me up with a syringe full of antibiotic and wrote script for some pills. Rolling my sleeve down, I looked for Harry, didn’t see him. I found him on the fourth floor in paediatric intensive care, peering through the window separating the sterile unit from the hall and waiting area.
    I walked tentatively to Harry and peeked in the window. Machines and monitors owned the real estate inside the unit. Our rescue was third in a line of five babies in Plexiglas boxes. Two kids were squalling, two were twitching or stretching. Ours was as still as clay. I felt myself staring. But it seemed as if I was watching from a vast distance, like the child was an image on a screen.
    I felt my body take a step backward and I bumped into Harry.
    “She looks terrible,” Harry groaned, stepping past me to press his hands against the window. “Just terrible.”
    “You’re responding to the tubes and wires,” said a cheery voice at our backs. “She’s doing far better than we expected.”
    Harry and I turned to see the blonde doc who’d sprinted from the helicopter. A brass badge on her breast said Angela Norlin, MD.
    “You’re sure?” Harry asked, skeptical. “She looks like she’s –”
    “She’s asleep, that’s all,” the doc said, bright eyes scanning the read-outs on the monitors. “Hertemp’s up a bit, but minimal. All in all it’s a very promising report. Surprising, too.”
    While Dr Norlin studied the machines, I circumspectly studied her. The slight crinkle of skin at her eyes and across the backs of her hands told me I’d been off a few years in my age estimate, and I now figured her for late thirties. A nicely crafted late thirties.
    “Do you specialize in helicopter paediatrics?” I asked.
    “When we got word there was a baby in trouble, the medivac folks sent me instead of the regular medic.”
    “A smart move on their part, I expect,” Harry said. “Why are you surprised she’s doing so good?”
    “Usually by this time we’d have had to flood the victim’s system with high-level antibiotics. There’s a potential for side-effects that can actually hinder progress. Baby Doe has some infection, but it’s low grade, and standard antibiotics are keeping it in check. Her immune system seems in exceptional condition. The power of her immune response is surprising everyone.”
    “The little lady must have good genes,” Harry said, scrutinizing the kid. Her skin was tawny, the eyes almond shaped, the dark hair curly.
    “What race is it, Doc?” I asked.
    Doc Norlin shot me a disapproving glance. “It’s a she. As far as race goes, to me it looks like human.”
    I’d never had much interaction with children.They were all it s to me until old enough to communicate, at which point they became interesting. But the it , combined with a racial query and what I’d been told was an accent more cracker than cosmopolitan, probably made me sound a tad cartoonish. Not a good cartoon.
    “I just mean…an, uh, ethnic