I started to ask her about Lindsey, but realized that I was picking at scabs, scratching and irritating them.

“Can we call a truce?” Cordelia asked. “Do I get a hug? I’ve had one of those days when I really need one.”

“Of course you get a hug,” I said. I crossed the room to her, somewhat chastened by her having to ask for something that used to be assumed.

She held me gently at first, then her arms tightened about me as if she needed to be touched with no trace of hesitation or doubt. I returned her embrace, wanting very much for our touching to overcome the chasm that seemed ready to open between us.

Finally, she let me go. “Okay, I’m ready to tell you about my day. But first I think I’m going to get a cup of tea.”

“Let me,” I offered. “Sit down, take off your shoes and enjoy one of the benefits of having a lover.” I didn’t add, Since you’ve been putting up with some of the drawbacks.I went into the kitchen and put on the water.

With the tea bags in hot water, and a little milk in Cordelia’s, I brought them out.

“Sit beside me?” she asked, still not willing to take closeness for granted.

I sat next to her, taking her hand between both of mine. “Now tell me about your day.”

“My first patient was a man in his twenties. His mother brought him in. He wanted an HIV test.” She paused.

“Did you give him one?”

“No. He didn’t need an HIV test. Oh, he’ll get one. But I didn’t see any point in drawing blood when he’s going to go to Charity and get his blood taken there, too. He had AIDS. I didn’t tell him that. Or his mother. You can’t diagnose AIDS in a fifteen-minute physical exam. But…he was emaciated, had thrush, problems walking, problems breathing, probably PCP. Twenty-eight years old with the face of an old man. Sometimes you know.

“I sent him to the emergency room at Charity. He probably has a few months left, at best. He’s seen a doctor three times in his entire life. Once when he was two years old and had a raging fever, once when he was fifteen and got shot in the leg on his way to school, and now. Poverty kills people. Sometimes I think it’s that simple.”

Cordelia paused again, then put her arm around me as if seeking warmth.

“Then another mother came in,” she continued, “with another child. But this time the mother was seventeen years old, barely beyond a child herself. Her three-year-old daughter was bleeding vaginally and rectally.”

I shuddered beneath Cordelia’s embrace, warmth a fragile and fleeting thing.

“She had the kind of cuts and bruises that don’t come from a fall. A broken rib, a throat infection that’s probably gonorrhea.”

“Three years old? Only three years old?” I cried out, unable to sit still as I pulled away from her. Relaxing in a comforting embrace didn’t seem possible.

“The mother, the seventeen-year-old, admitted to using crack. The man she lives with, not the girl’s father, didn’t want her to take the child to see us. Somehow the mother had enough maternal instinct to realize her baby needed to see a doctor. She snuck away from him to bring her in. She told me she wants to get off crack, but she’s having difficulty getting into a treatment program because she’s pregnant again.”

Cordelia was quiet for a moment, then spoke softly, “I had to turn her in. I couldn’t let the child go back into that home. They arrested the mother, of course. The child got sent to Charity to be sewn together, and then she’ll be sent off to foster homes. The police haven’t found the boyfriend yet. I don’t feel like much of a hero or savior,” Cordelia finished.