Chapter 4 - The Stethoscope
Inside the main house, the cool air hit them like a wet sheet.
Rachel was waiting near the bottom of the kitchen stairs, holding Sophie’s hand. The four-year-old was still wearing her red plastic stethoscope around her neck, her thumb tucked into her mouth, her large brown eyes wide as she watched the tall man walk through the double oak doors with the baby clamped to his chest.
Martha came hurrying out of the pantry with a wet cloth and a silver tray carrying a bottle of cold pedialyte solution.
"Mr. Bellini! Is he alright? Lord above, his face is so red—"
"Get the doctor," Roman ordered, sitting down heavily on the long mahogany bench in the central hallway. He didn't lay Nicholas down on the bench. He kept him on his lap, his large arms forming a high wall around the child's tiny body. "Call Sterling. Tell him to get here now."
"Dr. Sterling is in Columbia until four o'clock, sir," Martha said, her voice shaking as she reached out to wipe Nico’s forehead with the damp cloth. "I called his office when Mrs. Whitmore took him out. His assistant said—"
"Then call someone else!" Roman roared, his voice bouncing off the high plaster ceiling with terrifying force.
Martha flinched, stepping back three inches.
Sophie pulled her thumb out of her mouth. She didn't look scared by Roman’s shout; she looked annoyed, the way she looked when adults made unnecessary noise while she was trying to watch her morning cartoons.
She let go of her mother’s hand and walked straight across the marble floor toward the dark bench.
"Sophie, no!" Rachel whispered, reaching out to grab her daughter's dress, but Roman held up his left hand—a quick, sharp gesture that froze Rachel in her tracks.
Sophie stopped right between Roman’s knees. She looked at Nicholas, whose eyes were half-closed, his breathing still coming in short, feverish hitches.
She took her red plastic stethoscope, put the blue ear tips into her own ears, and reached out with the round red disc.
"Move your hand," Sophie commanded Roman.
Roman looked down at the little girl. Her sandal was completely off now, lying three feet behind her on the marble tiles. Her white sock had a dark smudge on the heel from the laundry room floor. Her face was flushed, but her eyes were steady, entirely unbothered by the fact that the man sitting above her could buy or sell everything her family owned before sunset.
Slowly, Roman pulled his thick hand back two inches, uncovering the baby’s ribs.
Sophie pressed the red plastic disc against Nico’s chest.
She stood there for five seconds, her head tilted to the side, her eyebrows pulled together in a look of profound, terrifying concentration.
"He's hot," Sophie announced.
"I know he's hot," Roman said, his voice dropping into a tight, strained rasp.
"He needs the cold juice," she said, pointing her small finger at the silver tray Martha was holding. "Not the cloth. The cloth makes his shirt wet. My mom gives me the cold juice in the little cup when I have the hot forehead."
Rachel stepped forward carefully, her hands folded in front of her gray smock. "She’s talking about the pedialyte, Mr. Bellini. It works better if it’s room temperature, not ice-cold. If it’s too cold, it makes their stomachs cramp when they're overheated."
Roman looked at Rachel. For the first time in the four weeks she had worked in his house, he actually looked at her face—not as a piece of domestic equipment that kept the dust off his late wife's porcelain, but as a human being who had raised a child through the night without three nurses standing by the bed.
"Do it," Roman said.
Rachel took the small bottle from Martha’s tray, poured two ounces into a clear plastic cup, and sat down on the very edge of the mahogany bench, eighteen inches from Roman’s hip.
She didn't try to take the baby from him. She knew better than that now.
"Hold his chin up a little, Mr. Bellini," Rachel said softly, her voice calm, practical, and steady. "Just a quarter inch so he doesn't choke when he swallows."
Roman adjusted his right hand behind Nico’s neck. His fingers were so thick compared to the baby’s tiny neck that he was terrified he would press too hard, but he moved with extreme care, following Rachel’s instruction until the child’s chin lifted slightly toward the chandelier light.
Rachel brought the cup to Nico’s lips.
The baby hesitated, smelling the sweet, salty liquid, then his small mouth opened and he began to drink—small, greedy gulps that made his tiny throat move in steady rhythms.
Sophie sat down on the marble floor right at Roman’s feet, cross-legged, holding her plastic stethoscope in her lap like a surgeon who had just completed a critical procedure and was waiting for the recovery room report.
"See?" Sophie said, looking up at Roman with supreme confidence. "I fixed him."
Roman looked down at the little girl sitting on his floor, then at his son drinking from the cup in Rachel's hand.
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The heavy, suffocating silence that had filled the Bellini mansion for six months seemed to crack slightly, like ice breaking on a winter pond under the first real sun of spring.
"Yes," Roman said, his voice so quiet it barely reached Rachel's ears. "You did."
