The paramedics were a young man and an older woman, and the older woman had a stuffed bear in the ambulance, a ratty yellow one that looked as if it had been through a great many emergencies. She gave it to June, and listened to her chest with a stethoscope while June sat in Sam's lap, and her face did not change, but she exchanged a look with her partner that Sam did not like.
"Possible pneumonia," she said to him quietly, as they loaded up. "Definitely dehydrated. Malnourished. She needs to be seen tonight. Good thing you found her when you did. Another week of this cold..." She did not finish the sentence.
Sam rode in the back of the ambulance with June in his lap and the yellow bear in hers and Nora squeezed in beside them on the bench. June fell asleep before they had gone two blocks, her small hot face against his neck, one hand fisted in the collar of his flannel shirt. Through the back windows Sam watched the dark mill buildings slide past, and the river, and the old bakery with its faded painted loaf of bread, and then the lights of Market Street, and then the highway.
Nora leaned her head against his arm.
"Dad," she said. "Are you mad?"
He thought about it honestly. He thought about the nights she had walked alone through the frozen town, and the doorway she had ducked into when the car went by, and what could have happened to her, and his chest went tight with a fear so large it was almost anger. But underneath the fear there was something else, and when he looked at it, it was not anger at all.
"I'm scared," he said. "I'm scared about what could've happened to you. We're going to talk about that, and you're never doing anything like this again without telling me. Never. You hear me?"
"I hear you."
"But I'm not mad." He looked down at the sleeping child in his arms. "You kept her alive, Nora. For three weeks. All by yourself. You fed her, and you kept her warm, and you sang to her. You did what Mom would've done." His voice cracked. "I'm so proud of you I don't know what to do with it."
Nora pressed her face into his sleeve and cried, and the ambulance went on through the dark toward the hospital, and for the first time in two years, Sam Whitley did not feel like he was alone in the car.
The pediatric emergency department at St. Agnes Medical Center in Bethlehem was bright and warm and smelled of hand sanitizer, and at two o'clock in the morning it was almost empty. They put June in a room with clouds painted on the ceiling. A nurse named Brianna, who had pink streaks in her hair and a voice like warm milk, started an IV in June's arm while June stared fixedly at the clouds and squeezed Sam's thumb so hard his nail went white. She did not cry. Sam almost wished she would.