The doctor was a tall, tired man named Patel who examined her with enormous gentleness and then asked Sam to step into the hallway.
"Pneumonia in the right lower lobe," he said. "Not severe yet, thank God, but it would have been. She's dehydrated and significantly underweight, maybe fifteen percent below where she should be. Some frostnip on her toes. We'll admit her, get her on antibiotics and fluids, and feed her." He paused. "There are also several bruises in various stages of healing. The one on her jaw. Some on her upper arms, consistent with being grabbed. And some old scars on her back and the backs of her legs that I'd estimate are a year or two old." He looked at Sam. "Linear scars."
"A belt," Sam said. His voice came out flat and strange. "She told me. From a foster home. When she was four or so."
Dr. Patel nodded slowly. "I'll document all of it. The county caseworker's on her way. And the police will want to talk to you again." He hesitated. "For what it's worth, Mr. Whitley. In this job you see a lot of kids who've been failed by every adult around them. It's nice, once in a while, to see one who wasn't."
"It wasn't me," Sam said. "It was my daughter."
"Then it's nice to see that," said Dr. Patel.
The caseworker from Lehigh County Children and Youth Services arrived at a quarter to four. Her name was Gloria Maddox, and she was a small round woman in her late fifties with reading glasses on a beaded chain around her neck and a canvas tote bag full of files, and she looked, Sam thought, like somebody's favorite aunt. She had been doing this work for twenty-six years. She sat with June first, alone except for Sam, for nearly an hour, and she did not ask a single question about Rick or the motel or the bakery. She asked about the yellow bear, and what its name should be, and whether June liked purple better than pink, and what June's favorite book was out of all the books Nora had brought. June, eventually, warily, answered. The bear's name was Sunshine. Purple was better. The best book was the one about the bunny who runs away and his mother keeps finding him.
"That's a good one," said Gloria. "That's one of my favorites too."
Then she came out into the hallway, where Nora was asleep across two plastic chairs under Sam's jacket, and she sat down beside Sam and took off her reading glasses and rubbed her eyes.
"I want to tell you what I know," she said. "Some of it I can't tell you, because of privacy rules, and you're going to have to trust me on what I leave out. But you found her, and she's attached to you, and I think you've earned some of the truth."
"Thank you."