The room the Worths were occupying was near the end and on the left. The child lay on a pallet on the floor. Even before the nurse touched him, she knew that he had a high fever. His lips had a dry, cracked look. His face was flushed, his eyes, opening when she knelt beside him, unseeing. Donna took a deep breath to ease her sense of responsibility and fear and touched the thin cheek. She had been right. The boy was burning up. She turned once more to the mother. "Go down to my office. It's on the left of the entrance as you face it. Ask somebody there to get me a thermometer out of the top drawer of my desk." The boy's father, who had been sitting in the chair at the teacher's desk, got lazily up and moved over to the girl. "He's pretty sick, ain't he? Never been really strong, and his ma babies him. I say if she'd let him be like other boys, it'd toughen him up and he wouldn't be always whining about how bad he feels." Donna looked up into the unshaven face and the stupid little eyes, and wondered if his uncaring attitude was ignorance or indifference.
