But it wasn’t what I expected. Toby Meyers, a precocious, active three-year-old boy, had been brought to the ER by his mother. For the past week or so he had been coughing, running high temps, and occasionally wheezing. No history of asthma and no medical problems. Prior to this, he had been the picture of health and, I’m sure, quite a handful. “We took him to a clinic down at the beach last weekend,” his mother had explained. “Same thing—cough, fever. They told us he had bronchitis and to take this.” She reached into her oversized purse and took out a bottle of liquid medicine with pink smears down its side. Amoxicillin. “He’s no better, and still coughs a lot. Mainly at night.” Toby looked up at me, smiled, and coughed twice. “See?” he said, then coughed twice more. His temperature was 102.2 and I heard noises on the right side of his chest. If he had had bronchitis last weekend, there was a good chance it was now pneumonia. “We need to get an X-ray of his chest,”
