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good, complete with glasses that always seemed to be sliding too far down his nose and hair that required a shotgun to keep down. Lucas loved sports and couldn’t play them a lick. When Mike would take practice shots at Adam in the driveway, Lucas would wander over and watch. Mike would offer him a stick, but Lucas didn’t want that. Realizing too early in life that playing was not his destiny, Lucas liked to broadcast: “Dr. Baye has the puck, he fakes left, shoots for the five- hole… brilliant save by Adam Baye!”
    Mike thought about that, about that sweet kid pushing his glasses up and thought again, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him die.
    “Are you sleeping?” Mike asked.
    Susan Loriman shrugged.
    “You want me to prescribe something?”
    “Dante doesn’t believe in that stuff.”
    Dante Loriman was her husband. Mike didn’t want to admit it in front of Mo, but his assessment had been spot-on-Dante was an asshole. He was nice enough on the outside, but you saw the narrowing of the eyes. There were rumors he was mobbed up, but that could have been based more on looks. He had the slicked-back hair, the wifebeater tees, the too-much cologne and the too-glitzy jewelry. Tia got a kick out of him-“nice change from this sea of clean-cuts”-but Mike always felt as though there was something wrong, the machismo of a guy who wanted to measure up but somehow knew he never did.
    “Do you want me to talk to him?” Mike asked.
    She shook her head.
    “You guys use the Drug Aid on Maple Avenue, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll call in a prescription. You can pick it up if you want.”
    “Thanks, Mike.”
    “I’ll see you in the morning.”
    Mike came back toward the car. Mo was waiting with his arms folded across his chest. He wore sunglasses and was aiming for the epitome of cool.
    “A patient?”
    Mike walked past him. He didn’t talk about patients. Mo knew that.
    Mike stopped in front of his house and just looked at it for a moment. Why, he wondered, did a house seem as fragile as his patients? When you looked left and right, the street was lined with them, houses like this, filled with couples who had driven out from wherever and stood on the lawn and looked at the structure and thought, “Yes, this is where I’m going to live my life and raise my kids and protect all our hopes and dreams. Right here. In this bubble of a structure.”
    He opened the door. “Hello?”
    “Daddy! Uncle Mo!”
    It was Jill, his eleven-year-old princess, tearing around the corner, that smile plastered on her face. Mike felt his heart warm-the reaction was instantaneous and universal. When a daughter smiles at her father like that, the father, no matter what his station in life, is suddenly king.
    “Hey, sweetheart.”
    Jill hugged Mike and then Mo, flowing smoothly between them. She moved with the ease of a politician working a crowd. Behind her, almost cowering, was her friend Yasmin.
    “Hi, Yasmin,” Mike said.
    Yasmin’s hair hung straight down in front of her face, like a veil. Her voice was barely audible. “Hi, Dr. Baye.”
    “You guys have dance class today?” Mike asked.
    Jill shot a warning look across Mike’s bow in a way no eleven-year-old should be able to do. “Dad,” she whispered.
    And he remembered. Yasmin had stopped dance. Yasmin had pretty much stopped all activity. There had been an incident in school a few months back. Their teacher, Mr. Lewiston, normally a good guy who liked to go a step too far to keep the kids interested, had made an inappropriate comment about Yasmin having facial hair. Mike was fuzzy on the details. Lewiston immediately apologized, but the pre-adolescent damage was done. Classmates started calling Yasmin “XY” as in the chromosome-or just “Y,” which they could claim was short for Yasmin but really was just a new way of picking on her.
    Kids, as we know, can be cruel.
    Jill stuck by her friend, worked harder to keep her in the mix. Mike and Tia were proud of