In about six hours you are going to start telling yourself that you should have handled it better, and that it might have been a misunderstanding, and that you have blown up a family.

You’ll do that at about two in the morning.

Everybody does.” She looked at me.

“You brought a hypothermic three-year-old with grip marks on both arms into an urgent care.

That is the correct thing to have done and it is the only thing you had to get right today.”

I have thought about Adaeze Mbeki a great deal in the four years since, and I have never been able to thank her, because the clinic would not pass on a letter.