We did check a blood count — it looked normal — and we got some urine to be cultured. On the other hand, the mother continued to feel strongly that the baby was not quite “himself”.

I couldn’t find anything wrong on his exam, but she knew him better. And because I got my paediatric training in the days when he would have been automatically admitted to the hospital, I’m probably more conservative than younger doctors.

In the end, we did give him a shot of antibiotics, his cultures went to the lab, and he and his mother went home with a thermometer.

The next day he was himself again, his mother reported, less fussy, more alert and happy, nursing well. Nothing grew in his cultures. Maybe he had a mild viral illness, which caused the fever and the fussing, and he fought it off.

The next time he comes into the clinic with fever, he will, I hope, have aged out of the gray zone, out of the high-risk age, and we can concentrate on treating an infection, if we find one, and reassuring his mother that fever by itself is nothing to worry about.