"His bedtime's eight o'clock," Natalie told Lydia. "I always read him a story before bedtime. Here's my cell phone number in case of emergency." Lydia Renkova, who'd returned from her trip to Russia with her family, was babysitting Luke so Ralph and Natalie could go to dinner and a movie.

"Bye-bye, sweetie." Natalie kissed her son's cheek. "Be a good boy."

"Bye-bye." Luke waved his hand at his parents. Ralph and Natalie had hardly been gone five minutes when he started crying. "Mama! Mama!"

"Sh," Lydia soothed. "Your Mama will be back soon. Right now, you and I are going to have some fun. How does that sound?"

She offered the toddler several toys in succession, but he just cried and threw each one. She was running out of ideas when she remembered how much Natalie had told her Luke loved 'Shining Time station.' She looked through the DVD's, found it, and popped it into the DVD player. Luke stopped crying and stared at the screen in fascination, and soon he was smiling at the antics of his favorite characters.

They had time to watch a couple more episodes before Luke's bath time. Lydia filled the bathtub with his favorite toys, undressed him, and put him in. Quickly she washed him off, and then for the next twenty minutes, the two of them had great fun laughing, splashing, and squirting water at one another. Lydia ended up getting drenched, but she didn't care. Afterwards, she dried him off and put his pajamas on him. Then she led him to his bedroom, where she read 'The Little Engine That Could' to him, kissed him good-night, and turned out the light.

Some time later, she was watching television in the living room when she heard a cry coming from the nursery. She dashed into the room and switched on the light to find Luke lying in bed crying and covered with vomit.

"Oh, no!" She walked to the crib and lifted him out, trying her best to keep the foul-smelling substance from touching her skin or clothing. She took Luke back into the bathroom, where she stripped him and put him back into the tub. She'd turned on the tap and water was slowly filling the tub when he began to vomit again.

Desperate, Lydia wrapped him in a large towel and ran to call Natalie, but all she heard was a message telling her Natalie was unavailable and giving her the chance to leave a message.

"Please come home soon! Luke's really sick!" she gasped into the receiver. Noticing that he'd also thrown up on the towel, she rushed back to the bathroom with him.

She was still struggling to clean him up when she heard the key turn in the lock and realized that Ralph and Natalie were home. As Natalie didn't see any sign of either Lydia or Luke, she followed her ears to the bathroom, where she found a flustered Lydia who was wet from head to toe and a naked, crying Luke.

"What happened?" she asked.

"He's thrown up three or four times already!" Lydia exclaimed. "I tried to call you but only got your voice mail."

"I'm sorry," said Natalie. "I had to turn my cell phone off during the movie. I'm sure glad we didn't stop for drinks on the way home after all!"

"Mama!" cried Luke. Natalie rushed to take him, and he stopped crying.

"I'm so sorry!" Natalie told Lydia. "He seemed perfectly fine when I left. I had no idea he was coming down with something. Here's an extra twenty dollars for all your trouble."

"Oh no, that's all right!" Lydia replied. "I just hope he'll be OK!"

Natalie paid her and she left, right before Luke threw up again. "Looks like we're gonna have to take him to the emergency room," she told Ralph, who nodded.

Fortunately, they didn't have to wait very long before being called back into one of the examination rooms, where a kind, portly, middle-aged physician with salt-and-pepper hair examined their son. "His temperature's only a hundred degrees," the man told them. "His throat and ears are clear, and so are his lungs. I've collected a sputum sample for just in case, but I doubt anything will show up. I think he simply has a nasty stomach virus. Give him nothing but Pedialyte tomorrow, and if he's able to keep that down, you can give him tea, crackers, and bananas the next day."

"Thank you so much!" Natalie sagged with relief.

On the way home, they stopped at the supermarket and bought Pedialyte and bananas, then continued on their way. When they got back to the apartment, Natalie replaced the soiled sheets in the crib and got Luke settled for the night.

When Lydia returned to her family, Irina gasped in shock at her condition. "Luke got sick," Lydia explained. "I got wet giving him a bath."

"Looks like you must have joined him in the tub," Arkady observed.

"I had to give him more than one," his daughter replied. "He was really sick."

"Poor baby," said Irina. "I sure hope he'll be all right."

"So do I," Lydia replied.