A Day's Wait

"A Day's Wait" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway published in his 1933 short story collection The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

The story focuses on a nine-year old boy and his father that calls him Schatz (German, meaning darling). When the boy gets the flu, his temperature rises to 102 degrees Fahrenheit. He is very quiet and depressed, finally asking when he will die; he had thought that a 102 degree temperature was lethal because he heard in France (where Celsius is used) that one cannot live with a temperature over 44 degrees. When the father explains to him the difference in scales, the boy slowly relaxes, and the next day, "he cried very easily at little things that were of no importance."