The short story "A Day's Wait" by Ernest Hemingway tells of a nine-year-old boy who develops a fever due to a light flu epidemic that is going around. The boy's father, the narrator of the story, puts him to bed and calls the doctor. When the doctor takes the boy's temperature, he announces that it is 102 degrees. Downstairs afterward, he gives the father some medicine for the boy to take and tells him that there is no danger unless the temperature gets to be 104 degrees. After the narrator gets back from hunting quail, he talks to the boy and finds out that all day the boy has been waiting to die because his temperature is too high. He had been thinking about body temperature measured in Celsius, but the doctor had used measurements in Fahrenheit.

In this story, the boy's worst problem is not his temperature. After the doctor takes it, he reassures the father that 102 degrees is safe and that "there was nothing to worry about if the fever did not go above 104 degrees." The boy's worst problem is his fear of death. He is convinced that he is going to die and that there is nothing the doctor, his father, or anyone else can do about it. That's why he gets so pale and worried, why he can't relax, and why he refuses to sleep. At the end, after his father explains the systems of measurement and assures him he will be all right, he relaxes, and for a while afterward he "cried very easily at little things that were of no importance."