The tone of the story is haunting--darkly funny, confrontational, witty with gifts of precise and lyric observation. This tone, which seems to be an extension of the Mother herself, underscores the terror of a parent whose child is diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease.The view of medical personnel is not complimentary and the tone becomes biting during many of the descriptions of medical events and personnel. The Anesthesiologist clamps a mask over the baby's mouth, a medical student blankly examines a bloody naso-gastric tube on suction, and the Surgeon blithely asks the Mother to autograph a copy of her novel without the slightest understanding that he had just led her to believe he was preparing her for even more bad news.The story is also an intriguing meta-story and frequently comments on itself--such as the ending noted above. In the middle of the story, the narrator explains how impossible it is to write the experience itself: "The trip and the story of the trip are always two different things. The narrator is the one who has stayed home, but then, afterward, presses her mouth upon the traveler's mouth, in order to make the mouth work . . . All that unsayable life!"Nonetheless, this story goes a long way towards saying the unsayable. Because this is a story of love, the immensity of parental love, that love which says, begs instantly and without a second thought--send misfortune to me, but spare my child.Editor's note: An excellent close textual analysis of the story appeared in Journal of Medical Humanities, Vol.  27, No. 1, Spring 2006: "The Limits of Narrative and Culture: Reflections on Lorrie Moore's 'People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk' "by Pamela Schaff and Johanna Shapiro.