Chapter 4
The apartment smelled like the pizza box we'd left on the counter that morning and the lemon cleaner Dad used on the table. He'd turned every light on in the kitchen, and it made my eyes hurt after the dim restaurant.
I was in my pajamas, the gray ones with the rockets, and my chest still felt tight when I breathed in deep. Not the can't-breathe feeling from the table, but sore, like I'd been holding it too long. Dad had put the white bakery box on the counter and hadn't opened it. The string was still tied.
He sat across from me at the kitchen table with his phone face up. His blue button-down was untucked and wrinkled where he'd knelt on the floor. He kept rolling his shoulder like it ached.
"Hey, buddy," he said. "You good sitting up?"
I nodded. I tried to make my breathing sound normal. I didn't want him to worry more than he already was.
He opened his notes app. His thumbs hovered over the keyboard.
"I'm just going to write what happened," he said, more to himself than to me. "So I don't forget anything later."
He typed with two fingers, slow. He read out loud as he went, quiet. "Seven fifteen, dinner... request for inhaler... device taken... thrown..."
I watched the cursor blink. My backpack was on the chair next to me. The dark teal zipper was open and my inhaler with the clear spacer was on the table between us, not back inside yet. Dad stopped typing and picked it up.
"Can I take a picture of this?" he asked.
I nodded again.
He laid the inhaler flat on the white tablecloth he'd brought home from the restaurant, folded under it. He took a picture. Then the spacer next to it. Then the two together with his hand for scale. The flash made me blink. He checked each photo and took another one closer.
"You don't need to do that," I said. My voice was small. "It's fine now. I used it."
Dad looked up. "I know you did. And you did exactly right. This is just so we have it."
He kept typing. He added, "delayed use, approximately four minutes, breathing difficulty observed."
I swung my feet under the table. The chair was too tall and my socks didn't quite touch the floor.
"Is your birthday ruined?" I asked.
He stopped typing.
"What? No," he said.
"I mean, because she left," I said quickly. I wanted to fix it. "If I hadn't needed it right then, maybe we could've just done cake. I could've waited."
Dad set his phone down. He leaned forward, his elbows on the table.
"Hey. Look at me," he said. "You didn't ruin anything. You asked for what you needed. That's what you're supposed to do."
I stared at the bakery box. I wanted to believe him, but I kept thinking about her face when she said I always needed attention. I didn't want Dad to have to choose.
"I don't want you to get in trouble with her," I said.
He swallowed. "That's not your job to worry about. My job is to make sure you can breathe."
He picked up his phone again, but he didn't type. He scrolled to his contacts and hit a number on speaker. A calm automated voice came on and then a real one.
"Pediatric after-hours nurse line, this is Karen. How can I help?"
Dad gave my name, my age, that I had asthma and a prescribed blue inhaler with a spacer. He described what happened in the same flat way he'd typed it, that the device had been taken and thrown and that I'd gone about three or four minutes struggling before I got it back and used it. He said I was talking now, but my chest was still tight and I'd been wheezing.
I sat very still and listened to her breathing on the other end while she listened to ours.
"And he was able to do two puffs with the spacer?" she asked.
"Yes," Dad said. "He's sitting up. Color looks good. But he says his chest hurts."
"That's expected after an episode," she said. "Because there was a delay, and he was working so hard to breathe, we really want you to bring him in tonight for an oxygen check and to listen to his lungs. We don't want to assume the rescue inhaler fixed everything. Can you get to the ER?"
Dad looked at me. I saw his jaw tighten.
"Yeah," he said. "We're ten minutes away."
"Good. Bring the inhaler and spacer with you. And if his breathing gets worse, lips pale, can't finish a sentence, call 911. Otherwise come straight in."
"Okay. Thank you," Dad said.
He hung up. He didn't ask me if I wanted to go. He just stood up and grabbed his keys from the counter.
"Let's go get checked," he said. "Just to be safe."
May you like
I slid off the chair. I put the inhaler and spacer back in the front pocket of my backpack and zipped it. Dad grabbed his notes phone and his wallet, but he left the bakery box where it was, string still tied, untouched on the kitchen counter.
He held the door for me. I stepped into the hallway and he turned the kitchen light off behind us, and we went out to the car to drive to the ER.
