Chapter 12: Every Door You Can't Get Through

Joy woke at two in the morning with a rattle in her chest.

I was beside her bed before I knew I had moved.

She had a cold from the gym, and her breathing was thin and quick.

"Mommy," she whispered. "It's the bad one."

Tobias stood in the doorway in a T-shirt and jeans, already holding her inhaler.

"Two puffs," he said. "Then we go."

She took them.

Her chest didn't loosen the way it should have.

He had her coat on and the truck running in three minutes.

I sat in the back seat with her against me, counting her breaths out loud, and Tobias drove through the dark at a speed I didn't ask about.

At the hospital he carried her in himself.

He talked to the nurse in short plain sentences, her weight, her age, how many doses and when, and the nurse looked at him and then moved faster.

They put Joy on the breathing mask, and she sat on the bed with a pink plastic mouthpiece and wide, tired eyes.

I stood beside her and signed what they handed me.

I could not make my hand steady.

Tobias put his palm flat between my shoulder blades and left it there.

"She's okay," he said. "Look. Her color's coming back."

It was.

Her lips went from gray to pink, and the whistle faded out of her chest, and she fell asleep with her cheek on the pillow.

I sat down hard in the plastic chair.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry, I fall apart."

"You didn't fall apart. You did everything right."

"I was counting."

"That's why she stayed calm."

I looked at him in the fluorescent light.

His hair was flat on one side, and he hadn't shaved, and he had not once looked at the clock.

"You don't have to stay," I said. "I mean it. It's four in the morning, and she's not your child."

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