He Scored My Life A 4 And Hers A 10 novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: Breathing

I read it twice under the hall lights.

Then I folded it in thirds and put it in my back pocket.

The president was still standing there.

"Is there anything you want to say?" he asked.

"Yes. Get a refill for her inhaler before she's discharged. The pharmacy closes at nine."

He blinked.

Then he nodded and walked away down the hall, touching his lanyard.

I went back into resus two with a blanket.

Jesse was asleep sitting up.

I put the blanket over him and sat on the end of Mabel's bed and didn't sleep at all.

They moved her to the kids' floor at four for observation.

By noon she was sitting up in bed eating red Jell-O and holding a grudge.

"That mask was disgusting," she told me. "It smelled like a balloon and a hospital had a baby."

"It worked, though."

"I'm not saying it didn't work. I'm saying it was disgusting." She pointed her spoon at me. "Write that down for the doctor."

"I'll put it in the chart."

"Put it in big letters. Like Dad does."

"Then nobody will be able to read it."

She laughed so hard she coughed, and Jesse and I both stood up at the same time.

She rolled her eyes at both of us.

"I'm fine. You're both so dramatic."

They sent her home that afternoon with two new purple puffers, one for her backpack and one for my flat.

Nobody told her I'd been fired.

She found out anyway, from Grandma's phone, the way she found out everything.

"You got fired for me," she said in the truck.

"I got fired for a machine that can't count," I said. "That's different."

"Is it?"

I thought about it.

"No," I said. "But I'd do it again."

She nodded, and put a rock in my coat pocket.

On Friday Jesse's mother took Mabel for a sleepover, with the new puffer and strict instructions.

Jesse asked me to dinner at his house.

He lived in a small brick bungalow six blocks from the firehouse, with a chain-link fence and a basketball hoop full of snow.

The kitchen had yellow cabinets and a fridge covered in drawings of rocks.

He made spaghetti. The sauce was from a jar. He said so before I could ask.

I wore jeans and the green sweater Ronnie said made my eyes look mean in a good way.

He wore a gray flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and kept looking at me.

We ate. We did the dishes.

Then he turned off the water and dried his hands and didn't turn around, just like the first night.

"I didn't thank you," he said.

"You don't have to."

"Let me." He turned around. "I got there and she was breathing. Do you know what that is? To run in and she's already breathing?"

"I know what it is."

"Ninety-four on the monitor and you holding her hand." His voice went rough. "I've done a lot of runs, Casey. I've never been that scared in my life. And you were just there. You'd already done it."

"I lost my job."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"I'm not." I leaned against his yellow counter. "That's the part I keep thinking about. I'm not sorry at all."

He came across the kitchen.

He stopped in front of me, not touching.

"Then I want to talk about the other thing," he said. "The thing we keep not talking about."

"Okay."

"I told you I'd wait. I meant it. I'll keep meaning it." He put his hands in his pockets like he didn't trust them. "But I need to know if I'm waiting for something. Or if I'm just a guy who brings you pie."

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