Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 102016 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 510(@200wpm)___ 408(@250wpm)___ 340(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102016 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 510(@200wpm)___ 408(@250wpm)___ 340(@300wpm)
“I want to be at school,” she says with a pout.
“Yeah, well, I want you to feel better, and what I want is more important right now.” I park in the lot, then help my girl out of her seat, and with her hand in mine, we walk inside.
“Hey, come on back,” Marsha says with a smile, gesturing for us to come through the door to her left. “We have a room ready for you.”
Sometimes it’s convenient to be the brother of a doctor.
One of the nurses, Leslie, takes Birdie’s blood pressure, checks her temperature, and takes all the vitals she needs, and then she smiles at us as she gathers her things to leave the room.
“Dr. Blackwell should be in soon. He’s just wrapping up with another patient.”
“Thanks, Leslie.” I nod, and she leaves, and Birdie sighs as if this is the worst day of her life.
If she feels good enough to be this pouty, she’s not doing too bad.
Less than a minute after Leslie leaves, the door opens, and Blake walks inside, giving Birdie a soft smile. He’s in green scrubs and a white lab coat with his name embroidered over the chest. His stethoscope hangs around his neck. He looks tired as fuck.
“What’s up with you, wee one?”
“Nothing,” Birdie says and stubbornly folds her arms, and I scowl at my daughter.
“Just wanted to see me, huh?” Blake grins and squats in front of her. “I missed you, too, cupcake. How are you feeling, though?”
She shrugs, and I jump in.
“She woke up with the sniffles, but after I gave her the cold medicine, she seemed fine. She went to school, and at lunchtime, she was running around and had an asthma attack. Dani had her inhaler on her, though.”
“Sniffles, huh?” Blake looks at the vitals that Leslie took. “Let’s get a listen of your lungs, okay? Sit up here.”
He helps her up onto the table with the strip of white paper along it, then tells her to breathe in and out while he moves his stethoscope around.
“You’re a little congested in there,” he says. “We’ll do a breathing treatment before you go. Let’s keep up with the cold meds every eight hours, too. She should be fine in a couple of days. I’ll swing by and listen to her lungs to make sure there’s nothing lingering. Until then, no running around. Hear me?”
“Okay,” Birdie says with a long-suffering sigh. Blake pokes his head out the door and tells someone to bring him the nebulizer.
“Thanks,” I tell my brother. “Appreciate it. She’s been lethargic again.”
“I saw that at dinner on Sunday.” He sits on a stool and sighs, examining my kiddo. “She was such a little preemie, Bridger. The lungs may always be an annoyance for her. Let’s get her recovered from this bug, see how she is for a week or two, and then we can run some more blood tests.”
“I don’t want any more needles,” Birdie whines as Leslie bustles back in with the machine to give my daughter a breathing treatment.
“I’m sorry, cupcake,” Blake says with a sigh. I know that Birdie’s illness has weighed on him. He wants to help her so badly. “We’re going to figure this out. Now, you know the drill. Hold the tube in your mouth, and take some deep breaths to get the medicine in your lungs.”
The treatments always make her shaky for a while after, but they really help when her poor lungs are working extra hard.
“How did Dani handle it?”
“She did great. I warned her this could happen this morning, and she carried the inhaler on her, just in case. I’m glad she did.”
Blake nods. “I like you two together,” he says, his voice low. “I think you’re good for each other.”
I run my hand through my hair, watching my daughter breathe with the machine. I doubt she can hear us over the noise of it. As much as I don’t need affirmation about Dani from my brother, I like it. He knows. He’s known for years that Dani has owned my heart.
“I think so, too.”
Chapter Fourteen
DANI
Ineed to get home. I don’t know how I kept it together for Birdie and Bridger this afternoon, because I was so freaking scared when she couldn’t catch her breath. Her face was screwed up in fear, and my stomach was in my throat. I’ve seen asthma attacks before, of course, and I’ve been trained to handle them, but seeing a little girl you love struggle to breathe?
Terrifying.
I never want to relive that again, and from what Birdie told me after she’d calmed down, that wasn’t even a bad asthma attack.
The thought makes me shiver and not in a good way.
Now that school’s out, I rush home and quickly change into leggings and Bridger’s T-shirt, then hurry across the street and knock on the door.