Page 21 of This Loving Feeling (Mirror Lake)

“You need more natural light for a recording studio?”

“No. For an art studio.”

Her eyes widened. Ha, she was surprised he was still doing his art. Well, since he’d taken to the road he hadn’t, but that was going to change. Stevie might have been his reason for picking a permanent place to settle but doing art relaxed him and he’d always dreamed of having a studio.

Stevie coughed again, on and on. Charles went into the house to get him some water.

“What’s going on with Stevie?” Sam asked.

Lukas shook his head. “He’s been doing that since we walked into the house. There’s dust everywhere.”

“You can’t stay here.”

He leveled his gaze at her.

“Oh, sorry. You already know that.”

“I’ve made other arrangements. Down Route Nine a ways. The whole town’s booked.”

Charles left the patio and began walking toward them. “Excuse me, sir, but the boy is having some trouble catching his breath.”

Lukas ran toward Stevie before he even registered the panic that tightened his own chest. Or Sam’s own gasp of surprise. Stevie was sitting forward on the patio stone, his chest heaving with the effort of breathing. Not normal.

Lukas turned to Sam, who was right behind him. “I’m taking him to the ER.” He was usually calm by nature, but now he felt completely helpless.

“I’ll drive, sir,” Charles said.

“I’m coming with you.” Sam was already heading toward the car and thrusting open the doors.

He gave a quick nod of thanks and bent to scoop up his child.

Lukas carried Stevie into the too-familiar ER. The boy’s shoulders were lifting unnaturally with every breath. It made Lukas feel short of breath too, which was why he could barely talk to the triage nurse. Fortunately, Sam could. She’d placed a hand calmly on his arm and sent him a look that saidI got this. She proceeded to tell the story—as much as she knew, anyway—and he managed to add a few more details. The nurse led them immediately into a room, slapped a breathing mask over Stevie’s face, and started an aerosol.

Stevie shifted panic-filled eyes onto Lukas, making Lukas’s stomach instantly slide down to his feet. Somehow he planted what he hoped was a reassuring expression on his face and forced his mouth upward into a semblance of a smile. Sort of like he did after he’d signed his hundredth autograph of the day for somebody’s Aunt Edith back in Kalamazoo. “Hey, buddy, it’s like you’re an astronaut,” Lukas said. “Just breathe deep and get ready for takeoff, okay?”

Stevie wasn’t buying it. “Don’t—like—needles,” came out in muffled sobs from behind the plastic of the mask and above the hiss of the oxygen. Tears leaked down the kid’s face. He’d held up so well despite everything that had happened to him the last couple of months—maybe too well. Hadn’t he suffered enough?

Sam stood on the other side of the gurney, clutching Stevie’s hand and gently stroking his back. The kid practically had a death grip on her. Relief washed through Lukas that she was here—that she’d insisted on staying with Stevie. Yet it stung that Stevie so obviously preferred her over him, confirming what Lukas already knew: that he was clueless about being a parent.

“Is there going to be a needle—oops, I meanan IV?” Lukas asked the nurse who listened to Stevie’s lungs and began to pull things out of her pocket—a roll of tape, a few syringes, and rectangular plastic-wrapped packages of what looked to be IV needles.

The nurse patted Stevie on the hand and began to rip pieces of tape. “Dr.Rushford will be right in but he told me to start one so we can give you medicine right into your veins,” she said.

Stevie pulled off the mask. “My veins don’t want medicine. Mymouthdoes.”

Before Stevie could make another comment, the door opened and a tall, good-looking guy in green scrubs with a close-shaved beard walked in.

Ben Rushford. Samantha’s brother.

To Ben’s credit, he took in the scene pretty quickly. His sister fumbling to replace Stevie’s askew mask. Lukas, who hoped he didn’t look as panicked as he felt. The child, still breathing heavily. He went right to Stevie and told him in a calm, soothing voice who he was and that he was going to have a listen. That everything was going to be okay, that his lungs didn’t like the dust in the house and were having a reaction but the medicine was going to make it all better.

Lukas had to admit, the guy could relate to children. He felt his own anxiety unwind a notch.

“Let’s get another albuterol going, Tracey,” Ben instructed the nurse.

Then came the questions, all rapid-fire and professional. What happened, did Stevie have a history of asthma? Lukas felt clueless. He had to ask Stevie himself if he’d had any trouble like this before.

Allergic reaction, he heard dimly. From something in the house, the drywall dust or some old stuff that got stirred up from all the mucking around that was being done.

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